Thankless Jews

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Background
We are following through a section of Luke, where Jesus is on His way to Jerusalem for the last time, and He is having discussions and performing miracles along the way. Recently in that Gospel timeline, Jesus had instructed to forgive someone absolutely any time that they repent, no matter how many times they transgressed and repented in the past. Then, Jesus explained how a little faith can move trees, and that you should consider yourself an unworthy slave to God.

Thankless Jews

Antisemitism has an undeniably strange relationship with Christianity. Jesus was a Jew, after all. The Twelve Apostles? Jews too. While there are several verses in the New Testament which remind us of the special prominence of the Jews in the eyes of God, there are other verses which seem to be written against the Jews as a whole. Let us take a closer look at a little bit of antisemitism, as well as an implicit reference to Jesus actually being God, brought to us by Luke.

In Luke 17:11-19, a miraculous tale goes like this:

While Jesus was entering a town in Galilee near the border with Samaria, ten lepers begged Him to heal them. Jesus told them to show themselves to the priests. (Per Leviticus 14, people needed to prove to the priests when they were cleansed of diseases, so that they could perform a purification sacrifice ceremony, and to permit them to re-enter society.) As the lepers walked to the priests, they became healed. Upon seeing that he was healed, one of the ten lepers, a Samaritan, went back to Jesus, praising God and thanking Him. Jesus was surprised that the other nine lepers did not come back to give thanks, and tells the Samaritan that he is saved. (My paraphrase)

One interesting point on this healing is the walk-of-faith aspect. Jesus did not heal the lepers right away. Instead, they had to obey Jesus' command and take it on faith that they would be healed in the process; and they were. In that theological regard, this is one of the better miracle stories of Jesus. If Luke had stopped there, it would have been perfect, but Luke was writing this passage with a purpose.

To see Luke's purpose, we have to look into a few of the details. Take a look at Luke 17:15-18:

One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. He threw himself at Jesus' feet and thanked Him—and [that leper] was a Samaritan.

Jesus asked, "Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?" NIV

The first important detail is how Luke equated Jesus with God. It is so subtle that it may slip by you because your mind automatically reconciles it to how you think it should be, but the claim is there, boldly. The NIV translation uses "Jesus' feet" to help you along, but they put "Jesus" in place of a possessive pronoun, and therefore it is better translated as "His feet." This pronoun usage makes it more ambiguous, but we can see how "His" could just as easily and more appropriately, per the guidelines of pronoun use, be interpreted as "God's," as in "God's feet." The implication that Jesus is God is made more strongly when we see that the leper did "return and give praise to God" in Luke 17:18, when the leper had both returned to Jesus and had clearly given thanks directly to Jesus. A third implicit reference is even stronger, but we will get to that in a moment.

The second important detail in this anecdote is that the leper who returned was a Samaritan. Jesus emphasizes this point by calling that leper a "foreigner" in Luke 17:18. If the only one of the lepers who had returned and given thanks to God had instead remained generically defined, that could be a statement about just how fallen mankind had become in general. But, no, this one thankful leper is defined specifically as a Samaritan and a foreigner, which draws the natural implicit conclusion that the nine other lepers who did not return to give thanks were, in fact, Jews. This becomes a specific statement against the Jews, about how they are thankless of all that God has done for them.

This passage provokes a righteous indignation against the Jews, which helps to foster antisemitism. An omniscient God would understand how verses like this, and others, such as we saw earlier in John 8:42-47 where Jesus claims that the Jews are children of the Devil, and what would happen later in Matthew 27:25 where the Jews appear to be taking the responsibility for Jesus' death, would spur on antisemitism and lead to the persecution of His Chosen People for millennia to come. Of course, if God has that omniscient understanding and let the verses be written anyway, then God is not good. If that is false, then God is not omniscient. This is a lose-lose situation for the Almighty.

This brings us to the third and final important detail, which is a lose-lose situation for Jesus too. Jesus asks both where the other nine ex-lepers were, and essentially, rhetorically, why they had not come back to give praise to God.

The question we should as is why would they have to return to Jesus to give praise to God? We can certainly understand why they may have wanted to thank Jesus as being an intercessor, but the ultimate power of the cleansing came from God Himself. If they wanted to give praise and thanks to God, the most appropriate traditional way to do that would be at God's Temple, possibly with thanksgiving offerings (Leviticus 7:11-15).

So who is to say that these nine Jewish lepers were not at their local synagogue or, more correctly, on their way to the Temple in Jerusalem to give proper and formal thanks and praise to God? The only way we can exclude this possibility is if Jesus is omniscient, if Jesus is God, and therefore He would know that the others were not off praising God somewhere else. Yet if Jesus was God, He would also know that it was appropriate for the Jews to give praise and thanks to God at the Temple, so there should have been no expectation for the lepers to "return and praise God" in front of Him (that Him being Jesus), except that Luke is equating Jesus to be God. So the details of this episode create quite a paradox for Jesus' accurate knowledge as either God or a Jewish man.

On minor point to consider as well is how did a Samaritan leper find himself hanging out with nine Jewish lepers in Jewish territory when, as John 4:9 puts it, the "Jews do not associate with Samaritans." Of course, this is a reportedly a border town, where the lines get a little more blurry.

When you consider all of these factors, the real truth becomes evident: this is fiction. Luke wrote this anecdote for a purpose, and that purpose was obviously for showing a condemnation of the Jews. However, this may not have been to provoke anger at the Jews. The Gospel of Luke was completed in a time after a major Jewish rebellion, one which ultimately cost them the destruction of their Temple at the hands of the Romans. Verses like these may have been used to put the Jews politically at some distance from the early Christian sect, so as to convince the Roman authorities that they should not be associated with those rebellious Jews.

A little drop of ink, such as this, would cause a great flood of blood.

Imperfection in Parables

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Background
In the Synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, after Jesus gave the parable about sowing seeds on different kinds of soil, He revealed that the reason that He spoke in parables was to keep people from understanding His words, to keep them from repenting, as it was (incorrectly) prophesied. That leads into a string of even more parables.

Imperfection in Parables

From Christian pulpits, there is a tendency to exalt Jesus' parables to a status of perfection. They marvel at how effectively and accurately Jesus was able to explain the Kingdom of God to people through the use of parables. However, as we just learned, the reason that Jesus spoke in parables was to prevent certain people from understanding. So half of that position is wrong. What about the other half? Were the parables perfectly accurate representations? The interpretations of unexplained parables vary based on the scholars you refer to, so that is some proof to the contrary right there. We can go a step further and easily find ways in which the parables fall apart, and maybe have a little fun in the process.

In Matthew 13:24-30 is the Parable of the Tares, which is unique to Matthew. It says that the Kingdom of Heaven is like a farmer who sows wheat in a field, only to have an enemy come a sow tares in that field while the farmer is sleeping. The farmer instructs his servants to wait until harvest time to pull out the weeds to avoid uprooting the wheat. The weeds will be pulled out first, and burned, and then the wheat will be harvested.

In the explanation of the parable in Matthew 13:36-43, God (Jesus) is the farmer and Satan is the weed-sowing enemy. The way that the parable is worded would suggest that Satan had planted the weeds unknown to God. That is a problem if God is really omniscient. So to be more accurate, the parable would say that the farmer sat and watched His enemy sow weeds in the field and did nothing to stop him. And in that case, you really have to question the farmer!

Also interesting is that, according to the parable, the weeds are gathered first before gathering the “sons of the Kingdom.” This creates a problem for people expecting a Rapture event where the good guys will be called up to Heaven prior to God unleashing His wrath on the world.

Switching over to Mark, he follows the Parable of the Sower with the Parable of the Growing Seed in Mark 4:26-29; a parable unique to Mark. The Kingdom of God is like a farmer who sows some seed, observes the crop growing all on its own, but he does not know how it grows, and then harvests the crop when it is ready. Because there is no given explanation for this parable, interpretations vary. However, it seems to suggest that very little effort at all would be needed to spread the faith and thereby enlarge the Kingdom, which is quite a contrast to the reality, which is presently a multi-billion-dollar affair requiring tons of effort.

Matthew 13:31-32 and Mark 4:30-32 then converge with the Parable of the Mustard Seed, which Luke 13:18-19 also records after Jesus healing a cripple woman on the Sabbath. The Kingdom of Heaven/God is like a tiny mustard seed growing into a tall shrub. So you see that that Kingdom start tiny, but grow large, but it would not be the only plant around, nor the strongest, nor the biggest, nor the most useful, etc.

Matthew 13:33 and Luke 13:20-21 then give the short Parable of the Leaven, a.k.a. Yeast. The Kingdom of Heaven/God is like a woman who mixes yeast into a large quantity of dough. Yeast, a bacteria, converts sugar (the sweet stuff of life) into alcohol (which clouds judgement) and the waste gas of carbon dioxide. Oh, maybe that parable is perfect after all. ;-)

There is a brief interlude where Matthew 13:34-35 and Mark 4:33-34 say that Jesus never spoke to the crowds without a parable. Mark says Jesus only explained the parables to His disciples in private, while Matthew misquotes Psalm 78:2. If you look at Psalm 78, the author is trying to tell everything, not hide anything through parables, so that the next generation will put their trust in God (Psalm 78:6-7). What makes this reference even funnier is that this Psalm was obviously written in a time before the concept of the afterlife existed, as can be seen by Psalm 78:39, which is given as the reason for God restraining His anger at the recurrent rebellion of the Israelites:

[God] remembered that they were but flesh, a passing breeze that does not return. NIV

Matthew continues in parables alone from here. In Mathew 13:44 is the Parable of the Hidden Treasure, in which the Kingdom of Heaven is a treasure which a man finds in a field, hides it again, and then buys that field from its owner, who is presumably unaware of the treasure. In other words, do whatever you can to get the Kingdom, even through deceptive means.

In Matthew 13:45-46 is the Parable of the Pearl. A pearl merchant finds a pearl of great price, and so he sells everything he has to get that pearl. Presumably unwilling to part with it, the man probably dies naked and starving clutching that pearl. Sméagol loves the pearl, oh yes, my precious...

Finally, in Matthew 13:47-52 is the Parable of the Net. The Kingdom of Heaven is like a big fishing net which caught all kinds of fish. After hauling it in, the fishermen separated out the good from the bad. If the Kingdom of Heaven is the net, then clearly some people who do not belong are going to make it into the Kingdom of Heaven, and then get kicked out. So, how sure are you of your Salvation? It is also pretty strange that God would call people into the Kingdom of Heaven who do not belong there, given that only those drawn by God will go (John 6:44).

This was all really just a fun exercise, but I believe that it effectively illustrates that not only are these parables far from perfect, but also without the proper interpretation given to the people who heard these parables would have been clueless to the truth when coming up with their own interpretations, which is apparently exactly how Jesus wanted them to be.

Jesus Versus Shakespeare

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Background
In our progression through the Gospels, Jesus and friends broke the Sabbath by eating, and then Jesus broke it by healing (Matthew 12:9-14, Mark 3:1-6, Luke 6:6-11). Thereafter, Matthew let us know about a prophesy regarding Jesus, which did not really seem to be a close match upon further inspection.

Jesus Versus Shakespeare

If there was a showdown of wits between Jesus and any man, Jesus would win. At least, He should win. He is God, and part of that status means the endowment of all knowledge; what is, what was, and what will ever be. So I figured it would be a good idea to pit Jesus against Shakespeare to demonstrate Jesus' clear superiority. Funny thing though; it did not quite work out that way.

In case you are in doubt about just how smart God/Jesus is, a good place to start would be Job 38 and Job 39. There, God brags to Job about how superior His knowledge is to that of any man. You can sum is all up with one verse from an earlier chapter, Job 22:2:

"Can a man be of benefit to God? Can even a wise person benefit him?" NIV

Basically, not even the smartest man could teach God anything. Given that Jesus is God, the same goes for Him. And now, on to the battle of wits!

Matthew 12:22-28, Mark 3:22-26, and Luke 11:14-20 all record an incident where Jesus was casting out demons. The Pharisees got angry, and accused Jesus of casting out demons by the power of Beelzebub, the prince of demons; a.k.a. Satan. Mark 3:23-26 gives us the memorable quote below, which is similarly echoed in Matthew 12:25-28 and Luke 11:17-20:

"How can Satan drive out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. And if Satan opposes himself and is divided, he cannot stand; his end has come." NIV

Pretty smart, huh? If Satan went around casting out demons, how could he rule his kingdom? (It is interesting to note that Satan's kingdom implicitly relies on people being demon possessed; that is by Jesus' logic anyway.)

Now let us offer up our human sacrifice, the immortal words of the mortal Shakespeare. The following quote comes to us from Act II, Scene iii of the play Othello. The villain Iago is secretly looking for a way to destroy the life of the black Moor, Othello, largely because of a rumor that Othello had slept with his wife. Iago's “friend,” Cassio, had fallen out of favor with Othello due to a drunken brawl, and he is desperate to restore his reputation. Iago counsels Cassio to have Desdemona, Othello's white wife, plead to Othello to forgive Cassio. It seems like good advice, but Iago plans to tell Othello that Desdemona secretly desires Cassio for herself in order to spur on jealousy. Speaking of the “good advice” he had offered, Iago says:

"When devils will the blackest sins put on, they do suggest at first with heavenly shows,"

In case your Olde English is not up to par, what Iago is saying is that when devils want to commit the most grievous kinds of evil acts, they start by deceiving their victims by doing something good; gaining their trust to fully enact their wicked plots.

Iago's, or more accurately, Shakespeare's words suggest that Satan, embodied in some possessed human, would benefit greatly by casting out a few demons here and there. In that way, people would revere his miraculous powers and treat him like a messenger from God. That is powerful and dangerous deception!

OK, time to check the scoreboard! Who won this battle of wisdom?

Jesus	Shakespeare
0	1

Oh, sorry about that, Jesus. It seems that your response just seemed a little naïve upon deeper reflection, especially compared to Iago's words. I am really surprised you messed that up, given that you know that Satan is the father of lies (John 8:44), and that you know that many false messiahs and false prophets will work miracles in order to try to deceive people (Matthew 24:24, Mark 13:22). Well, better luck next time.

Sourdough Sabbath

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Background
Jesus revealed that it is God's pleasure to keep things hidden from certain people, and that He is selective about to whom He shows God. Then Jesus claimed that obeying and following Him was an easy burden and a light yoke, but the reality seems quite the contrary. Next, we move into a couple anecdotes about the Sabbath.

Sourdough Sabbath

If anyone should know what is in the Bible, it is God. The Bible is called the Word of God for a reason. All but the most liberal believers consider the content of the Bible to be at least divinely inspired, if not divinely dictated. It is no surprise, then, that Jesus should know the Bible well, given that He is part of God. The Gospels even record the authority with which Jesus spoke about the Scriptures (Matthew 7:29, Mark 1:21-22, Luke 4:31-32). So what are we to think when Jesus gets it wrong?

Matthew 12:1-8, Mark 2:23-28, and Luke 6:1-5 all record the story of how Jesus and His disciples were walking through a field of grain one Sabbath. The disciples were hungry, so they picked some grain and ate it. Coincidentally, some Pharisees happened to be around to see this act, and they confronted Jesus because they thought that gathering grain on the Sabbath was against God's Law.

The response Jesus provided varied a little, depending on which Gospel account you read. However, Matthew 12:3-4, Mark 2:25-26, and Luke 6:3-4 all strike on the same chord as part of the reply. As Matthew 12:3-4 renders it:

[Jesus] answered, "Haven't you read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He entered the house of God, and he and his companions ate the consecrated bread—which was not lawful for them to do, but only for the priests." NIV

It is interesting to note that in Jesus' response, He implicitly confirms that the work involved in picking the grain would indeed be against God's Law. As we learned in Numbers 15:32-36 where God commanded for a man be stoned to death for gathering wood on a Sabbath, God takes such a transgression very seriously. Yet here, in this case, Jesus seems a little more lenient.

It is also interesting to note that neither David nor Jesus' disciples were to the point of starving to death when they made this transgression. At least that is not the way either story is framed. Besides, Jesus had previously reminded everyone that man does not live by bread alone but by God's will during a 40 day period fasting when He was tempted by Satan. That is a great reminder that this religion promotes fasting! So for Jesus' disciples to skip eating grain to honor the Sabbath should have been no big deal at all!

Yet, perhaps the most interesting parts of this whole affair is the story which Jesus references and the way in which He does so. If you did not know anything of the story, you might get the impression that David walked into the temple and took the sacred bread because he and his companions were hungry. That is not at all what happened...

In 1 Samuel 20, Jonathan, David's beloved friend and one of King Saul's sons, discovers that Saul is planning on killing David. So at the end of the chapter, David is fleeing. Fleeing by himself.

The part which Jesus references is in 1 Samuel 21:1-9. In the town of Nob, David seeks out Ahimelek the priest. Ahimelek is surprised to find David traveling alone. David lies to Ahimelek, saying that he is on a secret mission given to him by the king, and that his men are in a secret meeting spot. David does not say “I am hungry, do you have anything to eat?” Instead he demands five loaves of bread, or whatever Ahimelek can find. Ahimelek says that the only bread around is the consecrated bread (reference Leviticus 24:5-9) which David and his men could have, provided they had kept themselves from women! David continues the lie, saying that his men's bodies are holy (thus implying that having sex with women, even their own wives, would have made them unholy!).

Before leaving the temple, David took the sword of Goliath there, which was further proof that he was not with companions, as anyone would have given a leader, such as David, a weapon. According to 1 Samuel 21:10-15, later that same day David fled to the presence of Achish, the king of Gath, where David (all by himself) pretended to be insane for his own protection.

Jesus was wrong. David did not share the bread with his companions. David was fleeing for his life alone. How is it possible that Jesus does not know the Word of God? Furthermore, David procured this consecrated bread by lying to one of God's anointed priests, which is not exactly a good example to follow.

Finally, from the way in which Jesus made the reference to this story, you may think that anything David did, be it against God's Law or not, was OK to do. If so, you would be right, almost. Check out 1 Kings 15:5:

For David had done what was right in the eyes of the Lord and had not failed to keep any of the Lord’s commands all the days of his life—except in the case of Uriah the Hittite. NIV

Jesus claimed that it was against God's Law for David and his imaginary companions to eat the consecrated bread. God said that David upheld all of His commands (implicitly including God's Law) except for the case of Uriah. (Uriah was Bathsheba's husband. David had Uriah killed in battle after David impregnated Bathsheba. Reference 2 Samuel 11.) Who is right, God or Jesus?

It turns out that they are both wrong. Jesus was wrong about David's companions. God was wrong because of David eating the consecrated bread and because David had many wives, something prohibited according to Deuteronomy 17:17. How many many wives David had is not certain. He had three before becoming king (1 Samuel 25:42-44), he had some other random wife Eglah (2 Samuel 3:5), then he “took more concubines and wives” after becoming King of Judah (2 Samuel 5:13), then upon becoming King of all of the Israelites he took King Saul's (unnumbered) wives (2 Samuel 12:8), and, of course, he married Bathsheba (2 Samuel 11:27).

That, my friends, is a double strike against both Biblical inerrancy and divine omniscience. When Jesus gets the Bible wrong, and God does too, you have pretty good evidence suggesting that, at best, there are errors recorded in the Bible, and, at worst, that it is all make believe and man-made.

Dead in More Ways Than One

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Background
After Jesus healed Simon's/Peter's mother-in-law, He drove out some demons and healed the sick of the local populous, which Matthew mistakenly ties into prophesy from Isaiah. According to Mark and Luke, Jesus then prayed alone, followed by preaching, exorcising, and healing throughout Judea. Matthew tells a different story...

Dead in More Ways Than One

There are some verses of the New Testament, some actions and words of Jesus, which give modern apologists issues when trying to reconcile Jesus' message with modern values. They usually take one of three approaches: 1) skip them completely, 2) skim highlights to cover the verses from a safer distance, or 3) cover them honestly, but skip looking for the deeper implications and forget them altogether in the overall picture they have of Jesus. That is why I am here to help.

Let us start with something Jesus did which is typically glossed over. It appears that after healing people and exorcising demons, a crowd gathered around Jesus. In Matthew 8:18, we see that Jesus did what any deity-made-flesh-to-show-His-love-and-grant-salvation would do. Jesus ran away from the crowd. OK, He did not really run, but He decided to take a boat across the lake to get away.

No reason is given for His flight. Maybe Jesus was tired of exorcisms, or perhaps He felt like He had spoken to these people enough. For whatever reason, the crowd was there to see Him, but He did not want to see them. Perhaps Jesus was just trying to let them know how God would interact with them in the future. They would seek after God. God would go somewhere else.

Presumably, as they were preparing the boat, a teacher of the Law tells Jesus that he wants to follow Him, but Jesus warns the teacher that He is a rambling man (Matthew 8:19-20). Luke 9:57-58 records this same conversation, except that Luke has the conversation happen while walking on a road from one village to another (Luke 9:56). Thank God the Bible is inerrant.

Both Matthew 8:21-22 and Luke 9:59-60 agree on what conversation happens next, but they may not agree on the content of those conversations. Let us go with a side-by-side comparison:

Matthew 8:21-22	Luke 9:59-60
Another disciple said to [Jesus], "Lord, first let me go and bury my father." But Jesus told him, "Follow Me, and let the dead bury their own dead." NIV	[Jesus] said to another man, "Follow Me." But the man replied, "Lord, first let me go and bury my father." Jesus said to him, "Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the Kingdom of God." NIV

So in Matthew's version it seems like Jesus wants this disciple to follow Him and forget about the funeral. In Luke's version, it seems like Jesus is telling the “man” (who probably was not yet a disciple given that Jesus asks the man to follow Him) to go to somewhere to proclaim the Kingdom of God, possibly at that funeral while others bury his father. Which one is right? Flip a coin.

The most interesting text in these verses is “let the dead bury their own dead.” This makes Jesus sound like an insensitive jerk to this guy who just lost his father. Beyond that, the question comes up: What did Jesus mean by “the dead,” and why is this guy's father part of “their own dead?”

Biblical scholars explain this verse in several, mostly similar ways. Jesus was saying...

• let the spiritually dead bury the physically dead.
• let people who are not called to spread the Word take care of earthly business.
• the deceased and this man's family back home were all “unregenerate,” i.e. unsaved.
• (my personal favorite) leave the business of the world to those who are dead to God.

The problem with these Christian views is that supposedly part of Jesus' purpose was to save the unsaved by getting the message to them. Yet from their perspective, Jesus is neglecting people who obviously need His help. Where is the love in that?

I think that Jesus was essentially labeling those who were already dead as lost causes. Their fate was already sealed. Furthermore, those who were still just carrying out the business of daily life were also lost.

Why? Because Jesus believed that the time had come, that God's final judgement was near. Not the end of Jesus' life mind you, which was also near, but rather the end of all life and the coming final judgement. People who could not discern the season (in the metaphorical sense of the word), people who were still carrying on with the old ways, were essentially like the people living out their daily lives right up to the day of the Flood. (We will see this same theme several times pop up in later studies.) This statement from Jesus captures the laser-like focus He had for getting the message out to those who were seeking it as soon as possible.

This theory is supported somewhat by what follows next, in Luke anyway. (Matthew continues on with the actual boat trip.) Luke 9:61 records an additional conversation along the road. A man tells Jesus that he will follow Him, but he is going to go back and say good-bye to his family first. In Luke 9:62 we see:

Jesus replied, "No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the Kingdom of God." NIV

Jesus again playing the role of insensitive jerk, essentially tells the guy that he is not welcome in the Kingdom of God if he goes back to his family.

As above, it comes back to a business only, strict focus on (what Jesus thought was) the soon coming Kingdom of God. Jesus was acting much like Donald Trump, and He was not going to tolerate time wasters or weak commitments when He had a job to do with very limited time to do it. If only Jesus had known just how much time would pass until the Kingdom of God showed up. He probably would have been a lot nicer, if He had known that He had forever to wait...

No Christian today believes that Jesus thought that Judgement Day was going to be soon after Jesus' resurrection. Yet if the modern Christian perspective is correct, Jesus has no reason for being an insensitive jerk, because there were still about a couple thousand years to go (at least).

You also have got to keep in mind that this is the same Jesus who said do unto others as you would have done to you (Matthew 7:12, Luke 6:31). You and I probably would have let the guy go back to bury his father and let the other guy go back to say good-by to his family, because that is what we would like to do if the positions were reversed. Jesus is effectively saying that when God's involved, moral guidelines get ignored in favor of obeying His commands.

God According to Deuteronomy

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Background
Deuteronomy. It is the final book of the Pentateuch/Torah/Law, and the final chance for Moses to teach the new generation of Israelites the ways of God before they enter the Promised Land. It is time now to reflect on what we have learned about God's ways in this book.

God According to Deuteronomy

Piecing together some information from earlier books, we figure out early in Deuteronomy that God believes that when you reach the age of 20 years old, you are fully accountable for your actions. As far as any arbitrary number goes, that seems like a reasonable age.

God believes that the Israelites have not lacked anything in their 40 years since the Exodus began. But God is obviously out of touch with reality, because the Israelites complained about not having good food and, even more importantly, about not having water, on multiple occasions. God even sometimes punished them for making these requests for basic and essential needs.

God is really, really proud of the the laws and commandments (collectively know at the Law) which He gave to the Israelites. He does not want you to add to or subtract from them. They are good for eternity. God thinks that they are so good that any other nation which studies these laws will be extremely impressed at how smart they are. Are you wearing blended fabrics? Dummy!

Did I mention that God was impressed with the Law? Well, God wants you to teach your children the Law everyday, and speak and write the Law all over the place. Be sure to teach your kids how to treat their slave girls! It is through following the Law that you can be righteous, and you do not even have to be perfect at it to be righteous. (Sorry Christianity.)

God says that He will drive out the Promised Land's present inhabitants, but then confusingly reminds the Israelites to completely wipe out those same inhabitants, killing everything that breaths.

Who is God? Think of God as a Father: you know, the kind of father who constantly tests you to see if you will obey him, humbles you with starvation and thirst, and threatens to kill you if you show an admiration of any other father.

God reminds the Israelites that it is just sheer luck that they are chosen by God; luck that their forefathers had impressed God. Otherwise, God would have already killed them.

Getting to God's impressive, holy Law, God commands having absolutely zero tolerance for other religions within the Promised Land. Censor pagan knowledge. Destroy all pagan symbols and altars. Kill individual pagan worshipers. And if an entire town is pagan? Kill everything that breaths in the town, and burn the entire town as an offering to God. Are you impressed?

God's Law continues, instructing to cancel debts every seven years, but only for fellow Israelites. You should maintain debt records for foreigners. You should also generously loan (not give) to the poor, so that you will be financially blessed by God.

God's Law also has commands for kings to follow with no negative connotations associated with kingship, even though it becomes clear later on that God did not want the Israelites to have a king.

God tells us that He will provide multiple prophets, not just one, and that the Israelites need to test each prophet to make sure that they come from God based on the fulfillment of prophesies during the prophet's lifetime. If what they prophesy does not come true, kill them.

What about the morals and family values of God's Law? God says that women as part of the plunder of war, allowing you to have sex with them and marry them if you want. God approves of polygamy, but your firstborn son must get the inheritance typically allotted to the firstborn regardless of how much you love (or hate) the woman who gave birth to this son. Oh, and you should stone rebellious children to death.

God's Law also says that if there is no blood from a broken hymen during a newlywed's first intercourse, then the woman should be stoned to death because she obviously was not a virgin. Of course, this proves God has a poor understanding of female anatomy, because natural variations in body structure can make it so that no blood is produced during the first intercourse. God also says that a raped woman must be married to the rapist in certain cases. Yes, indeed, God has wonderfully high moral standards. So wise.

God has restrictions of who is allowed to enter His congregation, and who is not. God does not want anyone with damaged testicles, anyone from a lineage from someone born out of wedlock, or anyone of Ammonite or Moabite ancestry.

God believes divorce is OK, but you had better not remarry your divorced wife after she has married someone else. That would be disgusting to God, even though a man having multiple wives is not disgusting to God in the least.

God's Law says that no man should be put to death for the sins of his children, and no son should be put to death for the sins of his father. Yet God has an established pattern of ignoring this rule of morality.

God obligates a brother to marry his brother's widow (regardless of this brother's marital status) if there was no male heir, or else face a shame which would forever endure with his progeny. God also wants you to chop off the hand of any woman who fights dirty to try to save her husband. Plus, God wants the Israelites to hold a permanent grudge against the Amalekites, never forgiving them for what their previous generation had done.

Now if the Israelites obeyed God's righteous Law, God would bless them with peaceful, financial prosperity. If not, God would curse them in so many horrendous ways that they would be tortured into submission.

When the Israelites were again willing to follow only God's will, God promised that He would circumcise their hearts and the hearts of their descendants so that they would love God and obey His Law once again. Of course, this is in dramatic contrast to how Christianity spins the prophesy.

Closing out Deuteronomy with a song, God says that He has perfect works and perfect justice, and that He never does anything wrong. This brands God a liar, because He made man (imperfect), His justice is wanting (as seen above), and He routinely goes against His own moral code (again as seen above). The song ends with God making atonement (without Jesus) for both His people (the Israelites) AND His land (Zion), which is a bit different than the Christian perspective of salvation and redemption.

What We Have Learned
God thinks 20 years old is the age of full accountability.

God thinks that you can be dying of thirst, and still not lack anything.

God thinks that the Law He provided is perfect as is for all eternity, and it should never be amended or redacted. It is a showcase of God's wisdom, providing proof of His divinity to any pagan willing to study it. Children should be taught it, and the culture should be immersed in it, purging all other ideas. God is the kind of father who will have either your complete obedience to His Law or your death. When people drift away, their return to God will always be coupled to their return to His Law. HUGE red flag that Christianity is false...

God wants the present Promised Land inhabitants absolutely and completely wiped out, as well as death for all Amalekites. Short on forgiveness, God never wants anyone from a bastard's lineage or of Ammonite or Moabite ancestry in His congregation.

Just because you are chosen by God, does not mean you are any better than anyone else, which essentially means that decision is arbitrary.

God's wise laws include ideological intolerance, racism, nationalism, and sexism, as well as a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of human anatomy. In God's Law, death sentences are a usual form of punishment.

Even in cases where God provides good moral guidance, God Himself does not feel obligated to do what is right and obey His own given morals.

God will reward obedience in this life, not some life beyond death. And for disobedience, if you are not killed, you may wish for death when God gets done with applying curses.

Finally, God has a highly inflated ego and delusions of righteous grandeur.

In short: God is a hypocritical, intolerant, racist, nationalist, sexist, capricious, and delusional megalomaniac with little regard for human life, a poor understanding of anatomy, and an even poorer understanding of what it means to be a role good model for fatherhood.

Virginity, Rape, and Bitter Justice

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Background
We are approximately two-thirds of the way through Deuteronomy, in the middle of a section where Moses is listing God's laws for the Israelites. From Deuteronomy 21, we learn how you can marry captive women, practice polygamy with unloved wives, and stone your disobedient children. What will the next chapter hold for us?

Virginity, Rape, and Bitter Justice
Have you ever heard a song which starts of really well, but after the first chorus all of the stanzas are just horrible? You feel cheated, like the artist wrecked what could have been an otherwise wonderful song. Sure, you can go on singing the chorus and humming the tune, but any notion of artistic genius dissolved. This is not one for the iTunes. In a less lyrical sense, that is exactly what happens with Deuteronomy 22.

Deuteronomy 22:1-8 starts off the chapter pretty strong. Take care of your brother's lost or fallen livestock. Take the eggs, but not the mother bird. Deuteronomy 22:8 is even a precursor to OSHA, requiring fall protection for your roof! Besides the somewhat random prohibition on cross-dressing in Deuteronomy 22:5, these laws seem to demonstrate great compassion and understanding for humans and animals. This could be evidence of a loving, omniscient God.

Then things become a little odd in Deuteronomy 22:9-12. Here, as in our study of Leviticus, we see that God prohibits planting multiple seed types in the same piece of land and wearing blended fabrics. Also, do not yoke different animals together, and make sure to put tassels on your cloak. (The tassels are to remind you not to follow your heart, but to obey God's Law instead.) Do these laws represent divine wisdom? It is hard to tell. Let us move on.

In Deuteronomy 22:13-21, the train wreck occurs. In this section, a man may make a claim that his new wife was not a virgin, claiming that there was no proof of her virginity. What exactly would that proof be? A bloody sheet from the first night that the man and his wife had sex. If his wife's parents can provide this bloody sheet to the court, then the man gets a hefty fine, and must stay married to his wife and cannot ever divorce her. (The wife, after having her good named dragged through the mud by her husband, gets no choice in the matter.) If no proof of her virginity can be presented, the man's wife is to be stoned to death.

The trouble is that not all virgins will bleed during their first sexual intercourse. When the blood does come, it comes from rupturing the hymen. However, like any other body part, the hymen forms uniquely in each woman, resulting in a variety of shapes and elasticity. A smaller and/or more elastic hymen will be less prone to rupture during intercourse.

An omniscient God would know this fact, but an uneducated man would not. As a result of this ignorance, women have been killed for a suspected premarital loss of chastity. And as a result, to this day some women choose to undergo a surgery known as hymenorrhaphy to ensure that there will be blood during their first intercourse.

Next is a somewhat good, but starkly severe law saying that both the man and the woman engaging in an adulterous relationship must be killed (Deuteronomy 22:22).

Then, we get to rape in Deuteronomy 22:23-29, and God's wisdom becomes challenged again.

For rape of a virgin who is promised to be married, the punishment depends on where the rape happened. If it was in a town, and nobody heard the woman scream for help, then both the man and the woman are to be stoned (Deuteronomy 22:23-24). So the lesson to all of those would-be rapists is to make sure that you gag your victim first, because then it is unlikely she would later report the rape, as it would mean not only her shame but also her own death.

For rape in the countryside of a virgin who is promised to be married, only the man would be killed because there was nobody around to hear the woman scream for help (Deuteronomy 22:25-27). However, per God's Law in Deuteronomy 17:6, in such circumstances this man could not be put to death for his crime unless he provided witness against himself, because capitol crimes require at least two witnesses to enact justice. So another lesson for all of those would-be rapists is that countryside virgins are fair game.

What about rape of a virgin who is not yet promised to be married? Well, in that case, the rapist must marry the woman, never divorce her, and pay her father some silver (Deuteronomy 22:28-29). The woman gets no choice in the matter. She must marry her rapist. That is truly bitter justice.

God rounds out the chapter a little more softly, giving an implicit nod of acceptance to polygamy by saying that a man cannot marry his father's wife (Deuteronomy 22:30). That wife may or may not be the man's own mother.

For those who believe, it is time to stop simply singing the chorus and humming the tune which someone else has piped out for you. Read the Bible and pay attention to its words. When you understand its text, as we have seen above, its divine veracity simply does not hold up. It is not worth $0.99 to download it, unless you just really dig the riffs of fantasy.

A Talking Donkey Evades God's Wrath

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Background
The previous chapter, Numbers 21, was fairly busy. The Canaanite king of Arad attacked and captured some Israelites, and so then the Israelites counterattacked and completely destroyed him and his lands with God's help.

Then, like before in Numbers 20, the Israelites complained about not having water. This time, God sent fiery serpents/venomous snakes to kill some of the rebellious Israelites. The Israelites repented being thirsty, so God had Moses make a bronze serpent on a pole, and if the bitten Israelites looked at this serpent, they would live. Jesus would later compare Himself to this serpent.

After that, they traveled around the desert some more. The Israelites asked Sihon, the king of the Amorites, for permission to pass through their land. The king responded by attacking the Israelites, but the Israelites defeated him. Moses sent spies to Jazer, and then captured it as well. Finally, with God's help, the Israelites conquered Og of Bashan as well.

As we would later learn in Deuteronomy 3:3-7, these victories ended with the pillaging of all goods and livestock, and the killing of all men, women, and children. This sets the stage for our study.

A Talking Donkey Evades God's Wrath
Mick Jones of The Clash asked “should I stay or should I go?” in a song which topped the charts one decade after it was written. Mick wrote about a tumultuous relationship; not sure if it was worthwhile any longer. Believers sometimes turn to God for answers in such unsure situations. Omniscient; if there was ever a source for wisdom, you would think your Heavenly Father would set you on the right path.

In this study, a man by the name of Balaam turned to God for guidance, but God jerked him around; almost killing him for following that same God-given guidance, and that is not even the strangest thing about this tall tale. Let us investigate in Numbers 22.

Numbers 22:1-4 opens the chapter with the Israelites camping in Moab. The Moabites are frightened by the numbers of the Israelites, probably on the order of over six hundred thousand men at this time (Numbers 1:46), but even more frightened because the word had spread that the Israelites had just slain every man, woman, and child in multiple Amorite cities (Numbers 21:25-26, Deuteronomy 3:6).

Balak, king of the Moabites, fears for the safety of his people. Desperate, he sends princes to summon Balaam, a guy with a proven track record of effective blessings and curses, to aid his defense against the Israelites. Balaam tells the princes that it will depend on what God tells him, which obviously reveals the source of Balaam's blessing and cursing powers as well as his relationship with God (Numbers 22:4-8).

God asks Balaam who are the men who have come to him (Numbers 22:9) Either this is proof that God is not omniscient, or God is testing Balaam to see if he will tell the truth, which would be stupid because God would already know what Balaam's answer would be.

Balaam informs God that Balak wishes to curse “a people” which came from Egypt, so obviously Balaam does not know who they are. God informs Balaam that he should not go with the princes, and should not curse the people because they are blessed. So, Balaam told the princes that God would not let him go with them (Numbers 22:10-14).

Balak does not give up so easily. He sends more princes, and higher esteemed princes, back to summon Balaam again, and offers Balaam a great reward. Balaam tells them that it does not matter what they offer. It only matters what God says, which again suggests that Balaam had a tight relationship with, or at least a considerable respect for, God (Numbers 22:15-19).

Because God does not change His mind (Numbers 23:19) and does not respect a man's earthly importance (Deuteronomy 10:17, 2 Chronicles 19:7, Acts 10:34, Romans 2:11, Galatians 2:6, Ephesians 6:9, Colossians 3:25, and 1 Peter 1:17), naturally you would expect God to provide the same response again to Balaam. You would be wrong. Numbers 22:20 says:

That night God came to Balaam and said, "Since these men have come to summon you, go with them, but do only what I tell you." NIV

So God changed His mind, and let Balaam go, but God then gets angry at Balaam for going with the princes per His own command! After Balaam leaves in Numbers 22:21, we read in Numbers 22:22:

But God was very angry when [Balaam] went, and the angel of the LORD stood in the road to oppose him... NIV

Now here is where the story goes from bad to worse. Worse than God contradicting Himself? You bet.

We see in Numbers 22:23-27 that the invisible angel of God had a sword drawn, and on three occasions blocked Balaam's path. His donkey could see God, and so walked around Him the first two times, but stopped the third time because God had completely blocked the path. Because Balaam could not see God, he beat his donkey for misbehaving all three times.

God then grants the donkey the power to speak, and so she asks Balaam why she received the beatings. Balaam has a discussion with her about the beatings, instead of being utterly shocked (or reacting at all, for that matter) that his donkey could talk (Numbers 22:28-30)!

Then, in Numbers 22:31- 33, God grants Balaam the ability to see Him, to which Balaam does react; falling facedown. After chastising Balaam for thrice beating his donkey, God goes on to tell him, as Numbers 22:33 renders it:

"... If [the donkey] had not turned away, I would certainly have killed you by now, but I would have spared her." NIV

God was standing there, with His sword drawn; ready, willing, and even desirous to see Balaam dead. The only thing which stayed His sword was how close His target was. Proximity. As if someone could be too far away for God to kill. As if God was not omnipotent.

It is also important to note that God was not waiting for Balaam to commit one more sin. Instead, God was simply waiting for Balaam to take one more step closer to God to kill him. Ironic, no?

Balaam, humble as ever up to this point, tells God that he has sinned, and he will turn back around if that is what God wants. God replies with essentially the same response from Numbers 22:20, that Balaam can go with the princes, but must speak only what God tells him (Numbers 22:34-35).

So what was the point of all of this? Apparently God just wanted to put the fear of God into a man who, by this account, already had the fear of God. God was just being a bully.

God's Wrath Loves Company

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Background
The book of Numbers could just as easily be called the book of Rebellions. Already in our studies, we have seen rebellions due to inadequate food variety, to jealousy of leadership, and to fear of other nations. In our last study, we even found a rebellious man picking up sticks on a Sabbath, and we were reminded by God not to follow our hearts. The next chapter, the next rebellion, is the subject of this study.

God's Wrath Loves Company
When someone makes you angry, why get mad at only the person responsible? Why not take out your anger on their entire family? That is what God would do (and inherently what Jesus would do) as we see in this study of Numbers 16.

Despite God punishing four acts of rebellion thus far in the book of Numbers, amazingly there are some Israelites stupid enough to challenge Moses and his brother the High Priest, Aaron. The Levites Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, and 250 other nameless men bring a protest against Moses and Aaron (Numbers 16:1-3).

Moses tells them that they have gone too far, and tomorrow God will show them who He wants to lead the Israelites (Numbers 16:4-11). Dathan and Abiram tell Moses that they will not show up tomorrow just to have Moses brag about how he is in charge (Numbers 16:12-14).

Moses, ever humble, tells God that he has never wronged these men and that God should not accept their offerings (Numbers 16:15).

The day of the big showdown comes. Korah and his 250 men light their censers of incense for God (Numbers 16:16-20).

Then something odd happens. God tells Moses and Aaron in Numbers 16:21:

"Separate yourselves from this assembly so I can put an end to them at once." NIV

There are a couple things to note here. First, notice how God is so imprecise with His wrath that He needs Moses and Aaron to move away from the target zone. Second, and more significant, notice how God is going to kill everyone who came out to see the showdown, not just the rebellious party.

Think this interpretation is overreaching? Read the next verse, Numbers 16:22:

But Moses and Aaron fell facedown and cried out, "O God, God of the spirits of all mankind, will you be angry with the entire assembly when only one man sins?" NIV

Moses calls into question God's justice in killing the entire assembly. Just like in the previous study, Moses is the voice of reason for God. It should be the other way around!

Moses is somewhat successful in making his plea to God, as we see from what follows in Numbers 16:23-35. God spares the assembly, and burns the 250 nameless men to death, but reserves a special punishment for Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. For those three, God opens the earth up underneath of their tents, swallowing up all of their possessions (Numbers 16:31-33), and including themselves along with their wives, children, and babies (Numbers 16:27).

Despite Moses reminding God to act with justice, God still kills innocent children along with the guilty father. Clearly, this is what God meant when He said “for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me” in Exodus 20:5. (Except these people did not hate God, but rather they were jealous of the relationship which Moses and Aaron had with God and their position of leadership.) It kind of makes you wonder why God is surprised that the Israelites have a saying that “The fathers eat sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge” in Ezekiel 18:1-4.

The story does not end there. In a seemingly impossible display of more stupidity, the entire Israelite community grumbles against Moses and Aaron the next day, saying that they have killed God's people (Numbers 16:41).

God could not take anymore. He unleashes a plague to kill all of the Israelites. In a dramatic finish, Moses has Aaron burn incense to make atonement for them. Aaron runs out to the line of death and manages to stop the plague after only 14,700 Israelites had died (Numbers 16:42-50).

That calls up some deep philosophical and moral questions. God's will is to kill all of the Israelites during this episode, despite His promises to them. So by acting to bring about atonement, are Moses and Aaron acting against God's will? If so, then this is a sin. If not, then why did God unleash the plague to begin with? If Moses and Aaron had done nothing during the plague, would God hold them accountable for not taking action to thwart His wrath?

The closer you look at it, the more it looks like a tangled mess of lies, or, perhaps more appropriately, just an interesting work of religious fiction.

Repentant God, Part 3

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Background
Imagine knowing the consequences of your actions before taking them; knowing all the paths of fate for each possible option; knowing them completely and perfectly. Imagine being omniscient, like God. With such knowledge, it would be practically impossible to repent. As Numbers 23:19 puts it, God is not like a man, who changes his mind.

This is the third part in a series of studies where God obviously does repent and change His mind. The first part covered the well known legend of the Flood of Noah. The second part discussed how God wanted to kill all of the Israelites for making a gold cow idol.

These episodes cast serious doubt in the omniscience of God, or that God had any kind of master Plan. In this study from the book of Numbers, God's Plan and omniscience are challenged again by God Himself, and we learn a disturbing twist on God's forgiveness.

Here in Numbers, after squashing rebellions about food and leadership, the Israelites traveled on to the border of the Promised Land. Finally, after over a year of leisurely wandering in the desert, they will see the land which God had promised to give them before they had left Egypt.

Repentant God, Part 3
The Bible sometimes tells a story twice. Furthermore, the Bible sometimes tells a story twice. Sure, the details will be different, but the underlying plot will be strangely similar, like a copy of a copy of a copy. We have seen this with senior citizen Sarah being taken in as a concubine by Pharaoh and then taken 24 years later at the age of 89 by Abimelech, and again when God gave the Israelites quails and water after they complained and later gave them quails and plague after they complained.

Similarly, this study will call back to the infamous tale of when the Israelites made a golden calf while Moses was on a mountain talking to God in Exodus 32. In that tale, God became furious, wanted to kill all of the Israelites, and wanted to instead make a new nation out of Moses. Moses had to convince God not to kill them because the Egyptians would think badly of God and because doing so would break God's promise.

For this study, we begin in Numbers 13. Now that the Israelites are on its borders, God has Moses send out one leader from each tribe to survey the Promised Land (Numbers 13:1-16). Before they set out, Moses instructed the leaders to spy out how militarily strong the native nations were, among other things (Numbers 13:17-20).

The surveillance team explores the Promised Land for forty days (Numbers 13:21-25). Then they report to the Israelites that the land is flowing with milk and honey, but that the existing nations are very strong, even including some descendants of Anak (Numbers 13:26-29). Caleb, the spy from the tribe of Judah, tells the Israelites that they should go take the land (Numbers 13:30). The other spies reject this opinion. In a “bad report,” they say that the present inhabitants are far stronger, and furthermore that there are Nephilim (Anak was a descendant of Nephilim) there (Numbers 13:31-35).

(Who are the Nephilim? Genesis 6:4 is where you will find the Nephilim briefly described. It appears as though they are the result of mating male angels and female humans, resulting in giant and powerful offspring. They would have been completely wiped out by the Flood. However, note that the Genesis 6:4 statement of “in those days—and also afterward” suggests that this supernatural-inter-specie breeding went on after the Flood as well.)

The Israelites are frightened by this report. They wail that they would have been better off dying Egypt or in the desert, and begin thinking about returning to Egypt (Numbers 14:1-4). Joshua and Caleb tear their clothes, and try to rally the Israelites by reminding them that the land is highly desirable and that they will be successful because God is with them (Numbers 14:5-9). The Israelites then talk of stoning Joshua and Caleb (Numbers 14:10).

Here is where the story takes a familiar turn. God is furious. He tells Moses that He will kill all of the Israelites with a plague, and then build a new nation out of Moses (Numbers 14:10-12). God repented bringing the Israelites out of Egypt. Again.

As discussed before, God's solution to rebellious people is consistently to kill them all and start again. There is no soul winning. There is no suit of love to draw them back to God. There is no Messiah. There is only death. (Yes, because that strategy worked so well the first time with the Flood. Not!)

God's omniscience and master Plan are thrown out of the window. Instead of taking preemptive actions to circumvent this known future, God lets it happen. Instead of acting like He knew this would happen, God reacts in a fit of rage as if someone had unexpectedly slapped Him across the face. Instead of remembering temperance to ensure that His Plan for the future would occur; that the not-yet-born King David would provide a royal human bloodline for Jesus (Matthew 1:1-6) in the yet-to-be-prophesied eternal kingdom (2 Samuel 7:8-16); God is ready to cut off that thread of fate by killing its forefathers.

Just like with the golden cow incident, here again it is Moses who must quench God's fiery rage in Numbers 14:13-19. Moses tells God to think about the fact that the Egyptians will hear about God killing all of the Israelites in the desert, and will thereby have cause to mock Him. Moses even goes so far as to throw God's own words back into His Holy face, quoting Exodus 34:5-7 back to Him in Numbers 14:18-19. (That was when God called Himself “slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiving sin and rebellion.”)

Why is it that an imperfect human (Moses) has to point out to a perfect God that His intents are poised to break His own promises and turn Him into a hypocrite? God should be the rational one here, not Moses.

In Numbers 14:20, we find:

The LORD replied [to Moses], "I have forgiven them, as you asked." NIV

To forgive is to pardon, or in other words, to drop any bad feelings and relinquish any punishment of the guilty party. God, being perfect, should be the shining example of how to forgive. However, that is not what we find here. Instead, in Numbers 14:21-35 we see how God intends to punish the Israelites by making them wander the desert for forty years, and how during that time everyone who was twenty years old or older at the time of this rebellion will eventually die in the desert and how their children will suffer for their transgressions. Only Joshua and Caleb will survive to enter the Promised Land.

(Note that this particular passage could be used as support of the Catholic dogma of purgatory. The Israelites are forgiven, but must still suffer until their sins are purged away.)

So what have we learned? God seems to have imperfect omniscience. God repents. God is not slow to anger. God is willing to scrap His Plan and promises like they do not exist. God's forgiveness will not prevent His wrath. These traits are not very reassuring if you are banking on an eternity in His presence.

Firstborn Substitution

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Background
We are near the beginning of the book of Numbers. It began with God telling Moses to conduct a census of all of the Israelites except for the Levites. God then tells Moses how the Israelites should set up camp around the Tabernacle. Now it is time to get back to the Levites as we study Numbers 3.

Firstborn Substitution
Imagine that you were setting up your own religion. Maybe you would make it so that you and your family were the only ones who could serve as priests, thereby keeping all of the money and power in the family. Next, you may want a bunch of people to do all of the hard work for you, such as maintenance and transport of your holy things. Perhaps you would assign them such a duty as their sole purpose in life. They would effectively be your grunts, your muscle, your slaves. Well then, you would have liked being a priest for God!

Back when the census was taken in Numbers 1, God told Moses to exclude the Levites in the count. Now we discover why that is in Numbers 3.

God tells Moses that the entire tribe of Levi will work for Aaron and his sons (Numbers 3:5-9). In Numbers 3:9, God makes it clear that the Levites are given to the priests as possessions. Aaron and his sons now have a army of slave labor at their beck and call. The Levites would belong to the priests, and therefore could not be called out for the army to spill blood. This is why the Levites were not included in the census.

God goes on the emphasize that only Aaron and his sons are to be the priests, and that anyone else who goes to the sanctuary should be killed (Numbers 3:10). Thus Aaron and his family secured their place in society with an open license kill any would-be competitor.

As we had previously discussed in Exodus, God claimed all of the firstborn men and cattle for Himself, demanding that firstborn males must be taxed, er, redeemed, payable to the priests. Well now it seems that God, in His infinite knowledge and omniscience, has changed His mind on His own rules. In Numbers 3:11-13, God decides that He will claim all of the Levites in place of the firstborns.

God is the consummate accountant though. So He tells Moses to first count up all of the eligible male Levites (Numbers 3:14-15). Moses does so, finding 7500 in the Gershonite, 8600 in the Kohathite, and 6200 in the Merarite clans of the Levite tribe (Numbers 3:16-37). This totals 22300 Levites, except that in Numbers 3:39 the Bible tells us that it totals 22000 Levites, and we all know the Bible is infallible, so we should go with 22000.

Next, in Numbers 3:40-43 God tells Moses to count up all of the eligible firstborn Israelites. He does this, and comes up with 22273 firstborns.

Oops! There were too many firstborns. Not to worry though. Numbers 3:44-51 explains how God will settle the account. God tells Moses to collect 5 shekels from each of the families corresponding to the 273 extra firstborns. How Moses decided who had to pay, it does not say. According to God's will, Moses collects the roughly 35 pounds of silver redemption and gives it to Aaron. It is good to be the priest!

So God settled the account, and what a strange account it was! It showed a monetary exchange for redemption, an inability to count, and ultimately a cancellation of a rule which omniscient God had made just months prior. Go figure.

Born Again Into Misunderstanding

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Background
At this point in our New Testament studies, we are following the Gospel of John through a stretch of passages which are not recorded in the other three Gospels. Jesus turned water into wine, cleared the Temple in Jerusalem of moneychangers the first time (more on this later), and said that He would destroy the Temple and rebuild it in three days.

Born Again into Misunderstanding
Imagine being omniscient to everything that has even happened. Imagine knowing every action, every thought, and every feeling of every living being that has ever been. Imagine being God, which in Christianity also means being Jesus and the Holy Spirit. You would think you would know human behavior very well; what motivates them and what leads them to learning versus what leads them to confusion. Well, that does not seem to be the case.

In John 3:1-12, you find the story of how Nicodemus, a prominent Pharisee, meets with Jesus one night. Nicodemus tells Jesus that the Pharisees know that He is from God because of the miracles He has performed. It's not known if Nicodemus was acting like an ambassador of good will for the Pharisees, nor what the real purpose of the visit was, nor why the visit happened at night.

All of these questions are swept aside with how Jesus replies to Nicodemus. According to John 3:3, it went like this:

In reply Jesus declared, "I tell you the truth, no one can see the Kingdom of God unless he is born again." NIV

It is interesting to note that while Jesus thought being “born again” was essential to Salvation, you will not find a single mention of it in the other three Gospels. Strange, no?

Jesus does not feel the need to elaborate, so Nicodemus questions how a man can be born again (John 3:4).

Jesus replies in John 3:5-8 saying that a man needs to be born of the “water and the Spirit” to enter the Kingdom. Jesus tells Nicodemus that he should not be surprised at His saying that a man must be born again, and then goes on to point out that Nicodemus cannot explain the mysteries of wind, and that is how it is with born again people.

The big question to answer is why Jesus does not understand Nicodemus' surprise. You see, the Bible appears to reveal that there are possibly three integral parts to any person; body, soul (1 Samuel 1:10), and spirit (Psalm 31:5). However, note that often soul and spirit are often used interchangeably, muddying any sort of distinction between the two (Job 7:11). All three (or perhaps just body and a unified soul/spirit) are tied together upon birth. So based on the Bible, flesh gives birth to flesh, plus soul, and plus spirit, not as Jesus said, that flesh only gives birth to flesh (John 3:6).

Most Christians take this to mean not a literal birth, or creation, of the spirit at that time. Instead, it is considered to be a spiritual awakening. That is not a difficult concept to convey. Consider how well Ezekiel 11:19 does so. You would think that Jesus could have explained it as such to make it clear to Nicodemus. Nope. Instead Jesus uses vague metaphorical language and then marvels that Nicodemus does not understand what He is talking about. Obviously, Jesus was not a really good teacher.

Nicodemus, still (understandably) confused, asks Jesus to clarify what He means (John 3:9).

Does Jesus, the good teacher, explain any further? Not at all. Instead, Jesus marvels some more, and possibly mocks Nicodemus; amazed by the fact that Nicodemus is “Israel's teacher” and yet he does not understand what Jesus is saying (John 3:10). Jesus then brags about His credentials (John 3:11) and then goes on to say that if Nicodemus cannot believe the earthly things Jesus has said, how can he possibly believe any heavenly things Jesus might speak about (John 3:12).

Normally, most Christians remark that this episode shows how flawed the thinking of the Pharisees was at that time. They were so mechanical, so ritualistic in their worship and understanding that they could no longer grasp the spiritual component of their relationship with God. That is a rather short-sighted explanation for the episode which does not explain the whole dialog. For example: it does not address Jesus' treatment of Nicodemus.

There are a few possible explanations to explain Jesus' actions.

The first is that Jesus did not have any real desire to teach the Pharisees. He chose to give Nicodemus a couple of metaphors which he could not understand, and then mocked him for not being able to understand them. That seems rather mean-spirited, but it does follow a Biblical pattern because it is similar to how Sampson told a riddle which he knew nobody could answer in order to win 30 pairs of linen clothes (Judges 14:8-19).

The second is that Jesus did not want to everybody to understand, and therefore purposely gave out vague metaphors instead of being clear. There is supporting evidence for this opinion, as we will see in a later study on why Jesus spoke in parables (reference Matthew 13:10-17). Plus, despite Nicodemus asking for an explanation, Jesus simply dodges the inquisition and comments about how he does not understand. This plays into the theme of Gnostic Christianity, that there is a certain knowledge to be sought in order to be Saved, or perhaps more properly, Enlightened.

The third is that Jesus simply did not understand what leads people to learning versus what leads them to confusion. This is supported by the context of this tale, as we see relayed by Jesus' marveling at Nicodemus' misunderstanding. It is as if Jesus is saying “I explained it so fully that anyone can understand, and yet you do not. How is that possible?” Yet from the information which is recorded, Jesus' message is far from being robust in communication.

So, take your pick: Jesus wanted to exclude the Pharisees. Jesus wanted to exclude lots of people. Or Jesus does not understand how we think. None of these are very appealing options for God. They make Him either unforgiving or non-omniscient.