I have a few friends who occasionally shoot me emails and ask random Bible questions, often because someone asked them and they weren't sure, so they ask me. I received one of these the other night: In both Exodus and Deuteronomy it talks about the 10 commandments and refers to not coveting your neighbors wife. Why doesn't this refer to spouse? The problem the individual who originally asked the question had, was that it's sexist by only addresses men coveting women. So, how do I address this?

First, I think we need to ask, "What's the context of the Law, from the 10 Commandments on down to the final details in Numbers to the second giving in Deuteronomy?"

In Exodus to Numbers, the Law is what God gives to his people at Sinai after he's taken them up and out of Egypt. The giving of the Law begins with a statement of this Gospel action, then moves on to the 10 Commandments, and then on to the rest of the Law. In Deuteronomy, it's a reminder of this Law being given to the people before they enter the Promised Land.

So, why does this matter? Quite simply, because the Law, in both cases, is being given to a group of people who are categorized by their ethnicity and history. They are descendants of Jacob who were brought out of slavery in Egypt (either personally or their direct ancestors). This means that, literally, the 10 Commandments don't apply to you and me.

Now, before anyone loses it, take note of that word, "literally". Because, in a way, the 10 Commandments do apply to you and I. They are, after all, a solid framework for understanding God's will, especially when we follow Jesus interpretation of them as opposed to the interpretation of the Pharisees.

So, for our purposes here, the key for you and I isn't the letter of the 10 Commandments, but their heart ... and that heart doesn't include sexism.

But this still leaves us with the problem that, in the original giving of the Law, God gave the command specifically to men so, "Was God being sexist? Shouldn't God have said that you shouldn't covet your neighbor's spouse?"

In response to this, my mind flashed to Matthew 19 and Jesus teaching on divorce. In short, he doesn't think divorce is a good thing, which makes sense because I've never found anybody who thought divorce was something they were just dying to experience. Challenging Jesus anti-divorce stance, the Pharisees point back to Deuteronomy 24:1-4, part of the Law, which gives permission for a man to divorce his wife because, "he has found some indecency in her".

How did Jesus respond? He says that the Mosiac Law is something less than God's design and is, in a sense, scaled back because those God was giving the law to, had hard hearts. In other words, could their be sexism in there, absolutely, but not because God desires it, but because God recognizes the human condition. I'd say the same thing goes for all those men in the Old Testament who had multiple wives.

If you expand this same heart of God beyond this one issue, it's actually a very good thing that God is aware of our condition, and is willing to work with us in our weakness to accomplish his much larger purposes.

I've said quite a bit about evangelism on here over time, for example, don't do this, or this, but this, or this, or this, would be good ideas. Well here's another idea on something women could do ... I don't guys could get away with it without being accused of just trying to cop a feel. It's nothing new or radical, actually, there are books on the topic, but something happened yesterday that prompted it when I was walking home from work and ran into this gal on the 16th Street Mall:

She made the comment that, right before she hugged me, she'd hugged a huge crowd of people who were on their way home from a funeral and it just added a bit of joy to their day.

So, what if Christians just engaged in giving free hugs, or doing other random acts of kindness along the mall? Just little things to bring some joy to people's day or make their life a bit easier. Some people would just accept the gift and walk away, but others would want to know why, which would prompt a simple opportunity for Christians to say, "I just want to share a bit of the love Jesus has shared with me." If pressed, maybe give out a card that points people to a site like the Fishbowl or something like that.

Thoughts?

A number of years ago while doing youth ministry at Vineyard of Faith in Windsor, CA, I was looking at various options of places to go to continue my education. I didn't really want to go to Seminary at the time, so I was looking at a variety of places that had distance education programs that would help me in youth ministry. Given that I didn't get the nuances of theology and thought the school didn't matter as long as it was Christian, one of the places I considered going was the Talbot School of Theology at Biola University.

After reading this article from Christianity Today which seeks to answer, "How can I know I'm a Christian if I can't remember when I first responded to the gospel?" I'm really glad I didn't. Why? Here's the author's conclusion:

For those who question their salvation, the best evidence is not the memory of having raised a hand or prayed a prayer. Nor is it having been baptized or christened. The true test of the authentic work of God in one's life is growth in Christ-like character, increased love for God and other people, and the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22-25; James 2:18). A memorable conversion experience may serve as an important referent to God's saving work in one's life. But the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit in making a person more like Jesus is the clearest indicator that one has been made a new creation in Christ.

Now, I think the guy nails it when he writes, "one can doubt the 'decision' was real, leading to numerous journeys down the aisle (just in case)." I've run into so many people who are in this camp. They've done the decision and then, days, weeks, or months later, found themselves doubting their faith and wondering if they really decided. So the decide again and then doubt again and then decide again. The whole time, they always find themselves wondering where they stand in relationship to God.

But, as for his final answer, that we know if we're save based upon the fruit in our lives, talk about setting people up to experience hell on earth! I mean, I have good days and bad day (we could even say moments in place of days). There are times my life looks really fruitful and times it doesn't. If I'm looking to the fruit, I'm going to be save now, damned in 5 minutes, and back to salvation an hour later. In other words, I'm just about as comforted as the person trusting a decision made for Jesus.

Now, I'm all in favor of doing good works, as long as we understand that the only good they do is to help out our neighbor, that even our non-Christian neighbor can figure out and do these same good works (and thus, based on the article, appear more Christian than many Christians), and that, before God, even our good works need to be justified. Of course, all this rules out the idea that we know we're good with God because of our works.

So, how do I answer the question? Yesterday, Christians around the world celebrated the Baptism of Jesus, an event where Jesus stepped into and bound himself to the human experience so that, in our baptisms, we could be bound to his divine experience. In other words, I point to baptism, not, as the author suggests, because it connects you to the church, but because in it, Jesus makes a promise to you and connects himself to you.

What's the beauty here? I never have to wonder about my salvation, because it's connected not to me, but to Jesus. I'm good with God because of Jesus promise, and knowing my status with God is secure, I'm now free to go and serve my neighbor and let the fruit grow as it will.

Given my obsession over interpretation, it's not often that I find video messages that I get all that excited about. What's even more rare, is that I'd be excited about a video project that was focusing on the parables, but, given the references they used to guide their work, Modern Parables seems to be the real deal.

So, some might ask why do I have greater concern about the parables than other texts? Well, there's this mass impression out there that these story lessons were told because they were simple stories that people could understand and remember. However, this doesn't jive with Jesus words in Mark 4:10-13:

And when he was alone, those around him with the twelve asked him about the parables. And he said to them, “To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything is in parables, so that “they may indeed see but not perceive, and may indeed hear but not understand, lest they should turn and be forgiven.” And he said to them, “Do you not understand this parable? How then will you understand all the parables?"

In other words, far from being easy to understand stories of everyday life, the parables take the everyday human experience and turn the world upside down. They don't speak of everyday life, they challenge it. This of course makes them incredibly difficult to understand correctly and, odds are, if you're thinking, "That one's easy!" then you've really missed the point.

To add to it, in Jesus' day, the people who seemed to actually understand the parables were the Scribes and Pharisees, the very people who rejected these teachings of Jesus.

All that being said, it does look like Modern Parables has done their work and done it well. It should be interesting to see what they come up with!

A number of years ago I remember a comment made on the RE-YourLife discussion board by Bobby C in response to the movie, The Passion of the Christ. He made the observation that the deep emotional response that the came with watching the movie was as much a result of the extreme violence as it was the power of the story itself. To defend his point, he referenced the effect that watching a horror can have on the body.

So, why do I bring this up? I had a similar experience last night.

Anita was given tickets to the Rockies and Yankees game for Christmas. So last night Anita and I sat out in left field of Coors Field looking at the backs of Derek Jeter and A-Rod. Even as a non-baseball guy I can say that it was a great game and it was exciting to see the perpetually disappointing and rebuilding Rockies knock off the historic Yankees 3-1.

After the victory, the home crowd was ecstatic and the crowd around us chanted, "Let's go Rockies!" as we made our way out of the park. The joy of being on the side of the winning team even had me excited about the now two games over 500 Rockies and, had I not gone to the game with a Yankees fan, I very well could have joined in the taunting or just stepped to the side and basked in the glow of victory. It was a truly inspirational moment.

Then I thought, "That's interesting, the adrenaline rush and the general joy of this frenzy feels exactly the same as a powerful 'worship experience'." Maybe it's a really uplifting song or the emotion in a gifted singers voice or the need to respond to a particularly powerful message. What's more, I've met and talked with many worship band leaders who will work the flow of a service specifically for the purpose of generating this kind of emotional response.

The problem, beyond emotional manipulation in the name of Jesus, is that many people I've talked to over the years mistake this emotional feeling to be genuine faith and assume that, as long as the feeling is there, faith is there. However, when the feeling is gone, they assume that God has abandoned them. In the end they essentially become addicted to that feeling and pursue it like a drug, hopping from church to church whenever they don't "feel the Spirit" anymore. In the end, many of them are no different than an alcoholic or drug addict ... they've just got church language to talk about their idol.

In the end, it breaks my heart because I see people God loves suffering because they've been pointed towards something less than what God has in store for them. I pray that preachers, worship leaders, and fellow Christians would learn to point people not to a feeling, an intellectual ascent, or some other internal source, but to Jesus and his work and promises for them.