What is Moral (or Good)?

There is a lot of talk in the news these days about popular opinion, especially using popular opinion to justify whatever naughty things are being done or to justify criticism of conservative opinions.  Some bold people are even beginning to self-declare what's moral or not and basing that opinion on what's popular.  That's insane.  Popular opinion is perfectly valid as popular opinion but should never be confused with morals.  Morals are unaffected by popular opinion and popular opinion should always honor morals as their foundation.  The two aren't supposed to be interchanged, nor should they be in conflict.  So how should we define morals?

• When God declares right and wrong, it's called morals.
• When industries or other groups of volunteers agree on a set of right and wrong, it's called ethics.
• When rulers or legislatures do it, it's called law.
• When people in authority do it, it's called political correctness.
• When most of society agrees, it's called popular opinion.

An important detail is morals are the foundation for the rest, not the other way around. Politicians, journalists, TV news anchors, and the rest of us shouldn't be making moral declarations without basing our claims on the written word of God.  When people simply throw out accusations of immorality they're really just pushing propaganda, and most likely just objecting that someone has a different opinion.  Differences of opinion aren't immoral, unless you're differing with your Creator.

Note, people who reject the history of the Bible are very likely to reject the morality of it, too.  That's an understandable correlation.  For now, let's assume we care what the Bible says, because proving its historicity is a different matter.

The 10

The 10 Commandments are perhaps the most famous part of the Old Testament.  In part, because they're the infamous "thou shalt nots" which God gave the Israelites, and which Christians try to encourage the rest of the world as minimum standards of morality.  They were given by God to Moses in Exodus 20, and Moses reminded the people of them in Deuteronomy 5.  In case you don't have them memorized, here's my personal summarization:

1. Do not believe in any other gods besides the one true God.
2. Do not make any idols.
3. Do not use the name of God without love, nor misrepresent Him. 
4. Remember and keep holy the Sabbath day.
5. Honor your parents.
6. Do not murder.
7. Do not get sexually involved with anyone but the one person you are married to.
8. Do not steal.
9. Do not lie when testifying.
10. Do not lust for nor misuse anything that is not yours.

About 2000 years ago, when Jesus walked the earth, He was asked which was the most important commandment.  The person asking the question was not simply referring to the 10 Commandments, he was referring to their entire law, which included what we now know in the Torah plus all their made-up add-ons.  The interaction was recorded in parallel passages of Matthew 22:34-40 and Mark 12:28-34.  Jesus's answer was:

1. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.
2. Love your neighbor as yourself.

He was quoting Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18.  But another perspective on His response is He paraphrased the first 4 of the 10 Commandments with His first reply, then the last 6 with His second.

The 10 Commandments don't come with a prescription for punishment, at least not right there in the very next verses.  They're just the "thou shalt nots" that are so famous.  The implication is when God says don't do it, there's not supposed to be a need for an explicit punishment, you're just supposed to take God seriously.  However, even most Christians today, and certainly most atheists, have forgotten or were never taught that there actually were punishments prescribed for most of the Ten.  We just have to do the smallest amount of connecting the dots.

Rather than specifically look for each of the 10 Commandments, one by one, we can look for something else.  We can look for when God made a moral declaration and pronounced that violation was a capital offense (punishable by death).  Most of the following can be found with a simple keyword search (on BibleGateway.com or BibleHub.com or Bible.com or whatever tool you prefer) for "put to death" or "purge the evil" when using the NIV translation.  Since recurring themes are present, I've made a pass at categorizing them:

Disrespecting God (the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd commandments)

• Exodus 22:20 - apostasy
• Leviticus 24:16 - blasphemy
• Numbers 25:5 - false gods
• Deuteronomy 13:1-5 - false gods
• Deuteronomy 13:6-11 - false gods
• Deuteronomy 13:12-18 - false gods
• Deuteronomy 17:2-7 - false gods
• Deuteronomy 18:20 - misrepresentation

Disrespecting the Sabbath (the 4th commandment)

• Exodus 31:14-15
• Exodus 35:2
  

Disrespecting your parents (the 5th commandment)

• Exodus 21:15
• Exodus 21:17
• Leviticus 20:9
• Deuteronomy 21:18-21

Disrespecting human life (murder, the 6th commandment)

• Genesis 9:5-6
• Exodus 21:12-14
• Exodus 21:22-23 - the preborn
• Exodus 21:29
• Leviticus 20:1-5 - infanticide
• Leviticus 24:17
• Leviticus 24:21
• Numbers 35:16-18
• Numbers 35:21
• Numbers 35:31
• Deuteronomy 19:11-13
  

Disrespecting human sexuality (sexual immorality, the 7th commandment)

• Exodus 22:19 - bestiality
• Leviticus 20:10 - adultery
• Leviticus 20:11 - incest: mother
• Leviticus 20:12 - incest: daughter-in-law
• Leviticus 20:13 - homosexuality
• Leviticus 20:14 - incest: mother-in-law
• Leviticus 20:15 - bestiality
• Leviticus 20:16 - bestiality
• Deuteronomy 22:21 - fornication/promiscuity
• Deuteronomy 22:22 - adultery
• Deuteronomy 22:23-24 - adultery
• Deuteronomy 22:25 - rape

Disrespecting human dignity (human trafficking, relates to the 8th and 10th Commandments)

• Exodus 21:16
• Exodus 22:22-24
• Deuteronomy 24:7

Others (only mentioned once, still applicable today)

• Exodus 22:18 - sorceress
• Leviticus 20:27 - mediums
• Leviticus 27:29 NLT - people God says should die, should die
• Deuteronomy 17:12 - disrespecting God's ambassadors

These weren't the only moral decrees God made (for examples, do a text search for "detestable", "dishonor", or "wicked") but since these were punishable by the most extreme punishment, they were arguably the most important, or highest priority. They could be called the minimum system requirements to be moral. Logically speaking, as with breaking any of the 10 Commandments, from a Biblical perspective, when we commit any of these capital crimes, regardless of whether we are caught and executed or not, or if we even just encourage/ enable others to commit them, then we earn ourselves the label "immoral."

If we dislike or disagree with God on any of these topics, that doesn't change the fact that God is God and the rest of us are not. It's been said that God was the only one around when the votes were cast, and there's never going to be a recount (Isaiah 43:10). Believers don't call the Bible true or inerrant because they happen to like or agree with 100% of what it says the first time they read it. The Bible is true independent of our feelings, and is confirmed by fulfilled prophecy and all observable (objective) reality.

If we aren't crazy about capital punishment then it's easy to say now, almost 3,500 years later, "what the hell?" when we read all these cases. I don't need to defend the opinion of our omnipotent Creator, instead, let's look at the reaction of the people He "imposed" these deadly rules on. Did they feel God was being harsh, shocking, cruel, or the modern buzzword: oppressive?

Near the end of Moses's most famous sermon, after being told/ reminded of all the above, the people responded by claiming God's commands: (all following quotes are from the WEB translation)

• The things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law. -Deuteronomy 29:29b

King David lived under the law, hundreds of years later, just as much as the people to whom Moses spoke to personally. Here are a couple of David's comments/attitudes:

• Yahweh’s law is perfect, restoring the soul. Yahweh’s covenant is sure, making wise the simple. Yahweh’s precepts are right, rejoicing the heart. Yahweh’s commandment is pure, enlightening the eyes. -Psalm 19:7-8
• Give thanks to Yahweh, for he is good, for his loving kindness endures forever. -Psalm 107:1
• I run in the path of your commandments, for you have set my heart free. -Psalm 119:32

Of course, I'm not advocating we have an Old Testament revival and erect gallows and start lining people up for execution. These laws identified above established crimes for the nation of Israel (besides Genesis 9:6, which came much earlier) and in a literal sense do not transfer from their theocracy to my nation's democracy. But what does transfer is the timeless nature of the sentiment upon which the laws originated. When God established the Israelites as a nation, He set them up with a theocracy, and one of the first things He did (as any human monarch might do) was inform the people of His opinion on some moral behavior. These opinions established the boundaries of freedom people would have, just as every government on earth still does today. Because all civilizations are defined by what they won't tolerate. God's opinion should always trump any man's opinion because of the nature of being God.

Nothing new

The temptation to replace God-defined right and wrong with popular opinion is about as old as humanity itself. Adam, Eve, and the serpent thought they could replace God's reality with a reality they made up, as recorded in Genesis 3:1-6. It didn't work out well for them, and it won't work out well for us, either, if we reject God's explicit command(s). Did you notice in the original command, in Genesis 2:16-17, the restriction came after the declaration of freedom? The first thing God said was "you may freely eat of every tree of the garden." It was just that one tree next to the Tree of Life that they were restricted from (Genesis 2:9). And that made it a target. The point is, besides God is God, God is good, so when He defines morality for us, we should care, take Him seriously, believe Him, and obey. When we believe someone then we act like they're right.

Remember when Jesus did exactly the same thing? When He walked among us, one of the ways Jesus slammed the leaders of the day was to point out that they had disregarded something that God had declared a capital crime. Read it yourself in Matthew 15:1-9. Notice the religious leaders were claiming something was wrong and Jesus responded that for the sake of their popular opinion on right and wrong they were ignoring God's opinion on right and wrong. Jesus didn't call for everyone who violated to be executed in a catch-up clean-up act, but He did use an example from the law which prescribed capital punishment to make a point about remembering and honoring what God cares about. I'm doing the same thing now. Don't miss the religious leaders were whining about a ceremonial hand washing and Jesus replied with a moral capital crime. Further, Jesus dismissed their ceremonial concern and attacked their moral deficiency.

In Jesus's most famous sermon, the Sermon on the Mount, He started off with what we now call the beatitudes. Almost the next thing He said was He came not to abolish the law but to fulfill it. Then He spends the rest of what we now consider chapter 5 raising the bar on moral laws. For now, I'll just point out Matthew 5:21-22, where He didn't just remind us we're not to murder, but He also forbade us even hating people. Not only did Jesus leave murder a capital offense (as opposed to loosening the expectation & penalty) now thanks to Him we need to fear the fires of hell too! This was actually the first time the Bible explicitly mentioned hell by name. The second time was in Jesus's next breath, when He talked about adultery. Here again He raised the bar, made it harder to comply with the law, and raised the stakes by increasing the penalty for violation by introducing hell (Matthew 5:27-29). If Jesus was some peace-loving dope-smoking social justice warrior who advocated "make love not war," then if we heard Him say this we'd probably have responded "what the hell!?" (And we'd probably have called Him demon-possessed.) But really, do you think just maybe God thinks we should take Him seriously and use His definition of morality rather than arbitrarily making up our own (Matthew 6:33)?

So What?

Even though the literal Israelite laws no longer apply today, the opinion of our Creator remains. Do we care? Paul warned us in Galatians 6:7:

• Don’t be deceived. God is not mocked, for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap.

Don't think for a second that because of Jesus's sacrifice we are off the hook. Paul warned us away from this foolish wishful thinking in Romans 6:1-2:

• What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? May it never be! We who died to sin, how could we live in it any longer?

As did the author of Hebrews 10:26-27:

• For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remains no more a sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and a fierceness of fire which will devour the adversaries.

Certainly God was exasperated with His people in the Old Testament.  Just one example was Jeremiah 8:6:

• I listened and heard, but they didn’t say what is right. No one repents of his wickedness, saying, “What have I done?” Everyone turns to his course, as a horse that rushes headlong in the battle.

And if their perspective wasn't enough, then remember Jesus's warning in Matthew 4:17:

• From that time, Jesus began to preach, and to say, “Repent! For the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.”

And Jesus's warning in Revelation 2:16:

• Repent therefore, or else I am coming to you quickly, and I will make war against them with the sword of my mouth.

Repenting requires that we stop making immoral choices and encourage others to stop too. What is immoral? At least the actions God felt were capital offenses and the prohibitions in the 10 Commandments (Romans 7:7b). (Though some good runners up are things He hates, including but not limited to Proverbs 6:16-19, Isaiah 61:8, Zechariah 8:17, and Revelation 2:6.) Why does God care so much that He declared anything to be a capital crime in the first place? Because God is holy and not a fan of evil, but more to the point He cares about us and wants us to live long lives in fellowship with Him. But don't just take it from me, He gave His reasoning in Deuteronomy 19:19b-21a:

• You shall remove the evil from among you. Those who remain shall hear, and fear, and will never again commit any such evil among you.

Later, in Ezekiel 18:23, He elaborated:

• “Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked?” says the Lord Yahweh; “and not rather that he should return from his way, and live?”

Once we've earned the label "immoral," what is a holy God to do with us, other than get rid of us? The good news (the gospel) is that God came to earth to save us from our predicament. This concept was summarized by Peter in Acts 4:10-12:

• May it be known to you all... that in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth... There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven that is given among men, by which we must be saved!

The only trick is we must take God at His word and accept this wonderful gift, then live more holy (moral) and obedient lives as evidence of our choice (Matthew 7:21, 1 Samuel 15:22-23).

Good & Bad

Let's be clear on the parallel here between moral and immoral to good and evil. Because God said to Isaiah "woe to those who call evil good, and good evil" in Isaiah 5:20. God taught a lot when He was incarnate, including: "out of the heart come evil thoughts - murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander" (Matthew 15:19, Mark 7:21-22). Does that list of "evils" sound familiar? I hope so:

• Murder: 6th commandment
• Adultery: 7th commandment
• Sexual immorality: 7th commandment plus all the other sexual choices God declared "wicked", "detestable", or "dishonorable" in Leviticus 18-20
• Theft: 8th commandment
• False testimony: 9th commandment
• Slander: expansion on the 9th commandment, possibly similar to how He raised the bar on murder and adultery in Matthew 5:21-32

Of course there are a ton of other evil and good claims in the Bible, both before and after Jesus's resurrection. And there was Malachi 2:17, where he lamented

• You have wearied Yahweh with your words. Yet you say, ‘How have we wearied Him?’ In that you say, ‘Everyone who does evil is good in Yahweh’s sight, and He delights in them.’

Instead of wearying God, let's call evil "evil" and good "good," using God's definition, encourage others to too, and prioritize voting for representatives who do.

Further, as important of a start as it is, it's not good enough to simply acknowledge good and evil, we should punish God-defined evil and reward good: AM 5:15, ROM 12:9 (and certainly not do the opposite PR 17:15, ISA 5:20). May it be said of us, we "believed the Lord, and He credited it to [us] as righteousness" (Genesis 15:6).

The only way to sleep in bed?

Any patent can relate to this. Mom and dad are in bed and junior is asleep in his or her bed. Next thing we know our kid is climbing in with us and gets right in the middle of the bed, between mom and dad. Ok, we think, as long as you're polite and just go to sleep, whatever, you can stay. But next thing we know, junior is laying sideways between you. One parent gets a skull bumping into them and the other is getting kicked by a pair of restless feet. A few moments later and junior rotates again and now he is head down at the bottom of the bed, feet kicking both parents in the head or torso.

This is when a parent, especially the dad, is going to be inspired to say "wait a minute, there's only one way to sleep in bed with mommy and daddy, and that's head up, feet down, still, and quiet."

If we were to write that down, someone could take our comment out of context and rip into us. "There's only one way!? You're such an antagonist, or fascist. You micromanager, why are you so narrow-minded?" The fun part is in this specific example of parent-child bed-sharing, the comment made by the hypothetical parent was perfectly right in context, and just appeared mean out of context.

The limitation imposed by the dad wasn't something the dad even wanted to give. When the dad was woken up from an otherwise good and well-deserved sleep by a little child who climbed over (on top of) him to lay between him and his wife, the first thing to come to mind wasn't "there's only one way," nor "how can I limit this person." It's cute when a kid comes in bed, and especially if they had a bad dream and just want to snuggle, most parents most of the time would be fine with that. It is after the child has rotated and bumped (with skull, shoulders, elbows, hands, and knees) and kicked countless times every couple minutes does the dad resign to giving a command he doesn't think any thinking person should need to hear.

An outside observer who saw nothing and heard only "there's only one way to lay in bed" could easily ask "considering we can choose between sleeping on our back, our side, and our stomach, are you saying most of those are wrong? The trick is those are higher levels of thinking that the dad was well aware of but not what the child needed to hear. Also, ironically, almost all (if not all) of us, even those who might object to the father saying there's only one way, would agree with the father that the child laying in those obstructive ways is unacceptable. When the child wants to be with the father, then the father has the right to make the command there's only one right way to sleep with me. Because what's easier to say (a) "there's only one right way to sleep with me, and that's head up," or (b) "don't lay sideways, don't bump me nor mommy with your head, don't hit us, don't kick us, neither in the side nor in our head." Option B is more technically accurate, but sounds more negative and picky. Don't don't don't. Option A is actually constructive, advising the child what they should do to bring mutual happiness.

The parents look forward to the day when the one way to sleep together is accepted by all, and then at that point, they may need to advance to discussing if it matters (contextually) whether they lay on their side, back, or stomach.

In the same way, God our Father has declared there's only one way to be with Him. Only after we accept this can we be accurate that one size doesn't fit all and there are many ways to please Him. Jesus's disciples were told this to their faces in Mark 9:38-41 (and Luke 9:49-50). But all the nonbelievers need to take more seriously John 14:6, Luke 9:35, Acts 4:11-12, and 1 Timothy 2:5 before they try to claim Mark or Luke 9.

He said it, he meant it, and he was right

In the 1978 original Superman movie, there was a scene where poor, accident-prone Lois Lane, happens to be in a helicopter that has an improper takeoff. At the dramatic pinnacle, she ends up dangling over the edge of a skyscraper by nothing other than her handhold on her seat belt. Clark Kent (Superman's alter ego) happens to be walking by underneath, he notices the emergency situation, and leaps into action. Here's the clip on YouTube (note, Lois does a lot of screaming, and the music is loud)

https://youtu.be/394jYH82s2o

When Superman swoops up and catches Lois, he says something huge. Did you catch it? It wasn't a huge theological sermon. It wasn't at face value, or out of context, a very interesting statement. And in a million other circumstances, his comment could even be laughed at. But when and where he said it, it was incredibly profound, especially for the person he said it to. He said, "easy miss, I've got you." The key is he volunteered to position himself to say it, he said it, he meant it, and he was right. Anyone else could have said two of the three, but not been helpful.

• If someone said and meant it, but wasn't right, she'd be dead.
• If someone said it and was right, but didn't mean it, she'd probably be dead.
• If someone could have said it but didn't, would have meant it if they had said it, and really had the power to be right, she'd be dead.

Immediately after he said that to Lois, in disbelief she gives her famous reply, "You've got me! Who's got you!?" She neither understood nor believed the power he had to save her. But none-the-less, the proof was before her. His actions confirmed the truth of his words. A moment later the helicopter falls down from above, right on top of them, and Superman nonchalantly catches it. He keeps flying upward, peacefully calm, in dramatic contrast to the falling down Lois experienced moments before. As he lifts both her and the helicopter to safety, Superman looks at Lois with a whimsical expression of "no worries, I've got this, we're cool." After briefly meeting his gaze, Lois doesn't know what to do but look down in dumbstruck wonder at where she was sure she was going to have met her death only a moment ago.

Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. (Some would say it often is.) Jesus made a few comments a couple of millennia ago that still resonate today, and are significantly more profound than those in the movie clip above. The movie clip has a fun soundtrack and camera angles, but Jesus's words (and deeds) were far more important. Here are some quotes from the Bible:

• John 10:30 ​WEB: “I and the Father are one.”
• John 14:6b ​WEB: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”
• Mark 10:33-34 ​WEB: “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem. The Son of Man will be delivered to the chief priests and the scribes. They will condemn Him to death, and will deliver Him to the Gentiles. They will mock Him, spit on Him, scourge Him, and kill Him. On the third day He will rise again.”

Jesus volunteered to position Himself to say these things to us. He left heaven, which cannot be underestimated. Read a brief account of what He temporarily gave up in Revelation 4:2-11. Most of us wouldn't leave that for a second, let alone for multiple decades. And we wouldn't trade that setting for 5-star luxury, but Jesus traded it to live as a pauper. Long before Jerry Siegel dreamed up Superman and Joe Shuster drew him for the world in 1938, Jesus came to be the Savior of mankind. He volunteered to speak to us, He said some things, He meant them, and He was right.

• Matthew 28:5-6 ​WEB: The angel answered the women, “Don’t be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus, who has been crucified. He is not here, for He has risen, just like He said. Come, see the place where the Lord was lying.”

Jesus said many other things that cause many of us to look away, dumbstruck. His actions, especially His rising from the dead, proved the truth of His words. He said it, He meant it, and He was right. I believe Him, I hope you do too.

The only way

A female friend of mine (and my wife) was dumped via text message a few months ago. That's not cool. What jerk does that to a girl? Actually in this case I knew the boy, and he was perfectly nice. I was even the one to prod the boy to ask her out in the first place.  But he lacked adequate social skill to handle the situation, and he lacked compassion to care enough even to followup in person when she asked to talk.

As long as it was someone else (and not us ourselves who was the offender) it's easy to look at this situation and say the offender was a jerk.  Love is one of the most complex emotions and therefore one of the most sensitive conversations to have.  If we treat it as if it were just a random topic we risk offending the person who's sharing with us.  We know this to be true because if we were sharing our heart with someone and they dismissed us, especially if they'd recently been very open to us, we couldn't help but be hurt.

All things being equal, given the choice we'd all chose friends we can meet in person over friends we will only ever talk to over the phone or email or txt.  We want to invest in people who can interact and maybe physically help us, and who we can physically help.  Because that's what friends are, people who can be there for us.  Virtual interactions are fine but they can only supplement human interaction and aren't meant to take the place of it.  We weren't designed for that.

For those of you who agreed that the boy in the first paragraph above was a jerk for dumping my friend via text, I suspect not many of you would consider him any more of a gentleman if he had sent his brother or sister or friend with a verbal message that he had single-handedly decided that their romantic relationship was over.  Or if he had wrote a blog post (or a newspaper article or a book) and arranged for her to find out by reading it.  For the important things, it matters to discuss them in person.  Preferably face to face, and only when that's not physically possible then by phone might be acceptable.  In the digital age, the concept of real time & synchronous (two way) are important.  Virtual non-real time (email, chat, txt) aren't ideal because they don't allow true interaction, plus they lack both body language and tone.  The important messages just have to be discussed in person, it's the only way that can result in a mutually positive outcome.

This isn't a new concept, it's timeless.  God knows it because He designed us (Genesis 1:27).  At first He walked with us (Genesis 2:16-17, 3:8-9, 4:3-7) but we ruined our relationship with Him and eventually He only talked to some of us (Genesis 12:1) and then only through messengers, called angels (Exodus 23:20, Joshua 5:13-14, Judges 6:11-12) and through prophets (1 Samuel 3:10-11, Isaiah 6:1, Ezekiel 34:2).  (The role of a prophet is to tell God's will more so than it is to tell the future.  Telling the future is just a form of proof that the prophet speaks for God.)  But we are rather sinful and often just don't get it, even when love is staring us in the face (Isaiah 1:2-3).

So why do Christians think there's only one way to Heaven, or one way to God?  This is a common question from non-believers.  Besides the fact that the Bible says so (Acts 4:11-12, 1 Timothy 2:5) there's a simple bit of logic to realize.  God loves us, and all the intermediaries (angels and prophets) He sent just couldn't get through to us.  The fact that He loves us is really, really important, and it's quite unique among all major religions (at least until there came copycat religions).  This message had to be delivered in person, and that's where Jesus came into the picture.  That's the original reason for what we now celebrate as Christmas.

But Christmas is only part of the story.  Jesus didn't come to Earth just to hang out and tell us parables.  He knew what had to be done.  Because God is holy and just, every time we sin we separate ourselves from God.  But God loves us, He wants to be connected to us, but He's holy and we're not.  So the only way to be reunited is for a payment to be made for the sin.  Us humans have worked out a similar system in every culture: break the law and pay a fine, bigger crimes require separation from society, and extreme crimes sometimes result in capital punishment.  Thousands of years ago God established a pattern of atoning sacrifice to the Israelites: when you sin, make up for it by sacrificing something of value.  But sacrificing animals was never enough.  Every time we sinned a new sacrifice had to be made, and we just keep on sinning.  So God decided to come in person and be the ultimate sacrifice, once and for all.  Jesus came to Earth with a mission.  He volunteered to leave paradise (Isaiah 66:1-2) and come to Earth as a pauper (Luke 2:12, Matthew 9:11).  He knew what He was doing (Matthew 16:21) and who He was coming to be with (Genesis 6:5-6, John 2:24-25) but He came anyway (Romans 5:8).

And then we have the gall to say dumb things like "there has to be another way" or "I would rather find my own way."  This is just more of the same to God.  His lament about our disdain for His heart was recorded in Luke 13:34.  The idea that Jesus is our only savior is not simply common arrogance shared by all Christians.  If there was another way, do you really think He would have come here and modeled a sinless life just to die a brutal, violent, murder on our behalf?  If there was another way then God had better things to do than become human just to take our punishment for us, and I'd think He'd just say "let them be saved that way, that way is good enough, I'll skip the 30 years of poverty followed by brutal murder" (Mark 14:32-36). And don't think that just because it happened two millennia ago that you have any excuse to demand God act again, now, in your lifetime, in an equally radical fashion. What He did 2000 years ago was good enough once and for all (1 Corinthians 15:22, Hebrews 10:10) that's why He left eyewitnesses (2 Peter 1:16-18, 1 John 1:1-3) and a written record: so we'd still know about it today and thank Him for it, love Him even.  It's not supposed to be a drag when He says He's the only way (John 14:6), He's reassuring us.  He's saying "no one else is coming for you, but I have, I created you, and I'm pursuing you with My love.  I love you enough to suffer the consequences of your sin so that you can be with Me forever."  No other God nor any form of deity has ever made an offer that good, and yet He still allows us to choose.  Do we accept His offer, or reject it?  And if we accept it, do we keep this offer for ourselves or do we share it with the world?  This is what Christmas and Easter are annual reminders of: God cared enough to come in person and tell us how much He loves each and every one of us (John 3:16, Galatians 3:28).  This is why the angel declared that famous evening:

Luke 2:8-14: There were shepherds in the same country staying in the field, and keeping watch by night over their flock. Behold, an angel of the Lord stood by them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. The angel said to them, "Don't be afraid, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy which will be to all the people. For there is born to you today, in David's city, a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. This is the sign to you: you will find a baby wrapped in strips of cloth, lying in a feeding trough." Suddenly, there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly army praising God, and saying, "Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, good will toward men." (WEB)

Gospel Paradigms

When I read the gospels, something that stands out to me now (now that I've been working in the international business world for years) that didn't stand out the first couple times I read them (in college and shortly after) is the importance of paradigms.  I've been to four other countries on three other continents for my employer and learned a lot about humanity in the last few years.  I've learned that we're all the same, that we all have approximately the same hopes and dreams for reasonably prosperity and happiness, and we all have things we like and dislike about our government and our leaders.  I've also learned that we're all very different, that there are some people on this planet who think very very differently than I do.  Some of them live a world away, some only live down the street.  Take this perspective into account the next time you read the Gospel of Jesus.

For example, for hundreds of years, even thousands, God had been foretelling the Jews that a messiah was coming.  God had used tons of prophets to be His voice.  Of all the prophecies over the years, when Jesus actually showed up the one that was the "prime directive" in many people's minds was Psalm 110:1, which says:

The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit in the place of honor at my right hand until I humble your enemies, making them a footstool under your feet.” [NLT]

Never mind that this was basically the only prophesy that didn't warn us that the messiah would be ridiculed, mistreated, misunderstood, murdered, etc.*  But remember that the Jews had glory days.  They remembered when David and Solomon were king, and they ruled the whole area.  But now, the Romans were in charge, and the Romans weren't the nicest bunch of dictators you could ask for.  The Romans were the enemies of the Jews, and many Jews were unwilling to accept a Messiah who didn't live up to Psalm 110:1 and kick the Romans out.  But think about that concept again, and what that really means, because Jesus was the Messiah (and still is).  So let's say that another way then.  Many Jews were unwilling to accept God's plan God's way and thought that either God should operate the way they expected Him to operate or He can just go to Hell.  We see that over and over again through the Pharisees and other religious leaders' interactions with Jesus.  It was never the fact that what Jesus did was inherently wrong or evil or malicious that absolutely infuriated them, it was that what He did constantly challenged and unnervingly quickly and effortlessly destroyed their paradigms of who God was, what God cared about, and more importantly, who they were and their place in the world.  Jesus even called them on this in Matthew 22:41-46, which says:

Then, surrounded by the Pharisees, Jesus asked them a question: “What do you think about the Messiah? Whose son is he?” They replied, “He is the son of David.” Jesus responded, “Then why does David, speaking under the inspiration of the Spirit, call the Messiah ‘my Lord’? For David said, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, Sit in the place of honor at my right hand until I humble your enemies beneath your feet.’ Since David called the Messiah ‘my Lord,’ how can the Messiah be his son?” No one could answer him. And after that, no one dared to ask him any more questions. [NLT]

Today, the way we think (in our paradigm) it is a non-issue for a son to achieve more power than a father.  Especially when the father is so old he's dead.  But to them, under their paradigm, this was a huge theological problem.  That's why no one could answer him.  They wanted to claim the part of the prophesy (that we now know as Psalm 110:1) that would give them power (God making their enemies their footstool) but they really didn't want to deal with the part where a descendant, or heir, could be more important than their predecessor.  Not because it mattered in an absolute sense, but because they had deviated from God's will so much and come to love the power and position they had gained over the years, that to admit not only that they weren't perfectly aligned with God but that God actually saw things completely differently than they did would stand a good chance of making them to look really stupid (since they were his ambassadors).  And if they looked stupid on this one (big) issue then they might loose all their worldly power and position, and that was the most unacceptable thing they could imagine.  One of them even came out and said it in John 11:46-48:

Some went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. Then the leading priests and Pharisees called the high council together. “What are we going to do?” they asked each other. “This man certainly performs many miraculous signs. If we allow him to go on like this, soon everyone will believe in him. Then the Roman army will come and destroy both our Temple and our nation.” [NLT]

Notice the comment about the Romans came second, and his first concern was actually for the people who looked up to him stopping and following Jesus instead.  There are tons of examples of even the apostles struggling with the paradigm shifts that God was trying to introduce.  One of my favorite examples is Peter.  Remember him, he is the guy that Jesus praises so strongly in Matthew 16:13-19:

When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” “Well,” they replied, “some say John the Baptist, some say Elijah, and others say Jeremiah or one of the other prophets.” Then he asked them, “But who do you say I am?” Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Jesus replied, “You are blessed, Simon son of John, because my Father in heaven has revealed this to you. You did not learn this from any human being. Now I say to you that you are Peter (which means ‘rock’), and upon this rock I will build my church, and all the powers of hell will not conquer it. And I will give you the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven. Whatever you forbid on earth will be forbidden in heaven, and whatever you permit on earth will be permitted in heaven.” [NLT]

Pretty cool, huh?  The Catholics believe Peter was the first Pope.  But then, in the next verse basically, Peter lets his paradigm get the best of him.  He's just been given this wonderful compliment from Jesus because of his faith, so Peter is probably feeling pretty bold, like he can take on the world.  Especially after that description of "whatever you forbid..."  Let's read it in Matthew 16:21-23:

From then on Jesus began to tell his disciples plainly that it was necessary for him to go to Jerusalem, and that he would suffer many terrible things at the hands of the elders, the leading priests, and the teachers of religious law. He would be killed, but on the third day he would be raised from the dead. But Peter took him aside and began to reprimand him for saying such things. “Heaven forbid, Lord,” he said. “This will never happen to you!” Jesus turned to Peter and said, “Get away from me, Satan! You are a dangerous trap to me. You are seeing things merely from a human point of view, not from God’s.” [NLT]

Notice the comment "Heaven forbid"?  Remember what Jesus had said just a few sentences prior, about the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven.  Jesus all but tells him he's got the wrong idea (paradigm).  And then, a little while later, in Matthew 26, Peter was still hoping for his chance to be part of the beginning of the ultimate holy war where Jesus might forget all that peace junk he had been preaching for three years straight and go nuclear on both those annoying religious leaders and the Romans.  Let's read it from John though instead of Matthew, first in John 18:10-11:

Then Simon Peter drew a sword and slashed off the right ear of Malchus, the high priest’s slave. But Jesus said to Peter, “Put your sword back into its sheath. Shall I not drink from the cup of suffering the Father has given me?” [NLT]

...and less dramatically in John 6:15:

When Jesus saw that they were ready to force him to be their king, he slipped away into the hills by himself. [NLT]

My next favorite example is John the Baptist.  John is put in prison and when he hears that Jesus is out and about doing lots of miracles, he begins to doubt because Jesus is taking too long to come, break down the door, and rescue him.  So John sends some of his disciples to ask Jesus what's taking Him so long to launch the rescue campaign?  The response is in Luke 7:20-23:

John’s two disciples found Jesus and said to him, “John the Baptist sent us to ask, ‘Are you the Messiah we’ve been expecting, or should we keep looking for someone else?’” At that very time, Jesus cured many people of their diseases, illnesses, and evil spirits, and he restored sight to many who were blind. Then he told John’s disciples, “Go back to John and tell him what you have seen and heard—the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised to life, and the Good News is being preached to the poor. And tell him, ‘God blesses those who do not turn away because of me.’” [NLT]

Jesus is saying God blesses those who do not turn away from God because He holds a different paradigm, or because He has different priorities, than we do.  Blessed are us who are prepared to drop our own priorities and accept God's.  Judas Iscariot was perhaps one of the best examples of this.  Judas, too, expected a military messiah.  You may remember Judas was the one who betrayed Jesus by selling him to the Jewish leaders for 30 pieces of silver.  But is what we read in Matthew 27:1-5 the tone of a man who hated his teacher?

Very early in the morning the leading priests and the elders of the people met again to lay plans for putting Jesus to death. Then they bound him, led him away, and took him to Pilate, the Roman governor. When Judas, who had betrayed him, realized that Jesus had been condemned to die, he was filled with remorse. So he took the thirty pieces of silver back to the leading priests and the elders. “I have sinned,” he declared, “for I have betrayed an innocent man.” “What do we care?” they retorted. “That’s your problem.” Then Judas threw the silver coins down in the Temple and went out and hanged himself. [NLT]

The subtext, in my opinion, is that Judas had a wrong paradigm which lead him to have unrealistic expectations for his messiah (Jesus) which caused him to sin.  Judas had been with Jesus since before Matthew chapter 10.  He was one of the original apostles (not just a disciple).  He knew who Jesus was, and he didn't have any disdain for Jesus.  What he had in mind when he sold Jesus was not too dissimilar from John the Baptist.  I think Judas was saying to himself, "I know, I'll get the Jewish leaders to come after Jesus and force His hand so that He'll have to get the military campaign started, because I'm tired of waiting for it."  Kind of like with Neo in The Matrix and Emit in The Lego Movie, where the main characters couldn't really fulfill their potential until they really believed in themselves, spurred on by one of the other main characters.  Perhaps Judas thought Jesus just needed a push to build up the courage to get things in gear.  All things being equal, this might have been alright.  However, God didn't really appreciate a mere mortal trying to force His hand (John 17:12).  Jesus knew what Judas was thinking and said in Matthew 26:23-24:

“One of you who has just eaten from this bowl with me will betray me. For the Son of Man must die, as the Scriptures declared long ago. But how terrible it will be for the one who betrays him. It would be far better for that man if he had never been born!” [NLT]

And lastly (for this blog post) we see all this paradigm stuff with the mock trial.  Even when they were criticizing Jesus in the last hours, they were in their own way giving Him a chance to get so mad that He'd succumb to their expectations and go on a nuclear rampage and kill all the Romans.  (That is, if He really was the messiah, then surely that's what He'd do.  And if He wasn't the messiah, then as far as they were concerned he deserved to die a hundred deaths for wrecking havoc on their little kingdom.)  We can see it in this modern dramatization of Matthew 26:59-68, from Mel Gibson's 2004 movie The Passion of the Christ.  (The only version of this clip on YouTube has no subtitles, the movie of course has them.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_h0TORihZk

The trick is the people were not expecting a humble servant but a super hero.  Contrast God's idea of a savior to man's idea of a savior in the following movie clip from Marvel's 2009 movie Iron Man.  While you're watching this, remember that the Romans, while honestly not all bad, in many ways fit the bill (as Obiwan Kinobi said, "from a certain point of view") exactly for what we today call terrorists.  Except they were in charge of most of the known world.  As setup, this clip is showing you a scene from the movie where the hero, Tony Stark, is sitting in his basement fine tuning this new suit of armor he's made after using an earlier prototype to escape from these very same terrorists he's seeing on the TV.  The suit he made is meant to be armor and the device on his hand was originally only intended to be used as a flight stabilizer.  Once he realizes it has an alternate use, that is the catalyst of inspiration to go and be some people's savior.

(Note: the clip I originally picked here has been removed from YouTube, here's another that starts a minute later in the movie but contains the most important part of what I wanted to highlight. If at some point this video is also removed then this one was an authorized clip so shouldn't ever get pulled, but leaves out the terrorist's actions which leaves out some relevant emotional context.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTqa-NEwUbs

Obviously "iron man" is not what the Jews had in mind, specifically.  But the power and vengeance that he demonstrated was more in line with what they were expecting their messiah to bring.  Reminiscent of the judge Samson, or the Angel of Death in Moses's day.

Now of course, fast forward a couple thousand years.  Are we any different?  Do we accept God's plan as God's plan or do we tell Him that salvation and the rest of the universe needs to work the way we say it should work, otherwise He can take a hike?  Never mind that He invented absolutely everything, even the energy you're using to power your brain as you read this.  For example, take any of the numerous cultural hot topics, including abortion, marriage, sexuality, gun control, the 10 commandments, and biological evolution. God stated His opinions on these topics very clearly, long before you and I were born. Do we care? Are we willing to reset our paradigm to conform to His (as revealed in His word) or do we live our lives as if we expect God to conform to ours? If you're reading this at Christmas, remember why Jesus came to Earth 2000 years ago and think about what that can mean for how you live your life. If you're reading this at Easter, remember why Jesus suffered and died on the cross, and think about what that can mean for how you live your life.

(* Other prophecies the Jews surely hung to (because it emphasized the Messiah's glory, not His suffering) were Isaiah 11 and 55:3-5.)