Question and Response

This past Sunday, we had a Question and Response time. Please remember that I don't have all the answers! Here are the questions and responses.

What is sin and how does it affect us?

One of the best ways I know to respond to this is from St. Augustine. To help us understand Augustine's ideas, I want you to imagine a fish.

"Something's not right here, Fred. Do you have a tingling feeling?"

Fish are designed to do certain things: swim, eat bugs, lay eggs, live in particular kinds of water, and so on. When fish do these things they're designed for, they live their little fishy lives well.

Just like fish are designed to do particular things, Augustine says that humans are designed to do particular things. We are designed to have the things that we love in a particular order. We're designed to love God above all. And then somewhere in the middle, to love human beings: our neighbors and ourselves. And then third, way down at the bottom, comes everything else. When we have our loves in that order, we're like fish doing what fish are designed to do: we live our lives and it's all good.

But pretty often we put the things we love out of order: we love material things, or power, or status, or work, or learning, or play, more than we love people. Or we love people - ourselves or someone else - more than we love God. And when we put our loves out of order, we're not working the way we are designed to work.

It's like trying to use a fish as a microwave oven. It's just going to end badly.

That's sin: having our loves out of order.

For example: If I love status more than I love people, then when I make a mistake, I'm going to try to hide it - I'm going to lie about it. That might work in the short run, but it's going to hurt everyone in the long run.

Loving humans more than God is a little trickier, because we're supposed to love people, right? How can we love people too much?

Let's take an example. I love Erik, my husband, very much. But if I were to love him as God, then I would need him to be available to receive my love and attention all the time. It would be pretty disappointing for me when he, you know, went to work, or paid attention to other people. Because Erik's not God, and Erik doesn't have it in him to live his own life and to be God for me.

It would begin to be very obvious that he's not God, and that would be devastating for me. So then I might try to pretend I didn't notice. I might build up this idea of Erik that's actually very different from who he really is, so that I don't have to face the fact that he's not God. And now, you see, I've stopped loving Erik. Now I love this idea that I've created.

Or maybe if I love Erik as God, then I'm willing to do whatever I think is necessary to help and protect him, even at the cost of hurting other people. Again, not loving people, not loving God, and people are getting hurt.

That top-tier love that ought to be reserved for God - it's just too much for humans to receive. And if we give it to humans instead of God, whether to ourselves or someone else, then people get hurt.

That's why it's a sin to have our loves out of order. It's not an arbitrary line. It's because people get hurt when we put our loves out of order. It's trying to use a fish as a microwave oven. It's just going to end badly.

For any particular action, then, the question to ask is: Who am I loving above all with this action? Is it God? Not sin. Is is anybody or anything else? Sin.

Angels: What function do they play? Where do they come from? Who created them and why? What references to angels are in the Bible? Where do the names of angels come from?

The word "angel" means "messenger." This is the primary role that angels play in the Bible. They are messengers from God to humans. For instance, angels tell Abraham and Sarah they're going to have a child, angels come to the prophet Elijah in the desert, and an angel comes to both Mary and Joseph to tell them about Jesus. In addition to being messengers, angels in the Bible also praise God, and sometimes they protect certain groups of people.

An interesting connection here is with cherubim. We think of cherubs - the cute, fat little children with wings. But cherubim in the Bible actually have nothing at all to do with angels. They're completely separate. Cherubim in the Bible have wings, and they're usually made up of a bunch of different animals, all put together - like a lion and an eagle, smashed together.

Don't let those sweet faces fool you.

The clouds are hiding lizard/shark/camel bodies.

Cherubim in the Bible protect holy things and travel with God.

What's interesting here is that in the Bible, there are no angels described as having wings. In fact, angels aren't really described in any detail. The idea that they have wings - that comes from the cherubim, not from Biblical angels at all.

Where do angels come from, who created them, and why? In the Bible, it's fairly easy to see a progression from God being directly present in people's lives (God is WALKING AROUND in the Garden of Eden) to God being a little more distant. As that progression happens, angels come into place to bridge the gap between God and humanity. They are created by God to be intermediaries (messengers), and to praise God and protect particular groups of people.

There are two named angels in the Bible: Michael and Gabriel (see Daniel 8-12). Michael is the protector of Israel. Gabriel is a messenger - in fact, he brings the messages to both Mary and Joseph.

Other names for angels come from later Jewish traditions, especially mystical (highly spiritual) traditions, and especially from the time in between the Old Testament and the New Testament. There are references to angels in the book of Tobit, which is not in Protestant Bibles, but it is in the Bibles of some other churches, like the Catholic church. There are also references in the book of Enoch, which is in almost nobody's Bible. It's a mystical Jewish writing from that time between the Testaments. These extra-Biblical writings are where many of the names of angels come from.

There is no United Methodist doctrine or stated belief about angels, the devil, or demons. Many United Methodists believe in them. Many don't.

I think that if we understand angels as messengers, then something really important happens: Anyone can be an angel. We are all potentially angels - if we speak God's words. It also means we've got to listen to each other, because anyone around us could potentially be an angel: a messenger of God.

Where in the Bible does it deal with Lucifer being cast out of heaven?

In Isaiah chapter 14, there's a long, long taunt against the king of Babylon.

"Now go away, or I shall taunt you a second time!"

It says the king of Babylon has set himself, basically, as a god, as a part of the heavens, like a star. But the real God is going to nip that right in the bud.

So it says, "How you are fallen from heaven, O Day Star, son of Dawn!"

Now, the Bible is very, very clear that this is directed at the king of Babylon. If you read only Isaiah, you would have no idea that this might be talking about some sort of devil. But these things often have layers of meaning, so it's certainly possible that it's a statement both against the king of Babylon and against the devil.

Keep this Isaiah passage in mind, because we'll come back to it in a minute.

Next, we need to look at the book of Enoch, that Jewish mystical text that's not in the Bible. This is where we find the clearest account of the devil falling from heaven. Most of our ideas about what that looked like come from the (non-Biblical) book of Enoch, and they're enhanced by much, much later (non-Biblical) writings like Dante's Inferno and John Milton's Paradise Lost.

Remember, the book of Enoch was probably written in between the Testaments, and it looks like at least part of Enoch had a significant influence how people thought when they were putting together the New Testament and in the early church. The idea of the devil falling from heaven is echoed a couple of times in the New Testament.

In Luke 10:18, Jesus says, "I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning." Then in Revelation 12, there's a description of a war between Michael and his angels on one side (Michael is the angel protector of Israel), and "the dragon" and his angels (read: demons) on the other side. It says, "The great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world."

So there are three Biblical mentions: Isaiah, one sentence from Jesus, and this image from Revelation.

Let's go back to Isaiah, because this is where the name "Lucifer" comes from.

Long before English was a thing, the original Hebrew text of Isaiah was translated into Latin.

The Bible wasn't written in English. You're thinking of The Lord of the Rings.

In Latin, there's a word - just a word - that means "day star" or "morning star." The word is lucifer. Small "l."

Later, people had the story from Enoch in mind of the devil falling from heaven. They saw the echoes of that story in Luke 10:18 and in Revelation. And they saw it echoed way back in Isaiah, too. They figured that must be talking about the devil as well. That's when "Lucifer" began to be known as a proper name for the devil, rather just a word for a star.

Who was the heavenly group that Satan was part of - the "heavenly beings" in Job 1:6? Where did they come from?

In the book of Job, there's a scene described like this: "One day the heavenly beings came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came among them."

So we have these heavenly beings - which could also be translated as "sons of God." And Satan, it says, was among them.

"Satan" here is a very bad translation. We think of "Satan" as a proper name, as the devil, the personification of evil. But that idea did not exist when the book of Job was first written and read.

The Hebrew word here is ha-satan. You see the word "satan" in there. But the "ha" at the beginning means "the." "The satan." We would never say that with a proper name. We wouldn't say "The Rachon," for instance. A much better translation here would actually translate the word ha-satan instead of using it as a name. Translated, it means "the accuser."

So: "One day the heavenly beings [or sons of God] came to present themselves before the LORD, and the accuser also came among them."

To picture this, imagine a modern-day courtroom. There's a judge - that's God. There's a prosecuting attorney, who brings charges against people. That's the accuser. And there are other people too, who have other roles: a defending attorney, a bailiff, and so on. Those are the "heavenly beings."

"Your Honor, why are there no women in this courtroom?

And why are those guys in front of you reading and knitting?"

Keep the modern courtroom image, and add in an image of a royal court. There's a king or queen - that's God. There's some sort of police force that goes around and keeps an eye on the people - that's the accuser. And there are other people too, knights and such, that are the heavenly beings.

This picture has actually happened one other time in the Bible. In 1 Kings 22, the king of the time is Ahab. He's a bad guy. Ahab wanted to go into battle, and his pet prophets - the ones he paid to tell him he was awesome - told him that he would win the battle.

But then a real prophet, Micaiah, came to the king and described this scene: God was sitting on a throne, Micaiah said, and all the host of heaven was standing around. Just like the heavenly beings from Job. God asked for a volunteer - one of the heavenly beings needed to go trick King Ahab into going into battle. So one of them volunteered, and that's why Ahab's prophets thought he'd be okay. It was a trick from God to get him to go into battle and be killed.

By the way, it's stuff like this that got the prophets killed.

Nobody tells the king he's a fool.

So the picture of the heavenly court from Job echoes this picture from 1 Kings. But there's an even earlier mention of the "sons of God" - back in Genesis 6, they actually get married to human women and have children. Awkward.

These images of "sons of God" or "heavenly beings" are the forerunners of the images of angels that we have today. They're intermediaries between God and humanity. Because God is just so cool that we can't even handle it.

What does Job teach us nowadays?

Something to keep in mind in thinking about the book of Job is that it presents itself as a sort of parable. It opens with "There was once a man in the land of Uz named Job." This is something like our formula of "Once upon a time." When we hear "Once upon a time," we automatically know some things about the story that's coming. We know that the story is probably not factually accurate. But that doesn't mean it's not worth hearing. We also know that there's a good chance that the story has some moral or spiritual truth to it, even though it's not factually accurate. And this is how Job presents itself.

The story of Job, as we've seen, begins with a heavenly court. The accuser comes in, and God says, "Hey, have you seen Job? Boy, that guy's faithful!" The accuser says, "Well, sure, he's faithful. He's had pretty smooth sailing. Who wouldn't be faithful? But if you messed around with him a bit, I bet he'd turn away from you." So God gives the accuser permission to destroy Job's family, his property, and his body, as long as Job survives.

Once Job's life has been torn apart, his friends come to visit. For a while, they're silent, which is good. But then they open their mouths and things get ugly. They say, "Job, you must have done something to deserve all this tragedy. Because God is fair."

Job argues and says that he didn't deserve it, which, of course, he didn't. After a while Job gets angry with God for being so unfair. Finally, God comes into the picture and basically says, "Job, who do you think you are?" and then leaves, which is very unsatisfying.

But then at the end of the story, God does scold the friends. Remember, they've been saying that God is fair, but God says they're wrong. The story ends with God giving Job a new family and property and everything (on the assumption, I suppose, that this makes everything okay).

So what does it teach us? In a big way, the book of Job is a response to the book of Proverbs, which basically holds to the idea that if you do what's right, then good things will happen to you. And if you do bad things, bad things will happen to you.

So imagine living in a world where, if you got sick, or the animals you were raising got sick, or something happened to your family, then everyone around - including you - would blame it on you. You must have done something wrong.

That's how the world was when the book of Job came into play. People believed that God is fair, so you get what you deserve. It's a really tempting thing to believe, because then if we're just good enough, nothing bad will ever happen to us. But the book of Job emphatically says that we don't get what we deserve.

Today, we've sort of toned down the idea of blaming people for tragedies. But we haven't gotten rid of it. As an example, there's a part of us that believes that if you're poor, it's because you don't work hard or you made bad choices. And if you do have enough, then it's because you do work hard or you made good choices. We often don't bother to find out how hard people actually work or what choices were actually available to them.

To me, the book of Job says that life is not fair. It's just not. So when I'm blaming people for their circumstances, I need to take a second look.

Why does God seem so different - jealous, petty, and angry sometimes, but also a God of love?

The best way to answer this question is to start with a human being.

Let's imagine that we're all going to sit down together and write a biography of our friend Wayne. (Internet people, you may not know Wayne. Imagine someone else.)

So we go around and tell stories about Wayne. My guess is that there would be some overlap, but there would also be a lot of different stories. And we all know only one slice of Wayne. People he worked with would have other stories. Other friends would have other stories. Family members would have other stories. The truth is, even if you feel like you know Wayne, there's a huge amount that you don't know.

And if we put Wayne aside for a moment, and think about the person closest to you, someone you feel like you know really well - even that person can surprise you.

Because human beings are so, so complex. We can take a lifetime trying to get to know just one person, and we can still be surprised.

And if human beings are that complex, how much more complex is God! The Bible has many different voices and perspectives on God for a reason. Imagine if we tried to boil Wayne down to one word, or concept, or story, or even one person's understanding of Wayne. That would be so incomplete! And Wayne's just Wayne, he's not God.

Our picture of God would be so incomplete if it was simple.

Now, there is a core of identity. There are things about Wayne that would show up over and over. And God has a core of identity, too. From what I see in the Bible, and in the wisdom of faithful people since the Bible, that core of identity, that primary characteristic of God - it's love. Love, love, love. It's all over the place.

But! How humans have understood love has changed over time. In a world where dissent or disobedience could put an entire community in danger - in a world where villages were constantly in real, physical danger from bandits and armies and nature and everything else - I think a loving God might have some anger, some judgment. A loving God would keep the community together, united, which means that God might be jealous.

And that's not the only world in which a God who gets angry makes sense. For many victims of abuse or rape, a God who is all rainbows and sunshine and no judgment or accountability - that does not seem like a loving God. Which is not to say there's not forgiveness - there is. But forgiveness is meaningless without judgment.

So ultimately, as we think about God, the best way to approach it is through love. God seems strange in places in the Bible. So let's ask ourselves, How might this seem loving in different circumstances? Or to different people? We won't always get it.

But I'm so, so thankful for the many different voices and perspectives on our one huge, complex, fantastic God.

Do you have other questions? Send them to me or post them below!