Blind Dog, a song
I Thought You'd Never Ask (Part IV): What About Israel?
I share this post in my on-going series about the "questions no one told me I'd get asked in ministry" with a bit of trepidation. I have come across enough dispensationalist, fundamentalist, and/or literalist theologies to know that discussions of the role of national Israel in the economy of God's salvation can generate all kinds of heat with very little light. On top of that, there is the historic Church's very real legacy of anti-Semitism, which ought to temper everything we say on the matter with a great deal of humility and sensitivity. Before a Christian says anything else, I think, he or she needs to offer a very clear repudiation of anti-Semitism, as the affront to the Gospel that it is. Finally, of course, there are the ongoing and seemingly intractable political tensions in the Middle East-- raw nerves that any discussion of this issue will inevitably touch on. So I don't post this one lightly. But it is a question I get asked relatively often in ministry-- what about Israel?--and it's not one I ever studied directly in seminary, so certainly it fits the bill for this series. In the interest of full disclosure, I should say that I am a thoroughly-convinced amillenialist in my eschatology, a preterist in my understanding of the Book of Revelation, and a non-dispensationalist in my reading of Old Testament Prophecy. If any of those statements caused you to put up your dukes, you may wish to pass on reading this post and save yourself the frustration it's likely to cause.
That said, almost 5 years ago I received an email from a colleague of mine whom we'll call "Pastor Bill." Bill had a person in his church who was loudly and regularly criticizing him because he did not post "Pray for Israel" prompters in his bulletin, or publicly endorse ministries that did. He was wondering if I had any thoughts on the issue. For better or worse, this is the email I sent him in reply.
Thanks for the email, Bill. Yes, things are going very well for me these days.
So.... the question of Israel. Yes, that's a tricky one. I'll give you some raw unedited thoughts and feel free to do with them what you will.
1. It is very problematic to draw a correlation between ancient Israel, as the people of God, and the modern day Israeli state. Theologically this is so because Jesus has "redrawn the boundaries" of what the "nation" of Israel is. This is why there is no talk in the New Testament about "land" as one of the blessings of Abraham, but only the promise that through Abraham all the nations of the earth will be blessed. Yes, "ethnic Israel" is the chosen people of God, but this is not the same as saying that "the modern Israeli state" is God's chosen "nation." There's no such thing as a chosen nation. Distinguishing between "ethnic" and "national" Israel may be helpful as you process this with your folks. Yes: pray for/care about/witness to Jewish friends and neighbours, yes pray for "the Jewish People," or even for "Israelis." But don't confuse that with praying for the modern day nation of Israel.
2. Yes it's true that a lot of the "pray for Israel" stuff I've seen flows out of American right-wing sentiment, and so like you I always try to distance myself from the concept. Also, like you, I think that when you blur the lines between "ancient Israel" as the chosen people in the OT, and the modern day Israeli state, you set yourself up to blindly accept anything that the nation wishes to do, and make it so that it's impossible to criticize any action of the nation, which is a problematic posture for a Christian to adopt towards any nation state.
3. Ancient Israel's own vocation was to be a people of prayer for the nations, so prayer for Israel should include prayer for all the nations, and singling Israel out as a special focus of prayer seems to contradict Israel's own mandate. This was Jesus' motive for clearing of the Temple, that First Century Israel had exchanged its vocation as a people of prayer for the nations, and had become, instead, consumed with its own nationalistic agenda. Do we fall into the same trap when we get caught up in the "nationalistic agenda" of modern day Israel?
4. To pray for the nation of Israel as though that were somehow fulfilling Psalm 122:6 (which is the verse that's usually referenced in these discussions), is to fundamentally misunderstand what Jesus meant when he said "The Kingdom of God is at hand." Jesus' proclamation of the Kingdom was heard by his Jewish contemporaries as a ratification of their nationalistic agenda (i.e. that God was going to establish them as their own independent nation). This is why the celebrated him on Palm Sunday, because they figured he had come to establish National Israel. He didn't, because he hadn't. What he came to do was to establish God's Kingdom around himself (and not a nation), so that Jews and Gentiles alike could belong to God as one single people (Eph 2:14), and membership in "Israel" would not depend on ethnic origin or national affiliation, but on faith in Jesus. This is why Paul can say "Not all Israel is Israel" in Romans 9:6, and why he can talk about "the Israel of God" as though it were somehow distinct from national Israel, in Galatians 6:16. Because membership in God's "new" or "true" Israel happens through Jesus, for Jew and Gentile alike. This is why in Acts 1:6 the disciples ask if Jesus is "at this time" going to restore the kingdom to Israel (i.e. establish Israel as a nation state) and he redirects the question (1:7): don't worry about the national definition of what is or isn't Israel, instead worry about being my witness to all people groups, to the end of the earth (1:8).
So here's my bottom line:
1. Does God love Israel? yes, of course!
2. Does God want us to love Israel? yes, of course!
3. Should we want Jewish people to come to know Jesus as the Messiah? Most definitely!
4. Are the Jewish people still God's chosen people, with a special role in God's economy of salvation? Yes! (Though what that looks like, now, in relation to the Gentiles, is a bit more complicated. Read Romans 9, 10, and 11).
5. Should we pray for the modern-day Israeli state? Yes... in the way you would pray for any modern day nation, as a Christian.
6. Should we "single out" the modern-day Israeli state as a special focus for prayer? Only if there's a pastoral reason to do so in a specific local context (e.g. we pray for the Congo a lot in our church, because we have a lot of connections to Congo right now). But not because you think that "national Israel" fulfills some special mandate in the economy of God's salvation. I don't include "pray for Israel" in any prayer prompters at Corner Church, and except in some real specific contexts, I don't think I would; certainly not in a way that aligns my ministry with the American Evangelical Right that you identified in your email.
I don't know how much of that will be helpful to you, but those or my 2 cents worth :)
The City of Breath and Bone, a song
I Thought You'd Never Ask (Part III): Do All Dogs Really Go To Heaven?
The Dragon, the Maiden, and the Baby Boy (a song)
Walking through Covid with the Book of Joel (Part 2): Good Grief
I Never Thought You'd Ask (Part II): What About Tattoos?
Some Pastoral Thoughts on Tattoos
A bunch of years ago, I was eating lunch by myself at a Tim Hortons. I was just about to dig in, when 2 men approached my table.
“You must be a Christian” said one. I wasn’t so quick at putting one and one together, so I said, “What makes you say that?”
“Well, we saw you pray before you ate. You don’t see that much anymore. Are you part of a church?”
I explained that I was a pastor, and their faces lit up. I forget the name of the group that they belonged to, now, but they told me that they also went to church, and they asked about mine.
I told them I was Free Methodist. And then waited for the usual question: “What’s Free Methodist,” they asked.
I said: “Well, there was this Methodist minister back in the 1800s named B. T. Roberts, who sort of felt like the church had gotten off track with the Message of Jesus. So he started calling the people back to holiness. Eventually he ruffled too many feathers, so they kicked him out. And that’s when he started the Free Methodist movement.”
Well. When I said the word “holiness,” these two guys lit up even brighter. I was starting to think I’d met two long lost brothers in arms.
“Oh. Our church is all about holiness, too,” they said. “We feel that worldliness is killing Christianity. God’s people need to get back to holiness.” And I nodded.
And then he said, “Like, for instance, our women don’t wear pants. Or cut their hair.” And then he looked at me and said, “Do your women wear pants?”
And I didn’t know what to say. I told this story to Dani later on, and she said: well: did you tell them you don’t own any women?
Which is a good point. But the point I want to make in bringing this up, is that for these guys, whoever they were, one of the signs of whether or not you’re a holy Christian is whether or not the women in your community wear pants.
Now: let me make it clear that I completely disagree with that perspective.
But let me also say that if you wanted to: you could actually argue their point from the Bible. After all: doesn’t Deuteronomy 22:5 say, “A woman shall not wear anything that pertains to a man, nor should a man put on a woman’s garment, for all who do so are an abomination?”
And doesn’t 1 Timothy 2:9-10 say “Women should dress modestly, with decency and propriety, not with braided hair, or gold and pearls” (incidentally, that would rule out wearing braids, too).
Certainly, for Paul, in his era, it was not considered modest for a women to wear something that exposed the shape of her legs. In the Greco-Roman world, women generally wore an ankle-length dress called a stola, which they wore overtop of a tunic called a peplon, and sometimes they wore a mantle over top of that, something called a palla.
So it’s unlikely that any ancient writer in the ancient world would have thought that pants were respectable attire for a women.
And yet, let me go on the record one more time, and say that I disagree with those two guys I met in the Tim Hortons: I don’t think holiness has anything to do with whether or not women wear pants, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with women doing so in our culture.
Maybe you’re thinking: I thought this was gonna be about tattoos….
And it is. Because here’s the point: it is very difficult to make a case strictly from the Bible for how a person ought to look, or not look, without first acknowledging that how we look—what is considered acceptable, or respectable—is always conditioned by our culture.
Is it okay to wear jewellery? 1 Peter says that our beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as elaborate hairstyles and the wearing of gold jewelry.
Is it okay to shave? Leviticus 19:27 says that men must not trim the edges of their beards.
Here’s the thing: you cannot apply any of these verses directly without recognizing that the Bible says these things because in the culture that the Bible was first written in, these things—braided hair, shaved faces, gold jewelry, wearing pants—they had a certain meaning in that culture.
If we lived in a culture were only prostitutes wore clothing that exposed the shape of their legs—which was the case for the Greco-Roman world, incidentally—then you might have a case for forbidding pants in our culture, too.
But we don’t, and so the way we apply the verse that says “dress modestly” has to relate, in some way, to what our culture understands as modest.
So let me finally ask it: is it okay for Christians to have tattoos?
The answer is: it depends. What do tattoos mean in our culture, and do they mean something that is contrary to the Way of Jesus?
They did mean something that was contrary to the Way of Jesus, in ancient Israel.
This is why the one place—the only place—in the Bible where it mentions tattoos, it says we should not get them.
Leviticus 19:28 says, “Do not cut your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourselves. I am the Lord.”
Now that seems cut and dry. But that’s why I did the long preamble: because it’s no more cut and dry than the question of whether or not it’s okay to wear pants.
And here’s the thing: I do not believe that Leviticus 19:28 applies to the modern-day practice of getting tattoos. And I think if you try to use Leviticus 19:28 to build a case against getting tattoos, you are on very shaky ground.
Here are my reasons:
First: The phrase that we translate as “tattoo marks” in this verse is very rare. This is the only occurrence of it that we have in the Hebrew Bible. So it’s not even exactly clear what it’s describing. It’s clear that it’s talking about putting some sort of a mark on your body, but this could be by tattooing, or it could even just mean painting your body in some way.
But let’s assume our translation is accurate and it means permanent tattoos like what people get today. That brings us to this:
Second: The context seems to describe a specific kind of “tattooing practice.” It says don’t do this “for the dead,” i.e. as a way of mourning the dead. Many commentaries suggest that this is probably connected to some pagan mourning ritual, where you marked your body in some way to honor your dead loved ones. So, if it is prohibiting tattoos, it’s not necessarily a general prohibition, but a specific cultural practice.
(Think about it like this: If I said, we shouldn’t “sing Taylor Swift pop songs” in church (which we shouldn’t) am I prohibiting singing in church generally, or am I prohibiting singing specific kinds of songs?)
You see: here’s the reason that the Book of Leviticus prohibits the practice of getting tattoos for the dead: because in that culture, tattoos had a pagan association. If people saw you wearing a tattoo, they’d think you worshipped Molech, maybe, or Ba’al, or they would think that worshiping Israel’s God was no different from how you worshipped them. And because tattoos were associated with worshipping false gods, the book of Leviticus says don’t do it.
Do tattoos today have that same association?
I’d say in most settings, they don’t.
I could imagine a situation, maybe, where, let’s say there was an ex-biker, who was part of Hells Angels. I don’t know. And he got tattoos as a biker, to show his allegiance to the gang… right? But then, let’s say he comes to Jesus and gets saved; and then later on, let’s say, he comes to me and He says, hey pastor should I now get a tattoo of Jesus to show I’m part of his gang now?
I’d probably say, Hey Rocky, you left that life behind, you can’t honor Jesus in the way you used to honour the Hells Angels. So don’t get a tattoo.
But outside of those kind of specific cases, do tattoos have the same spiritual connation to us as they did in the ancient world?
Before you answer, let me say this: Third: This verse comes in the Old Testament Law, as part of a long series of prohibited practices, including, but not limited to: wearing clothing with two different kinds of fibres woven together, or shaving your beards.
And according to Galatians 5:3, if anyone tries to “justify themselves by keeping the law” they are now obligated to keep the entire law.
In other words, If I say, I’m a good Christian because I keep Leviticus 19, and don’t have tattoos, and you’re a bad Christian because you broke Leviticus 19 and got a tattoo …. anyone who does that is now immediately obligated to keep every rule in Leviticus, too: are you wearing a nylon/cotton blend? Do you eat shellfish? Do you shave your face? Do you do any work (at all) on a Saturday?
These are all equally prohibited by the same book that prohibits tattoos. And if you’re gonna justify yourself by keeping one, you’ve gotta keep them all.
But this brings me to fourth: The Old Testament Law—Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, the whole bit—has been fulfilled by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. As Christians, we “keep Leviticus,” the whole of it, rules about tattoos included, not by following it, but by following Jesus. And Jesus says, here’s the way you fulfill the Law: by putting your Faith in me, and then, from that faith, start Loving God with all your heart, and loving your neighbour as yourself.
There’s a place in the New Testament where the Jewish Christians—Christians who had followed Leviticus all their lives, mind you—they were trying to figure out what to do with all these Gentile believers who were coming to Christ. Should we require them to keep the Law?
That was the big question: should we tell them they can’t have tattoos (among other things).
Anyone know what they said?
In Acts 15 it says they said: “Why should we try to test God by putting a yoke on their necks that we ourselves, as Jews weren’t even able to bear. No! It is through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that we are saved, just as they are.”
Did you catch that? We are not saved by keeping the Law (the bit about tattoos included). We are saved by the grace of the Lord Jesus. And, if we try to put the burden of the Law on other believers—especially believers coming to Jesus brand new—when we do that we are actually putting God to the test.
To be clear: the principle that underlies Leviticus 19:28 still applies for Christians.
The principle is: the way we worship our God should be distinct from the way non-Christians worship their gods. There should be something about us that sets us apart.
But I believe very strongly that Jesus would say: listen: if you think the thing that’s gonna set you apart from non-Christians is whether or not you have tattoos, then you’re kind of missing the point. The way I want you to be set apart (this is still Jesus speaking) the way I want you to be set apart is by excelling everyone else at being peacemakers, and extending love to the excluded, and generosity, and honesty, and sincerity.
Heart-change stuff.
Because you could go your whole life and never get a tattoo, and still be full of selfishness, arrogance, judgementalism, and whatnot on the inside. Jesus called that being a white-washed tomb. And he had no time for white washed tombs.
This actually brings me to the main thing I want to say about tattoos today: Just that Jesus wants us to excel at the heart-change stuff—you know: showing this neighbourhood his love, and peace, and generosity, and grace—he wants us to be so single-mindedly consumed with loving him and loving other people that we just don’t have time to sit around and debate something as superficial as tattoos.
And for the record: the New Testament is full of examples of churches that did not survive because the people in the church kept judging one another based on superficial measures of holiness, like tattoos, let’s say, instead of the real measures of holiness—our passion to walk by Faith in the Love of God and the Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.
As an example: there’s a place in Galatians where Paul’s writing to a bunch of Christians who are debating circumcision. Does a Christian male have to be circumcised? It’s interesting, they were debating the propriety of putting a mark on your body, too, but in this case it’s a totally different kind of mark.
But the thing is, I mean: Leviticus says circumcise your males, right? And a lot of Jews in the Galatian Church were circumcised, and none of the Gentiles were, right? So, who’s holier than whom?
Is it okay for a Christian not to be circumcised? (We can’t imagine debating that, probably, but this question was tearing that church apart)
And here’s what Paul says (among other things): Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything, but what counts is being a New Creation. The entire Law is summed up in a single command: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ And then he says, “But watch out: if you guys keep biting each other, and devouring each other, you will destroy each other.”
I.e. If you get hung up on these superficial measures of holiness, you will destroy this church.
Says Paul.
So: You ask me: As Pastor, what’s your opinion about tattoos?
I’d say: I’m completely indifferent to them; like Paul says about circumcision, I’d say, neither having a tattoo or not having a tattoo means anything. What counts is being and becoming a New Creation.
And if you asked for more, I’d say: well: there is no biblical case you can make to say that tattoos are wrong.
There is no theological case you can make to say that tattoos are wrong.
And there is a very strong biblical case to make against judging other believers for superficial things like circumcision… or tattoos… or what not.
Of course, if we lived in a culture where tattoos had the kind of connotation that they did in the ancient world, where they were associated with the pagan worship of pagan idols, I’d say don’t touch them with a 10-foot pole.
But they don’t have that association in our culture.
I’ve been asking around. And it turns out that people get tattoos today for a 1001 reasons: To express their individuality. To mark a special moment in their lives. To fit in with the group. Conformity. Vanity. You name it.
Not all of these are good. But not all of them are bad, either. And every Christian needs to go to God for themselves, in faith, and decide before God, in faith, whether their tattoo is a good idea or not.
I would love it if our church was the kind of church where we just expected each other to do that—to go to God with all of our decisions, big and small—if we trusted each other to do that—and then we devoted the bulk of our time to the New Creation stuff, the heart-change stuff, the mission that Jesus has us on, to show his unconditional love to this neighbourhood.
Walking Through Covid with the Book of Joel (Part 1): Awake!
One of the advantages to putting together a preaching calendar so far in advance, is that it prevents you from giving knee-jerk reactions to whatever issue happens to be most prominent in the news at any given time. If the next passage in the book of 1 Corinthians happens to be about eating food sacrificed to idols, then it must be that God wants us to talk today about food sacrificed to idols, regardless the 1001 issues that are vying for attention on our social media accounts, our newsfeeds, or our Google searches. It allows the Bible to set the agenda, in other words, not the CBC; and it allows the Bible to speak to world events on its terms, rather then letting world events dictate how we read the Bible.
All that to say I was truly amazed this year, when the Covid-19 Pandemic hit right as I was coming back from a three-month Sabbatical, and it "just so happened" that the first series I had planned was a verse-by-verse study through the Book of Joel. I put that phrase in scare-quotes just now because, I had no idea that the pandemic was coming, of course, but God surely did. And God must have known, too, how beautifully and directly a book like the Book of Joel-- of all the books of the Bible-- would speak to what was happening as the world went into shut down and everyone wondered what was coming next. I was tempted at first to switch gears and preach a series that spoke directly to the pandemic, but as I started digging into the book of Joel, this ancient prophetic oracle about a time when all of Israel was shut down because of a locust plague, I realized that there was no better place for my preaching ministry to go, in responding to Covid, than to the Book of Joel.
Eight sermons later, we were still in the midst of the pandemic, but I was deeply encouraged to see how directly God's ancient, holy word, speaks to our modern, secular world. As we move into our sixth month of Covid, with no clear end in sight, I thought it might be worth revisiting that preaching series here on my blog. The handy thing about the lockdown is that we were doing entirely pre-recorded messages back then, which, though they were far more work to do than a simple sermon, resulted in a relatively-well-produced series of videos on the Book of Joel.
So over the next few weeks on my blog, I will be re-posting the sermon series that I preached back in the spring, walking through Covid with the Book of Joel. I hope it will be an encouragement to you as we all continue to walk.
Here's the first sermon in the series: Joel 1:1-12: Awake!
The Start is Near, a song
I Thought You'd Never Ask (Part 1): A Theological Exploration of our Every-Day Questions About God
When I graduated from seminary 11 years ago, fresh off the presses with a Master’s of Divinity in my pocket and the dream to become a pastor shining brightly in my head, I had expected that the questions I’d been trained to answer would more or less line up with the actual questions I’d be asked in ministry. I’m not talking here about the administrative problems any pastor has to figure out how to solve—how to make sure your church’s insurance is up-to-date, let’s say, or how to file your reports for your denomination. These were context-specific tasks that I knew I’d have to do and I expected to have to figure them out as I went along.
I’m talking about the theological questions that arose in the course of my work shepherding the flock under my care, the spiritual issues and biblical quandaries that the people I pastored were wrestling with. I attended Briercrest Seminary, a very good school that had done some careful thinking about how to equip their grads for “real life ministry,” and I believe that the masters degree I earned there, on the whole, gave me a well-stocked tool box for pastoral work. I even blogged about it early on in my ministry, in a blog post about the Top Ten Classes I’m Glad I Took in Seminary.
That said, I’ve come across all sorts of theological issues in my work as a pastor that I never really saw coming. Few of these were especially deep or troubling, though a small handful were, both deep and troubling. Most were just theological queries that arose in the course of people’s everyday lives, however, and if I were taken aback by them, it was only because it never would have occurred to me to wonder about them myself. Many of them felt somewhat superficial to me at the time, and occasionally it was rather deflating, to want to engage with people over the eschatological significance of Jesus’s counter-intuitive Kingdom of God kerygma (for instance) and to be asked, instead, whether I thought our pets would be with us in heaven.
I would not be communicating well here if I came across as though I looked down in any way on these questions. Yes, it was sometimes deflating, but at the same time, some of the most theologically rich conversations I’ve had in my eleven plus years of ministry emerged out of efforts to tackle these seemingly hum-hum theological questions. Will our pets be with us in heaven? Well: that depends entirely on what you make of the eschatological significance of Jesus counter-intuitive Kingdom of God kerygma.
So I have learned to embrace these kinds of questions—should I get a tattoo, Pastor Dale?—should we pray for Israel, Pastor Dale?—should we put up a Christmas Tree in the sanctuary, Pastor Dale?
In their interesting book How to Think Theologically, Howard Stone and James Duke argue that everyone has an operative theology—even those who aren’t aware of it—even those who out-and-out deny the existence of God. We all have tacit assumptions about who God is and what he’s like, and those assumptions shape our thinking and guide our actions in all kinds of subconscious ways. I tend to agree with them; and I’ve learned that one of the ways to tune in to a person’s “operative theology” is to pay attention to the kinds of questions they’re asking about God, faith, and spirituality.
All this is by way of introduction to a blog series I’m starting here at terra incognita, which I’m calling, “I Thought You’d Never Ask.” It will be an exploration of the “real questions” I’ve been asked over the course of my work as a pastor, the questions my seminar training never primed me to expect. Many of these questions have come to me via email, and so conveniently, I still have a record of the answers I gave at the time. If you happen to have been one of the askers, please rest assured that I will not break any confidences in anything I post; I am more interested in the broad strokes and general themes. But I hope it will be an illuminating exercise, to explore the everyday questions we ask about God, and examine the theological truths that those questions reveal about him, and about ourselves in relation to him.