Opus 2021-028: God on Whiteness

I can see why the cancel culture is so set against the Biblical message.  Based on the book of Psalms it is clear that the Jews were part of the conspiracy of white privilege.  Consider this well known verse,

(Psa 51:7 KJV) Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

It is clear that God has a problem with people who are not white.  Part of the preparation for eternity is an ethnic bleaching.  (For liberals, that is a bit of humor you might not get.  As we used to say, “Joke, Irene, Joke.”)

If you believe that, you must be a Progressive*.  Ignorance, hate and brainwashing come with the territory.

The left has even more problem with the idea that we need to be purged from our sin.

homo unius libri

Opus 2014-175: Un-self Righteous, part 1 of 2

Warning!  Theology ahead!

We can be righteous and not be perfect.

Another verse that some Christians like to quote is,

(Isaiah 64:6 KJV)  But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.

They interpret this to mean that it is impossible to be righteous in reality.  This verse is usually misquoted.  I heard it again on the radio this week.  Notice the plural “righteousnesses.”  This means the spiritual games we play.  It does not refer to our spiritual condition.  It is a serious miss-quoting of what the Bible actually teaches.

It is true that we are all sinners from birth.  Here are simple statements from both Testaments.

(Psalms 51:5 KJV)  Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.

(Romans 3:23 KJV)  For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;

But you cannot read the Bible long before you come across such verses as,

(Genesis 7:1 KJV)  And the LORD said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house into the ark; for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation.

Here in the first book of the Bible you have God declaring that He sees Noah as righteous.  I don’t think God is blind or delusional.  He is also not a liar or a politician putting spin on an issue.  For those into Hebrew I would point out that both “righteous” (6662) and “righteousnesses” (6666) come from the same family of words.  One is an adjective and one is a noun.

If you have the time and are still in denial about this simple fact, do a word search on the word “righteous” and see how many times it is applied to God’s people.

To be concluded...

homo unius libri

Opus 2013-68: Book Review: When Bad Things Happen to Good People, part 3 of 7

In my last post on this topic I gave a quote from the book.  Let me lift out a couple of issues with what Kushner said.  First, he seems to think that the great thinkers of the ages use big words only to confuse and trick. 

“It does not try to use big words or clever ways to rephrasing questions in an effort to convince us that our problems are not really problems, but the we only think they are.” p. 1

In one sentence he writes off all the contributions of the great thinkers of the past.  All the Rabbis, philosophers and theologians who have tried to deal with the big question of pain are just being sophists.  This seems a bit arrogant, but maybe in his pain he is over stating his case.

His second basic assumption about the world is a bigger problem.  He states that he believes in the “goodness of the world.”  With this simple statement he separates himself from the Biblical Judaism that he purports to espouse.  With this statement I assume that he represents the Reform branch of Judaism.  In Christian terms this would make him a United Methodist, United Presbyterian or Unitarian. 

As you read through the book you notice that he rejects the idea of sin and the fallen nature of man.  I am not an expert in Jewish theology but sin and the fall are certainly in Genesis.  Also consider this from the Jewish Publication Society Bible.

(Psalms 51:5 JPS)  (51:7) Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.

And yet he rejects this with a pat on the head to those so provincial that they believe it.

“Perhaps, depending on the religious tradition in which you were raised, you were told that all human beings, Adam’s and Eve’s descendants, were doomed to die as sinners because of that original disobedience.” p. 74

This is one of those Continental Divides between what the Bible teaches and our pagan culture rejects.  The world is not now, nor will it ever be in this age, good.  It is under the curse of sin.  If you reject that you might as well reject the rest of the package, which Kushner has done even if he does not realize it.  I may come back to this.

Third, he is rethinking all he has been taught about God and His ways.  Thinking is good.  Thinking about God and His ways is good.  Rethinking is a constant process.  The problem is that Kushner insists on rejecting all sources outside his own world view and his worldview has rejected the teachings that God gave in the Bible.  You can’t have it both ways.  Either you accept the God revealed in the Bible or you are simply another member of the Belief of the Month Club.

The problem I am seeing as I read is that he sets himself above not only the wisdom of ages but seems to be moving toward remaking God into the author’s own image.

To be continued...

Kushner, Harold S.  When Bad Things Happen to Good People.  New York:  Schocken Books, 1981.

homo unius libri

Opus 2011-28, Key Scripture: Psalm 51:5

(Psalms 51:5 KJV)  Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.

My last post looked at Romans 3:23.  It talked about all humans being sinners.  Some people might try to hang that on the uptight Reformers.  You know how those Puritans were.  They walked around with prune faces and did not want anybody to have any fun right?  Or they blame it on those nasty Christians and their emotionally retarded views of God. 

Actually, the concept has been around since the beginning.  Well, right after the beginning.  Adam and Eve were not born into sin, they introduced it to humanity.  But the concept is strongly established in the Old Testament.  It is a part of the teaching of the Bible.

Some teachers through history have tried to make this verse say that sex is evil.  That is refuted by the rest of the Bible.  Sex in monogamous, man/woman covenant is a gift of God.  This verse is talking about the sin nature that is a part of every living man, woman and child.

Sin exists.  Jesus is the cure.  Get cured.

homo unius libri