DISRAELI on Reddit

You may have noticed that I haven't been starting any new series on this forum recently. This was because I was running out of ideas, having covered most of the Bible one way or another, and the last one on my projected list came to an end in December. I've already warned people about that.

On the other hand, my books based on the older series are gradually getting published, and in the meantime I've been finding a new field of activity in the Christian forums on Reddit, r/Bible and the rest. Not so much posting new threads as offering possible answers to the questions the mainly young Christians are asking. I thought it might be interesting if I shared here some of the comments I have been making there. As it happens, I did briefly think of opening up an "Ask me almost anything" thread on this forum, but I think this way would work better.

One question which seems to turn up a dozen times a week is "I'm going to read the Bible for the first time, in what order should I read it. So I will begin by sharing the answer I've begun offering;

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As something of a newcomer to these Reddit forums, I was both surprised and encouraged to see so many people looking for advice on the best way to read the Bible “for the first time”. This may be the best time of year to offer my own thoughts on the subject.

Previous generations of Bible readers were introduced to the Bible at an earlier age. The traditional Sunday School approach has been based on story-telling, working through the different stories found in the Bible. We should be guided by that, because all these stories add up to form THE story of the Bible, namely the story of the relationship between God and his people, which comes to a climax in the story of Jesus. This must have been how Hebrew worship and scripture developed in the first place, starting with the regular re-telling of the story of the Exodus and expanding to cover the rest of the ups and downs in the relationship. This is not just history, but “salvation history”.

So I would recommend getting to know the storyline of the Bible first before moving on to the deeper sections.

The best way to accomplish this would be to read through the first half of the Old Testament, up to the end of Nehemiah. Omitting the books describing the legal system (Exodus after ch20, Leviticus and Deuteronomy). Omitting also Chronicles, which is a re-run of the story in Kings. Then at least one of the gospels followed by Acts. Mark is the simplest narrative, focusing more on what Jesus did than on what he said, but Luke was written by the same author as Acts, making them a good pairing.

I think it would be a mistake for a newcomer to the Bible to start with the New Testament. This would be like picking up an Agatha Christie novel and going straight to the last chapter, where Poirot is explaining all the puzzles that have emerged in the previous chapters and you don’t know what he’s talking about. The Old Testament outlines the problem which Jesus came to solve, and if we don’t see the problem we won’t see the point of the solution.

Once you know the main storyline, you can move on to fill in the gaps, and that’s when the New Testament becomes the priority. Complete the reading of the gospels, probably finishing with John. I understand why people love John enough to suggest reading him first, but to me that’s like taking a new swimmer and throwing him in at the deep end of the pool. The epistles take up half the Testament. In 1 Corinthians, the first nine verses are, in effect, Paul’s definition of what it means to be a Christian community, and he spends the rest of the letter trying to teach them how to live up to that standard. Four letters, in particular, are teaching us the importance of faith; Galatians, Romans, Hebrews, and James. Paul and James are saying similar things with a different emphasis, because they are dealing with different problems. Paul says that faith must be FOLLOWED by works, while James says faith MUST be followed by works.

I suggest postponing Revelation to the end of your New Testament reading. I like Revelation (I’ve published a book on it), but I fear too many people are drawn to end-times speculation by the sense of excitement (“itching ears”). The purpose of Revelation is to encourage a church living in a state of emergency, and we don’t really need it until the emergency arrives.

Then you could move back to the gaps in the Old Testament. The Psalms are about worship, of course; best taken one at a time. The “wisdom” books (Proverbs and Ecclesiastes) are demonstrating that true wisdom lies in knowing God and what he wants from us. Job and the Song of Solomon (in my interpretation) both portray God’s people in trouble and close to despair, and needing to hold fast to their trust in their God. The prophets were speaking to the people of their own time, in the first instance, and the best way to read them is to connect them with their place in the timeline. I’ve got a book coming out (“Prophets, Priests, and Politics”) which could help with that. Most of the writing prophets lived in the second half of the kingdom period. Only Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi are definitely later than that, though there is something to be said for taking Daniel at the end as the climax of Old Testament prophecy.

Once again, I suggest reading the rest of the Old Testament before looking over the laws, to discourage any temptation to try following the laws in detail, which is not what Christians should be doing. These laws were written for the kind of ancient rural society in which oxen were wandering around unfenced land accidentally falling into other men’s pits. “The letter kills but the Spirit gives life”, and we need to be looking for the spirit of the law rather than the letter of the law. When we see these laws showing more concern for justice and more concern for the protection of the weak and vulnerable than can be seen in the other law codes of that cultural world, that’s where we might detect God’s mind at work.

a reply to: DISRAELI2

Why would you recommend to skip the laws god gave you directly?

That's both silly and ridiculous, and the god of the old testament would find that blasphemous.

Pretty sure Jesus said he came to fulfill the laws, not abolish them.

Imagine if someone told you to skip the gospels until after you read all of Paul.

The guy who wasn't there, who taught that Gods laws didn't matter anymore, and that the disciples were wrong even though they were actually there...

a reply to: ashisnotanidiot

He explains why right in the OP.

a reply to: ashisnotanidiot
Because the laws of Moses are not the "God's law" that Jesus promised not to abolish. They are fairly obviously mixed up with a lot of human stuff, which is where the imperfections come from. That is why Paul calls obedience to these laws a form of slavery, and tells us (Romans ch7 v6) that we have been liberated from them to live "in the new life of the Spirit".

So no, if someone's ox wanders into my garden and falls into a pit that I have dug there, I am not going to pay for it, whatever the Pentateuch says on the matter.

a reply to: DISRAELI2

I see.

Paul is greater than God.

Makes sense.

If God wanted you to read the bible in any other order than the order he put the books in, he would have put the books in that order.

Matthew 23:9
And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven.

1 Corinthians 4:15
Even if you had ten thousand guardians in Christ, you do not have many fathers, for in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel.

Jesus, God, said one of those, Paul said the other.

I wonder which one God is going to hold you to?

Matthew 5:17-20
Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets. I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. For I tell you truly, until heaven and earth pass away, not a single jot, not a stroke of a pen, will disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.

So then, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do likewise will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever practices and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

Specifically, he's referencing the law of Moses. Wasn't Paul a Pharisee?

Matthew 12:1-2
At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry and began to pick some heads of grain and eat them. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to him, “Look! Your disciples are doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath.

Oh... and here.... since you don't care about the Ox in the pit.

Matthew 12:11-12
He said to them, “If any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out? How much more valuable is a person than a sheep! Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.”

And this was a rushed answer to the question; "Which denomination should I join? What are the differences between them" Incomplete, because I didn't even get into American variants like the Pentecostals.

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The way to understand denominations is to understand the history.

The Catholic/Orthodox tradition, as it grew up in the Middle Ages, began to focus a lot on ritual and centralised human authority. Protestantism is the sixteenth-century reaction against these things, shifting the focus back to faith.

In some places, authority was transferred to the rulers, and they became national churches. Hence the church of England, and the Lutheran churches of Germany and Scandinavia. They were governed at the time by kings, aristocracy, and bishops (in that order, really).

Calvinism was a more middle-class movement, led by the ministers. It flourished where royal authority could be ignored or defied; that is , in the independent cities of Switzerland and Germany, among the Dutch rebelling against Spain, among the Huguenots rebelling against the French kings, and after a brief civil war in Scotland.

Presbyterianism has Calvinist origins, going back to the attempts to remove bishops from the Church of Scotland and Church of England (successful only in Scotland).

The Lutheran and especially the Calvinist traditions lay more stress on the doctrine of Election, which is not everybody's cup of tea.

Whereas the Baptist tradition lays stress on the importance of adult baptism.

The Methodists are really part of the Anglican tradition. They originate from John Wesley's efforts to be more evangelistic and evangelical than the Church of England wanted to be at the time.

If there is someone encouraging you in the Christian direction, it's a good idea to follow their guidance. Otherwise, if you want to focus on faith (which I would recommend) look to any well-established community identifying as Protestant. N.B.. The Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses do not identify as Protestant.

Somebody todays was trying to argue with me on the interpretation of Revelation. Just like the old times of 2010. However, he gave up and "agreed to differ".

It took time to get used to the customs on that site. One of the subforums issued a fresh instruction that posts should be made "with flair", and I could not help adding the comment "I like to think that I've been writing with flair all my life."

Anyway, a small sample of early contributions;

“Why do modern people not trust the Apostle Paul”.
It's the modern version of "the scandal of the Cross". Paul offers a clear presentation of the gospel teaching. Therefore anyone who wants an excuse not to believe the gospel of the Cross has a motive for putting Paul down as a bad man. The real title of every attack piece on Paul ought to be " I want to reject the gospel without making it too obvious."

Those who quote James against salvation by faith are misunderstanding him, I believe. In the first place, James firmly believes in the centrality of faith, as shown by the fact that his epistle begins and ends on that topic. He's only changing the emphasis from Paul's "Works must FOLLOW faith" to "Works MUST follow faith", and that's because they are criticizing different faults. James' beef is with those who rely on SAYING they have faith, which is not the same thing. They may be followers of Paul who are taking his approach too far. "Faith without works is dead" actually means "What is called faith is probably not real, if it can't be demonstrated in action". In fact I suspect the wording to be a deliberate reversal of the slogan "Works without faith are dead", otherwise unknown but implied by references to "dead works" in Hebrews.

My understanding of "the image of God" is that it involves sharing his intelligent self-consciousness. Hence the connection (previous verse) between being made in the image of God and having dominion over the earth under God.

We know just one thing about life in heaven; "So we shall be evermore with the Lord" 1 Thessalonians ch4 v17

“What is the cause of Judgment Day?”
The cause of Judgement Day is the fact that God and the existence of sin are ultimately incompatible, which means that one of them must disappear from the scene.

"Why would a God who contradicted himself cease to be God?"
Because change comes from "outside". God does not change, because there is nothing that has the power to make him change. And he does not change his mind, because he never learns anything new that he did not know previously, so that he starts with his final opinion and intention.

"Is Christianity dying?"
Remember the story of Elijah fleeing to Horeb and telling God "I, only I, am left". Things are never quite as bad as they seem. There is always a remnant being preserved.

[On the subject of Jesus being "tempted"]
I think there would be less confusion on this whole issue if people recognised the ambiguity of the word "tempt".
In reality there are two elements involved. One is the external offer ("You could do something"), which comes from other people or implicitly comes from circumstances. The other is the internal response ("Yes, I would quite like to do something").
In ordinary human life, the two things ALWAYS go together, to some extent, so we don't normally bother to distinguish. In popular speech, we use "tempt" in a combined sense. "I was tempted" means "The possibility was made available AND I felt some response to it."
The problem is that people tend to read "Jesus was tempted" and take it for granted that the combined meaning still applies. If he was "tempted", then he must have felt something of a response. We need to understand that in his case the "temptation" is the external offer ALONE. In fact the Greek word is "test", so the translation "tempt" (given the popular understanding of it) is a ,little misleading. The same is true when James uses the same word. It means "test".

"What does the Bible say about shaving?"
From the Christian viewpoint it doesn't matter. These are the kinds of Mosaic laws from which we are released (Romans ch7 v6). The few OT laws about how a person looks were designed to distinguish the Israelites visually from the idolatrous tribes round about them., like "those who cut the corners of their hair" (Jeremiah ch49 v32).