The Easiest “Job” on Earth: Critic

The movie Ratatouille came out when my twins were six and so it’s fair to say that I have seen it many times. It is not my favorite, but one of my favorite movie moments of all time comes at the end when the food critic Anton Ego faces the truth about what it is that he really does for a living. In his final review, the review in which he actually places himself instead of someone else on the chopping block, he begins with:

“In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little, yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so….”

That was a humbling thing for me to hear way back when, and I’ve never forgotten it. Those who put themselves out there, are forever at the mercy of those who don’t but still feel free to criticize – which is the prime reason why I leave people alone if I am not actively doing what they are doing or truly studying in depth what they are studying in depth. There are a great many things that I do not have the standing to critique in this world. Social media has made it all too easy for people to behave badly, to foist their critical spirits, lack of self-control and/or humility upon the world in general, as though disagreement is a capital crime worth being gunned down over. Whether we are talking about the drive by corrector who simply comes by and makes a disparaging comment and then never comes back to defend it or back it up when challenged, or the professional flame artist, who delights in argument – such people thrive not on relationship, but on the undermining of many. Indeed there are people out there who never seem to say a word unless it can contain a critique somewhere. Some have very little to offer and so they make their way through social media by seeming to have the knowledge required to school the teacher on some minor point – sometimes a point so minor that the teacher wouldn’t waste anyone’s time by mentioning it. I call it the ‘ministry of refutation’ and it’s scandalously easy to do – you don’t even have to actually know anything; all you have to do is inject doubt and undermine the other person. Most people who read and listen don’t even ask or care about your qualifications, they are just looking for someone entertaining to believe and mistake passion and charisma for credibility.

I have a policy – if I have never praised or encouraged you (especially recently) or if we have no real relationship, then I will pretty much leave you alone. Call it a heads up that I once got about my lack of importance in the whole scheme of things. If you are not important enough for me to spend time with and actively cheer on, then you are not important enough for me to correct either. Of course, I say that tongue in cheek because everyone is important, but I simply don’t have enough time or energy to be there for everyone or really even for many people. If I don’t spend my time getting to know you, how can I discern what you do and do not know, where you are at and what your character is well enough to judge your tone of voice? That many people have found the time to cheer me on and encourage me is humbling indeed – more than I deserve for the lack of personal effort I put into the lives of others as individuals. I’m just a teacher, and teaching is often a rather detached profession. I bear in mind that there are billions of wrong people out there, and I am one of them. I choose to treat people as I would have them treat me – not as those who are in great need of my correction but never my encouragement, or throwing them an ounce of encouragement so that my criticism can look less critical even to myself. I know that I am still uninformed about so very much and I am grateful for the people who do give me credit for what I have learned and the space and dignity to learn more – and so I extend that to others. If someone values or desires my input, then they will ask – and a lot of people ask, even though oftentimes I have to honestly say, “I don’t know, I haven’t looked into that yet, all I could give you is an opinion and I’m sure you have your own opinions already without me adding mine.” Who knows, maybe that’s why they ask – after all, who really needs my opinions anyway?

The work of creation is a risk. It requires pouring yourself out for all to see – the educated and uneducated alike, the graceful and the graceless, the humble and the arrogant, those who are teachable and those who only want to pick at the teaching like a food critic picks at food he never even paid for. In my case, sometimes a blog comes at the end of years of study, decades of experience, or sometimes it comes down to something I have only recently learned – but I put it into words for the sake of edifying the Body. I mean, I could keep the information to myself – after all, I learned it for myself and not for anyone else – but where’s the fun in that? Whether it comes in the form of my children’s videos on youtube, my books or my blog, I have invested time and yes even love into each creation – whether it be hundreds of hours or just a few. The critic on the other hand, as Anton Ego wrote, risks absolutely nothing. One can work their way from one end of social media to the other, critiquing the work of others like a food taster and without ever having to produce anything themselves. Like the food critic, the internet critic needs nothing other than their mouth, tongue and fingers because everyone else does all the work for them – providing the feast for their critical spirits to descend upon like a vulture. The critic strides in like an authority, not because they produce but because they consume – greedily gobbling up the blood, sweat and tears of others, reaping the benefits of the work of others while often giving absolutely nothing in return but their disdain. But is the critic really an expert, or does the critic simply know what they do and do not like and how to express it? That’s what Anton Ego learned – that he was merely a walking, talking opinion and not really an expert on actually doing anything. Food critics, like social media critics, often devour in order to find the fault instead of the good. No chef, and no teacher can defend themselves against that sort of person.

That’s the food world, but the Body of Messiah is supposed to be about relationship. People should know who we are by how we love each other, not by how we publicly criticize each other or ignore the good in search of the fault. Anton Ego had it right in the end – the junk that someone labors to put out is often more meaningful than the negative criticisms piled up against it. There are people out there who need correction, who need teaching – but is a sometimes nameless, faceless stranger the person to do it? Someone who is nothing but a drive-by corrector of unknown qualifications, who may or may not study, may or may not have good character, and may or may not even know what they are talking about? There are people out there who are posing as teachers who are unbalanced, others who won’t admit that they really haven’t studied much or have studied so narrowly that their critiques on certain areas are empty and meaningless no matter how much they know about other areas. There are others who have terrible character, who probably wouldn’t be allowed to teach in person in the first century assemblies at all but out on social media all one needs to do is sound interesting. There are some who are bent on conquering, who want to be deferred to, called by whatever title they have laid claim to, who want the air of respectability without having to earn respect through relationship. There are many who are fear driven and for whom the ends justify the means, even if it involves deception in order to keep others “in line.”

Ever wonder what would happen online if we all held ourselves to only critiquing those whom we had actively cultivated a relationship with over time? Or maybe, if instead of rushing to critique, we asked questions? Or maybe most importantly – what if when we are offended we take a good hard look at why we are offended? I would say that probably 95% of the critiques I get are not from people who can argue facts with me, but by those whose agendas, pet doctrines or behavior are being called into question – even though the blog was never aimed at them personally. Critical people leave me alone when they agree, or if they figure someone else’s agenda is being crushed, or someone else’s behavior is being called into question – they enjoy those things, but not enough to encourage me and that is very telling (only to comment on how awful ‘those’ people are, when what I post is meant to make each of us look within – not at others). That they only respond when they can disagree or disapprove of others or exalt themselves is more revealing than their silence when they do agree – and interestingly, I know exactly who will respond if I put out certain kinds of posts. I could make a list and unless someone is on vacation, I will always strike gold – if criticism can be equated with gold. Many folks don’t care to engage unless it is in negative terms.

Disagreement and correction, within the bounds of a good relationship, are healthy and edifying for both parties. I cherish my accountability partners (I have six very knowledgeable people who actively hold me accountable for what I teach, about four others who weigh in from time to time whose opinions I respect, and about ten people who hold my behavior accountable and warn me when I need to shut up), but that accountability is always in terms of established relationships. When they talk, I listen because I know that they love me and because the success of what I do it important to them – not to the point that they are going to agree with everything I write, in fact, sometimes we argue behind the scenes – and that’s okay. They want me to succeed because it is about building the Kingdom of Heaven and not about building my own illegitimate kingdom. None of them are doing the easy work of the drive-by shooter looking to gun down whatever offends them, they are doing the hard work of being the Body of Messiah. I love them not because they are “yes” men and women, but because they are invested in me and so I cherish every word they speak to me. They have earned the right to speak whatever they need to speak into my life, and they aren’t afraid to let me have it when I have it coming.

Let us all endeavor to make our words count for something other than making ourselves look good and someone else look small. Anyone can be a critic – but not everyone can edify.

Pagan or Cultural?

One of the more frustrating aspects of teaching Biblical context is dealing with those who misunderstand the difference between cultural expressions of respect, and pagan worship so I want to talk about it today. It’s really an incredibly important distinction to make because of all the memes and posts I see about “paganism” out there on the internet, it is the third-most common factor among them (the first, of course, being the passing on of unsubstantiated claims- but that’s the common denominator in the posting of almost everything on social media, from political attacks to outright spoof stories from parody sites, and second would be the lack of understanding between the idea of actual “pagan” worship involving literal graven images and the symbols (click the link for yesterday’s amazing archaeological announcement related to this subject) that at one time or another have been associated with the cultures who worshiped false gods).

So how do we know what qualifies as “pagan” (Note: I do not agree with the usage of this term as it doesn’t mean “pertaining to the worship of false gods” as it is commonly used – but simply means the member of a non-mainstream religious group and by that definition Muslims are not pagans – however I will use it for clarity sake)?

A commonly misappropriated verse of scripture is Deut 12:29-31

²⁹“When the Lord your God cuts off before you the nations whom you go in to dispossess, and you dispossess them and dwell in their land, ³⁰take care that you be not ensnared to follow them, after they have been destroyed before you, and that you do not inquire about their gods, saying, ‘How did these nations serve their gods?—that I also may do the same.’ ³¹You shall not worship the Lord your God in that way, for every abominable thing that the Lord hates they have done for their gods, for they even burn their sons and their daughters in the fire to their gods.

God has certainly told us how He desires to be worshiped, but there are things that are *unique* to the worship of other gods that we are not to do for Him. Child sacrifice would be at the top of that list, along with ritual prostitution, sacrificing inappropriate animals, women priestesses and for that matter the taking of priests from anywhere other than a specified bloodline (which the Romans violated), choosing kings from the inappropriate bloodline, having sacred groves, making altars outside of the designated place, making idols and serving them (they literally did serve them, the Temple staff would bathe, feed and put their idols to bed in their temple ‘home away from cosmic home’) – that sort of thing.

However, there are things done for God that are also done on behalf of other gods – animal sacrifice (goats, sheep and cattle), offering up prayers and petitions, swearing oaths in His Name, bowing and prostrating oneself, building a temple, having sacred furniture and holy offices, burning incense, and lighting lamps, singing hymns, and doing good works to His oppressed and vulnerable ones, as well as general acts of obedience.

Throughout the Ancient Near Eastern and First Century world, we see common methods of rendering honor – and the concept of rendering honor is important because there are going to be standard ways by which all gods are going to be honored. Pagans would have recognized the same legitimate ways of rendering honor, whether it was to man or gods, that Israelites would have. There are things that you did to honor God and men, and things you did to shame them. If the ways of honoring the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were entirely unique to His worship – then they would not have been honoring Him in the eyes of the Nations, who looked at their actions and said, “Wow, these guys really know how to honor their god, He must be a mighty god indeed!” Instead, they would have been like, “What the heck are they doing? Is that barbeque? Those idiots are waving sheaves of barley like madmen and what is that smell? Some weird perfume – are they smoking in that little tent?”

So I did a social media post the other day because of something I noticed about the way that Dagan, the Philistine god of agriculture and death (those two concepts were often tied together in the ANE, even Yeshua said that a seed ‘dies’ in the ground – it isn’t scientifically accurate but it is what they thought because they weren’t scientific minded but spiritual minded – Yeshua spoke to them according to what they could understand, He did not come to teach science but instead God’s truth) was honored through the intermediary of his idol in Mari. His priests would take perfumed oil and bathe his feet (Felui, 104) and I immediately saw the honor that they were rendering to that god – and yes, honor rendered to Dagan is idolatry, of course – and made the connection to what Mary did to Yeshua’s feet right after He raised her brother from the dead. She was rendering that same cultural honor – bathing the feet in ‘ointment’ which was a spikenard oil. Some folks got a bit upset because they mistook her rendering honor to Yeshua for doing something inherently pagan – but why should we consider rendering honor in and of itself necessarily pagan in nature? Why do we not simply accept it for what it was? We know from Scripture that to wash someone’s feet was to render them honor, and so to oil and perfume them was an even greater honor. Mary was treating Yeshua like a King and like the Son of God, but if we have it in our heads that every sort of way to give honor is pagan we will end up chasing our tails. Chasing “paganism” has become an epidemic, and the fruit of it is generally over-reaching skepticism and contempt – people become obsessed with rooting it out, and with being offended over any possible instance of it but often without really studying it out and really looking into the ancient mindset (which was nothing like our own – it was NOT possible to commit idolatry accidentally, it took effort and intent).

There is absolutely nothing that I or anyone can legitimately do for YHVH that was not also done for other gods – because honor is honor, and there were legitimate ways to give honor in the ancient world. We have lost sight of this and so we tend to cry pagan when we see some expressions of respect. It really did bother me before I learned to make this distinction, and throughout the Word we see YHVH referred to by epithets that were specifically used to describe other gods. Were those epithets pagan in nature – as in when YHVH was called the Rider on the clouds in Psalm 104 (that was also the designation for Ba’al)? Are compliments inherently pagan in nature, or are they cultural? There are very frankly things done to other gods that YHVH loves to have done for Himself, when, where and how He specified it be done. There are things that are done to worship Him that are not found in the Torah but instead found in the Psalms – cultural expressions of adoration that didn’t need to be written in the Torah because everyone knew how to honor a god – that’s why He went to great lengths to specifically tell them which ways to exclude. Now sometimes we do need to learn precisely what was meant by those prohibitions or else we will sort of expand them to include anything that sort of sounds equivalent to our modern sensibilities and start whacking people on social media because of the way something sounds in English. Jeremiah 10 is the most prominent example (especially if one limits themselves to a few verses out of context) – if one hasn’t studied ancient idolatry and the actual manufacture of the big city idols of Mesopotamia, it is easy to decide it means something else entirely. The problem is, where do we stop – and how do we tell other people not to inject modern meanings into scripture if we ourselves are doing it? How do we dare eat cheeseburgers when there are those who say that “Do not boil a kid in it’s mother’s milk,” prohibits it, but only outside of the ANE idolatrous context of the Canaanite ritual? We cannot criticize Mishnaic rulings out of one side of our mouths while doing it ourselves with our own creative spiritual applications.

You know, it really is okay to just admit that we don’t understand how they thought and lived and what things meant to them. What’s not okay is to presume that everything written to an ancient, spiritual, communal, nomadic people living in a henotheistic reality is going to make sense to a modern, scientific, individualistic, settled audience living with a monotheistic worldview. What’s really not fair is to read the Scriptures in English according to our modern mindsets and to assume that the vast differences in culture don’t seriously influence the integrity of what we think we are seeing written. We need to be really humble, and to make sure we know what we teach before we hold people accountable to our interpretations of Scripture. After all, how would our interpretations be superior to those 1000 years ago? 1500 years ago? The ways people think and the things they do have changed radically – so why are our interpretations based on our modern culture better than those of what was “modern” in the middle ages? Unless we are taking into account what we have now that they didn’t, archaeological context, we really can’t!

Now, before someone nails me to the wall (as has been done recently) – no one who knows me seriously thinks that I approve of Christmas or Easter, or celebrate them, or even want to. We have legitimate Feasts that we are commanded to keep with God forever as His children and they are enough for me. Christmas and Easter are both traditions (of questionable European origins) that I want no part of and there is no real way to honor God by ignoring His chosen celebrations and creating new ones. That wouldn’t fly in our own homes and it isn’t going to work in His Household. But we have to be careful when using words like pagan and idolatrous because they mean really precise things – like grace, holiness, covenant and a whole host of other things that are often cultural and very specific in nature but which we have been taught to spiritualise away. The Mishnah actually has a great write-up on what constitutes idolatry in Tractate Sanhedrin and let me tell you they were dead serious about idolatry (Kehati has a great commentary on it)! When we do not know what things mean, we can make them mean whatever it is that we want them to mean and hold people to standards that are misinformed and oftentimes unreasonable.

I have noticed that this time of year, many believers get completely derailed by hunting down paganism and oftentimes post things that are inflammatory, untrue and unfruitful all mixed in with things that are true – and then people make decisions to stop doing things they love for the wrong reason, which means that in their heart they never really stopped. That was me ten years ago – I gave up Christmas and Easter because people told me they were bad (and gave me illegitimate reasons why) but they never replaced them with anything. You want to know why I really gave them up after starting to celebrate them again years later? The Feasts of the Lord – once I discovered them I didn’t want the counterfeits and now I would never dream of going back. We should want people to keep the Feasts so that we can honor God in the ways that He has commanded, in the ways that teach us and our children about the Messiah, but it is really easy to get sidetracked away from that and to just focus on Christmas and Easter instead – to be more against Christmas and Easter than we are for God and His Feasts. People get trapped in the mode of being “against” what they hate and they forget how to be “for” what we are called to love, and then they slip back into the same trap we were in before we found Torah. A lot of us, when we came to Torah, got angry when folks wouldn’t listen to ‘reason’ – they wanted to defend their beliefs and would believe anything that they read in support of what they believed, no matter how much proof we would supply. Then when we latch onto something we want to believe that might not be true, oftentimes we do the exact same thing – we will argue with anyone or anything, no matter how much proof someone might offer that we could be mistaken. We really don’t change much – even though we would like to think we do. The deal is – when we have an emotional need to believe something, whether it is rooted in fear, or hatred or pride, or just the jealous protection of beloved memories – we are blinded and there is only one cure for it. We need to realize it and ask to have sight – and we need to keep asking and never stop. Not only that, but when we are passionate about something, we need to stop and examine if it is a holy passion, or one rooted in flesh – God is generally the only one who knows for sure.

Have a wonderful week.

Feliu, Lluis The God Dagon in Bronze Age Syria, Brill, Boston 2003

Changing gears – a new direction for The Ancient Bridge

As much as we like to stay in the same place forever, sometimes God places us into a certain mode of operation for a time in order to train us for what we are really meant to do. Those of you who know me, know that I never planned on writing any of my three published books and that every book that was ‘my idea’ never could get beyond the first chapter so generally I sit around studying whatever tickles my fancy, waiting impatiently, and then one day He tells me what my next assignment is.

Ten years ago I got a long term ‘heads up’ in the form of a very vivid dream.

I was in an upper room, sitting at a round table in front of a projector screen. On the table in front of me was a sheet of music and playing on the projector was a documentary about a middle aged couple with 100 children, none of them biological. As I sat there in admiration, I realized that I was watching a video of myself and my husband.

Well, I woke up freaked out, convinced that Mark and I were going to adopt/foster 98 more children. I cannot convey the absolute horror that produced in me. I loved my own kids but pretty much hated everyone else’s. I informed God that if this was the plan He was going to have to fundamentally change who I am from the inside out. Four years ago when we moved to Lakeville, MN – our house just happened to sit next to a home based daycare.

There’s something about children who rarely see their parents that is incredibly endearing – I found that a child values the people who don’t have to spend time with them, but do so anyway. They can tell the difference. As I worked renovating the backyard, they would ask questions and I would answer. Answer time became silly story time, or sometimes I would sing to them. I couldn’t walk out my back door without hearing, “Tyler, will you tell us a story?” They had two stories they wanted to hear, the scary-silly “dark-dark” story and the story about the cute little (various animal) named (one of the day care kids) who really wanted to be a (ridiculous food item) and ended up getting eaten by a T-Rex after quizzing every other animal at the zoo about how to accomplish their goal. I learned that it wasn’t the story that they really loved, but the time and effort spent on their behalf to genuinely engage with them. With some of the really little guys, my name was one of their first words.

We moved away in March. I miss those little stinkers – especially now way out in the country with no neighbors and no kid voices, my own kids being hairy, deep voiced and oftentimes smelly teenage boys.

Anyway, two years ago a dear friend in Ghana named Cassyama – a mighty Christian woman of God – was praying for me and had a vision. She told me she saw me surrounded by “so many children.” I told her about my dream eight years before. She suggested I get into children’s ministry.

What? Me? No way! Yuck – no one respects children’s ministry! Visions of crayons and glitter danced in my head, and my eyelid twitched nervously. My very first ‘ministry’ position was as a Sunday school teacher to Middle Schoolers – not only was I just a brand new believer but I wasn’t even a parent – I was not equipped. They didn’t care – they needed a more mature version of day care and they handed me the little felt dudes and put me to work. It was a disaster. I can assure you it was NOT better than nothing, it was FAR FAR worse.

Anyway, I then wrote and published The Bridge – my outreach to the Christians I had so brutally and arrogantly (and ignorantly) burned my bridges with years before. Then I wrote and published King, Kingdom Citizen in response to the growing divide between Jews and former Gentiles within the Messianic movement. I was getting ready to write a book called Eternal: Our God, His Temple and the Aaronic Priesthood when I got waylaid. I even had majorly respected teachers lined up and willing to help me out with it. But then I got different marching orders – to write a children’s curriculum book on honor and shame culture in the Bible.

Writing a textbook was different than anything else I had ever done – it was harder. When you teach adults you can make leaps and ask them to make the jump with you, but with kids you have to take them step by step, not leaving things out. Teaching children requires a more compassionate pace – and it also means not always being able to teach everything you know, but limiting yourself to what they need and what will help them become critical thinkers, someday able to interpret Scripture themselves. So I wrote the ten week curriculum and published it about ten weeks ago and got my first review this week from a man who has a PhD in Biblical Geography, a University Professor – five stars. Wow, that was unexpected.

I also began my youtube channel, Context for Kids – you can find the link on my sidebar. I am doing short weekly teachings, starting this year with the first five books of the Bible – no doctrine, just context. Like my book, the videos aren’t for kids – they are for families. I am not a substitute teacher – I think that if the kids learn something then the parents should know it too. My book and videos are designed to get families learning and talking as a unit – to be mini-scholarly communities and not scholarly individuals. I read all those horrid scholarly books and articles and translate them into what I affectionately call ‘normal speak.’ I teach kids the exact same things that I teach adults – well, mostly. This week’s Torah portion was tough since half of it involved sex of some kind so I played it safe. My poor kids are never spared the details but I respect differences in approach and the ages involved. Not everyone is teaching 14 year olds.

I’ll be honest – I enjoy writing for adults but I don’t really enjoy teaching them. What I enjoy is putting concepts down on paper in as clear language as possible, but presenting those concepts to adults who are often very critical and wanting the Bible to be plainly understandable as it is – well, it can be pretty hazardous work. Some people are hostile to the thought that Bible people were entirely different than we are today. Adults are invested with agendas and sometimes with legends and many read only so that they can react negatively – but kids aren’t like that. Kids are still able to learn new and wonderful things without being offended by them – they aren’t invested with so much tradition that they can’t see clearly yet, the way we are. What I want to do is not to teach kids doctrine – that is a parental responsibility and privilege. I am a teacher of history and character – I believe that when kids get a glimpse of another way of life, the way of life that existed in Bible times, that no one will be able to tell them that the Bible is just a book of fairy tales. They are going to see the Bible for what it is, a history book that reveals God’s character, and His redemptive plan through His Son Yeshua (Jesus).

I believe, that in learning the Ancient Near Eastern historical and First Century context of scripture, that all believers in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and His Messiah can find common ground. We parents see the obstacles facing our kids, we see the terrible character of believers in our real and online lives, we see the needless wars being fought between people who genuinely all want to honor our God but disagree about what that looks like. I think that we can be united around a desire to equip our children to BELIEVE the Bible is true, and to UNDERSTAND in context why Yeshua (Jesus) is the Messiah. The world is going to pelt our kids with loaded questions that quoted Bible verses won’t be enough to answer. University professors, and even many believing professors, will tell them that the Bible wasn’t written when it says it was or by who it says it was written by. We need to stop that before it happens. Believe me – I used to specialize in asking those types of questions, and now I answer them.

Right now I am transitioning TAB towards children’s ministry. I have nine different curriculum books in my brain and another one on developing Biblical character through the proverbs. I am trying to figure out a way to gather a group of parents together online, in a place where doctrine and agenda are outlawed and we all work together to better educate our kids on the provable context of the Bible. I firmly believe in the Biblical principle of throwing the divisive brothers and sisters out in the name of a healthy and respectful learning atmosphere. I have said it many times – I believe that this generation coming up is THE generation. They’re different, and we have the opportunity to undo some of the divisiveness that has characterized the Body of Believers for too long. We may not be able to unite around this or that doctrine, but we can unite as parents who see a desperate need for our kids to be able to prove that the Bible is our history, and our future. You may not agree with my doctrine and I may not agree with yours – but I don’t teach mine and I won’t question you about yours, I only teach context and character through archaeology and the written Word.

I don’t want children’s ministry to be an afterthought – I want to teach them grown up context at kid speed. They deserve to be our priority because their spiritual lives are most certainly going to be harder than ours. There are people out there trying to do great kids ministry, but too many are struggling because they aren’t considered to be the ‘real’ teachers (in my case it was actually tragically accurate) – the glory and investment goes to the adults, but that just doesn’t make sense to me. I am 46 years old and I don’t need to be equipped as badly as someone who is a kid right now. I think we need to re-examine what we have been doing and what it is we value. Kids ministry can be fun, but it has to accomplish the goal of equipping our kids or it is nothing more than daycare. I am taking a break while I get this figured out – video teaching might be late this week. I don’t want to rush in but I don’t want to delay either.

I have a few grown up “meme” blogs that I am working on in various states of being finished, but other people are beginning to research this and speak out so I feel the need for me to do it is lessening. I don’t know what all this is going to look like yet, but I guess I am eager to find out.

Novus Homo: The ‘New Man’ of Rome with Respect to Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians

First of all, credit where credit is due. I am not the person who noticed this. My friend and teacher Rico Cortes of Wisdom in Torah ministries contacted me on Tuesday morning and asked if I wanted some homework. Unlike my 14 year old sons, I actually love to do homework and so I jumped at the chance. Rico said, “Homo Novus – research it and I want to know if you see what I see.” I told him that I would get to it after school, not knowing what to expect, and went off to make the boys breakfast. While they were eating I snooped around and within about 30 minutes my jaw was hanging down and I responded to him with something like, “Oh my gosh, this is phenomenal,” but no one had written about it. There are no scholarly papers linking this piece of historical context to the First Century Biblical writings that I could find. So what I am going to present to you is something that Rico noticed and did the original footwork on. I put my findings into writing and sent them to him so that he could look over what I was seeing and we found that we were in agreement. He went ahead and shared what I wrote to him on his facebook page, and will be incorporating it into a much larger teaching on his website www.wisdomintorah.com very soon – it is going to be mindblowing and so if you are not already a site member, you want to become a site member. Everything I write, I write because Rico instilled me with a passion for learning as much as humanly possible about the Word of our King and God. So without further ado, here is what Rico figured out and I wrote in witness of:

Roman leadership (administrative authority) during the years of the Early Republic was restricted to the Patrician class (aristocracy) and certainly at no time in the Roman Empire do we ever see a complete eradication of the caste system, although at times advancements were indeed made. The years of 494 to 287 BC brought a great civil struggle between the Patrician class and the Plebians (commoners) which did eventually result in the granting of rights of Plebians to run for public office.

Of course, running for office and achieving office were two entirely different things and it was a rare event for a commoner to break in to the world of Roman politics. It was not until the passage of Lex Gabinia in 139 BC that secret ballots allowed Roman citizens to vote their conscience instead of being required to vote for the candidate of their patron’s choice. Still, even in the wake of this new legislation only the rare plebian was able to climb his way to the top echelon of government power – the Consul, which gave a man automatic entry into the Senate.

Such men who achieved this were called novus homo – ‘new men’ – the first in their families to achieve Senatorial status. There were two types of novus homo – the first came from well-connected equestrian (or greater) families and the second came from families on the outside – the aforementioned plebians. Here’s the catch, they were Senators (called ‘small senators’) but they weren’t in the ‘in crowd’ – the caste system that made it so hard for them to achieve success still held them back. They had the elected position, they had the recognition, they had the authority – but they were still treated like second class citizens for a few generations.

How does this relate to Paul and the Ephesians? Ephesians 2:11-22 details the problem going on throughout the mixed assemblies of Asia – a problem related to another caste system. In this case, the caste system was not Roman patrician vs Roman plebian, but Jewish believers (and nonbelievers) in Yeshua vs believing yet uncircumcised former gentiles. In city after city we see this same problem of a caste system between believers with a definite legal wall of separation between the groups. The edicts of Shammai had really solidified existing Jewish prejudice against Gentiles to the point that, even when said Gentiles lived an entirely Jewish life in obedience to Torah Law to the exclusion of all idolatrous practices, they were not considered to truly be Jews unless they underwent formal conversion. In essence, the problem facing first century converts was much the same as was faced by the novus homo of the Roman Senate. They had a place, but it was resented and sometimes even undermined by the existing aristocracy.

¹¹Wherefore remember, that ye being in time past Gentiles in the flesh, who are called Uncircumcision by that which is called the Circumcision in the flesh made by hands; ¹²that at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world: ¹³but now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ. ¹⁴For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us; ¹⁵having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace; ¹⁶and that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby: ¹⁷and came and preached peace to you which were afar off, and to them that were nigh. ¹⁸for through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father. ¹⁹Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God; ²⁰and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone; ²¹in whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord: ²²in whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.

Paul was a Roman citizen living among a population all too aware of the unjust Roman caste system – they would understand all too well the allusion that Paul was making to the political situation in Rome and to the difference between the equity of the Kingdom of Heaven under the great King YHVH and the Empire of Rome under the divine-pretender emperors. Gentile converts were being brought into the Kingdom in droves, but what status did they have? Were they regarded by God as johnny-come-lately’s, charity cases, or there merely to be a servant class to God’s chosen people – forever second best – a very distant second best? No, like any novus homo, they were chosen members of the upper echelon of humanity, not only full citizens of the Kingdom but on an equal level with the established jewry. What did that mean? It meant full authority, the same access to the Father through the mediatorship of Yeshua. Unlike the ‘new men’ elected as Consuls (and therefore automatically made members of the Senate), when they received election through Yeshua that middle wall of petition was broken down, and the man-made ordinances that set up a genetically based caste system was abolished because unlike Rome, God is no respecter of persons:

Acts 10 ³⁴Then Peter opened his mouth, and said, Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons: ³⁵but in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him.

Here we see the precedent in Acts 10 – Cornelius and his family are righteous commandment keeping gentiles – ger tzadik – but they are excluded from the fullness of Jewish community life because Cornelius, as a Roman Centurian, is uncircumcised. When the Spirit falls on Cornelius’ entire family, it was an act over-ruling the ordinances of men – Cornelius was elected as a full citizen, and so was his entire family. Peter, realizing this, stays in his home and eats with his family. Peter, far from treating Cornelius like a Roman ‘new man’ who was grudgingly acknowledged but never accepted, embraces Cornelius’ family and shares the intimacy of table fellowship that would have been, up to this time, forbidden to them.

We see Paul fighting this same battle again and again, a battle against both his Jewish brethren who very much wanted to see and enforce things in terms of ‘them vs us’ and the Gentile converts who kept falling for it and assuming the Jews were correct. Yeshua, however, didn’t merely make ‘new men’ out of the Gentiles – the language is plain:

‘for to make in himself of twain one new man’

Yeshua made ‘new men’ of both Jews and Gentiles – it is through Him that we came to the Father. He preached to those who were near, and to those who were far off – holding each to the same standard, preaching the same message. We were called by the same message to the same life, the same rights and the same authority as believers – different parts of the Body with different functions according to His gifts to each man and yet all equal citizens, none above another.

Gifford, Paul Review of T. P. Wiseman’s New Men in the Roman Senate, Constellations Vol 2 No 2 (Winter 2011) pp 154-156

http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100240795

Gruen, Erich S, Review: New Men in the Roman Senate, 139 B.C.-14 A.D. by T. P. Wiseman The Classical Journal Vol. 69, No. 3 (Feb. – Mar., 1974), pp. 251-253

Unknown author, The Novus Homo: a study in politics and social mobility in ancient Rome

Wikipedia entry for Novus Homo

Confessions of a Former Torah Terrorist Pt II

So anyway, last night was one of those nights where Father was really able to show me some things. Funny how reading a book like 1984 all over again in homeschool really brings things into perspective the way it never did as a teenager. I remember a time when I was part of the out of church movement – you know, I would often read the Bible three hours a day before everyone else woke up (that’s kinda what happens when you live on adrenaline). I would get up in the wee hours before the twins would wake up and pour through my Bible, but I did it with an agenda. I was reading my anger at the Christian Church into the text (even though I was a Christian). I hated churches after having gone through some really bad experiences. I decided that whatever people told me about structured churches outside of people’s homes was true and I zealously read the Scriptures to prove it. And when I say I believed what people said, I mean that I believed absolutely everything bad they had to say about it and nothing good. If someone made a pro-church claim, I set out to disprove it, and if someone made an anti-church claim, I simply thought about how much sense it made to me, read it into the text, and repeated it. I learned a lot about the Bible through these readings, but what I learned was tainted by my hatred – it poisoned me. I found proof for everything I believed at the time, because that is why I was reading. In talking to many people over the years, I have found that I am in no way unique – we tend to read not to find out what is there but to justify what it is we already believe. In other words, we read not to find out what is true but as an act of self-justification.

Evolutionists do the same thing with science, and so do Creationists. What happens when we go into our readings with an agenda? Well, the same thing that happens when evolutionists and creationists approach science – they toss the data that doesn’t fit and will oftentimes twist whatever data can be twisted. Each side fervently and genuinely wonders why the other side doesn’t ‘get it.’ And yeah, that’s what happens when people discover Torah as well – it gets easy to start reading the Bible in order to prove the other side wrong and ourselves right. But does God’s Word exist for the purposes of massaging our egos? What happened to the desire to find out what is actually there, even if it means finding out that we are wrong? Finding our own errors revealed in the Word is far better than finding our justifications in it.

When we discovered our fathers inherited lies (Jer 16:19), some of us got so angry that we stopped believing in and started believing against. I did that for a while, and those were the dark days of bad fruit for me – I treated people badly. I talked a lot – talked a pretty good game at that – I am a very persuasive person when I want to be, when I want to manipulate and discredit the person I am disagreeing with. I had to resort to that sarcasm, the mocking and manipulation because I really was against and not for. I was against the organized Church, against Christians, against Sunday Sabbath, against Christmas and Easter, against ‘lawlessness.’ But what was I for? Was I for seventh day Sabbath? For the Feasts? For the Law and the testimony? I thought I was – and I should have been, but my focus was on the things I was against – while deceiving myself that I was actually for the opposite of those things. I was so busy railing about the people who don’t get it that I wasn’t really getting it. I was very busy trying to be right and I wasn’t very busy becoming the kind of person that the Torah was designed to make me into. Zeal makes it easy for us to look like we are for when we are actually against.

What am I now? I am a person who reads the Word and studies context so that I can understand everything my Bible has for me. I spend my time and money so that not a single Biblical treasure will be left beyond my grasp – I want it all, even though I know the task is beyond me. It isn’t about being right anymore, but about finding out what is actually right – it isn’t about being against Christmas and Easter. Of course I don’t keep them, and of course I don’t approve of them – I don’t need a houseful of questionable European rituals when I have the Feast of Sukkot, and I don’t need the sequel that comes around in the spring to replace the Passover and First fruits. Of course I am against Sunday sabbath – but my faith is no longer defined by what I am against. What I am against is pretty much in the rear view mirror. I am merely and profoundly grateful that it is in the rear view mirror because I cannot go forward lugging them behind me. I am looking forward to the Feasts of the Lord, setting my sights on them, learning them, rejoicing in them – striving to live the life that I was called to live. I don’t have time to mock people whose eyes are not opened, or worry about the ones who do know but refuse to do what is right – or to think that I necessarily know which of those two scenarios this or that person falls into.

It’s about perspective, and when I was looking behind me I was stopped dead in my tracks, or at best, stumbling and tripping in a haphazardly slow forward direction, but mostly staggering to the left and to the right because we can’t walk while looking backwards – we weren’t designed for it. Maybe I simply see clearly now that I don’t have enough reason to be impressed with myself to dare spend my time looking backwards and mocking others. Once we start having our focus being “against,” we start getting into trouble. With me, it resulted in nothing but bad fruit – but I was so pleased with myself at the time that I never noticed. So last night as I was laying in bed I was deeply ashamed of the years I spent focusing on what everyone else was doing – and especially the efforts I took to shame them, thinking that I could convert them through pushing them down and degrading them.

I have been studying the Sanhedrin lately, and I am in awe of the requirements that they had in place for good judges. The Bible tells us time and again the qualifications for a good leader and never do they include the words we look for when deciding who to listen to and vote for – nothing there about being entertaining, or passionate about what they are doing, or convincing, or oozing charisma. They had to be experts in the topic they were speaking on, they had to be fair and yet merciful, mature in the faith, and respected – but in modern times, we don’t want to oftentimes listen to people unless they are entertaining. I was repenting last night of being the type of person who really used to believe what entertaining people told me. I was repenting for enjoying hearing people being mocked. I was ashamed for appreciating a compelling argument and rushing to judgment based on how much more quick on their feet one person was over the other. With my track record, I might have followed Korah rather than Moses – nothing charismatic about Moshe and he was too humble to spend his time mocking and insulting the people who disagreed with him. We follow personalities because they tickle our ears by propping up those who follow them with accolades and making those who don’t seem to be fools. Everyone wants to be one of the cool kids, we never really do outgrow high school.

Nowadays, we have the Presidents we deserve, and the lawmakers we deserve – because we act the same way they do, and we gleefully enjoy their antics, well at least the antics of the ones who agree with us. We are quick to hate and denounce the same behavior from those with whom we disagree. Ever wonder what it would be like – if we all stopped the antics and divisive behavior within the Body of Messiah? If we could present our facts without telling everyone something terrible about the person who disagrees? If we could just preach without telling our audience that everyone who is sane agrees with us and therefore why they should too? What would happen if we stripped the manipulative language, the mocking, and the sarcasm from our message and stopped telling people we are right – and instead just started acting right.

I look out there and see shadows and reflections of who I used to be, and wonder how much of it is still left in me. I know that I could easily slip back into it again, all I have to do is turn around and focus on battling someone else. I fight the urge to give in and return to those tactics, because those tactics are easy and they draw a crowd, but I don’t want the attention of that crowd anymore. I see how they treat people, and then I look at who does and does not respect them. Then I look at the people who don’t act that way, and I notice who does and does not respect them.

A long time ago I noticed something about myself that I think is pretty typical. When I have facts behind me, I am much less likely to manipulate, mock and divide because I don’t need to – and I am not tempted to compromise the truth. It’s when all I have is ideas and theories that I get down and dirty – because the facts are facts and they don’t need to be violently defended, they need only be presented and then people have a choice whether to believe or not. But when I am promoting my deeply held ideas or theories and they are shot down, it hurts – because their source is always emotional; the source is always about me, my opinions, my intellect, my ego and my desires and defending that at all costs – well in the past it meant that the ends justified the means of what I was doing, even if those means came at the expense of the basic dignity and humanity of someone else. The more I desperately need to believe something and the more desperate I am that everyone else believe it too, the more likely I am to compromise truth and sacrifice people on the altar of my agenda.

This is why I don’t spam people with my teachings. I put them on my wall and on my ministry page, and that’s it. No one has to read them and no one is required to agree in order to have me treat them with dignity – when I was a Torah Terrorist, everyone had to hear me and everyone had to agree, or I most certainly would not treat them with dignity. Father forgive me and guard me from slipping back into that pit if not for my sake then for the sake of Your reputation and for the sake of the lives of the people I would damage.

My teacher tells me all the time, “Just because we are right doesn’t mean we are right.”

When we are willing to compromise on the way we treat our brothers and sisters whose only crime is to dare disagree – it no longer matters what we are preaching, because we have become wrong. And if we are going to be wrong, it would be better if we stopped teaching the truth because when we teach the truth while acting badly, we make the truth look like a lie and make the lie look like it is good.

Part I is here.