Episode 181: Privilege–what it is, isn’t, and why it matters

When I teach the kids, they call me Miss Tyler, but today I am Auntie Tyler. Privilege is a concept that appears all over the Bible and in every sort of literature within it. Privilege is incredibly important within the Biblical narrative–but why? I want to peel back a lot of the rhetoric, talking points, and misinformation out there to take a hard look at how Christians should view privilege and what it should mean in the life of the Body of Christ.

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So, this morning we are going to do something very different than usual. We’re going to talk about the sociological reality of privilege and what it is, what It isn’t and why it matters—especially to the church because we find it mentioned all over the Bible and in all types of Biblical literature from the historical narrative to poetry, and wisdom sayings to apocalypse. Privilege is a word that tends to provoke strong reactions from white people, like me, even when we readily acknowledge the ways in which we ourselves don’t have it as good as other people do for this or that reason. Personally, I believe the topic has been poisoned by those who want to make it look like the argument of privilege is saying things that it absolutely is not saying—that every single white person has it better than every single person of color (POC) in this country or that if you are white then you haven’t struggled. The truth is that absolutely no one is saying that even though there are talking points out there that have been designed to provoke fear and defensiveness in white people. But the Bible talks about privilege.

Hi, I am Tyler Dawn Rosenquist, and welcome to Character in Context, where I teach the historical and ancient sociological context of Scripture with an eye to developing the character of the Messiah. If you prefer written material, I have years’ worth of blogs at theancientbridge.com as well as my six books available on Amazon—including a four-volume curriculum series dedicated to teaching Scriptural context in a way that even kids can understand it, called Context for Kids. (affiliate link) I also have two video channels on YouTube with free Bible teachings for adults and kids. You can find the links for those on my website. Past broadcasts of this program can be found at characterincontext.podbean.com, and transcripts for most broadcasts at theancientbridge.com. If you have kids, I also have a weekly broadcast where I teach them Bible context in a way that shows them why they can trust God and how He wants to have a relationship with them through the Messiah.

Let’s look at the UK. It shouldn’t even be remotely controversial to say that, if you are a member of the royal family or the nobility then you have natural privileges and perks that average everyday folks do not have. You are more likely going to attend Eton and Oxford than public schools. You will have top-notch health care and access to whatever it is that will assist you in developing your natural talents. You won’t worry about money as long as you are responsible with it because you have inherited wealth from your ancestors, as well as titles—giving you standing that you did nothing to earn. In fact, you didn’t earn anything you were born to possess or benefit from. No one does, rich or poor. We would all agree that it is a privilege to not have to deal with certain hurdles that others have to try to jump over.

Let’s look at Israel, and I understand this is a sensitive topic right now but who on earth would choose to be born behind the barriers in Gaza or the West Bank? Any takers? Of course not—there is no one who would not rather be born to a Jewish family in Jerusalem instead. Who would make the conscious choice of being born a woman in Iran or Afghanistan now that the Taliban has regained control of the country? Who would choose to be born in a war zone, or in an apartheid state on the side of those being oppressed? I am very grateful to be living in America and to be white because it means that I didn’t struggle in the ways that many of my friends of color have struggled. I am grateful that I wasn’t born into poverty in Mexico or South America, whose governments are either in cahoots with, controlled by, or in a losing battle with powerful drug cartels. I am grateful I have never had cause to live in mortal fear of what will happen to my sons who, despite being biracial, easily pass as white. There are hurdles I have never had to jump because I am who I am and I am sure you can say the same thing. The Bible flatly tells the have’s not to despise the have not’s and to not ignore them or mock them. When we deny the privilege all around us, we are despising and mocking those who suffer the consequences of the situations they were born into.

And there are other kinds of privilege. Generational wealth and education within the middle class. Although slavery was made illegal in the 1860’s, various forms of it lingered long afterward and even to the present day. Even poor whites, during antebellum days, benefitted and profited from cheaper cotton and tobacco than they would have if the workers were fairly paid and were free to seek employment elsewhere or were educated. My ancestors didn’t own slaves, as far as I know, but they did enjoy the benefits of what was being perpetrated against enslaved people. At the end of the Civil War, my family retained what they had before the war, while freed blacks were let loose with absolutely nothing. No land. No money. No education. No open arms waiting to embrace them anywhere. It is only within recent memory that the black community in America has been able to begin generating generational wealth–the ability to send off their children with a fair start in life educationally and financially and for the children to someday inherit and build upon what they had growing up. People who are firmly middle-class often fail to see what an advantage it is to have things provided for them because their parents had things provided for them. People who are upper middle class and rich are often completely oblivious to it. But the Bible isn’t. And the prophets sure weren’t.

The way your family life is set up constitutes an area where advantage and disadvantage can be quite obvious. No one would deny that growing up in a loving, non-abusive, supportive Christian two-parent family free from addiction—regardless of socio-economic conditions—gives young people a huge leg up psychologically over those who do not have it. Attending a school where the teachers truly care and support their students makes a world of difference. Never having lived in foster care, being raised by relatives while parents are incarcerated, dead, or just gone remove a lot of hurdles that real kids out there face. Foster kids are often put out onto the street when they hit their 18^th birthday; when the support money stops coming in, and they end up at men’s shelters or on the streets.

Some privileges are seemingly random—physical beauty, musical or athletic ability, intelligence, health, and being able-bodied. All of these contribute to a person’s chance of success—including color and gender. Nothing I have mentioned so far has anything to do with merit or virtue. They are very much what we could call “accidents of birth.” No one is born deserving or not deserving any of these. They just are what they are. I would be a ridiculous fool to say that it isn’t a privilege to be very intelligent, white, and to have come from a family that was mid to upper-middle class by the time I graduated from High School. My parents paid for college—another privilege. My husband has those same privileges. We never had to worry about how to pay for college, and neither did our kids. Neither of us earned that—even though we worked hard in school because there are people who worked even harder to had to work full-time or part-time or take out student loans to afford their tuition. They, through no fault of their own, had that hurdle that we didn’t even hardly know was there. Not only that, but we were able to attend more prestigious schools with better science and engineering programs.

Let me just stop right there. Do I feel guilty about that privilege? No, I don’t—that would be counterproductive and self-centered. But that isn’t the same thing as me not seeing the injustice of it and knowing that change needs to happen. I really like Star Trek because it represents a world where a lot of this inequity has been defeated. I mean, there will always be abuse and irresponsible parents, but I believe that a world where no one is hungry and every child has equal education and opportunities is in alignment with the trajectory of Scripture. That we should greatly desire it goes without saying. I had a dream back on September 4 that I want to share. I wrote this in the morning when I woke up but haven’t shared it until now:

Last night, I dreamed that I woke up one day as a black woman in America. I still had all my memories of being a white woman, and the voice I used while talking to others was the voice of a white woman but the reactions to it were very different. I saw neglect and disrespect. I saw black youth in what can only be called a pit of vipers–cobras specifically–and my demands that those in charge do something about them going unheard and not taken seriously. And I am talking big obvious cobras just under the sand. Then, suddenly, I was white again, and I yelled about it and people scrambled to deal with the cobras as though this was the first they had heard of them. I went from setting to setting like this with similar results.

It wasn’t a matter of attractiveness because the woman whose face I bore was younger and far more attractive (I would kill for her hair, lemme tell you). The face was far more professional looking, well groomed, you name it, but she wasn’t white.

For many years now, I have been asking God to really make the reality of “privilege” clear to me, and that did it. I was so frustrated. Being “white” on the inside, in the way I thought, acted, spoke, etc. had absolutely no effect on these people’s reactions to me compared to how they responded when my face and body reverted back to my own. It was like a switch flipped in their heads that I should be listened to, cared about, taken seriously, and even feared.

Not caring about cobras waiting to strike at kids who were black until someone white was there demanding action and help in getting rid of them? And that’s the point, isn’t it? The not caring. It’s worse than hatred, really. The pretending that things aren’t wrong when steps can be taken on behalf of kids, even.

It was strange; the cobras were actually yellow. I had no idea there were yellow cobras but I looked them up and there they were, Cape Cobras. Geez, they looked just exactly like the ones in my dream, venomous and highly aggressive. They live in South Africa. And white adults were just standing by, casually uncaring. To care would mean needing to do something because no one could ever, ever see something like that in real life and refuse to act if they had even an ounce of love for kids. We don’t want to compare ourselves to apartheid South Africa—but after my dream, I think that maybe we really need to reconsider if we are different enough from them to feel good about ourselves.

How can this be true in a country that calls itself a Christian nation?

And that brings me to another reality in life about privilege, one that I knew about but had normalized until my book designer David posted something about it. I hadn’t ever realized that it shouldn’t be normal for me to worry about being sexually assaulted if I am out walking at night. It isn’t something that men need to obsess over or even really think about. They might get beaten up and mugged, of course, that can happen to men or women, but they don’t lie in their beds at night thinking, “What if an intruder breaks in and rapes me?” I think about that. I have always thought about it. Imagine being a single woman. Oh sure, I have had to deal with my fair share of discrimination—having started my working life in the 90’s. And I have had to deal with dismissive comments no man would ever hear, regardless of color. But the worst treatment I have received as a woman has been in the Church.

It was in the second church I attended as an adult that the modern worship leader began to come on to me and harass me sexually. When I rebuffed his advances, he didn’t stop. When I went to church leadership, I was told that it must be nice to know that I’ve “still got it at my age.” I was 33, hardly geriatric. And the idea that any woman naturally loves that sort of attention from a married man with six kids? Ew. It creates a hostile worship environment. Before too long, when his wife found out, I was blamed and it was made known that I was unwelcome in that congregation. He was more valuable than I was. I was the problem, even though I had done my due diligence in reporting it. It was a Southern Baptist Church, and although it surprised me then, now it wouldn’t.

But that still paled in comparison to what began to happen when God called me to teach—even though I make no effort to teach men. Heck, I make no effort to teach anyone except by posting on my websites and social media pages. I am only on the radio because people came to me and asked me to do it and I have only spoken at conferences where I was asked to come and given authority to teach. And yet, even in minding my own business, I get gender-based hate mail from men who (instead of simply disagreeing with me) get ugly and pull verses out of context to tell me that I must remain quiet. Even at home, I guess, because that is where I teach from. The reason is because of my gender, and not my level of knowledge, intelligence, giftedness or calling. It’s something men never have to deal with. Likely, it is something they can’t even imagine—and any sort of discrimination we can’t even imagine represents a privilege in our lives.

In the outside world, in many ways, I am more privileged than a black man. But inside the evangelical churches (along with too many others) he would be privileged over me. Someone white might tell him to shut up, regardless of how good a preacher or teacher or leader he is, but it would only be based upon his color.

One of the ways I like to explain privilege is this—“who would you never, in a million years, want to trade places with?” For all that many Evangelical white men (certainly not all) complain about a war on men and specifically a war on white men, I don’t see any of them volunteering to be a black man and much less a black woman. And it is because they (and we) recognize that it is far better to be white in this country than black. This doesn’t mean that as long as you are white, you have it made because you absolutely do not. A white male can struggle terribly because of poverty, a lack of generational wealth and opportunity, poor education, disability, poor health, etc.

Privilege isn’t the same thing as having no struggles, it’s just an acknowledgment that the playing field isn’t equal. And that shouldn’t make any of us bristle. Nor should it make anyone feel guilty for whatever privileges they did have. We were born into an unjust system, but it doesn’t mean we have to ignore it or have a right to deny it. We need to pray and work for a better world. One of the things I hate to hear the most is that America is a great country because the best and the brightest can rise to the top. Yeah, they can, but not always and it isn’t inevitable. As a special needs mom, I am not satisfied with living in a society where we are okay with only the best and brightest being able to escape abominable circumstances but where everyone else is destined to continue to suffer and somehow it’s okay. America won’t be great until everyone escapes, and every child is fed and educated and safe. Maybe the worst thing I ever heard another believer say is, “Well, God knew that people would be born into those circumstances,” when I made the statement that it broke my heart how much more difficult it is to preach the Gospel to people who have never known anything except deprivation and fear and righteous anger at being sidelined. It isn’t okay with me. It shouldn’t be okay with any believer to allow it and ignore it and even institutionalize it or see it as inevitable. And if that makes me a liberal then what on earth is wrong with conservative Christians? I am simply siding with those with whom Messiah identified in Matthew 25 in the parable of the sheep and the goats.

Those of us with whatever measure of privilege we have, as believers, must always speak up on behalf of and assist those who do not.

Prayers for a Privileged People by Walter Brueggemann C. 2008 pp 87-8 (affiliate link)

A Prayer of Protest

Since our mothers and fathers cried out,

since you heard their cries and noticed,

since we left the brick production of Egypt,

since you foiled the production schedules of Pharaoh,

we have known your name,

we have sensed your passion,

we have treasured your vision of justice.

And now we turn to you again,

whose precious name we know.

We turn to you because there are

still impossible production schedules,

still exploitative systems,

still cries of pain at injustice,

still cheap labor that yields misery.

We turn to you in impatience and exasperation,

wondering, “How long?” before you answer

our pleading question,

hear our petition,

since you are not a labor boss and do not set wages.

We bid you, stir up those who can change things;

do your stirring in the jaded halls of government;

do your stirring in the cynical offices of the corporations;

do your stirring amid the voting public too anxious to care;

do your stirring in the church that thinks too much about

purity and not enough about wages.

Move, as you moved in ancient Egyptian days.

Move the waters and the flocks and the herds

toward new statutes and regulations,

new equity and good health care,

new dignity that cannot be given on the cheap.

We have known now long since,

that you reject cheap grace;

even as we now know that you reject cheap labor.

You, God of justice and dignity and equity,

keep the promises you bodied in Jesus,

that the poor may be first-class members of society,

that the needy may have good care and respect,

that the poor earth may rejoice in well-being,

that we may all come to Sabbath rest together,

the owner and the worker,

the leisure class and the labor class,

all at peace in dignity and justice,

not on the cheap, but good measure,

pressed down,

running over … forgiven.

Episode 163: Sociology II—Religion, Weird Science, and Practical Linguistics

You might be wondering why we need to talk about religion when we are already studying the Bible—but religion in the ancient world was nothing like what we experience today. There was no separation between “church and state” or church and anything. Religion was everything and everything was religious. We’re going to tie ancient religion into their pre-scientific beliefs, and we are also going to talk about some of the wrong ways to treat ancient words in modern interpretations.

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Hi, I am Tyler Dawn Rosenquist and welcome to Character in Context, where I usually teach the historical and ancient sociological context of Scripture with an eye to developing the character of the Messiah. But not right now, right now I am doing a series about how to not waste your time with bad study practices, bad resources, and just the general confusion that I faced when I started studying the Bible and was trying to figure out what to do and whose books I should read. Bottom line, I read a lot of nonsense and spent a ton of money on it. I am going to give you some basics on how to avoid a lot of the pitfalls, save money, maximize your time and effort, and get the most out of what you are doing. So, what we are doing here is getting you introduced to summaries of what is out there to study and things you should know about. Master book list can be found here and I will add to it as needed.

Now, you might be wondering why it is necessary to talk about religion as though we don’t know what that is but the truth is that how modern westerners think of religion is absolutely nothing like anyone in the Bible would have seen it. I mean, not the pagans and not the worshipers of Yahweh either. In fact, we can’t understand much of anything in the ancient world without having a pretty good handle on their religious lives. If we don’t, we will find ourselves making assumptions that seem absolutely normal to us but would have sounded insane to them. In the western world, we claim to cherish a separation between church and state—except for when we want the ten commandments in courthouses and Christian prayer in school and creationism taught in the classroom. What we are truly interested in is having freedom from everyone else’s religion while not quite understanding why they feel the same way about wanting freedom from ours. And just as a funny aside here, the Ten Commandments are actually not compatible with the Constitution and especially the Bill of Rights. Right off, the first commandment stands at odds with freedom of religion because Sinai said there was no freedom of religion. Ditto for the second, and third commandments. And when was the last time someone actually went to jail for adultery? Guess what? It isn’t illegal! I am going to link this great article that Carmen Imes wrote about this conundrum a while back.

But in the ancient world, there was no separation of religion and state, or religion and science, or religion and shopping, or religion and absolutely anything. Everything was religious and religion was everything, and it didn’t matter if you were Jew or Gentile. Secular isn’t a word that they would have understood and there was no one day to focus on religion—even the Sabbath was a day of rest, not THE one and only focus of worship. Day in and day out, ancient people were focused on keeping their gods happy and well cared for. Offending them meant famine, sterility of people and crops, drought, natural disasters, defeat in battle—really anything you can think of. There was no part of life that the gods weren’t responsible for and deeply involved in. It was a world of belief in fate and where science was unnecessary because they depended on what they thought they were seeing with their own two eyes and behind it all were the gods making everything work. Science is the way of explaining the operations of the universe and everything in it through observation and experimentation, however, when you think that there are gods doing everything—well, what’s the point of looking more closely into it?

The rain cycle with evaporation and condensation and precipitation wasn’t being taught in Canaanite schools because Ba’al Hadad and his exploits as the storm god were being taught around the campfires. They accepted that such things were out of control and crafted stories to explain the phenomena, and they lived in ritualistic ways to try to make sure that the gods would continue to care for them. Science, if anything, was the absolute opposite of ancient religion. Someone, and not something, was responsible for each cosmic functionality of life as they knew it. When it is someone, and they are divine, all you have to worry about is how to keep them happy and not to figure out exactly how it works.

As for the entire ancient world’s belief in a flat earth and, no, Nimrod didn’t make that up. It was what everyone believed based upon what they could see with their own eyes and what made sense to them. As to what organs were responsible for different emotions and thoughts, they based their beliefs on either how things felt or pure guesswork and it wasn’t until about 500 BCE that the Greeks figured out what brains were for. I mean, give them some credit, I know some folks who still haven’t figured it out! And God worked through those beliefs to teach them about Himself. As I tell the kids on my other radio show, the Bible isn’t Abraham’s story, or David’s or Moses’—it’s God’s story to help us understand and love Him. And it also isn’t a science book—and if it was, what science would God reveal to them? How we see things now? Or a hundred or a thousand years ago? Or a hundred years from now? Or, even worse, what He actually knows about how things work—things that we could never hope to understand. Nope, best to always talk to everyone wherever it is they are and focus on the important stuff. Which is not science. And what is important? Who is Yahweh? Who is He to us? Who are we to Him? How is He different from every other god worshiped on the earth? And why can we trust Him? And of course, we learn about His desire to save us from sin and death and reinstitute His Kingdom fully on earth under the reign of the Messiah. Next to that, who cares how rain works anyway?

Life in the ancient world, whether Jewish or Pagan life, was an act of worship and a reflection of the deities one served. Now, the big city gods like Marduk, Ishtar, Baal, El, Zeus, Jupiter and many more—they were the responsibility of the priests. Cities would have patron gods and it was the job of the Temple staff (not too different from a palace staff) to keep them fat and happy because they weren’t particularly competent or bright and if they had to do their jobs and get themselves food, things could go terribly wrong and it was the belief of the pagan nations that humans were created mostly as slaves to serve the needs of the gods after they got tired of taking care of themselves. These gods were supremely pathetic, and they had every fault that humans have as well as a few more. I personally can’t think of anything worse than serving gods who are anything like humans. Just no. We’re bad enough without powers.

The ancient world was almost entirely polytheistic and I say almost entirely because evidently Egypt toyed with monotheism during one dynasty and Persia developed Zoroastrianism which is a dualistic monotheism. But mostly, they just had a whole bunch of gods, each with the job of making a certain thing in the heavens or on earth working properly. And by monotheism, which we are most familiar with, I mean the worship of one God while denying the existence of any others. Now, what was Israel? That’s harder to explain and scholars are split. Because there were two more choices—monolatry and henotheism. You’ve probably noticed that the Torah and the Prophets really do not deny the existence of other gods which, of course, leads to much debate as to why. And it is a really interesting debate. The plagues of Exodus, for example, are predicated upon being a judgment of Egypt’s gods. Not a proof that they aren’t real but as a judgment against them. When we look at Deutero-Isaiah (Isaiah 40-55), we see Yahweh taking the other gods to court and demanding answers from them. And the first commandment doesn’t deny the existence of other gods—it just forbids their worship.

So, here is the crux of the dilemma. Israel was certainly not monotheistic before the end of the Babylonian exile. They were constantly worshiping other gods and goddesses alongside Yahweh, although He had supremacy. There is a pottery shard dated to the monarchy that states Yahweh’s consort is Asherah of the Canaanites (a mother goddess)—and she might have been the Queen of Heaven mentioned by Ezekiel or perhaps it was Ishtar. But we also see women weeping for Tammuz. When David is on the run from Saul, his wife Michal places a household idol in their bed to make it look like he was still there. In the wilderness, the Israelites bound themselves to Ba’al Peor. And these aren’t isolated incidents by a long shot because the sacred groves and high places are mentioned throughout the monarchy accounts. Solomon really got the ball rolling when he made temples for his foreign wives to worship their gods in and he joined them in his old age.

So, monolatry is what Mormons practice—the belief in a great many gods but only being permitted to worship one. Every faithful believer on earth worships Elohim (who is a flesh and bone physical male being), aka “Heavenly Father”, but the faithful will achieve exaltation, become gods and will rule over their own planets. Henotheism, on the other hand, also involves the belief in many gods however, one rules supreme at the top of the pyramid. So, the Bible is written from a monolatrous standpoint that doesn’t deny the existence of other divine beings but forbids the worship of any but Yahweh, upon the understanding that the nations were given over to these other divine beings but Israel was set apart for Yahweh and owed him their exclusive worship. When they were doing well, they were practicing monolatry, saying, “Yeah there are other gods but they aren’t ours and we only worship Yahweh because He is the King of kings and Lord of lords.” When they fell into rebellion, they were practicing henotheism, worshiping Yahweh and a lot of other gods as well.

After the exile, at some point, they became monotheists however, when we read sectarian writings like Enoch, we see that they traded out henotheism and monolatry for a very imaginative form of angelology—where all the cosmic functions that were once carried out by a myriad of gods and goddesses are now carried out by angels. It is literally almost exactly the same thing but a movement in the right direction. I do not know when it was that angels took on the role of being messengers and worshipers and the Jews realized that Yahweh is the master of everything and doesn’t need angels or other gods to carry out running and managing the world. But, as with their science views that we have grown out of and see as Yahweh being generous and not trying to correct, we see the same things with the existence of a multitude of other gods. We no longer accept them because we are monotheists. Yahweh used their beliefs in other gods, as He used their pre-scientific beliefs, to turn them into a people completely devoted to Him as the One God. Who has better things to do than to teach science.

Tied to this, and this really helps us understand why the Israelites worshiped the gods of the peoples around them, is the belief in regional gods—a belief that everyone in the ancient world shared. They didn’t believe in a fertility god or goddess with many names depending on where you lived. No siree bob. They believed that Egypt had Hathor and Isis, who were entirely different than the Canaanite Asherah, and the Mesopotamian Inanna. No one believed that these were the same goddess and it wasn’t until the time of the Greeks that they floated the idea that all of the fertility goddesses were simply a manifestation of their Demeter or Aphrodite, depending on what kind of fertility one was referring to (livestock, crops, or human). This was actually a brilliant aspect of Hellenization and how the Greeks really dealt a death blow to a great many local religions. It’s also why people know the names of the Greek gods and goddesses better than anyone else’s!

And so, when you moved to a new area, although you would still believe in the gods you grew up with, you would understand the importance of honoring the local gods who were responsible for everything that happened in that region—which is why they are called regional gods. It’s why Baal Hadad was so popular in Israel because he was responsible for bringing the rain, and Asherah the babies, and Dagon the grain. We see this belief pop up several times in Scripture—the two best known are in 2 Kings 20:28 when the Arameans were a bit unclear on the concept of Yahweh most certainly not being a regional god, “Then the man of God approached and said to the king of Israel, “This is what the Lord says: ‘Because the Arameans have said, “The Lord is a god of the mountains and not a god of the valleys,” I will hand over all this whole huge army to you. Then you will know that I am the Lord.’” Evidently, that was too much of an honor challenge for Yahweh to let slide. And the second is in 2 Kings 17:24-26), “Then the king of Assyria brought people from Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hamath, and Sepharvaim and settled them in place of the Israelites in the cities of Samaria. The settlers took possession of Samaria and lived in its cities. When they first lived there, they did not fear the Lord. So the Lord sent lions among them, which killed some of them. The settlers said to the king of Assyria, “The nations that you have deported and placed in the cities of Samaria do not know the requirements of the god of the land. Therefore he has sent lions among them that are killing them because the people don’t know the requirements of the god of the land.”

It might seem silly to us but they couldn’t conceive of a being powerful enough to create the universe and everything in it and run it without a lot of help. Remember that their gods were just like them, only with powers. Not like superhero powers, but with the power to make the things happen that we need to survive. One more aspect of their religion is ancestral gods, or teraphim, which aren’t really gods but ancestors that they believed needed to be cared for after death. I mean, just imagine how hard it would be to break someone of thinking that they need to provide for their parents in the afterlife, right? How would you even begin to accept that they wouldn’t starve if you stopped feeding them? Is it a risk you would even remotely want to take with your dead loved ones? I believe that this is why Rachel stole the idols from her father, and why he was so desperate to get them back. Remember that worship wasn’t what we would always think it would be—at the heart of worship is taking care of something or someone for this or that reason. Gods or dead loved ones—it wouldn’t make a whole lot of difference to ancient people.

Okay, now I want to divert from sociology slightly into the realm of linguistics (which is the study of languages) because this is so badly abused by people who do not study, don’t have degrees, and just go with their gut or by how things sound or mean today and that is absolutely the worst mistake we can make in studying languages—especially in a place like America where we have a billion loan words (give or take) which have changed so much in meaning that we cannot apply modern meanings to ancient concepts. But you can look on YouTube and read memes and google pages that do just that in pursuit of various agendas. Let’s do one that I have never heard from anyone before but I told it to my study buddies as a joke and they were at least polite enough to laugh. The word translated spirit is pneuma. Stoic philosophers equated the pneuma with the soul or the inner spirit but it also is connected to a meaning of breath. But in the Bible it can mean anything from the Holy Spirit, to demons, breath, inclinations, wind, angels, whatever. It’s a big word and we need context to translate it.

But what if someone had an anti-meds agenda, okay—you know, like the people who are saying that if you got the COVID vax that you took the mark of the beast, or are part demon or Nephilim now, or whatever. And they looked in Strong’s Concordance and found out that pneuma means Spirit, like the Holy Spirit. And then, they noticed that pneumonia is very similar. And then, added to that, they realize that antibiotics make pneumonia go away. And so, horrified, they get out their meme generator software and use it to craft a scare story that antibiotics kill the Holy Spirit or at least drive it out of a person’s body. And so therefore, Big Pharma is trying to steal everyone’s salvation—and all because they didn’t understand linguistics and how language actually works. Language is, by its very nature, sociological because communication is everything. It shapes what we know, how we think, the way we will perceive new concepts, and how we interact with one another. Language is incredibly important but it must also be respected and we must not misuse it out of context to suit our agendas. I mean, even if our agendas are worthy, we must still not twist language or especially the Bible, to shortcut our way to the results we desire. Using pneuma and pneumonia in the way I just described would be a great example of what not to do. And it sounds ridiculous and it is but there are people out there who do this, preying on people and terrorizing them. Fear has this way of bypassing our doo-doo detectors—which is why people use it and why memes on social media are such effective propaganda promoters. Make a claim which you don’t have enough space to prove, and people assume it is legit. And they like and share without investigation and oftentimes without even knowing how to investigate such a claim. Just FYI—YouTube and Google are not reliable ways to investigate claims. Don’t believe me? Google holocaust denial one of these days and watch them prove that what happened, didn’t actually happen.

Homophones are another big problem, where people assume that two words are historically linked because they sound the same or share the same root word. Dynamis, pronounced doo-nah-meese despite being transliterated as dynamis, means power and is used of Yeshua/Jesus quite a bit when it talks about Him coming in the power of God, the dynamis. Dynamis is closely related to the words dynamic, dynamo, and dynamite but they do not all mean the same thing. But their meanings are related to one another. But we cannot change one for another otherwise we have Yeshua coming with God’s dynamite, which makes for quite the interesting picture. But if He had done that, He could have taught Peter, Andrew, James, and John a much easier way to go fishing, right? Now, that’s an example of words that sound alike and actually are linked but cannot be used interchangeably. Another example is pharmakeia, which was a technical term in the first century world for the crime of sorcery and especially through the use of poisons for the purpose of murder. It is linked to words like pharma and pharmacy but they are not equivalents, even though you wouldn’t know it from a lot of memes out there. If so, then we would have to look at what medicines were in the ancient world and outlaw them. So, bye-bye herbs and essential oils—you’ve been reclassified as pharmakeia and thus sorcery. You see, it just doesn’t work. But the words still share common roots and foundational meanings.

All that is to bring up a homophone that is really abused out there in religious circles and especially on the internet, with two words that are completely unrelated to one another in any way shape or form except that they sound quite a bit alike and those are Ishtar and Easter. I mean, look at a world map and ask yourself how a word for the Babylonian goddess of war and prostitution, the Queen of Heaven, used in what would become modern day Iraq, got all the way over to western Europe during an age where no one even knew who Ishtar was anymore because her empire had been conquered and disgraced and overrun by the Greek and Scythian armies and replaced with their deities a thousand years earlier? And on top of that, why would that be the word used to describe a Passover-related observance in only three Germanic languages while the rest of the world uses Pascha instead? Including all of the Near and Middle East. This happens all the time—the word beter (pronounced better) means “worse” in Turkish and the same word that means mountain in Japan means pit in Russian. I will link you a great article on that. It isn’t enough for two words to sound alike, they have to be historically linked somehow to be related. And never, I mean, never use the word booger for snot in the UK or in eastern Canada to refer to your friend’s little brother. Just don’t.

And there are similar problems for people who lack understanding of Hebrew who will do some disastrous things with the word et, made from the letters aleph and tav. We’ve run out of time, so I will link an article on that in the transcript as well, by my friend Jonathan Brown. Fortunes and whole new religions have been made from misusing words and we really ought to have more respect for languages!

The Dangers of Dualism: Fearing the World Instead of Trusting in God

Dualism is a metaphysical belief that looks at life in terms of extremes – physical vs spiritual, good vs evil, us vs them, etc. Sounds reasonable ay first glance, and yet this kind of thinking has led to a terrible kind of bondage, not only in the world but also within the Body of Messiah – bondage that we see in politics, congregations, and all over social media. It is an extreme point of view that has led to paranoia, persecution and unnecessary division throughout the ages.

Dualism is about separation, and most often comes up in terms of “we are good, they are bad,” or “physical = bad, spiritual = good.” It’s the mindset behind the idea that this world can be written off, that it exists simply to be escaped from – where we become “more heavenly focused than earthly good.” Because of this, there has grown up a mistrust in and fear of the physical world as well as a fear of and contempt for anyone who is not in lockstep with ourselves – there are no shades of grey in dualistic religious or political thinking. For example, Catholicism (Judaism, Liberalism, Conservatism, whatever) can’t just be partially wrong, in the mind of a true dualist, it has to be entirely evil. It has to be discredit, destroyed, at any cost, through whatever worldly and even sinful means at our disposal. When we are scared, we are more than willing to allow our morals to slip “for a good cause.” Everything done under that banner has to be suspect, and no one can give them credit for any good works for fear of being labeled as a papist, or at least very dangerous. People from other countries can’t just be “backward,” they have to be subhuman – they have to be, because we, ourselves, are supposedly good. Or at least I am, in this train of thought. (Hence the American form of slavery as identified and justified by color). This is also the line of thinking responsible for political rancor, racism, and class warfare – people like me are good and anyone else is suspect and most probably inferior (at the very least)

The Bible even seems to support this kind of thinking, because it was written in a dyadic society – hence they had no problem with celebrating the “dashing of enemy babies against the rocks.” They were too extreme for the tastes of people growing up in a post-Cross world which has been largely transformed by the fruit of the Spirit. We take for granted that no decent person would want such a thing to happen, but again, Yeshua/Jesus died in order to bring God’s heart values (and not just outward observances, which are also vitally important) into the world in a massive and unprecedented way.

But, with the advent of social media, we have once again become very much like the paranoid and conspiratorial people who lived before the Cross. Nowhere is it better seen than in politics and the fake news stories spreading all over the internet – reporting conspiracies as though they were fact, citing non-existent news stories and fabricating quotes, data and statistics. Of course, these sites have a LOT of advertisements, and they get money when you visit, a lot of money. Because of this unBiblical dualism, which paints everything in terms of black and white, these stories feed the notion that, for example, government is entirely evil, and anyone who questions it is immediately granted an aura of integrity. That’s dangerous. We can’t attribute virtue to those people who feed our pre-perceived notions and call it something like, “taking the red pill” – instead, it is simply believing, without a thorough investigation, a separate storyline. Believe me, if you take too many red pills, you will overdose.

If you are obsessed with finding all the hidden evil in the world, then your focus is desperately off.

I have seen it used in politics, racism, anti-semitism, intercountry squabbling, religion, you name it. It is rooted in an absolute paranoia of the different. We want “us” to be good and right, and so we need “them” to be evil and wrong. It’s completely about us, and because it is about us, our moral compass goes off-kilter. We will believe everything good about us and everything evil, no matter how absurd, about them. It goes so far that we read a story and don’t even do a basic fact check – we don’t bother to find out if this celebrity actually even made the interview being quoted, or if CNN is actually the source behind a story, or if there truly is a speech on file that says what the story claims, in context. We are driven by fear and surface-appearances by people who, frankly, would appear to be training us to react and divide without even thinking about why we are doing it, and without asking questions. Who exactly is yanking our strings so effectively, while warning us that others are yanking our strings? Seems to be the perfect disguise for a deceiver, eh?

Think, for a moment, about the paranoia that has to exist within us, in order to believe and propagate anything bad we see reported about our “enemy” when the Ten Commandments specifically tell us not to bear false witness against our neighbors. Think about how compromised we have to be, to forward every bad thing we see about the suspected folks of our choice. That isn’t a godly virtue, or truth-seeking, being informed, smarter, a remnant, or a watchman. In the real ancient world – a watchman who reported false information regularly would die. He was not at liberty to blow the shofar every time he saw a tumbleweed on the horizon. What we are dealing with is a lack of self-control – fear gone wild, manifesting itself in sin through false witness. It’s a blindness brought on by a need to be good and right – but we aren’t entirely good and right – are we?

No. We aren’t. And it is our pride and self-deception that drives this madness of external dualism. But let’s look at a healthier dualism-ish sort of situation.

Within each individual (let’s not bring extremes like psychopaths into the mix), there is a battle of good vs evil. I am certainly no exception – I am trying to be more good all the time and less evil – but the Bible clearly lays out this struggle in every human being, beginning with Adam and Eve. All of the patriarchs, the kings, everyone fought this battle within themselves. We are not entirely good – only one Man could ever boast of that on His resume. The rest of us are various degrees of what I call a hot mess. It is an unending battle that we have to fight every day, for the rest of our lives. As we begin to see how suspect we are, as we stop seeing ourselves and those who side with us as inherently good, we will begin to see the world and the people in it as more multi-faceted. Honestly, that is the kind of mindset that can take the gospel to the ends of the earth – as opposed to Peter’s belief that he couldn’t even enter the home of a Gentile, even a decade after the Cross. We can’t effectively serve God when our judgment and perception is clouded by extreme dualism.

You know what? The best way to start is to take a break and stop questioning everyone else all the time – the government, religions, races, ethnicities, etc.; we need to question ourselves and what the things we need to/choose to believe – specifically, we need to understand what they tell us about ourselves and our need to believe that we 9and those who agree with us) are truly on the unquestionably trustworthy end of our dualistic paranoia.

“Wow, look at that headline, it’s outrageous, and it is about X so it must be true.”

Whether it was happening in Nazi Germany or today, it’s the same dualistic pride and fear behind the sin – and it is behind our inability to do anything but sit in paralyzed fear of the world around us. One thing is for certain – we can’t make any kind of headway in the Kingdom if our constant focus is the world and all the terrible things they must be constantly doing behind the scenes – especially if a lot, or even just a little, of it is just the product of our imagination spurred on by those who are out to make a quick buck, create outrage, and further their own agendas – which we actually should be questioning. After all, if we are so suspicious of X that we will believe anything that Y says, it doesn’t make us particularly well-informed, it just makes us useful to God only knows who, hidden safely and anonymously behind the scenes and hidden behind some computer screen. People we don’t know, but whom we place our blind trust in – simply because they appear to be the enemy of those whom we believe are our enemies.

We are the Body of Messiah: worshippers of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Who exactly have we been trusting blindly?