Worship or Praise?

I recently received a question from a young adult church member ( I treasure all these questions, by the way!)

how are praise and worship  different, if at all?  The question came up because of what I see in  my church services (in most, if not all of the churches I’ve been a  member of).  The short version of my thought is that praise is David  dancing before the Lord with his bathrobe not-quite-done-up (and  saying he’d be even MORE undignified praising God), and worship is  “the Lord is in His holy temple, let all the earth keep silence.”

In  my mind, I would praise God however I feel impressed to praise Him (a la Psalm 150, or the idea behind thank offerings), whereas worship is  how God wants us to worship Him (like the ancient sanctuary services).

They’re obviously not mutually exclusive, but to me, they seem
distinct.  (This is why I describe myself as being a “liberal” when it
comes to praise and a “conservative” when it comes to worship.)  But I  also know that if, say, you were planning a church program, there’d be  questions around how to mix the two, or join the two to complete the  intention of a church service.  It also leads to the question of what  exactly God wants from us in worship (specifically corporately, since  individually, it seems a more simple answer, revolving our individual  humility and respect, like Moses at the burning bush, or Elijah with  the still, small voice, or Job in the tornado).

It  seems like an important issue to me, since so many traditions around  how we do church hang on its answer.  (It’s closely tied to how we understand “reverence,” which is a word that I’ve heard for as long as I can remember.)

What a fabulous question! So I had a go at it.

As far as praise and worship go, my simple answer would be that praise is one component of worship.  Worship consists of more than praise. The best definition I know of worship is proclaiming “who God is, and what He does.” Necessarily, some of this will be praise.

Reverence is the internal attitude of awe that results from recognizing with Whom we have to do. In my book, “Torn,” I describe this sense of reverence immediately after Jacob sees the tower we call “Jacob’s Ladder.”

“Shivering now, not from cold but from awareness, he looked around him,
remembering the tower, the ramp, the shimmering messengers. This is a
fearsome place, he thought. What else can this be but the house of Elohim, the very doorway and path to the heavens?”

Although the initial reaction may well be silence, the realization of God’s
great grace may then be followed rapidly by ecstatic praise.  That’s why
worship in the Bible often includes shouting, clapping, and dancing.
Although we may be uncomfortable with those things today, our early pioneers practiced all these and more.

I think we spend too much time wondering about what is ‘appropriate’
worship, and not nearly enough time concentrating on how to make God and His works real. Our lack of demonstrativeness — and I say this as a pretty stolid white guy (see the postcript, below) — says more about our lack of realization of “who God is and what He does,” than it does about reverence.

Having said that, the alternate temptation can be just as destructive, that
is, too gin up a congregation emotionally in order to produce the sort of
demonstration that results in clapping, shouting, and dancing.

In the Bible, sometimes God is in the fire from heaven, and sometimes He is in the still, small voice. Our worship must focus on the Person and Works of God–the expression of that worship will take care of itself.

I think the greatest temptation for those conducting worship service is
after one of those services where the hair rises on the back of your neck
because you recognize the Presence of something you could not have planned, to think, “let’s do that again!” But God must be sought, He will not be summoned; He acts, He will not be acted upon.

The best we can do, I think, is try to create an opportunity for worshipers
to open themselves to the Divine. Every attempt to induce or force that
openness produces the opposite reaction. And the more successful we are at simulating worship, the greater our sense of pride, and the more distant
real worship becomes.

P.S. I don’t dance. Not because I object to it. Scripture actually commands it, and I have seen beautiful worship dance. I don’t dance because when I do, others object. Let’s just say my gyrations are to dance what “making a joyful noise” is to singing.

Needs to be Killed

This discussion of needs, and my friend Martin’s comments, brought to mind one of my favorite stories. Before telling it, I want to preface it by pointing out that there we spend a great deal of time meeting the ‘felt needs’ of people who give big offerings, who sit on boards and executive committees–the older brothers who don’t rejoice when prodigals return.

But I know the person who asked the original question. She is a young adult, a young mother, like many I hear from, whose church consists too often of pharisse’s prayers and preaching to the choir. “We are thankful we have the Truth, and are not as other men and women,” instead of “I struggle to understand and conform to God’s will, and here’s what I’m going through.”

Young adults and people at large don’t need another sermon on vegetarianism, the need to find spiritual meat–food for their souls. And too many churches serve up either pablum or gruel, because “That’s the kind of preaching we had when I was young.”

Anyway, I want to share a story from Jack Hayford, who pastors a church in California, and the author of the song “Majesty.” I heard Jack tell this story myself, and I loved it immediately.

One day an elder came to Hayford and said, “Pastor, some people are uncomfortable because you urge them to lift up their hands when they worship and pray.”

“Well,” Hayford replied, “I don’t urge them to do anything. I do recommend it because it’s scriptural.”

“I have to tell, you, Pastor,” the elder said, sorrowfully, “it really hurts their pride when you say that.”

“Oh!” Hayford said, surprised and shocked. “I never meant to do that. I never want to hurt anyone’s pride.” He paused for moment, and said, “I meant to kill it outright!”

There’s far too much pious posturing and ostentatious humility in our congregations, because people think they need to be regarded as pious and humble. And those are needs to be killed outright.

Needs vs. Denomination

Just recently I saw a young member ask this question: What’s more important, a church that meets your needs or one of the proper denomination?

There are a lot of different ways to address that question, but the first thing that comes to my mind is: What a condemnation of our denomination, that such a question needs to be asked! If there was ever a question that demanded soul-searching on the part of our church, this has to be it.

And yet. . . . and yet, I have to say, I asked that question myself years ago. My answer will not satisfy every one, neither do I pretend that it is the only or best answer.

Legend has it that Alexander the Great was confronted with a supposedly intractable problem, to untie an incredibly complex knot. No one had been able to do it, and some thought that whoever could untie the knot would rule the world. Alexander solved the problem but cutting the knot with his sword.

I mention that because sometimes the way to solve a problem is to reject the assumptions that are inherent in it. What I did was plant a new congregation.  To be honest, I wouldn’t have even attempted it, if it hadn’t been for how I defined “meeting my needs.” As for myself, I could survive without the support of a local congregation. Indeed, for a period of 14 months, I ceased to attend church because of the dysfunctions in what was then my local congregation. It was a place which not only did not promote spiritual growth in its members– it actively destroyed them.

My needs were not being met, but that was not what concerned me. I could not see any reason why my children would desire to be a part of such a church. That need, the need to pass on a faith worth living, to have a church that my children and grandchildren would choose to belong to, became an imperative for me.  That, and only that, could have motivated me to take on the task of planting a congregation.

But that was my answer, in effect, not to choose between a church that met my needs or one of a different denomination, but to cut the knot, and plant a congregation that would meet the needs I had identified, and remain in the denomination.

I do not pretend that is the answer for every one. But that is the first part of my answer to the question posed in the beginning: Define exactly what your needs are.

I’ll have more on this in my next blog.

Telling or Asking?

Over at Adventist Today, I got into a discussion concerning my article there, “Turn Out the Lights.” In the comment section, I made this suggestion concerning retaining more young adults:

One step we might take is to start listening, and asking questions ourselves, instead of assuming we already know what others want, what they mean, or what they are saying.

Which elicited this interesting response:

In evangelism, Ed, we don’t wait for people to “ask the right question” because sinful man often does not know what question to ask.

Anyone interested in the rest of the discussion can read it there.

The reason I bring this up is not that I disagree with what my respondent wrote– quite the contrary. It is precisely my experience that in evangelism we rarely, if ever, ask any questions of those we seek to reach. And, surely, sinful people do not necessarily know the questions they “need” to ask. But I’m not certain that other sinful human beings — or are evangelists sinless?!! I don’t think so — are so all wise as to know precisely what someone else should be asking. That idea makes me more than a little uneasy.

My first impulse is always to go back to basics–back to the beginning, to the Bible, to the record of how God does things. And when I do that, do I find more telling— God, after all, does know what people need–or more asking?

The Bible shows that God does both. But what fascinates me is how often God begins with asking. God, who knows everything.

In Genesis 3, for example, when Adam and Eve have sinned, and hidden from God (now there’s a sign of sin degrading our reasoning process, imagine hiding from God), God surely knows what has happened, and where they are. Does He start by telling them their terrible mistake? No. Gen 3:9 indicates God asks, “Where are you?”

And when Adam replies that they are hiding because they are naked, God does not say, “Oh, ho! You’ve been a bad boy!” Instead, God asks another question “Who told you you were naked?”

And then, when Adam explains that he ate the fruit his wife gave him, God asks yet another question. “What is this that you have done?” Only then does God tell them the consequences.

And this pattern is repeated throughout the Bible. When Cain kills Able, God asks, “Where is your brother?”

Jesus, God with us, demonstrates the same behavior. A pastor friend of mine from another denomination wrote his dissertation on the questions of Jesus. And there are so, so many.

Jesus at 12 in the temple: Didn’t you know I would be about my Father’s business?

Jesus in the boat on the Sea of Galilee: Why are you so afraid?

Jesus to the man at the pool: Do you want to be healed?

Jesus to Peter: Who do men say that I am? Who do you say that I am?

Jesus to Judas in the Garden: Do you betray me with a kiss?

When I see how often God, Who knows all, asks rather than tells, it persuades me that perhaps I, who know so little, should get in that same habit.

What do you think?

P.S. Please forgive me for taking this opportunity to wish a Happy Birthday, today, to my delightful daughter Elise!

Jacob’s Ladder

There are many, many more lessons to be learned from the life of Jacob. But the one that strikes me most forcefully is the one that involves Jacob’s ladder.

Everyone knows the story.

¹⁰ Jacob left Beersheba and set out for Haran. ¹¹ When he reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep. ¹² He had a dream in which he saw a stairway ^[d] resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. ¹³ There above it ^[e] stood the LORD, and he said: “I am the LORD, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. ¹⁴ Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring. ¹⁵ I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”

¹⁶ When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, “Surely the LORD is in this place, and I was not aware of it.” ¹⁷ He was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven.”

Gen 28:10-18 (NIV)

But why did this happen? Why did God favor Jacob with this vision, and this promise?

Jacob had done nothing to deserve it. Indeed, he had conspired with his mother to deceive his father, had stolen a blessing that belonged to his brother, and was running for his life. Far from being a high point, morally or in his walk with God, it was one of the lowest points in his life. Jacob did not deserve such an affirmation from God.

But that’s why it’s called ‘grace.’ Grace comes from the Greek word that means ‘gift.’ The oft-quoted theological definition of grace is ‘unmerited favor.’

If there was ever a person who did not merit favor, it was the scheming, deceiving, theiving Jacob on the run from his brother’s justifiable anger. Jacob deserved many negative things, but not this tremendous vision of God’s glory and watchcare.

And notice, there are no ‘ifs’ in God’s declaration. He doesn’t say ‘if you do this,’ or ‘if you avoid that.’ He just affirms and blesses Jacob.

It’s so easy to get caught up in the notion that we must earn God’s approval. But we cannot earn it. We can only accept or reject it. And grace comes to us, as it did to Jacob, unbidden. And it comes not at a time when we deserve it, but when, like Jacob, we desperately need it.

Let that be our prayer. Not: God, I’ve been good so give me. . . .

That’s what legalism and self-righteousness is about.

Instead, we pray: God, You are good, and my need is great.

That’s what grace is all about.

Past, Future, and Imagination

C. S. Lewis wrote that “The past is as much an act of the imagination as the future.” What he meant, I think, is that the way we think of the past is an act of imagination. I touched on this in an earlier post. And this relates directly to Cindy’s question about changing views of the End in the Bible. We tend to think of our own past as one of settled doctrines.

In fact, as a people, SDA ideas of the End have undergone significant changes.  For a while, early pioneers believed that the gospel going to the whole world meant reaching the world through ‘hyphenated Americans,’ that is, reaching Germany through ‘German-Americans,’ China through ‘Chinese-Americans’ and so on. In the earliest days, they really didn’t have a missionary outlook in the truest sense. That came later.

These changes need not be a source of embarrassment. It’s clear that the Disciples originally expected Jesus to return, for the End to come, in their lifetimes. There are strong indications that Paul intended to “take the gospel to the whole [then known] world” all by himself! Only later, in places like Thessalonians and the writings of John do we see an awareness ( a changing awareness) that the End will not happen for some time.

This is simply part of the human condition. God knows the end from the beginning, we do not. Until it happens–and even afterwards, to some extent– our knowledge will remain incomplete, partial. No doubt a good portion of the millennium will be spent sharing stories about what we experienced in those climactic events! As we get closer to the End, our understanding will grow, and probably become clearer and more detailed, just as our image of an object grows clearer and more detailed as we approach it.

Our very name, “Adventist,” proclaims that we have an interest in the future. That is as it should be. But what really matters is what we do, how we live, how we build relationships now. The End will come. But who, and which of us, enjoy what comes after the End depends upon how we live and reflect God’s love to others today.

It is my hope and prayer that my understanding of the End continues to grow–which necessarily means change– and that my reflection of Christ’s character will increase every day. I’m 59 now, and hope to live many years. But violence, accident, or disease might take me at any time. That will be the End for me.

Leaders tell us that the best long-range plan makes clear what we should do today. In the same way, our understanding of the End should inform our daily walk with God, and with our fellow creatures.

Different Versions of the End- II

One of the great joys of my life as a teacher is dealing with children. one of the most important things when it comes to dealing with children is learning to answer their questions.  What I mean is this: all too often, we don’t answer their questions, we answer our questions.  This was pressed home to me one day many years ago as I was teaching in a one-room Adventist school, when a sixth grader looked up from his Bible workbook and asks, “Mr. Dickerson, what’s a whore?”

Two things must be kept in mind: the Bible can be quite frank and graphic in certain passages, and this was a multigrade classroom.  I wasn’t eager for the the first and second graders to become too interested in this topic. Their parents would have questions for me if I didn’t handle this discreetly.  So I simply said, “Why don’t you look that up in the dictionary?” he got up the dictionary, and began paging through it.  Looking over his shoulder, I saw that he was in the “H” section.  So I asked, “are you sure it starts with an ‘H’?”

Nodding enthusiastically, he said, pointing to his Bible, “Yes, it’s right here: hoarfrost.” This exchange impressed upon me forever the importance of providing an appropriate answer for the question — and for the questioner.  The changing understanding of the End time in the Old Testament is, I believe, an example of God doing just that.

For a group of people who had just been released from centuries of slavery, and whose belief system included an unending cycle of time, the radically different understanding we have would have made no sense at all.  So God gave them guidance appropriate to their situation.

It’s somewhat similar to a parent explaining complicated eschatology to a five year old.  It confuses and frightens them, rather than building their faith.  And so what we find in Deuteronomy is roughly equivalent to guidance given to a five year old.  Deuteronomy tells the Israelites that if they obey everything God told them to do, their lives would prosper and they would be happy; if they disobey what God told him to do they would be miserable and die.  We might say it this way, to our five-year-old, “Do what Daddy tells you to do, and things will work out all right.”

As passing time and new experiences broadened the understanding of the Israelites, giving them a more complicated view of evil, God revealed to them increasingly complex explanations of how evil would be dealt with, and a new world of righteousness brought in.  As their need grew, God’s explanation expanded and became more detailed to meet the greater need.  And that’s why we have a developing and growing explanation of the End time in the Bible.

If the message had been given to one people, at one point in time, we would not have this difficulty.  But because the Bible continually interacts with God’s people for more than a thousand years, we have recorded these varying accounts.

As Martin quoted and his comments on the previous post, and as I quoted myself in an earlier post Jesus told the disciples that he had more to tell them but they could not yet bear it.. That is a principal God repeatedly follows in his interactions with human beings.

What was nailed to the cross?

In my last post, I promised to take up the question about what was nailed to the cross in Colossians 2. Cindy said that every argument about what was nailed to the cross could also be applied to the Sabbath. I kind of agree, except that most of the arguments about what was nailed to the cross miss what the text originally meant.

Most of the time, the Greek behind the NT doesn’t matter. We have been blessed with such excellent translations of the Bible, that the vast majority of passages can be easily understood without recourse to the Greek. And we have been blessed with many resources that help with the Greek, so that the believer does not need to feel excluded when the original language is discussed.

But the word translated “handwriting of ordinances” by the KJV in Col. 2 is a case where the Greek matters quite a lot. Some have interpreted this to mean the 10 commandments, or simply the law of Moses. But the Greek word here is not nomos, which means law, nor is it entolē, commandment. Instead, it is a word used only this one time in the Bible, cheirographon, literally “handwriting.”

As mentioned, it does not occur elsewhere in the Bible, but we know quite a lot about it from contemporary culture. The best translation, as I understand it (and I am far from an expert in Greek), is the NASB’s rendering: “the certificate of debt.” The NASB renders the full text as follows:

¹³When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions,

¹⁴having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.

Still, this is one of those cases where we can understand all the words, but may still have difficulty with the meaning. For me, the best rendering that gets at the meaning of the text, is from the Philips translation:

You, who were spiritually dead because of your sins and your uncircumcision (i.e. the fact that you were outside the Law), God has now made to share in the very life of Christ! He has forgiven you all your sins: Christ has utterly wiped out the damning evidence of broken laws and commandments which always hung over our heads, and has completely annulled it by nailing it over his own head on the cross.

Now, there is nothing in the Greek about guilt which “hung over our heads.” That is a figure of speech missing from the Greek. But that is the sense of the Greek. We need no longer be haunted by guilt for all our failings.

So, in that sense, our violations of the Sabbath are included. But nothing in this verse indicates that we are suddenly free to fornicate, or murder, or violate any of the 10 commandments. In fact, in the very next chapter, Paul says:

But now, put all these things behind you. No more evil temper or furious rage: no more evil thoughts or words about others, no more evil thoughts or words about God, and no more filthy conversation. Don’t tell each other lies any more, for you have finished with the old man and all he did

Yes, our guilt was taken care of at the cross. No. we shouldn’t go around doing bad things–we’ve left all that behind.

Finally, as concerns the Sabbath vs. the feasts. The feasts were instituted to remember certain specific saving actions of God for Israel, and to point forward to a greater saving act in the life, death, and teachings of Jesus. The Sabbath, by contrast was woven into creation itself. God created the world in six days, (Yes, I affirm that, and I have no problem dealing with science), and set aside the seventh day to commune with us.

When Jesus died, the reason for all the sacrifices and feasts disappeared. In Paul’s language, the shadow had met reality, so why focus on the shadow? But Jesus reaffirmed the Sabbath in his death. How so?

God created the world in six days–creation week– and rested the seventh. The triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, the action that initiated the chain of events that led to his death, took place on Sunday–the first day of the week. We call the next seven days “passion week,” but I call it “redemption week.” For just at evening on the sixth day (the hour of the evening sacrifice, we are told) Jesus cried out “It is finished.” The context makes it clear this was a cry of triumph, not resignation. Jesus had accomplished the work of redemption, and he died. He rested in the tomb during the hours of the Sabbath. Thus redemption week mirrored creation week.

When we observe the Sabbath, we rest from our own efforts to save our selves, rest in Christ’s finished work of redemption. Far from engaging legalism, we celebrate creation, redemption (a new creation), and grace.

I hope that answers your question, Cindy.

Is “Forever” forever?

Back to Cindy’s questions:

4.  If the feast days were given to be celebrated “forever” and for all generations, why do we not celebrate them now?  Granted, there were sacrifices involved, but God never actually said to stop celebrating them.  All of the Adventist arguments for the Sabbath not being “nailed to the cross” could be used for the feast days as well.

You may get tired of this, but the first step in responsible interpretation is alwasy “exegesis,” which can be reoughly described  as answering the question, “What did the author (the human author) think he was saying?”

And that always has to take his culture and historical setting, the situation into which it was written, into account. Their is a fancy theological term for this — as if exegesis wasn’t bad enough!– but it’s German and I’ll let it go.

What did the original author, and his audience, think it meant? In one way, they thought of it as ‘unending,’ just as we do. But Jude tells us that Sodom is an example of ‘eternal’ fire. Well, with Google Earth we should be able to get nearly real time images of the area around the southern end of the Dead Sea, where Sodom is thought to have been. No fire and smoke are still burning there.

So there’s a sense of ‘forever,’ ‘eternal,’ or ‘unending,’ which means, ‘as long as its purpose remains.’ Sodom’s fire was ‘never’ put out– it continued until everything flammable was consumed. In that way it was eternal. And everything regarding the Israelite cultus (that’s a technical term, not a slam) was to continue. . . as long as its purpose remained. That’s why Matthew tells us that the curtain between the Holy and Most Holy places in the Temple was torn “from the top down” — a supernatural declaration that the purpose of the the Temple no longer remained.

So all those feasts were to continue, “for ever in your generations.” that is, “to keep the purpose fresh in everyone’s minds,” until the ultimate purpose, the life and death of Jesus, made the feasts unnecessary. The pointed forward to His great work. Once He had done that work, the work spoke for itself.

Someone has said the Old Testament can be summarized by Isaac’s question at Mt. Moriah, “Where is the lamb?” and that the New Testament be summarized by John the Baptist’s answer: “Behold the Lamb of God.”

Another way of looking at it would be this.  Three years ago, BOTH my daughters got married within a 5 month period. Our calendars were full of dates in preparation; dates for the gowns, dates for measuring for tuxes (you should see me in a tux!), dates for bridal showers, dates for relatives arriving, and finally — the date for the wedding.

Well, now that they’re married, we don’t keep looking back at all those dates, all those tasks. They were preparing us for the wedding, so now we look at– the wedding pictures, of course! Why focus on the preparations, when the real event has come and gone?

That leaves the question of the Sabbath, and what was nailed to the Cross in Colossians. As it happens, I was blessed in my Seminary days to have taken a class from Dr. William Johnsson, the recently retired editor of the Adventist Revies. It was titled, “Law, Grace, and Freedom.” We went through every passage in the NT related to the law, and spent some time on what was nailed to the cross. I’ll share that next time.

P.S.

Believe it or not, there is one sense in which the feasts continue. I’d like to direct your attention to the book of Revelation, chapter 21, which has these somewhat puzzling words:

¹And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.

²And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

³And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men. . . .

This, of course, is describing what happens after the end of sin. But it seems strange, the part about ‘no sea.’

There are two things that come into play here. In the Old Testament, water repeatedly got in the way of God’s people as they sought to reach the Land of Promise. First the Red Sea, and then the Jordan had to be parted, to let the people reach their promised home.

I believe that ‘no more sea,’ in this passage, indicates that with sin and death destroyed, there will never again be anything to separate God from His people, nothing to keep them from possessing their promised home. And, in this passage the New Jerusalem is being described.

The second part is this: All the feasts except one were celebrated before the Israelites took possession of Canaan. Only one, the feast of the Tabernacles, was saved until later. During that feast, they lived in ‘booths,’ or ‘tabernacles,’ to remember their time in the wilderness, and thus celebrate their possession of the land of Promise.

But look at the beauty and majesty of Revelation. For after the saints take possession of the New Jerusalem “the tabernacle of God is with men.” I almost cannot type the words for the awe I feel. Revelation 21 depicts God as celebrating His return to us. Exodus 25:8 has been fulfilled–He now dwells among His people. Our sins had separated us from Him–but Sin had prevented Him from fully dwelling with us. And Rev. 21 shows us the final, everlasting celebration of the feast of the tabernacles–Immanuel, God with us!

Position of Women in the Bible-II

When we look at the status of women in the Bible, then, we’re looking at something which changes, depending upon where and when the reference took place.

The tendency is to ask, “How does this command concerning women compare with what our culture thinks today?”,  and on that basis,the Bible generally comes up short. But this is a false comparison, because the choice for the women concerned, the ones who would be affected by what God said through the prophets, did not have the choice of either the prophet’s declaration or today’s status. Their options were the prophet’s declaration concerning their status, or the prevailing status in their culture at the time.

When Moses set the conditions for divorce, they didn’t have the option of ‘no fault,’ alimony, and child support vs. a ‘bill of divorcement.” Their choice was between the ‘bill of divorcement,’ or simply being abandoned.  More that a thousand years later– that ‘s right, more than a thousand years— Jesus made it clear that God considered that the only legitimate  grounds for divorce was sexual infidelity. And if you read the narrative, it’s clear that even the disciples considered this radical.

Had God’s attitude toward divorce changed that much? Of course not. But, as the disciples reaction indicates– and these were the guys who believed in Him–people can only take so much change at time. And when confronted with change beyond their abilities, humans just bive up. So the real question becomes, “Which is better? A little progress, or none at all?”

And when we carefully examine the Bible’s teachings concerning the treatment of wome, in context, we will find that God always opts for progress, even a little progress, compared to the existing situation. at the time.

Having said that, there are some passages where the correct answer for today’s student is, “I don’t know.” That’s where I will have to be with “head covering” for women. I’m confident it’s not an essential matter one way or another, since those are explained repeatedly and in clear terms. My sense is it’s cultural, and I’ve seen several explanations for that. I’ve also seen counter-arguments for each of the specific cultural explanations. I’m not totally convinced of any of them, and to be honest, it’s not something I believe is worthy of a great deal of effort on my part.. Someone may find/have found the definitive explanation for this, and I’ll be happy when I run into it. In the meantime, I have other things

One of those, being a “fool who rushes in” is to take up your question concering the “hatred of gays,” next. Would you like to focus that a little more, or shall I just venture in and hang myself without assistance:)?