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Christian interaction with marijuana

The below is based on a presentation I gave at St. Andrew’s Anglican Church.I spend a lot of time on Reddit, various Christian subreddits, dozens of them. Every day someone asks somewhere, “Is XXX a sin?” Sometimes I’ll answer, and my answer is always, “You need to back up and ask, how do you determine right from wrong? Because asking Reddit is probably not the best approach.”

I’m not an ethicist, but I’ve spent some time studying, specifically Dr. Chidi Anagonye. There are three basic kinds of ethical systems:

  • Rule-based * An action is good because it follows the rules (whatever they are)
  • Consequentialist * An action is good because it has good consequences (however you predict and judge consequences)
  • Virtue-based * An action is good if it makes you a better person by your doing of it

People often ask questions like, “Why is there a rule against this thing? It doesn’t hurt anyone!” Which is muddled thinking, but fundamentally it’s really asking “Why are Christian ethics rule-based when I expect them to be consequentialist?” So we have to ask, which kind of system are we dealing with?

Christian ethics are virtue-based. Christ spoke on many occasions against rule-ethics: a man who would murder his brother, but happens to not today, is still a murderer. A man who would commit adultery, but happens to not today, is still an adulterer. We are, by nature, selfish, short-sighted, and self-destructive. Unless we change, we will die, not simply because of God’s judgment against us, but because we cannot live. God’s saving work in history is his acting to give us a new nature, to re-create us, to make us into the image of his Son that we were always intended to be. And the perfected person acts correctly, not because they know the rules, but because correct action flows from who they have become. We see this throughout scripture.

  • (Jeremiah) “This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my laws in their minds, and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”
  • (Hebrews) “I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit within you. I will remove the heart of stone from your body and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my Spirit within you; I will take the initiative and you will obey my statutes and carefully observe my regulations.”
  • (Romans) “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!”
  • (Romans) “We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin.”
  • (Titus) “He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.”
  • (Ephesians) “You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.”

Christian discipleship is the process of changing who we are. A disciple does what his master does, for the reason his master does them, to the end of becoming like his master. The Spirit works within us, and we take the action that makes us more like Christ, that builds the Christian virtues in us, because that makes those actions more natural to us the next time. Our nature is replaced over time.

In short: I have been saved, I am being saved, I hope to be saved.

So what, then, are the Christian virtues? There are a few classical lists, but I grew up in a tradition heavy on scripture and light on big-T Tradition, so I tend to take a different approach. I’m also an engineer. I systematically identified every virtue list in the New Testament (about 25) and grouped the virtues in them (about 200). There turn out to be ten clusters, which are very much like the Fruits of the Spirit in Galatians, so I take that as a hint I’m on a good path here. These are the things the Spirit brings about in us:

  • Love, leading to respect and affection
  • Joy, leading to satisfaction, contentment, and gratitude
  • Peace, leading to forgiveness, drive for relationship and covenant
  • Patience and hope
  • Compassion, leading to kindness, mercy, generosity and benevolence
  • Righteousness within, leading to justice without
  • Faithfulness and endurance
  • Humility
  • Integrity and self-control
  • Embrace of knowledge, wisdom, and truth
    • This one’s not in the Fruit, but it’s kind of necessary for the rest to make sense. We can’t know what action is kind without having some understanding of cause-and-effect in the physical world.

So when a question is asked, “should I do X?” I suggest that it should be asked in this framework.

  • Does it make me more loving, respectful, affectionate? Or less?
  • More joyful, satisfied, contented, grateful? Or less?
  • More peaceful and forgiving? Or less?
  • More patient and hopeful? Or less?
  • More compassionate, kind, merciful, and generous? Or less?
  • More driven toward greater righteousness and justice? Or less?
  • More faithful and endurant? Or less?
  • More humble? Or less?
  • More self-controlled and consistent? Or less?
  • More driven toward knowledge and wisdom? Or less? Now, this kind of framework does make us uncomfortable at times. For one, it means there may not be consistent answers. What’s “wise” is dependent on the context; five centuries ago the “wisest” people on earth didn’t have any understanding of how diseases spread, so a perfectly wise and kind person could still spread diseases that killed millions of indigenous Americans. We have to act in accordance with current wisdom, but also be humble enough to repent in the face of new knowledge.

Further, in a broken world we are faced with situations where there is no good choice, only a decision among bad ones. We cannot be maximally kind to everyone in a context of limited resources. We cannot always be faithful to oaths to obey the law and also working toward greater justice in the world. We cannot be both loving to the Jews hiding under the kitchen table and truthful to the Nazis searching for them. Which means it’s difficult to have a virtue-ethic system that universally proscribes any specific action. A virtue-based system does not provide easy answers to all situations. In fact, it makes life harder than rules do, because it demands that we recognize the complexity of the world and wrestle with it. What action is most virtuous is very contextual.

Now, in the context I grew up in, the immediate response would be “That’s situational ethics, Patrick!” But in fact it is not. It’s only situational if you assume ethics are about rules. The ethical framework is fixed, it’s the applications that are situational.

So all that said, let’s talk about cannabis, which for the purposes of today I’m assuming to mean “getting high” and not the non-psychoactive uses. Most virtues, I don’t see as necessarily relevant to its use. But others might!

  • Does it make me more loving, respectful, affectionate? Or less?
  • More joyful, satisfied, contented, grateful? Or less?
    • Arguably it could, in a medical context
  • More peaceful and forgiving? Or less?
  • More patient and hopeful? Or less?
  • More compassionate, kind, merciful, and generous? Or less?
    • Doing pot in situations where it can result in harm to others is bad, don’t ever do that.
  • More driven toward greater righteousness and justice? Or less?
  • More faithful and endurant? Or less?
    • Do you perceive yourself to have an obligation to not use cannabis because the law in your context says not to?
  • More humble? Or less?
  • More self-controlled and consistent? Or less?
    • Some people are dependent on cannabis. You should work towards being able to do without it. But if you’re dependent on something, don’t pretend you’re not. Improvement takes time. We run towards a goal we may not be able to reach in our lifetimes. Dying before we get there isn’t really a problem for us.
  • More driven toward knowledge and wisdom? Or less?
    • Behaving like an unwise person makes you less wise, and less like the person God wants you to be. Inhaling smoke is always bad for you, cannabis addiction is a thing for some people, and habitual usage for people whose brains are still developing is almost certainly a terrible idea.
    • Use of pot may be unwise for any number of other reasons. In a world where many false claims are made we can’t determine what’s wise without understanding how reality actually behaves, how pot really affects individuals. (“REEFER MADNESS!!!” “CBD cures everything!!!!”) That’s hard, and this is not the context to evaluate those sorts of claims. * Don’t believe everything you read, and don’t believe everything that makes you happy, and don’t assume that because something was probably true yesterday means it’s still probably true today. We learn.

In summary, I don’t have answers. But I hope that this provides a framework for thought about this issue and many others.

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Summarizing the science on EMF-induced injury and disease

I’m an electrical engineer, and I often hear people who are otherwise pretty science-oriented express concern about injuries and disease being correlated to electromagnetic field (EMF) exposure. Usually these statements are pretty vague, “studies have shown” without much about what studies have shown what. So I did some digging into a few dozen different studies, meta-studies, and well-respected summaries. Forgive me for not linking every study I looked at. A couple representative ones here and here.

My goal is to accurately represent the truth of the situation, so that people will stop being afraid of things they don’t understand. Unless, of course, they should be afraid. Either way, understanding = good. Here’s how it seems to all fit together:

  • Alternating magnetic and electrical fields cause charged particles like ions to move. Your body has lots of ions in it, so exposure to alternating EMF will impact the movements of ions in your body. This seems hard to dispute just from basic physics.
  • Several studies find that exposure to alternating magnetic fields causes oxidative stress, which can contribute to basically any chemical mechanism in your body functioning worse. Tests on rats exposed to high-intensity EMFs found that they developed functional issues that were resolved with antioxidants. So oxidative stress is a plausible mechanism for exposure to alternating EMFs to contribute to injuries and diseases on a population level to some degree. Whether that degree is at all meaningful is a different question.
  • Most studies I’ve seen are done at ELF (50/60 Hz line frequency) or 900 MHz (mostly older cell phones). I haven’t seen much about 2.4 Ghz or higher that’s been in use in every cell phone for the last decade. One would reasonably expect higher frequencies to have fewer biological impacts since they don’t penetrate tissue as deeply. Since laptops, tablets, and most cell phones only operate at DC or at 2.4 GHz and higher, they seem very unlikely to be sources of any sort of problem.
  • Alternating current generates an alternating magnetic field. The biggest exposure to alternating magnetic fields for an average person is going to be from an electric blanket, which maxes out around 30 uT (microteslas) right on the surface of the skin. (That’s pretty close to the intensity of the magnetic field of the earth that you’re exposed to all day every day, though that doesn’t oscillate, so it won’t cause ions to move in your body unless you’re on a spinning teacup ride or such.) There are studies showing some temporary and reversible medical impacts on rats from alternating magnetic fields applied to their brains, but most studies are at ~100x the intensity of an electric blanket. Unless you’re a welder or working with induction furnaces, you’ll see vastly lower levels than those tests from basically every other source in your world.
  • Alternating voltage generates an alternating electrical field. Exposure to electrical fields is generally much lower than for magnetic fields except perhaps for people who live very close to high-voltage transmission lines. Frankly, I’m having trouble quantifying the fields involved and what they would do to the ions in a human-sized hunk of meat. But there are quite a number of studies that conclude a slight (almost always well within the margin of error) increase in certain diseases for people that live near high-voltage lines. The E-field effect provides a plausible mechanism for increases of certain diseases near transmission lines, despite at least one study showing a correlation between disease and transmission lines but also no correlation between disease and magnetic field exposure in the same population.
  • There are studies indicating there might be small population-level effects from long-term high-use cell phone exposure. There are also studies on microwave exposure to rat brains showing some negative impacts. But all these studies I’ve seen were done on 900 MHz frequencies. 5G phones typically run at 2.4 GHz up to 60 GHz, though they will drop back to 900 MHz in cases where range is needed. And as previously noted, those higher frequencies don’t penetrate far.

Preliminary conclusions:

  • Living near high-voltage power lines may pose a small but just-barely-measurable legitimate health hazard due to the electric (not magnetic) fields involved. I need to do more math on the E-field exposure compared to other field exposures.
  • Extreme use of early cellular phones may have presented a legitimate low-level hazard, but this has probably been resolved by newer technologies.
  • All other alternating EMF sources do contribute to oxidative stress on the body, and oxidative stress is bad. But if one was to order the causes of oxidative stress on the body, EMFs probably aren’t very high on the list compared to, say, eating fries cooked in weeks-old toxic sludge at your local fast food restaurant. I’m not sure how one would quantify this, though.

Given all of the above, whatever health impacts from EMFs exist are probably well below the noise floor for almost everyone. Rather than altering our technology or behavior, it makes more sense to remove other sources of oxidation like junk foods, consume some antioxidants like curcumin, and go on with life. Don’t unplug your nightstand clock. Don’t dress up like a baked potato. Maaaaaybe don’t live near high-voltage lines if you have an option.

∞

Ecclesiastes as an angry rant

I’m contemplating the book of Ecclesiastes, which has this one word in it often translated vanity or meaningless or futility. I’m thinking maybe instead we should translate it “bullshit.”

Bullshit! Bullshit! Utter bullshit! Everything is bullshit.

I have seen all the works which are done under the sun; it’s all bullshit.

I said to myself, “Come now, I will make a test of pleasure; enjoy yourself.” But this was bullshit too!

Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had spent in doing it, and again, it was all bullshit!

Then I said to myself, “What happens to the fool will happen to me also; why then have I been so very wise?” Bullshit!

Here’s some more bullshit that occurs on earth: righteous men who get what the wicked deserve, and wicked men who get what the righteous deserve. This too, I say, is bullshit.

I’m not sure if it captures the intent of the original author, but it sure captures how I feel a lot of days.

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Hopepunk: examples and extensions

I just became aware of a new fiction genre: hopepunk.

Hopepunk in speculative fiction explores resistance, rebellion, and resilience as counters to apathy and cynicism.

…[stories] reveal hope in the face of challenges and act as a counter to pessimism

Although they may include horrible events, injustice, and inequality, hopepunk stories have characters who choose to act, rejecting pessimism and passivity. Positive human traits and community contribute to solutions.

Hopepunk characters persevere, believing in the possibility of something better in the face of difficult realities.

I’ve previously noted my interest in stories of hope, but this is the first I’ve heard of an entire genre. The phrase “weaponized optimism” seems to describe it well. I’m going to list some examples I’ve enjoyed.

I’ve recently loved the Wayfairers series, The Lady Astronaut series, and the Murderbot series, all of which have been called examples of hopepunk. The Expanse (both TV and book) is often listed as an example, and James Holden certainly is a man who lives in absurd irrational hope that people can be better than they are. And every so often, he’s right.

Looking through the rest of my bookshelf, I don’t see much, so clearly I need more! Asimov comes close, in that it’s all about building a better future, but it’s not really about human action. Individual agency basically doesn’t exist in his work. Iain M. Banks and the Culture series is utopian, but there are also no serious problems for most people in that setting.

The television ur-example is almost certainly Star Trek. Someone (I can’t find who) said that while Star Wars is about good vs. evil, Star Trek is about base vs. better. It’s about people becoming better than we are. Kirk back in the late 60s said:

We’re human beings with the blood of a million savage years on our hands, but we can stop it! We can admit that we’re killers, but we’re not going to kill today. That’s all it takes… knowing that we’re not going to kill today. Captain Picard is probably the ultimate example of a hopeful orientation within the franchise.

Despite the above about Star Wars, Return of the Jedi succeeds when it stops being about good vs. evil. Luke is a hero not because he destroys the forces of evil, but because he refuses to give up hope for his father’s redemption.

Other shows from the last few decades include The West Wing, Parks and Recreation, Ted Lasso, and The Good Place. All are about people refusing to give up hope that things can be better, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.

I suspect Iroh from Avatar: The Last Airbender is a good example. He knows the Fire Nation’s rampage has to be stopped, but he achieves it by helping Zuko find himself and become a better person.

Here’s one you might not expect: Terminator 2. Sarah Connor has the opportunity to save all humanity by killing one innocent man, and refuses to do it. She chooses to not become a killing machine, and radically hopes that there must be a better way.

Because if a machine, a Terminator, can learn the value of human life, maybe we can too. The Sarah Connor Chronicles expanded on this brilliantly, and I still mourn its abrupt cancellation.

One obscure show I’ve loved is Due South, a Canadian police drama from the 90s. The main character is a walking stereotype, a Mountie from the Yukon. One day he does too good a job, embarrasses the Canadian government, and as punishment he’s assigned to stand outside the consulate in Chicago eight hours a day. He spends his off-hours helping a local detective, but also helping basically anyone he comes across. He moved into the worst imaginable Chicago apartment, immediately started addressing all his neighbors by name (having memorized them from their mailboxes), and was just unrelentingly optimistic and positive.

Of course, at the core of all this for me is the Resurrection. Christian theology is centered on our hope that death has been defeated, and that we can be made better than we are. In the end, all things will not be destroyed. All things will be made new.

So what else is out there? Give me more stories of hope.

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The? Unforgiveable? Sin

I’ve seen so many people anxious about whether they’ve committed the unforgivable sin. (And no, they have not.) Let’s look at what they’re talking about, why they are very sadly confused, and why we should all revel in our hope!

There are three passages in the synoptic gospels, all of which say more or less the same thing, though with different contexts. Matthew 12:22-32:

12:22 Then they brought to him a demon-possessed man who was blind and mute. Jesus healed him so that he could speak and see. 12:23 All the crowds were amazed and said, “Could this one be the Son of David?” 12:24 But when the Pharisees heard this they said, “He does not cast out demons except by the power of Beelzebul, the ruler of demons!” 12:25 Now when Jesus realized what they were thinking, he said to them, “Every kingdom divided against itself is destroyed, and no town or house divided against itself will stand. 12:26 So if Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then will his kingdom stand? 12:27 And if I cast out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your sons cast them out? For this reason they will be your judges. 12:28 But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has already overtaken you. 12:29 How else can someone enter a strong man’s house and steal his property, unless he first ties up the strong man? Then he can thoroughly plunder the house. 12:30 Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters. 12:31 For this reason I tell you, people will be forgiven for every sin and blasphemy, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. 12:32 Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven. But whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.

Mark 3:20-30:

3:20 Now Jesus went home, and a crowd gathered so that they were not able to eat. 3:21 When his family heard this they went out to restrain him, for they said, “He is out of his mind.” 3:22 The experts in the law who came down from Jerusalem said, “He is possessed by Beelzebul,” and, “By the ruler of demons he casts out demons.” 3:23 So he called them and spoke to them in parables: “How can Satan cast out Satan? 3:24 If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom will not be able to stand. 3:25 If a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. 3:26 And if Satan rises against himself and is divided, he is not able to stand and his end has come. 3:27 But no one is able to enter a strong man’s house and steal his property unless he first ties up the strong man. Then he can thoroughly plunder his house. 3:28 I tell you the truth, people will be forgiven for all sins, even all the blasphemies they utter. 3:29 But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven, but is guilty of an eternal sin” 3:30 (because they said, “He has an unclean spirit”).

Luke 12:8-12:

12:8 “I tell you, whoever acknowledges me before men, the Son of Man will also acknowledge before God’s angels. 12:9 But the one who denies me before men will be denied before God’s angels. 12:10 And everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but the person who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven. 12:11 But when they bring you before the synagogues, the rulers, and the authorities, do not worry about how you should make your defense or what you should say, 12:12 for the Holy Spirit will teach you at that moment what you must say.”

Matthew and Luke both say that speaking against the Son of Man will be forgiven, and Mark says “all sins” and “all blasphemies” will be forgiven. But all three say that whoever blasphemes/speaks against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven. Look, people say, here’s the unforgivable sin! If only we can figure out what it is! Maybe it’s suicide! Or dying having committed an unconfessed mortal sin! (Or maybe that’s the same thing!) But it’s probably that one terrible thought I had when I was eight! I’M SO WORRIED I STEPPED ON THE MAGIC TRIPWIRE AND THE ARBITRARY SCARY LEGALIST GOD HATES ME NOW AND THERE’S NOTHING I CAN DO!!!!!

First, this conception of God is totally incompatible with the character of God. People whose idea of God is that he’s trying to find an excuse to destroy us all aren’t going to be talked out of that with a blog post. If that’s you, you need to practice rest. Learn that God is good, and loves you. If someone told you otherwise, they were lying to you.

But back to the text. Let’s point out a couple problems with “the unforgivable sin.” Then we’ll talk about what’s actually going on here.

First, that word “unforgivable.” The text never says anything cannot be forgiven. It says something will not be forgiven. That’s a subtle difference, but an important one. God is capable of forgiving all things. But some things he will not.

Second, “the” is a problem. Because there is another case where Jesus says God will not forgive! In Matthew 6:14-15:

6:14 “For if you forgive others their sins, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 6:15 But if you do not forgive others, your Father will not forgive you your sins.

And again in Matthew 18:23-35:

18:23 “For this reason, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his slaves. 18:24 As he began settling his accounts, a man who owed ten thousand talents was brought to him. 18:25 Because he was not able to repay it, the lord ordered him to be sold, along with his wife, children, and whatever he possessed, and repayment to be made. 18:26 Then the slave threw himself to the ground before him, saying, ‘Be patient with me, and I will repay you everything.’ 18:27 The lord had compassion on that slave and released him, and forgave him the debt. 18:28 After he went out, that same slave found one of his fellow slaves who owed him one hundred silver coins. So he grabbed him by the throat and started to choke him, saying, ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ 18:29 Then his fellow slave threw himself down and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will repay you.’ 18:30 But he refused. Instead, he went out and threw him in prison until he repaid the debt. 18:31 When his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were very upset and went and told their lord everything that had taken place. 18:32 Then his lord called the first slave and said to him, ‘Evil slave! I forgave you all that debt because you begged me! 18:33 Should you not have shown mercy to your fellow slave, just as I showed it to you?’ 18:34 And in anger his lord turned him over to the prison guards to torture him until he repaid all he owed. 18:35 So also my heavenly Father will do to you, if each of you does not forgive your brother from your heart.”

(Notably these are both unique to Matthew.)

So now we have a couple of questions.

Firstly, why does Jesus bring up blasphemy when he does? Well, in Luke he talks about blasphemy in the middle of some other instructions, there’s no apparent trigger for that specific subject. But in Matthew and Mark it’s in response to some people (Pharisees or Judean Torah-scholars) respond to Jesus healing a man by saying “he heals by the power of demons!” It is, as Jesus points out, an absurd response. It’s not just weird or sad, it’s literally incoherent. Nobody could possibly think their response made any sense at all. Something about their nonsense is at least adjacent to speaking against the Holy Spirit.

Secondly, what do these two unforgiven sins have in common? Why is failure to forgive others tied to speaking against the Spirit?

The Matthew 18 parable is particularly instructive at the end. We read it in English and wonder, “This makes no sense.” (That’s usually a good indicator we should start digging and not stop until we hit gold.) “How can this man be put in jail _until _he comes up with an absurd amount of money? How is he supposed to do that from prison?” And now we get into some Greek oddities, because the Greek is actually ambiguous. It’s more like the servant is put in jail “until he clears the debt.” But which debt? It can mean “until he pays what he owes,” but it can also mean “until he forgives what is owed to him!” (I suspect the ambiguity is intentional; either will do, but only one is within his power.) This understanding makes more sense of the parable. In Matthew 6, Jesus says we will not be forgiven if we do not forgive, but failure to forgive isn’t a one-time action, it’s a state. God will not forgive us if we do not forgive others, but we can come to forgive others and God’s forgiveness will be waiting.

Is the same true of speaking against the Spirit? Suppose speaking against the Spirit is a state, the state of being in which one can see incontrovertible evidence of your own wrongness and still make up whatever insanity you have to to ignore that evidence and keep living your own way. If the Spirit works in us to heal and change us, to make us able to repent, then speaking against the Spirit can be rejecting our own need for repentance. Every one of us is sick, but only those who know their sickness will receive the physician. As CS Lewis put it, it’s incoherent to think God can take you back if you will not go. There are two kingdoms, and God in his mercy lets us be part of his kingdom where all debts are forgiven, and find life there. But if we will not, we remain part of the kingdom of death, where all debts are enforced, and we must inevitably die there.

As a final note, 10,000 talents is an interesting number. Much has been made of just how much money that is, but I find it interesting that “10,000 talents” is something we’ve seen before, if we know our Hebrew scriptures: it’s a reference to the story of Esther. The man who owed a king 10,000 talents in that story was Haman, who tried to annihilate the Jewish people. Even Persian Hitler has healing available to him, if only he’ll take it.

So do you, no matter what you’ve done. What matters is what you do now.

∞

Sermon on the Mount: fractal structure and meaning

The Sermon on the Mount is often considered the core of Jesus’s teachings. But if you just read the sermon beginning to end, it comes across like it has no structure, like it’s just a random walk through unconnected topics. I propose that it does have a structure, and a very informative one.

In the sermon, we often see things divided into four sections, and the third of the four doesn’t quite fit with the other three. For a clear example, consider what I’d say is the second section of the sermon, which contains four lessons:

6:1 “Be careful not to display your righteousness merely to be seen by people. Otherwise you have no reward with your Father in heaven. 6:2 Thus whenever you do charitable giving, do not blow a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in synagogues and on streets so that people will praise them. I tell you the truth, they have their reward. 6:3 But when you do your giving, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 6:4 so that your gift may be in secret. And your Father, who sees in secret, will reward you.

6:5 “Whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, because they love to pray while standing in synagogues and on street corners so that people can see them. Truly I say to you, they have their reward. 6:6 But whenever you pray, go into your room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father, who sees in secret, will reward you.

6:7 When you pray, do not babble repetitiously like the Gentiles, because they think that by their many words they will be heard. 6:8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. 6:9 So pray this way: Our Father in heaven, may your name be honored, 6:10 may your kingdom come, may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. 6:11 Give us today our daily bread, 6:12 and forgive us our debts, as we ourselves have forgiven our debtors. 6:13 And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. 6:14 “For if you forgive others their sins, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 6:15 But if you do not forgive others, your Father will not forgive you your sins.

6:16 “When you fast, do not look sullen like the hypocrites, for they make their faces unattractive so that people will see them fasting. I tell you the truth, they have their reward. 6:17 When you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, 6:18 so that it will not be obvious to others when you are fasting, but only to your Father who is in secret. And your Father, who sees in secret, will reward you.

  1. Give in secret
  2. Pray in secret
  3. The Lord’s Prayer
  4. Fast in secret

Or consider the fourth section, also with four lessons:

7:13 “Enter through the narrow gate, because the gate is wide and the way is spacious that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. 7:14 But the gate is narrow and the way is difficult that leads to life, and there are few who find it.

7:15 “Watch out for false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are voracious wolves. 7:16 You will recognize them by their fruit. Grapes are not gathered from thorns or figs from thistles, are they? 7:17 In the same way, every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. 7:18 A good tree is not able to bear bad fruit, nor a bad tree to bear good fruit. 7:19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 7:20 So then, you will recognize them by their fruit.

7:21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter into the kingdom of heaven – only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. 7:22 On that day, many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, didn’t we prophesy in your name, and in your name cast out demons and do many powerful deeds?’ 7:23 Then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you. Go away from me, you lawbreakers!’

7:24 “Everyone who hears these words of mine and does them is like a wise man who built his house on rock. 7:25 The rain fell, the flood came, and the winds beat against that house, but it did not collapse because it had been founded on rock. 7:26 Everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. 7:27 The rain fell, the flood came, and the winds beat against that house, and it collapsed; it was utterly destroyed!”

  1. Narrow gate vs. wide gate
  2. Bad fruit vs. good fruit
  3. Fruit matters more than words
  4. House on sand vs. rock

Those two sections are kind of obvious, and help us identify the first and third section. The first section is all of chapter 5, which also has four distinct lessons.

  1. Beatitudes
  2. Salt of the earth/light of the world
  3. Righteousness through keeping Torah properly
  4. Antitheses

What’s left is the third section, and it’s not nearly so obvious as the other three, but it does have a pattern. The catch here is that each of the four lessons in this section is actually two lessons, and each pair (except the third) is on the same two subjects. The first half of each is about God providing for our needs, and the second half is about generosity in our treatment of others.

  1. Treasure in heaven vs. earth / good eye vs. bad eye
  2. Do not worry / do not judge
  3. Speck vs. plank / pearls before pigs
  4. Ask, seek, knock / do unto others

We can now put these four sections in order, with some proposed section headings.

Being God’s children:

  1. Beatitudes
  2. Salt of the earth/light of the world
  3. Righteousness through keeping Torah properly
  4. Antitheses

How God’s kingdom looks:

  1. Give in secret
  2. Pray in secret
  3. The Lord’s Prayer
  4. Fast in secret

God providing/treating others well:

  1. Treasure in heaven vs. earth / good eye vs. bad eye
  2. Do not worry / do not judge
  3. Speck vs. plank / pearls before pigs
  4. Ask, seek, knock / Do unto others

The way of life vs. the way of death:

  1. Narrow gate vs. wide gate
  2. Bad fruit vs. good fruit
  3. Fruit matters more than words
  4. House on sand vs. rock

Now, for our final trick, let’s take those section headings and see where else we find those same ideas. Oh, wait! It’s the Lord’s Prayer! Consider that prayer as a set of four couplets, which in Hebrew fashion repeat the same idea twice.

  • Our Father in heaven / hallowed be your name. God is our father, and we are those who make God’s name be seen as holy throughout the world. Two ways of saying the same thing, because that’s simply what it means to be God’s children. The Beatitudes, salt and light, and the antitheses are all how we should be as people, so people see God through us.

  • Your kingdom come / your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Two ways of saying the same thing, because God’s kingdom on earth looks like God’s will being done, and what God wants is people being right internally rather than doing good things for show.

  • Give us this day our daily bread / forgive our sins as we forgive others. Just like in the third section of the sermon, each lesson is a pair of lessons about God providing and about our treatment of others. This doesn’t look like two way of saying the same thing, but it is. God gives us what we need, and that is identical to God forgiving us as we forgive others.

  • Lead us not into temptation / deliver us from evil. Two ways of saying the same thing; we have a choice to make, and we must choose well.

In summary, the Sermon on the Mount has four sections, each section has four lessons on the same topic, and both the third section and the third lesson in each section stand out from the others. The sections are all topics from the Lord’s Prayer, which is itself one of the mismatched third lessons. It’s structure that appears at multiple levels and the lowest level references the top levels all over again. The Sermon on the Mount is a fractal.

∞

Virtue ethics

Let’s talk about ethics. I’m not any sort of expert, but the great Dr. Anagonye once explained that there are three kinds of ethical systems: rule-based, virtue-based, and consequentialist. Either an action is right because it’s consistent with the rules, it is right because it is the thing a good person would do, or it is right because good things come of it.

Virtue ethics are particularly interesting. If you should, for example, be a brave person, the right action for you is the one that is bravest. And because we are creatures of habit, that action actually makes you a braver person. We live as the person we want to be, and it becomes easier and easier to be that person over time. We become better by acting better. We don’t exactly fake it until we make it, but it’s not far off.

I would suggest that Christian ethics should be understood as virtue ethics. The human problem, from this perspective, is that we are lacking virtue. It’s not that we are people who have done bad things, it’s that we are simply bad people. We can’t not do bad things, selfish things, short-sighted things, self-destructive things. Our nature is sinful. We need our hearts replaced or there is no hope for us to survive, and truthfully, is it even worth living as the creatures we have been?

But we can’t change alone, and God, hallelujah, in his mercy has not left us alone. He isn’t demanding perfection from us; he’s offering it to us. As Christians, the right action is the one that Christ would do (WWJD YODO and then face judgment), because that is the action that makes us more like Christ. These sad beings we are cannot survive; if you gave a human immortality and then said “BTW that one thing will kill you” we’ll do exactly that one thing. We have to change, or we will and must die.

So just for fun (because this is my idea of fun) I searched scripture for virtue lists. I came up with a couple dozen, containing about 200 distinct entries. I then grouped them. First I note there are three particular virtue clusters, which are almost meta-virtues:

  • Commitment to truth, a recognition that external reality exists and a desire to become correct
  • Humility before God, continual recognition that his ways are correct and ours are wrong
  • Commitment to restoration, recognition that things are not the way they should be and the drive to fix them

Put another way, recognize that objective rightness does exist, everything (including you) is broken and dying, and God’s way is the way of life. The rest is just figuring out what that way of life looks like. And what do you know, the other virtues can be summed up under the fruit of the Spirit. Approximately:

  • Love and respect
  • Faithfulness
  • Patience and hope
  • Kindness, compassion, mercy, and generosity
  • Gratitude and joy
  • Forgiveness and peacemaking
  • Integrity and self-control

So if you find yourself trying to understand Christian ethics as a giant list of detailed rules, maybe back up and consider that rules should be pointing you toward virtues. The central question is, who are you trying to be? Then go be that person.

∞

Where did all these demons come from?

Another question about demons interests me that I’ve never seen addressed: where did they come from, anyhow?

Read through the whole Old Testament. There’s not a mention of demon oppression anywhere. The closest we get is Saul who is oppressed by an evil spirit from God. (This is not “evil” in the moral sense, but evil in the sense of causing injury.) There’s mention of a “demon” in Leviticus, but it’s not explained, and doesn’t seem to be the sort that oppresses people. In Daniel, King Nebuchadnezzar is driven from human society in a fashion that looks kind of like demon oppression, but it’s not described as such. In the Old Testament, we just don’t see demon oppression as a phenomenon.

Yet in the gospels, Jesus can’t step outside without tripping over a demoniac. We go from a world with no mention of demons in it, to demons everywhere you look. It’s pandemonium! And Matthew, Mark, and Luke also feel no need to explain to the audiences what’s happening, “Oh, this was during the great dimensional cross-rip of the Judean Tetrarchy.” They just assume their audiences know what’s up with all the demons and go on with telling their stories.

(John, on the other hand, doesn’t mention any demons, which is an interesting point in itself.)

It’s a little better (???) when we look at the Second Temple literature, in between the Old and New Testament. In Tobit, about 200 BCE, a Jewish woman living in Ninevah after the Assyrian deportation is oppressed by a demon who kills every man she marries, until her final husband exercises the demon by burning fish organs. (The Deuterocanon is trippy sometimes!) And 1 Enoch from about the same time period elaborates at length on how the spirits of the Nephilim from Genesis 6 became evil spirits tormenting mankind. One might assume the writers of 1 Enoch feel a need to explain the origin of the demons they encounter in the world. And there are other second-temple-era references to demons, such as Solomon having knowledge of how to drive them out.

Clearly the original audiences of the (synoptic) gospels were expected to not be surprised that Jesus casts out demons, nor that there are so many demons to cast out. If we assume the biblical texts genuinely describe demons, it seems like either 1) at some point a bunch of demons showed up in Israel that just weren’t there before, or 2) demons were all over Israel in the Old Testament period too, but nobody wrote anything about it.

So what changed?

Here’s a guess, and it’s only a guess. But when Jerusalem fell to Babylon and the first temple was destroyed, Ezekiel had a vision of God’s glorious presence up and leaving. And while a second temple was constructed, that presence of God was never understood to have returned. Indeed, the Jewish people of the second temple period understood themselves to still be in exile, despite having bodily returned to the promised land.

Perhaps during the Old Testament period, demons really were everywhere in the world. Everywhere except Israel, because Israel was protected by the presence of YHWH. When he withdrew his presence, that protection was lost. So in the second temple period we read about in the gospels, Israel was subject to the same demonic “infestation” as the rest of the world always had been. And after Pentecost, when God’s presence returned to his new temple, the Church, demons have again been largely driven out of the entire world.

None of that explains why John doesn’t talk about demons, of course. That’s another post.

∞

Spirit of Python

I’m a fan of the late Dr. Michael Heiser. If you want to spend four hours listening to an exquisite exposition comparing the early and late dates of the Exodus, he’s your guy. What he’s probably best known for is his study of the spiritual world-view of the biblical authors, which is the kind of thinking that leads me to posts like this.

Acts 16 has a particularly interesting story.

16:16 Now as we were going to the place of prayer, a slave girl met us who had a spirit that enabled her to foretell the future by supernatural means. She brought her owners a great profit by fortune-telling. 16:17 She followed behind Paul and us and kept crying out, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who are proclaiming to you the way of salvation.” 16:18 She continued to do this for many days. But Paul became greatly annoyed, and turned and said to the spirit, “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her!” And it came out of her at once. 16:19 But when her owners saw their hope of profit was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the authorities.

A few things catch my attention about this passage.

  1. There are all sorts of examples of demon oppression in Matthew, Mark, Luke and Acts (though notably almost none elsewhere). The language here is different. This isn’t described as a demon or an unclean spirit. Instead, it’s a spirit of divination. In Greek it’s a spirit of Python, which as a programmer I just find hilarious.

  2. This spirit doesn’t torment the girl. It seems to do nothing at all to harm her. In fact, the spirit doesn’t seem to do anything objectionable! Paul really is a servant of the most-high God proclaiming the way of salvation! At a glance, this girl/spirit is helping!

  3. Paul doesn’t drive out the spirit on sight. He waits days, and finally only drives it out because it annoys him enough.

  4. This spirit has enough people convinced that it can tell the future that the girls' enslavers are making a profit. How? Does it just put on a good show? Or can this thing actually tell the future? Or maybe somewhere in between, it doesn’t know the future, but it knows things the girl couldn’t otherwise know, like how demons would recognize Jesus on sight.

I suggest that this spirit is an example of something not found elsewhere in scripture: a neutral spirit. It isn’t working directly for God, but it also isn’t trying to be a force of chaos and death by harming people. Maybe it wants to serve God but doesn’t know how to do it well, maybe it has some other tiny agenda. But it’s just hanging out in this girl and making her life… interesting.

Now, this girl can’t be running around all day not making a profit. Her enslavers wouldn’t let that go on. And we note that Paul driving out that spirit isn’t an obvious solution to his annoyance; the girl can still run around proclaiming exactly what she has been! Yet she apparently stops when her profitability is removed. Presumably this spirit is calling out Paul as a servant of God because that will somehow make money, and when the money stops, so does the proclamation.

I suggest this group is using Paul as a draw for larger audiences. The spirit’s declarations bring people to Paul, and the bigger the crowd, the more people are going to want to pay for a foretelling from the girl. If the enslavers think Paul is a huckster like they are, then they might just see this as synergy between their two “acts.” In short, they’re making a profit off Paul’s spread of the gospel. And there’s no way Paul will put up with that for long.

∞

Romans 13 and the presumed justice of civil authority

How Christians should interact with civil government is a deep topic, which I don’t plan to comprehensively address here. But I do want to talk about one passage, Romans 13:1-7.

13:1 Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except by God’s appointment, and the authorities that exist have been instituted by God. 13:2 So the person who resists such authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will incur judgment 13:3 (for rulers cause no fear for good conduct but for bad). Do you desire not to fear authority? Do good and you will receive its commendation, 13:4 for it is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be in fear, for it does not bear the sword in vain. It is God’s servant to administer retribution on the wrongdoer. 13:5 Therefore it is necessary to be in subjection, not only because of the wrath of the authorities but also because of your conscience. 13:6 For this reason you also pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants devoted to governing. 13:7 Pay everyone what is owed: taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due.

This passage is often understood to mean that all authorities everywhere are put in place by God. There is certainly a degree to which that is true, in that God has the power to remove any authorities and is choosing not to in many cases. But the idea that God specifically selects all civil rulers is not found in this passage. Let me explain.

In this passage, Paul says that the authorities that exist have been appointed by God. We tend to assume that he is making a universal statement about all authorities in every context. Here’s the problem: he also says that the authorities will commend you if you do what is good. To be consistent in our reading, we would have to assume that that is also a statement about all authorities in every context. Agreed?

But that simply cannot be! Paul himself has been assaulted by authorities for doing good. Paul has been the authority that assaults others for doing good. The entire gospel Paul preaches is that of a man who was crucified by the authorities despite having done no wrong! There is no way Paul could ever say “all authorities everywhere will commend you if you do good.”

So what is happening here?

Our mistake is in universalizing this passage. We hear Paul say “the authorities that exist” and assume he’s referring to all authorities in all places in times. In fact, Paul is writing to Christians in Rome around 56 AD. Perhaps everything Paul says about those authorities is true: they were appointed by God, and would reward those who do right. We have no evidence of any empire-wide Roman persecution of Christians until after that point. In fact, not long after writing Romans Paul travels to Jerusalem and the temple authorities try to have him killed, while it’s the Roman authorities that keep Paul alive! Clearly Paul doesn’t see Rome as a force necessarily working against Christ and his Church at this point in history.

There’s every chance Paul wouldn’t say the same about the authorities in Rome a few years later, since they had him executed.

So what can we learn from this? Well, apparently some authorities are appointed by God, but not necessarily all. Which ones? Presumably the ones that reward the good and punish the wrong. The authorities appointed by God are God’s servants, even if they don’t realize that’s what they’re doing. Authorities that do not serve God, on the other hand, authorities that work against God, Paul says nothing about in this passage. We have to look elsewhere for guidance on dealing with them. Perhaps that’s for another post.

∞

Salt as fertilizer

Jesus tells his audience for the Sermon on the Mount that they are the “salt of the earth.” What, exactly, does that mean? I thought I knew before I started writing this. Part of the purpose of this blog is to work out my own thoughts, even if it’s in public!

Matthew is the only one to use the phrase “salt of the earth” but Mark and Luke both talk about salt losing its saltiness, with variations. The variations may help us figure out what’s happening.

Matthew: You are the salt of the earth. But if salt loses its flavor, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled on by people.

Mark: Everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can you make it salty again? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with each other.

Luke: Salt is good, but if salt loses its flavor, how can its flavor be restored? It is of no value for the soil or for the manure pile; it is to be thrown out. The one who has ears to hear had better listen!

Let’s start with Mark, whose text is honestly confounding. Jesus is talking about how avoiding hell (Gehenna in this case, we’ll talk about “hell” later) is worth any cost. And then he says “everyone will be salted with fire.” (Or maybe he says “Every sacrifice will be salted with salt.” Or maybe both, the manuscripts vary.) As best I can tell, nobody is sure what this means. Jesus seems to jump from avoiding hell to being salted with fire, to salt losing saltiness, to having salt in ourselves and being at peace with each other. There’s no obvious thread here.

Now, I think there is a train of thought happening here, but I’m going to have to save that for another post. For now, let’s look at the words being used.

The word for “salted” shows up nowhere else in the New Testament except Matthew 5 and Mark 9. But in the Old Testament it does show up in Leviticus 2:13 and in Ezekiel 16:4.

That Ezekiel passage is particularly interesting, because it implies newborns should be salted. Why, exactly? Well, again, nobody seems to know, but it’s been a thing discussed for a long time. So is Jesus saying fire will do for us what salt does for newborns, some form of cleaning and purification? But then, why would we have salt in ourselves? The language doesn’t quite fit.

In the Leviticus 2 passage, it’s specifically grain offerings that have to be salted, so at least it makes some sense to talk about having salt in yourself, if you (or whoever Jesus is addressing here) are the grain offering. And grain offerings were offerings by fire, so that’s consistent at least with everyone being salted with fire. The fire applied to the people (which is presumably unpleasant) is like the salt of the grain offering, perhaps suffering to be made a holy offering to God, much as Paul compares himself to a drink offering. Maybe that’s something Mark has going on.

Except for Luke, where that makes no sense at all. Luke talks about salt being fit for soil or a manure pile, not for offerings to God. This is salt as fertilizer. Their salt wouldn’t have been our chemically pure table salt, it would have been obtained by evaporating sea water, and sea salt has all sorts of great plant nutrients in it. Salting the earth doesn’t ruin it, it turns it into a productive field, because really, who would be stupid enough to ruin perfectly good land in a context where your society needs every scrap of food it can grow? Now weirdly, in Luke we get no explanation of why Jesus suddenly starts talking about salt. He doesn’t compare it to people or make any apparent point with it. This may require further consideration in another post.

Can we square salt as fertilizer with Mark’s usage? Mark’s “have salt in yourself” makes sense, if we are ourselves the manure the salt is mixed into, so we can be fertilizer. So while Matthew says “you are the salt” and Mark says “have salt in you,” they’re using slightly different metaphors, but either way the purpose is for us to apply that salt to the world, preparing the world for growth. That’s consistent with the common agricultural/harvest metaphor for the coming of the Kingdom of God; the purpose of God’s people is to prepare the world for the growth of the Kingdom. But what does it mean for everyone to be salted with fire?

Now I want to get into the Greek a bit. I claim no expertise here, but as far as I can tell, the word here translated “everyone” is really just “all.” All will be salted with fire. The idea that it’s “all people” is an assumption by the translators from context, but it could also mean “all the world” or “everything.” Now, the idea that everything will be salted by fire makes more sense, if we understand salting to mean “preparing for new growth.” The world will be prepared for new growth by fire coming to destroy the corruption that already exists, and the disciples will be part of that as long as they don’t become corrupt and lose their own potential for facilitating that growth in the world.

There are some very smart people who read the salt passages differently than I do, of course. If you’re convinced that salt really is about purification rather than fertilization, I’m not claiming to be an authority that can tell you otherwise. But I do think this is a very significant theological point. If we assume these passages to be directed at all of Christ’s disciples, we ourselves should have salt in us, and be salt to the world. But are we just preserving the world against destruction, or are we making the world ready for new growth? These are very different perspectives of what exactly our purpose is.

I would suggest that God’s acts of creation are not just bringing something from nothing, they’re bringing order from chaos. As we have been assigned the task of reflecting God’s image to creation, we are invited to participate in that ongoing work of creation. Clearly we are not here to merely preserve what we have been given, but to make things grow. God’s people are the fertilizer of the earth; be sure to keep that fertilizer in yourself, so you can do the job you were meant to do.

∞

The Antitheses

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus gives the six antitheses. “You have heard it said X, but I say to you Y.” I suggest that these six are specifically chosen to represent six figures who were, or should have been, leaders of God’s people. Let’s take a look.

First, we read about murder, anger with a brother, and offerings to God. Who does that make you think of? Cain.

Second, we read about adultery and looking at a woman to desire her. That’s David.

Third, divorce. This is actually kind of interesting, because there are surprisingly few people in the Old Testament who get divorced. Maybe Sampson, maybe Vashti. But the big one is Ezra, who commands the returned exiles to divorce their foreign wives, in a fashion it sounds like Jesus would not approve.

Fourth, oaths. There are a few notable oaths in the Old Testament. Jephthah comes to mind. But in this case, I’m going to suggest it’s Nehemiah. We’ll see why in a minute. Nehemiah leads the returning exiles to take an oath to obey the law of God.

Fifth, retaliation. Now, I’m going to go off the rails here. I promise I’ll explain. This is John Hyrcanus. Hyrcanus was a Maccabean king/high priest who conquered Israel’s historical enemies of Samaria and Edom about 100 years before Jesus.

Sixth, hate for enemies. This is particularly interesting because nowhere in scripture is anyone commanded to hate their enemies. Jesus seems to be responding to Essene teachings. (The Essenes were, in short, a Jewish monastic group who lived in the wilderness and was devoted to maximal personal purity. You can probably thank them for the Dead Sea Scrolls.) Now, there’s one historical figure who looks a lot like an Essene: John the Baptist. And the Baptist is not exactly all about reconciliation with certain people.

So our six figures form a chiasm, a structure with three pairs mirroring each other around a center pivot!

  • A: Cain
    • B: David
      • C: Ezra
      • C': Nehemiah
    • B': John Hyrcanus
  • A': John the Baptist

Ezra and Nehemiah in the center are an obvious pair, all about return from exile. David and John Hyrcanus are kings who represent the greatest achievements of their eras. Cain the first one after the first Adam, while John the Baptist is the last one before the Last Adam. Together, all six represent leaders of God’s people, both before and after the return from exile, who in some way or other didn’t quite Get It. Jesus is using them as object lessons for the broader message of Matthew 5: who are God’s people supposed to be?

∞

Inheriting the Kingdom of God

I like thinking about how Jesus would have been understood by his Jewish audience. For today’s example, let’s look at two parables: the treasure hidden in the field, and the pearl of great price. (Matthew 13:44-46)

Rabbis like Jesus would often assume that their audience was deeply familiar with the Hebrew scriptures, and they would make references to stories that were always on everyone’s mind. Let me suggest that Jesus is doing exactly that in both these parables. Let me also suggest that each of these parables has two characters: the buyer and the seller. We are meant to be comparing them.

Let’s focus on the pearl for a moment. The man buying the pearl is a merchant. When do merchants buy things? When they can get a good deal, when what they’re buying is worth more than the price tag on it. The seller in this story has this pearl and is willing to part with it. They don’t see the value, but the buyer does.

The same is true for the treasure in the field. Western readers often ask, is it right for the buyer to buy the field without telling the seller what he found there? But just like the pearl, it’s the seller’s job to know the value of what he has. If I find a rare book in a used bookstore for $2, I’m not going to go to the seller and say, “Don’t you know how much this is worth!?” I’m going to buy the book!

So if Jesus is referencing someone from the Old Testament, who is it?

Esau. Esau, firstborn to Isaac. Esau, inheritor of all God’s promises to Abraham. Esau through whom all nations of the world would be blessed. Esau, whose progeny brought salvation to all mankind.

Except not, because he really wanted those lentils. (Side-note: when Hebrews talks about Esau being an “immoral person” it uses the word porne. He’s literally a whore for stew.) Esau stood to inherit the most valuable birthright in the history of mankind, but he didn’t see its value. Jacob did.

The Kingdom of God belongs, not to those who are born into it, but to those who do whatever it takes to get it, and will not let it go.