Ezekiel the Heretic

"And Joshua, and all Israel with him, took Achan the son of Zerah, and the silver, and the garment, and the wedge of gold, and his sons, and his daughters, and his oxen, and his asses, and his sheep, and his tent, and all that he had: and they brought them unto the valley of Achor. And Joshua said, Why have you troubled us? the LORD will trouble you this day. And all Israel stoned him with stones, and burned them with fire, after they had stoned them with stones." (Joshua 7:24-25)

What a terrible and fascinating story. What on earth could it possibly have to do with Ezekiel? Let me explain the background to this story first. Achen was a soldier of Israel and was there with Joshua at the slaughter of Jericho. Before going into battle with Jericho Joshua had commanded that all of the treasures of Jericho belonged to the Lord and no one was to take what belonged to God. Needless to say, Achen did take from the city and buried it under his tent. When the Children of Israel went up to attack Ai they lost the battle badly. Joshua saw this as a sign that God was not with Israel and he complained to God. It is reported that God told him that one person in the camp had sinned against God and stolen from Jericho and so all of Israel was being punished for the sin of one man. No mention was made on the fact that Israel had become so confident that instead of attacking Ai with the entire army they only sent three thousand men, because Ai was a small city. Instead of an easy victory, however, Israel was defeated and chased from the city. Rather than assigning the cause to Israel’s over confidence, they assigned the entire blame to the sin of one man.

There is one thing that is worth mentioning before moving on. This idea that the sin of one person would inflict punishment upon everyone was very common and, if the record can be believed, God set this precedent Himself. This cultural practice was upheld by verses such as the following, “…and will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and upon the children’s children, unto the third and to the fourth generation.” (Exodus 34:7) Multiple times in the Old Testament the sin of one person caused the death of multiple people, it didn’t just happen in this story. The converse is also true, the righteousness of one person often spared the lives of all those around. In fact, In the previous chapter of Joshua all of Rehab’s family was saved, not because of their righteous deeds, but because of the actions of Rehab. Multiple times God spares the life of a king for the sake of the righteousness of his father.

So obviously Achen is discovered and Joshua asks him, “My son, give, I pray thee, glory to the Lord God of Israel, and make confession unto him; and tell me now what tyou have done; hide it not from me.” Achen confesses his sin and tells Joshua what he did, and by the command of god himself, Joshua takes Achen’s entire family and all his animals and the entire camp of Israel throws large stones at them until they all die by blunt force trauma and internal bleeding. Then the camp took their bodies and all their possessions and burned them with fire as a kind of twisted offering to god, and “…the Lord turned from the fierceness of his anger.”

So what does Ezekiel have to do with all of this? Quite simply stated, Ezekiel so pointedly contradicts scripture that if he were to preach today he would be labeled as a liberal heretic who was purposefully attacking the gospel of God and is deserving of hell fire for leading God’s people astray. To really understand what I am about to say you really need to read Ezekiel chapter 18 in its entirety. The chapter starts out with God questioning a common proverb in Israel. The proverb is, “The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” The meaning of the proverb is clear after reading the story of Achen. The fathers ate the grapes, but the children also feel the effects of the stinging sourness. God reacts strongly to this saying, stating the following, “As I live, saith the Lord God, you shall not have occasion any more to use this proverb in Israel.” At this point I become very confused. Why does God contradict himself here? Didn’t he command Joshua to not only kill Achen, but also his sons, his daughters, his wife, and all his animals?

Is this even the same God that Ezekiel is presenting? It is not just us who asks this question; all of Israel asks this question of Ezekiel. They accuse him of presenting a God contrary to the word, yet Ezekiel continues on in his argument. Ezekiel goes through verse after verse describing in extreme detail all the wicked deeds and good deeds people can do. He finishes this back and forth between the wicked father and the righteous son with this statement, ”The soul that sins, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him.” Further more what is even more unbelievable is that Ezekiel begins to paint a picture of God that is so fantastically more compassionate and forgiving than any other picture painted in the history of Biblical literature up to this point. “If the wicked will turn from all his sins that he has committed, and keeps all my statutes, and does that which is lawful and right, he shall not die.” Are you guys getting as excited about this verse as I am? I wish you could feel my excitement as I write this, this verse is fantastic! “All his transgressions that he has committed, they shall not be mentioned unto him: in his righteousness that he has done he shall live!”

What comes next in the passage so contradicts the actions of Joshua that you almost have to ask the question, “was Joshua worshiping the same God?” “Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? Saith the Lord God: and not that he should return from his ways, and live?” Ezekiel is essentially saying this, “Listen people, the death of the wicked does not appease God!” The people’s response to Ezekiel is surprising to me, they tell him “The way of the Lord is not equal!” God responds to the people by saying, “Hear now, oh House of Israel; is not my way equal? Are not your ways unequal?...For I have no pleasure in the death of him that dies saith the Lord God: wherefore turn yourselves, and live!”

What I find most fascinating about Ezekiel’s presentation about God is that even up to the time of Jesus' Ezekiel's message had still not been accepted as gospel by the religious leaders or the general public. Ezekiel simply walked to close to the line of heresy. Thus when the disciples asked Jesus, “Master, who sinned, this man or his parents…?” (John 9:2) The answer was shocking to everyone around, as if they had never heard of Ezekiel before, “Neither has this man sinned, nor his parents…” The same exact thing happened with the man with palsy, the first thing Jesus says to the man when he is lowered in from the roof is, “Son, be of good cheer; your sins are forgiven.” (Matthew 9:2)

These kinds of teachings are what got Jesus killed. Jesus contradicted the Scriptures. Jesus preached the message of a heretic. Is it any wonder why Ezekiel is one of those books that no one wants to touch? Even today people do not know what to do with Ezekiel. He has been portrayed as a mental case, an eccentric, a fraud, and a source for conspiracy and theory. What is missed in a study of Ezekiel is that Ezekiel is all about a revelation of the character of God. Ezekiel was building up a new foundation off which to base theology. His writings are a revelation of Jesus, but in order to reveal Jesus accurately He had to tear down the foundations that were built in the past in order to pave the way for the revelation that was soon to come. When people say that the Bible never contradicts itself I simply point to Ezekiel and Joshua, two polar opposites preaching extremely different messages about the same God.

This is where I proudly place myself squarely among the company of the heretics with a simple statement: In reading scripture, you must read it with a filter. All scripture is profitable, but not all scripture is equal. As is clearly seen with Ezekiel and Joshua, the Bible reveals a progression of understanding. It reveals a God in motion who is constantly leading people to greater understanding. God is not stagnant. If there is one thing that should be taken from this comparison of two different people in opposites sides of the Old Testament, it is this, God is on the move in scripture. You should not believe that God was not leading Joshua, rather God was not willing to leave humanity at the story of Joshua. God is constantly leading us on to something better. God does not exist only where the Bible ends, God is still moving, and He will continue to move us toward deeper and deeper understanding of His character. As long as God is moving there will always be prophets speaking the heresy of God.

What Makes You a Christian?

What makes you a Christian? The answer to that question may vary widely based on what denomination of Christian you ask. Christianity is such a diverse group of people, most of whom think very differently from each other. There are some sects of Christianity who claim that unless you believe and think like them you are not truly a Christian, yet I think, for the most part, people are ok with other denominations labeling themselves as Christian. 

What does being a Christian mean though? Is it the belief that Jesus is the son of God sent from heaven to pay for our sins? Many Christians may readily jump up and shout "Amen!" Yet not all Christians believe that. I myself have questioned that one, yet I am still a Christian. There were some in my own denomination, even James White, who did not believe that Jesus was God, yet they still lived according to His teachings and preached His message. 

I think the answer to this question of what makes one a Christian is becoming increasingly important in the massively converging world we live in. We need unity in this world,  as the current Pope has been strongly noting in his campaigns recently. Christianity needs unity in order to create a society that is better than our past. That doesn't mean we all have to think or believe the same way, it means we must find common ground on which we can stand in opposition to the oppressive and backwards societies of our past. 

I believe that being a Christian goes far beyond belief and doctrine, as was manifested in the life and teachings of Jesus. What does doctrine profit if it does not manifest in a life committed to helping those around us? If your doctrine and your beliefs do not cause you to be a better person and do not cause you to love all those around regardless of their religious ideals, political party, economic standing, or sexual orientation, then you have become just a sounding brass, or clanging symbol. Does your faith drive you to reach those who need your help, or does it cause you to turn your back on those you deem unfit for your help and friendship? We need to change how we identify as Christians. We as Christians should be distinguished how Christ was distinguished not so much by what we believe, but by how we live.

A New Ethic

It is Time for A New Ethic

Timothy Prewitt

Loma Linda University School of Religion

August 30, 2015

            There have been many philosophies off which human society has based ethical and moral code over the course of our 30,000 odd year history. They range from religious and cultic codes of conduct down to simple duties inside small communities. The debates and arguments about which philosophy is the most accurate and serves society the best could go on endlessly. I would wager to say that for each individual the moral code varies even among proponents of the same ethic. No one has gotten it right. This is obvious just by the very fact that we have so many different interpretations of what a moral life looks like. If morality were simple there would be only one philosophy and everyone would agree on it. The fact that humanity has missed the mark time and time again is even more evident when you take a quick survey of human history and comprehend all the dark places human morality has led us. Genocide, crusades, the Holocaust, jihad, and innumerable atrocities have been the result of very different philosophies.

            How do we solve the problems faced by a growing society that is ever at war over seemingly limited resources? It is clear that the answer is not religion. If the answer were truly religion then the most influential religion of human history would have solved the problem long ago, yet as we have seen time and time again, the Bible fails to give humanity a solid, unified framework off which to base absolute morals. This is evidenced in the debates we see in different Christian denominations just within the United States. The Seventh-day Adventist denomination has just ruled that unions cannot choose to ordain women to ministry, and at least half the church believes women should never be ordained simply because they interpret the Bible to say that God does not want women to minister to men. They believe God to be sexist and arbitrary. In the same denomination you have people excommunicating members of their society simply because they believe the Bible says that all homosexuals will burn in hell in the last days, thus they carry out the justice of God and do whatever the law allows in order to remind these people that they are sinners deserving of death.

The Bible cannot answer the issues that society is faced with, at least not coherently enough to provide a unified voice that causes love to pervade our dealings with people. We must discover a new ethic, one that is universal to all human society, one that is free of individual interpretation, manipulation, and human bias. One might rightly argue that such an ethic does not exist and will never exist, and this may be true, but there is one ethic that comes close to addressing human behavior and interaction in an unbiased way. That philosophy is Naturalism.

There are many forms of Naturalism, thus Naturalism is not entirely free of human interpretation and manipulation. Evolutionary Naturalism has been used to justify eugenics and the mass murder of people, yet Naturalism rightly understood will avoid this danger. The correct form of Naturalism does not base its foundation off of human desires and tendencies - it is a science, it simply observes what is. The reason this is advantageous is because most philosophies deal solely with what ought to be, and that is the problem, because what ought to be is often subject to each individual’s ideals and desires for their own survival. Naturalism is the study of the natural world and the concretes of reality. It focuses on what is actually observable.  Naturalism is free from the whims of a fickle god and the dictates of a stubborn people.

The father of Agnosticism, Thomas Huxley wrote, “As a natural process, of the same character as the development of a tree from its seed, or a fowl from its egg, evolution excludes creation and all other kinds of supernatural intervention.”[1]  He then goes on to explain that if it turns out that indeed a supernatural being did create the universe, then everything inside of it, including its processes, are created by the supernatural agent and are not interfered upon by the creator because the universe has been created to operate by these fixed laws. Not that a god could not interfere but that the god wouldn’t, simply because he or she would not need to. This argument comes from the idea that God has created the universe to run a certain way. Had God desired it to run differently he or she would have created it that way in the first place. Thus Naturalism does not simply cater to the atheist and the agnostic, but can include the religious as well. Naturalism does not exclude the possibility of a God who interacts with reality; rather it shows a God whose interaction is actually built into reality itself. In other words, the study of nature is the revelation of God.

Naturalism is not fully without use of “ought” when describing societies morals. Ethical Naturalism is not simply the study of human behavior, rather it is the study of what human behavior ought to be in the face of what is. Naturalism acknowledges the observation of nature’s tendency to compete and to create a “survival of the fittest” reality. What ethical Naturalism does is review what the human response is to this competitive world and thus builds a moral code off of what is concrete. Humans do not simply follow the progression of evolution; rather we fight it at every turn. Humanity creates order out of disorder. We plant vineyards in desserts where vineyards should not grow, we weed gardens allowing plants to survive that are not the most fit for survival in that given environment.

Huxley states, “As I have already urged, the practice of that which is ethically best—what we call goodness or virtue—involves a course of conduct which, in all respects, is opposed to that which leads to success in the cosmic struggle for existence.”[2] Huxley points out that how society is constructed is not the survival of the fittest but rather the fitting of as many as possible to survive. Society’s hope is not in giving into the natural processes or from trying to run away from them, but rather in combating them. Thus is created a more solid understanding of the value of human life out of the observations of nature.

Ethical Naturalism is not subject to the whims of a god, nor the whims of individual ideals, neither is it a slave to the dictates of evolution. Rather, it is a recognition of what is and a deliberate determination to do that which brings order to the processes of an unordered system. Ethical Naturalism does not call for the self-assertion of individuals, it calls for self-restraint, it does not call for competition over resources, it calls for the cooperation of society in furthering the survival of each other. Thus, inside human society, we should not be promoting the survival of those who are most fit to survive. We should be holding up the survival of those who are, what Huxley would call, “ethically best.”

This is not a call for radical socialism and the support of all humans simply because they are human, it is the call for the support of those who are combating the natural process of equilibrium. This again is where the “ought” comes into Ethical Naturalism. We ought to combat the processes of evolution and put into practice our God-given ability to afford a change in the natural process. We ought not to support a system that allows for the survival of the fittest, but rather create one that rewards those who are ethically grounded in their desire to create a society that is in opposition to the natural drive to be better than one’s fellow beings.

If society, including Christianity, adopted Ethical Naturalism in place of their previously held moral and ethical framework, we would have a system that allowed for human diversity, desire, ambition, and progress and yet opposed the unmoral segregation of humans who are considered less then everyone else simply because of things such as their gender or sexual orientation. A complete and detailed discussion of how Ethical Naturalism deals with subjects such as gender differences and sexuality is beyond the reach of this paper, but it does answer those questions in a way that gives personhood to the individuals and acknowledges their worth.

Ethical Naturalism is relatively simple when it comes to normally complex topics on human behavior. Ethical Naturalism asks two simple questions: “Is it natural?” and “Does it cause harm to others?” You can almost always find what the moral standard should be based off of these two questions. For instance, Naturalism can be played out inside a discussion on homosexuality. Is it natural? This question is normally difficult because it goes into questions on nature verses nurture, etc. but naturalism isn’t concerned with those facts, it just looks at what is the natural behavior. Is it natural for two people of the same sex to be sexually involved with each other? The answer is obviously no. Two males or two females are not physically or biologically compatible, their sexuality serves no useful purpose. Yet is love of one individual for another natural? The answer is obviously yes. So then the attraction is not natural but the love that flows out of that attraction is.

At this point the second question can be introduced, “Does it harm others?” Does one person loving someone else of the same sex harm other people? Other than potential emotional harm done to the families who follow a strict religious ethic, or emotional damage done to the homosexual individual whose family disowns him or her, the answer is no. So why would we try to push homosexuals out of our society just because their attraction is not biologically accurate?

Religious ethics are almost always based on exclusion. They seek to determine a standard that is set to include only like-minded individuals. Organized religions are by their very nature exclusive and thus any ethic or moral standard that comes out of such religious belief will be exclusive and rigid in its interpretations of what is and isn’t ethical or moral. Ethical Naturalism avoids arbitrary standards of morality. It is unbiased toward religions or cultures. It is based on observational facts and not simply on the theorizing of a few men or women. The era of Biblical ethics must come to an end if society is ever to progress beyond the narrow and oppressive culture of our past. That isn’t to say the Bible is useless - nothing is useless that reveals human behavior and progress especially one as old and extensive as the Bible. That being said, morality must progress to something universal if we are truly going to realize a more perfect society in an ever mixing and converging world.

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[1] Huxley, T., (2009) Evolution and Ethics. In M. Ruse (Ed.), Evolution and Ethics (p. 6). Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

[2] Huxley, T., (2009) Evolution and Ethics. In M. Ruse (Ed.), Evolution and Ethics (p. 82). Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.