It's Time to Read the Bible Differently

The more I study about philosophy, history, worldviews, and the Bible the more I am convinced that in order to progress in our understanding of truth we must start reading the Bible differently than we did in the past, especially in the previous modern era. We need to recognize what the texts were saying in historical context and then move beyond it to what they mean for us today with the input of modern thought.

When studying the Old Testament you have to realize that it is focused exclusively on one group of people and their fight for survival and relevance. What’s more is that the narratives found in scripture cannot be taken as the actual course of history. The stories were never written for that purpose, in fact they were separate and distinct stories and folklore of what occurred in the past and were then added together by redactors and compilers as they collected them. We like to think that the Bible is a coherent collection of historical fact that contains a perfect sequence of events, but that just isn’t the case. Even when reading the two tellings of creation found in Genesis 1 and 2, the two orders found back to back are completely different! The writers of the Bible were not concerned with accuracy of facts; the primary concern was what the story revealed about their relationship to God.

It is so important to recognize that the stories of the Bible tell a progression of understanding, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they are historically accurate in that progression. If we are going to truly obtain value from what we find in the Bible we must read it differently. It tells the progression of one group's understanding of God throughout the ages. It must be noted that the Old Testament is indeed solely focused on Israel. God is not the God of humanity in general; God is the God of Israel. His covenant is not with mankind; his covenant is only with Israel. This provides many problems for people reading the Bible from a literal point of view. For some it leads to a religion of exclusivity and a rigid refusal to change from that which was “revealed” to Israel. But for others, if you approach scripture from an understanding that it is the story of one group of people struggling with their relation to God, it suddenly gains a completely different picture with deeper meaning and beauty then ever before.

Israel progressed from a people who thought God had rejected them and abandoned them in slavery to Egypt to a people who realized that God cared about them, rescued them, and dwelt with them. The history of Israel’s law is not a history of rigid structure and brutal punishments, it is a history that revealed that God could be reconciled with. In the religion of Israel it was possible to become right with God. The law was a covenant given in response to the grace God had bestowed. That idea is something that all other religions of the time lacked. Israel then progressed to understand that God did not dwell only in the temple, but was with them even in Babylon and indeed could be experienced by the individual who read the written record of God’s promises. From there you move to the New Testament which has the startling revelation at Pentecost that God was concerned primarily with the individual. In Acts God’s presence did not descend and dwell on a building but on humans.

In each era there was a new revelation of man's relation to God. That is the beauty of the Bible. It is not beautiful because of its historical accuracies, or its perfect stories, or even yet its unflinching and unbending moral law; it is awesome because it reveals something great about human thought and God’s leading of human reason. It is time we stop attempting to read into the Bible what we think it ought to have said if the writers had been in our generation, and start reading the Bible as it is. We owe the Bible the respect that we want to be given to ourselves, and that is a willingness to read and interpret scripture in its historical context with an understanding of what it said to the writer back then rather than changing it to what we think it should say today. Once we have done that, we must then allow ourselves to be influenced by the trajectory of truth.

Christianity No More?

           Christianity no longer fits my world-view.  That isn’t to say that I do not believe in Jesus or the Bible as an inspired book, there are just aspects that sum up modern Christianity that I can no longer in good conscience claim as my own belief. First I will describe to you my world view and how that plays out in my own personal life, then I will describe what about Christianity, and indeed all religions, falls short in keeping up with what I am and what I believe as a logical free thinking autonomous creation.

            My world-view has been under development for some time now. I grew up as a pretty conservative individual. If you talk to people who knew me when I was growing up they would probably be shocked at who I am now. The person I was then would have strongly condemned the person I am now. I support things such as women’s ordination and the acceptance of the homosexual community into our churches. I believe in equal rights for all, no matter race, sexual orientation or sex. I believe that all people have an opportunity for salvation, no matter their sexual orientation, whether or not they wear jewelry, or whether they drink, smoke or use recreational drugs. I believe that sin is no barrier to heaven; if it was there would be no one who would be saved. The only barrier to heaven is the individual’s desire not to be there. I believe that heaven is for those that are broken by this world and the muck it contains. Heaven is for those who desire to have a relationship with a God they might not know or even believe in, yet they have seen a glimpse of love and desire that existence more than life here on this world. In short, I believe heaven to be a choice, not a reward for good behavior. Heaven is for those who choose it and for those who would be happy in its company.

            I believe that God is not a created being living in a place called heaven somewhere far out in space. God does not have a body and a brain and emotions like we do. God is in all and works through all. God’s character is revealed inside reality itself. All of creation is a revelation of what this God is. I believe that by studying nature we gain a deeper understanding of who God is and what His “character” (if God can be said to even have such a thing as character) truly is. Nature is not God’s second book but rather his first. I believe there is no such thing as absolute truth for one simple reason. What is “truth” is determined by fallible humanity as they reason what God must be from their own existence. Whenever you have a fallible human observing  the universe from his relative position inside of the universe, you get an inaccurate or incomplete view at best.

            If there is one thing that post-modernism has taught us, through the study of science and the observable universe, it is how impossible it is for us to know for sure whether a theory is true or false or only partially true. I believe that truth is the study of the empirical world. What is real is what is true. Of course, when it comes to quantum physics and other sciences that cannot be truly objectively studied, there is some give in what can and cannot be known, which has obvious implications in allowing for the belief in God himself.

            I believe that morals can be known without the need for a priori theorizing and that human morals can be studied and observed by simply understanding and exploring the natural world. God’s creation supplies the framework of which morals are constructed by humanity in order to make sense of existence. I do not believe that we have to call upon supernaturalism in order to explain our morals. As has been seen over and over again throughout history, some of the most reprehensible acts performed by man were justified by appealing to one god or another and the morals supplied by that god. Much of our morals are constructed based off how we feel about God at the time. Instead, I believe morals are constructed as a direct result of creation and are therefor constant and unchanging across culture and land divisions.

            I believe that God is Love. Why do I believe this? I believe this because of my observation of creation. Even a neutral, uncaring, deistic god could not have designed such a fantastic piece of art. Everything in the universe has free will as an essential part of its existence. An asteroid in space can be acted on by other bodies in the universe, causing it to change its course randomly. An electron inside my own body can be in any place it “chooses” at any time with no possibility of us calculating where exactly that will be. It has “free-will” of motion and position in space and time. I have free will in that I can choose what to do and when to do it. This free will is possible because of the freedom of movement of the electrons inside of my brain that are responsible for my thoughts and actions. I am a totally free agent, free to go and to do as I please. The God responsible for all of this must be the essence of Love itself or else such concepts as free will would not be in existence at all.

            I believe that Jesus revealed the character of God to humanity in a way we never understood before. The nature of Christ is absolutely not important; what is of importance is the message he taught and the things he revealed about God. God revealed himself through Jesus, just as he did through many more human beings before Jesus. Trying to determine whether or not Jesus is fully God, fully man, or both, is an exercise in futility. The message of Christ is clear: God is awesome, and incredibly different than we always theorized.

            I don’t believe in supernatural events, simply because I believe all things to be supernatural. Creation itself is a manifestation of God. When I pray I do not expect that God is going to do something magical outside of space and time; prayer is simply my way of coping with the frustrating parts of reality and free will. God does not do for me what he does not do for every single individual in existence. For instance, a few weeks ago I missed my flight out of LA. All the circumstances were pointing toward having to buy a completely new ticket at a later date, which would force me to spend hundreds of dollars and get to my destination late. My mother was praying as was my fiancé that I would get something worked out. I spoke to the customer service desk and lo and behold a different flight opened up  for me for just $75. Now for those praying, this was a miracle, but according to my world-view it was chance working in my favor. It was nothing more than the world behaving as God ordained it to behave. As Solomon once wrote, “…time and chance happen to all” (Ecc 9:11).

            I believe that because nothing can ever been fully known, truth is in a constant state of change and development. Truth is continually growing and developing and adapting according to what we continue to discover about this world and the awesome God that created it. What is true is never stagnant. If your religion has been the same for the last 100 years or longer, then you have the wrong one. Humanity has the tendency to assume that what was before was better than what is now. We have a fallacy to believe that because it is old it is somehow infallible or wiser than what we are now. We romanticize the past and make it into what it is not. I believe that what is known now is almost always superior to what we knew in the past. That does not mean that we discard the old in favor of the new, but that we critically analyze the old in relation to the new and selectively choose which beliefs fit best with empirical evidence. For instance, today we know that the world revolves around the sun even though the church stated it was heresy and contrary to the Bible to believe so. We do not believe that the earth revolves around the sun simply because it is an old belief and supported by the church for hundreds of years. We took empirical data and we changed our theology about the world’s importance in space. Truth changes and adapts.

            I think the reason why Christianity no longer fits my world-view is obvious. My views no longer match the beliefs of the general Christian church and especially do not match the teachings of the Seventh-day Adventist church. The church does not believe that gays should be accepted in our churches or that salvation is available to everyone. They believe that salvation is conditional based on your works inside Christianity. The church does not believe that everyone is equal before God. They elevate pastors above everyone else, they ban women from serving God as pastors,  and they have historically banned peopled based on race. They have again and again shown that they cannot tolerate change or handle thought, questions, or challenges. They cannot adapt to discovery, new truth, or anything that seems to contradict their previously held interpretations of facts. Christianity in general, and most notably my own faith, can no longer contain my worldview. It is too narrow-minded and shallow. If I told someone that I was a Seventh-day Adventist I wouldn't be a telling the whole truth because there isn't much in my faith that overtly resembles the church.

So I am now faced with one of the hardest problems I have ever had to deal with. What do you do when your culture and your claimed faith no longer fits your worldview? For many young people the answer is to throw away all claims to the faith and leave. In fact, this decision is so popular that over 50% of Adventist young people will end up leaving the church. That method doesn’t work for me though. I understand why they do it, boy do I understand. Sometimes I am so frustrated by the narrow mindedness of the church that I too wish I could simply walk away and say goodbye to the church I have known for so long. Yet, if I leave, where would I go? As I have insinuated through this post, there is nowhere inside Christianity I would go. Every faith outside of Christianity is also just as problematic for me. My only option is to stay where I am or leave religion all together, and most in my position take the later route.

My response to this increasing problem has been to redefine what it means to be a Christian. I have had to deconstruct the associations I attach to what it means to be a Seventh-day Adventist Christian. I have discovered that the problem with religion isn’t the religion itself. Most religions and denominations have great things about them, but where they start going wrong is with the people who begin to shape what it means to be a part of that religion. The problem with religion is people; that is the bottom line. I rarely argue with the doctrines of a religion, what I end up arguing with is the subsequent interpretation of those doctrines.

Here is the ironic part of this whole issue though; the only thing that makes me desire religion at all is the people. The very thing that frustrates me so much is also the thing that drives me to desire it. I love the people in my church. I don’t love all of them, but I could say that the majority of people inside my faith I actually really like. I associate with a body of believers because I enjoy the association of people who I can relate to. If I left the church, to what group of people would I go? I could go to the philosophers, but I guarantee you that I would find similar frustrations and disappointments with that group as well. Wherever you involve people, you will have differences in opinion and decisions you personally may deem as idiocy.

So my response is this: I have a philosophy and a worldview that is now no longer compatible with the worldview and philosophy of my religion. However, I can no more abandon Christianity than I can abandon my humanity. To abandon Christianity because of the people in it is not logical since no matter where I go in this world, unless I become a hermit and seclude myself in the Alaskan wilderness, I will be faced with the stupidity of humanity. Dealing with other people’s ideas, thoughts, and desires is a part of what it means to live in a society with other people, whether inside a religion or out in the general population. So I will continue to attend my local Seventh-day Adventist church, I will continue to associate with Adventists and call myself Christian, but I do all this with the understanding that my worldview and my philosophy is not based off the worldview and philosophy of narrow minded people. I am a follower of truth, I am not a follower of the whims of the Adventist population. The General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists cannot dictate my conscience, neither does any other ruling body, either Christian or otherwise. My faith is my own, my beliefs are my own, and my relationship with God is my own. The people that I associate merely spur me to discovery and support me in my quest for truth; they do not determine what I believe to be right. So the church can carry on refusing ordination to women and condemning homosexuals to hell, but as for me and my own belief, I will serve the Lord as my relationship with Him continues to dictate.

            

Homosexuality; Sin or a Result of Sin?

So my feed has obviously been blown up with posts on homosexuality over the last few days, and not being one to shy away from hard and important topics, I've decided to jump into the deep end on this one. I am putting this response on my blog because I feel that the distinction between what is sin and what is a result of sin is a huge issue and one that could solve problems far beyond just the discussion at hand. 

This world is a terrible place. Oh yes it has its wonders. As I write I am laying in a hammock over looking the ocean of Costa Rica, with Scarlet Macaws flying overhead and howler monkeys serenading me in the background. Yes the world has some beauty and wonder left. I am always amazed when I stand on top of a mountain, walk through a dense forest or gaze out over the endless ocean, I love this world. Yet this world has a dark side. It breaks things. It doesn't take long to see the brokenness of our world. The longer you gaze at the wonder of creation and existence, the more you realize how broken it all is. I found a dead pelican on the beach, there was a macaw at a sanctuary that could not fly because of abuse suffered from its previous owner. The list of horrors and sad tales could go on endlessly. We look at the beauty of our world and compare it to the death and pain and we say, "this is not natural." We know it is not natural and not the way things should be, yet it is the way things are. 

Now we turn our attention to homosexuality. It is not natural, that much is strikingly obvious. How do I know it's not natural? It isn't because the Bible says it's wrong or because the church says marriage is between a man and a women. I know it is not natural because it biologically doesn't make sense. Male and female are physically complimentary, there is a purpose for their sexuality and the design of their bodies. This is naturalism at its core, what is natural is what is right. The male is designed for the female, and the female for the male. No matter what kind of arguments you desire to make for homosexuality, either using historic  documents or psychological evaluation, you cannot escape the fact that the sexual attraction of a male to a male or a female to a female is not biologically accurate. 

This being said there are a number of things that are not accurate. For instance, according to the Bible written by humanity over the last several thousand years, eating animals was originally not natural. We were not meant to eat animals, we were meant to eat fruit and nuts and beans. Things were not supposed to die, we weren't meant to kill the plant just to eat it, neither were we meant to kill the animal to eat it. Everything lived in harmony with everything else, the trees shared their fruit, the plants shared their leaves, and the animals shared their carbon dioxide and waste. We were meant to self sustain, yet the Bible very clearly indicates that as a result of the fall it is not a sin to eat animals. This point is extremely important to recognize. Eating animals is a result of sin, but it is not sin itself. Wearing clothes is a result of sin, but it is not a sin to wear clothes. The list of things that are a result of sin but not actually sin in themselves is nearly endless. 

Homosexuality is a result of "sin" or in other words, it is not natural, that much is clear, both from a biblical standpoint and a natural one, yet the attraction that results from this detour from what is natural is not sin, it is the result of sin. Is it sin for a broken individual to follow their heart and act on their attraction for the same sex? If two individuals of the same sex both are altered in the same way and fall in love, is that sin? Tell me, what about the love of one individual for another is sinful? No, it is not natural, obviously it is the result of what we call sin, but is it sin in and of itself? Logic tells me a resounding NO. The problem with our system and society is that we so often confuse the results of sin with sin itself. Does being an active homosexual cause you to stop desiring a personal relationship with Jesus? Does being homosexual cause you to hate God and not desire any part of his character? I suppose in some circumstances it does indeed, but only because of what the church has taught us about who God is and what He is like. 

This world breaks people. This is my answer for suicide too. The church used to believe that all people who committed suicide would go to hell. That belief is absurd. This world breaks people in many different ways. We are all broken, yet for some reason we really like to point out other people's brokenness and say theirs is worse than ours and they deserve less respect and less love because of it. So we point the finger at homosexuals while pretending to be calling sin by its right name, yet as we do so we ignore how the world has broken us also with pornography addictions, molestations, affairs, cheating, lying, mental illness, depression, which of these is worse? Many of these I have mentioned impact other people negatively, they hurt and destroy the person taking part in them and other people involved, yet homosexuality does not directly hurt anyone, except in a few instances when the family is broken up because they refuse to be accepting and loving toward the gay individual. Homosexuality is merely a twisting of what is natural, yet homosexual individuals can still love and still commit to caring for each other. It may be the lowest impact perversion of the system that there is! We only attack it so fiercely because it is so open and so obviously not natural. I

 read an article denouncing women's ordination by Samuel Pipim, a man who has proven to have zero respect for women. He raped a 20 year old new convert that he was having bible studies with in Africa and only confessed when she came forward, yet he still dares to write on the subject of women's ordination? Come now, we have such bigger issues in the church that actually matter! That isn't to say gay rights aren't important, but that we are looking at it with a microscope when our other problems are so glaringly evident to those who dare to unearth them from their shallow graves. 

I'm not asking you to call homosexuality normal, or to condone its practice as morally agreeable and correct, I only ask that you stop to recognize the difference between a sin and a result of sin. Does it harm other people? Does it irreversibly hinder someone's desire to be a friend and brother of Christ? I have not seen these things in evidence with those I have come in contact with. Those I know who are gay are just like you or I with the only difference being that they feel attracted to someone of the same sex. Obviously this is not what is natural, but the result of this attraction, that being love and care for another individual of the same sex, that is natural because it flows out of the desire to love and care for other human beings. This desire to love someone on a deeper level is an essential part of what it means to be human, the attraction is not normal, but the acting on that attraction is.

Philosophy vs Religion

I have a theory. This theory states that there is a difference between the Philosophy of Religion and the Practice of Religion. One thing that I have seen throughout my short life is that people often confuse philosophy with religious practice. There is an inherent human trait to turn a good philosophical thought in to a series of traditions and rituals that barely resemble the original idea. 

For instance, I was a religious Studies Major in undergrad and one thing that struck me as I studied world religions is that most of them started with a really good idea! Take Hinduism for an example. As a Christian you might not think that Hinduism could possibly have any bit of good in it. Three hundred million gods just seems completely and totally absurd until you study the philosophy of what that actually means. You see, philosophically, Hinduism is actually a monotheistic religion. They believe there is only one God but that humans are so incapable of describing what "God" really is that they actually have to describe him in as many ways as possible in order to explain the characteristics of God. Surprisingly, the philosophy of Hinduism is correct--in that I, too, believe God to be more than just a simple three dimensional human living in space. God is not human and not created. So in the end the problems I have with Hinduism are in the practice of the religion but not in the core basis of the original philosophy itself. People have taken Hinduism and have made rituals that abhor me. Widow burning is just one of the rites and rituals that are absurd. They have created stories and folklore that barely resemble the original philosophical idea. 

Let's take another religion, Sikhism. The philosophy of Sikhism is that there is only one God in existence. This God is loving and desires all people to be saved. God told the founder of Sikhism (Guru Nanak) that, "There is no Hindu, there is no Muslim." This teaching led Guru Nanak to proclaim that all humans are equal in the sight of God. Men and women are even equal, and you have to understand that this religion comes from a culture in India that places women at the very lowest level of human reincarnation. Women have no rights. In fact, women were supposed to burn themselves on the funeral pier to accompany their deceased husbands into the afterlife. The Sikh faith is a faith of peace. They protect the needy and believe that all men have the right to worship as they will. When the Muslims took over the region and demanded that all Hindus convert to Islam, the Sikh community went to war to protect the right of the Hindu to worship as they desired. So what do I have against this religion? Actually nothing in the core original philosophy--what I dislike is the practice of the religion such as the idea that in order to become enlightened you have to "look upon" the guru, or that you have to feed food to the sacred text in symbol of its living truth. These are really the only things I dislike about the Sikh faith, it is the practice of the belief and not the belief itself. 

I find that most faith is like this. The original thought behind the faith is good, but humans begin to confuse tradition with philosophy and muddy the waters of what truly matters. This has happened in Buddhism as well, a religion dedicated to living well and right with respect of all living things. In some circumstances the religion is just as full of religious ritual as any other with idol worship and tasks that must be performed to be saved.  

This happens in Christianity as well. Christian philosophy is primarily this: God is a personal God who cares for His creation. He desires that all people would know Him and desire to be with him. Christianity's philosophy is that God created everything and is not Himself created. God does not have one specific group of people that alone will be saved but in fact is wanting all to be saved, Jew and Gentile alike. So what do I have a problem with? The add-ons that humans create. The rituals you must perform in order to be saved, you must be baptized, you must confess your sins to the spiritual leader, you must worship only in the way that the church ordains, you must only have ordained instruments in church, you must be ordained in order to work for Gods people, you must be a man to be ordained. You cannot have sex or get married if you want to serve God's people. You must worship on a certain day in order to be saved. The lists of human add ons are as endless as the denominations of Christianity are nearly endless. These are not the philosophy of faith but rather are traditional rituals added on to faith. 

Humans desire these rituals. They seem to want to be able to separate themselves from everyone else. "I am saved and you are not because I do this..." After talking about all these issues I have a genuine question for you. Why do you think humans need such traditional add ons to philosophy? Is philosophy not enough? Me personally, I put very little stock into tradition and rituals. I take part in traditions but I recognize them as just that, traditions. I worship in an Adventist church on Sabbath almost entirely because of tradition, not at all because I believe that I must worship on that day in that denomination in order to be saved. What determines my salvation is my philosophy on who I believe God is. That philosophy causes me to have a specific relationship with God which determines how I relate and interact to this world and those in it. Philosophy is everything to me, speculation and cultural influences impact the way I worship but in no way impact the way I view salvation. So tell me, what need have we of tradition? Why do we create hills to die on such as music and what should and shouldn't be done in church? Is philosophy and understanding of God's character not enough?

What Kind of Christian Would Satan Be?

There are many ways to distinguish yourself inside Christianity. Christianity is one of the most complex religions in the world, with thousands of denominations, theologies, sects, and cults. You can distinguish yourself as a liberal, a conservative, or a middle of the road Christian. The list of titles could go on and on, emerging church, Jesus movement, etc. One question I often ask, and I think many others do as well is, "If Jesus were here, how would He distinguish himself?" A question that we don't often ask however is this, "Who would Satan most easily associate with?"

Before I start in I want to place a qualifier here. Lies and evil avoid no group. There is no one sect of Christianity that you can associate with that will not be in danger of deception. Why is this? It is because every sect of Christianity has one big flaw, humanity. Mankind has a knack for turning truth in to error. A movement that starts out containing the truth often ends up persecuting those who come after with even more truth and light. In history, groups that had the truth ended up murdering those they deemed did not have the truth. Mankind will never cease to destroy and pervert that which was once the truth. That being said I believe there is one form of thinking that is most often used to turn people from the truth.

The real danger to Christianity is not the emerging church, or the One Project, or any such thing. The real danger to the church comes in the form of a resurgence in what I will call traditionalist ideals. Let me attempt to explain what this looks like. In this culture you are led to believe that God can only use you as much as you are faithful to him. If you have a bad day, say you are a salesman and your sales are down that day, it is almost certainly because you fell to temptation and broke your promise to God in some way, such as eating cheese on your Taco Bell instead of going vegan. The belief becomes this, “God only blesses those who are faithful.” It isn't done on purpose, the belief just kind of surfaces as these ideals are propagated. There is a story that was used once to support not eating at any restaurant that cooked with lard. A certain group of Christians went to a restaurant that cooked with lard, and they ordered their food and discovered that it had lard in it, so they canceled their order and went somewhere else. On the way back they saw the original restaurant had caught fire and burned down. Of course the thought was that because they were faithful to God in canceling their order and leaving, God spared them from potential disaster.

I don't mean to harp on any particular community and pick on them in particular, it is just this sort of thinking that typifies "traditional" thought. It is the general idea that if I do something for God, then God will do something for me. Nicodemus had a very similar understanding when he met Jesus for the first time. John chapter 3 describes this scene. Nicodemus had just watched Jesus cleanse the temple. He had seen the authority with which Jesus commanded the Pharisees to leave the temple. Nicodemus was actually a pretty righteous man. He had seen the commercialism of the temple and the robbery that took place and he inwardly abhorred it. He desired a change and had been fighting for years to curb the behavior of his fellow Pharisees. So Nicodemus comes to Jesus one night after the cleansing of the temple and he says to Jesus, "Jesus, you and I, we are the same! You have the same desires as me! We need to work together. If I bring my works to the table, and you bring yours, we can actually get something done in this place!" Nicodemus even gives Jesus the title of teacher. Nicodemus was twice Jesus' age, but he honors him with a title of equality with himself. Nicodemus had great respect for Jesus.

What was Jesus' response to Nicodemus though? Did Jesus say, "Oh, thank you Nick! I've been waiting for a righteous man just like you to help finish my work here!" Did Jesus accept Nicodemus' offer of co-partnership in the works of righteousness? No He didn't. He tells Nicodemus, "Nicodemus, you need to be born again." Nicodemus mocks Jesus here and says, "Can a grown man enter his mother’s womb?" You see, Nicodemus understood exactly what Jesus was insinuating. There was an idea in those days that a Jew was a trueborn son or daughter of God, and in order to be saved and enter the inheritance of God, a gentile had to be born again. Jesus was telling Nicodemus, "you are not good enough to help me in my work. In fact Nicodemus, you are just like the Gentiles, you are in need of baptism." Nicodemus thought he had something to offer Jesus. He had done all these good works; he had withstood the temptation to use his office to swindle others. He came to Jesus offering everything. He was offering a partnership with Christ. His works together with the works of Christ would accomplish the end. Yet Jesus says no.

You see, the so-called "Traditional" ideal is Nicodemus. A man committed to doing right, a man who would stand for the right though the heavens fell partnering with Christ to accomplish the work set before him. But that is not the desire of Christ. The desire of Christ is found in the very next chapter in John chapter 4. Jesus meets a gentile at a well and guess what, her response is identical to Nicodemus'. She meets Jesus' comments with scorn and sarcasm just as Nicodemus did. Jesus tells her that she has absolute need of him. She came to Jesus with something to offer just as Nicodemus did. She had the jar with which to draw the water, Jesus had nothing to offer but good company. When Jesus tells her that her works are useless that she actually needed him to give her the water her soul desired, she scoffs. Nicodemus and the woman at the well were the same. John put these stories back to back very deliberately. Both thought they had something to offer Jesus, both considered Jesus to be offering something equal to the amount of work they had put in, and Jesus tells both of them that they are in need of new life, a life supplied by himself and himself only. You see John is bringing our understanding to a point of recognition that what Jesus was offering was not some sort of partnership. Jesus didn’t care what they had to bring to the table. Jesus was not impressed or swayed by the works they had done, but instead offered the gift of life freely and without the input of their individual works.

The woman did something that Nicodemus did not however. She recognized her need and in her need she did the work of Christ. She did not go in to the town to alter the behavior of her fellow neighbors because of her righteousness. She went to them and declared, "Come see the man who told me everything I have ever done!" In other words, "Come see the man who knows my awful past and yet associated with me at the well anyway!" Jesus knew everything about her, yet asked her, “Come follow me.” Jesus did not judge her or try to alter her behavior with threats of damnation and hell, He simply associated with her, and in so doing accepted her as she was. This simple act of Jesus, to associate with a sinner and accept them as they were, altered that women's life forever. She became a disciple of the gospel and in so doing there was a change in her life.

A theological traditionalist would not accept this about Jesus' character though. The traditionalist’s mind screams at this injustice. How is it just of God to accept all alike no matter their life? How is it right of Jesus to refuse such a respected man as Nicodemus, he was righteous! There was nothing about his actions that Jesus found fault with except one thing, that he thought he had something to offer.

I believe if it were possible for Satan to join a movement he would join the traditionalists. Why? Because it is the goal of Satan to turn people from a knowledge of the love and beauty of the character of God; and what better way to do it then to create a standard for entering the kingdom of Heaven that no living person on earth can achieve? Traditionalism does not offer an abiding relationship with Jesus they offer a partnership. The Traditionalist teaches that if you do this, this, and this, Christ will abide in your heart and life. But if you do things such as watch movies, listen to "bad" music, and have a love for Worldly things such as money, cars, houses and a comfortable life, then Christ cannot abide in your life and you cannot enter the work set before you. In other words, unless you are like Nicodemus, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. Yet Jesus refused Nicodemus. And that is why I believe this is a doctrine of demons; God rejects the traditionalist ideal because they do not know Him. If Satan had one goal in this world, that would be it, to cause all living things to misunderstand God.

Because Traditionalists do not understand the love and universal character of God, they create concepts such as the idea of us and them. A church that everyone has to join in order to be saved, it was the Traditional ideal in the days of Christ and it is the ideal now. You must belong in order to be saved. You must worship on a particular day or God will reject you at the end. You must be a male in order to lead God's people; you must only listen to organ music and piano because God does not accept any other forms of music as worship. If it has a beat it is from the devil. In other words they teach that you have to identify with a specific culture in order to be saved, primarily the culture of the 1800's. In other words, traditionalists teach that the Spirit of God is so delicate and arbitrary that the slightest thing not in "order" will cause Him to flee in terror. The Traditionalist’s god is weak and easily swayed by the actions of men.

All these things are not the teachings of Jesus though. Jesus taught that the rain falls on the just and the unjust alike equally. Jesus taught that the abiding relationship with God is not conditional but is with all who desire a relationship and friendship with him, even if they don't know that is what they are seeking. Jesus taught that the kingdom of heaven is full of those who do not deserve to be there and indeed did not even work to achieve it. Jesus taught that those who think they deserve the kingdom will not be there because heaven would be to them a place of terror because they do not know the character of God.

Jesus did not call people in to a certain religion or culture. Jesus did not go to the Gentiles and teach them they must become a Jew and eat only meat prepared by Jews. Jesus called people where they were and in the cultures they associated with and invited them to follow him. Jesus was not calling people into a church, but rather into an understanding of His character. Jesus did not preach the Seventh-day Sabbath, but rather he acted out its purpose, to get to know people and take time to care and spend time with them. Jesus acted out the law, and preached a message of character and not laws. Jesus preached a message of a change in the life. He promised that a relationship with him would change your life. He preached that knowledge and understanding of the character of God would change the heart and cause you to love your neighbor as yourself. These were the teachings of Jesus. They were radical and contrary to every teaching taught during that day. The conservatives of that day wanted to kill him, the ungodly wanted to silence him, the liberals could not handle his unassuming and uncompromising way of life, but those who truly sought a new life full of joy and happiness, those people found it.

This is not the message of any specific group inside of Christianity. It is the message of truth, truth that transcends culture and time and crosses borders. It ignores the culturally derived stigmas that place people in boxes. It ignores the headship created by a culture of war that associated power with males. It ignores color and people groups, it looks beyond culturally relevant and irrelevant music alike. It looks past the writings of the Bible, it looks beyond humanity and its narrow focus and it looks beyond this world and its cares. This truth looks forward to the future of where God desires to lead us. Where there are cultures they will cease, where there is music it will change, where there is science, it will grow, where there is theology it will progress.

We are on a course set by the creator of existence to learn the purpose of existence itself. God desires to be known, that is the truth. The truth is the pursuit of an understanding of love. The 28 fundamental beliefs of Seventh-Day Adventists are not the end of truth, nor are they the beginning, but rather a part of man's endeavor to discover. My own set of 23 fundamentals found on my blog are not a start nor a beginning to truth either, rather they are just a feeble effort to place one more piece in the puzzle of God’s character.

Error is working in every culture, every belief, every sect of Christianity and religious cultures of the world to turn people from the path of truth, and foremost in turning people from the truth is the traditionalist culture conflicting the truth about Gods character. This is the case in every religion, ISIS for instance. I ask you, are you seeking truth, or are you seeking a method of belief that gains you some sort of reward? Are you trying to gain heaven, or are you creating heaven here and now? Jesus says in Luke 17:20-21, "Some of the Pharisees asked Jesus, "When will God's kingdom come?" Jesus answered, "God's kingdom is coming, but not in a way that you can see it. People will not say, 'Look, God's kingdom is here!' or 'There it is!' No, God's kingdom is here with you." Jesus didn't preach a message of attainment, but a message that declared the reward already given. God has already given our reward. Will you seek truth, or will you stubbornly stand by the theology created by humanity in order to place themselves in a position of power over others. The choice is yours.