Israel's "Genocide" Against the Midianites

The Problem of Evil...

includes an argument that, when God commanded Israel to wipe out certain populations, He contradicted His own nature. If God contradicted Himself, then He is not Good, is misrepresented by the Old Testament, or does not exist.
I've never seen an Atheist put it that logically, but that's what their lazy rhetorical questions imply.
One specific example of "genocides" is Israel's first significant war, one against the Midianites and the five kingdoms led by Balak.
In Numbers 31:16, we read that the prophet Balaam advised the Baal-worshiping nations to lure the men of Israel to sexually sin and to worshiping their idols. Numbers 25 documents that this had resulted in the deaths of 24,000 Israelites. God then orders Israel to war against the nations that had lured them into sin, killing every man, woman, and male child (chapter 31).
Chapter 31 verse 19 adds a new element of understanding. The killing had made Israel's warriors ritually unclean -- which is another way to say, they had sinned. They were required to remain outside the camp of Israel for a week while undergoing purification rituals prescribed in Numbers 19:11-22.
In other words, although going to war had been a necessity, in God's eyes, acts of war were still an evil. This implies that God's judgment reflected weighing the evil of killing in war and the evil of failing to go to war.
Refraining from the war would have violated justice against the Baal-worshipers whose actions had cost thousands of Israelite lives. The events of chapter 25 were an insult to God Himself. Inaction would have left in place the temptation to sin. And the silence would constitute a failure to warn Israelites against repeating their apostasy.
So like the Atheist, God saw the so-called genocides as evil. However, unlike the Atheist, He had weighed the war against its context and judged it necessary. This answer may be generalized to the subsequent wars as Israel took possession of the promised land. One more lesson can be drawn from Numbers 25 through 31. Temptation can have life-and-death costs. Believers must deal decisively with circumstances that would draw us away from God and into sin and idolatry.
Copyright 2020 Richard Wheeler. Permission granted for personal and non-profit use, provided credit is given where credit is due.

The Ten Commandments Reveal God's Grace

In what ways do the Ten Commandments reveal the grace of God?

The commandments of the Old Testament are called The Law. The Law is One Law, with two top-level commandments:

• ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ “This is the great and foremost commandment. “The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets. (Matthew 22:37–40)

The Ten Commandments add the next level of detail. The next level of detail adds over 600 more commandments. (And the Jews wrote commentaries with thousands more, just to avoid breaking any of the over 600 that people might not have understood. This one Law is an earthly application of the objective moral standard, which is God’s holiness. If you break one point, you’ve broken the Law. And if you would keep even one of the commandments to justify yourself before God, you have to keep the whole Law with all of its hundreds of commandments. You must do this not only from the time you decide to start, but also from the time you were born.

The Ten Commandments reveal the grace of God, but they primarily reveal the holiness and justice of God. The Ten commandments (and over 600 others) were given primarily to show us our need for God’s grace.

• Now we know that whatever the Law says, it speaks to those who are under the Law [self-righteous people], so that every mouth may be closed and all the world may become accountable to God; because by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified in His sight; for through the Law comes the knowledge of sin. (Romans 3:19–20)
• Therefore the Law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith. (Galatians 3:24)

Since we need God’s grace, telling us about our need is a gracious act. It is shocking to learn that you have cancer, but it is gracious to inform somebody that they have a disease and they have access to a cure. Likewise, it is shocking to learn that we are already condemned, but it is gracious to be given that diagnosis so that you will turn to the remedy that God offers, namely, salvation by grace through trusting faith (Ephesians 2:8–9).

The message that we need God’s grace is one way the Ten Commandments reveal the grace of God. Another way they reveal the grace of God is by laying down rules by which we can love our neighbors.

• If we do not blaspheme and commit idolatry, our example does not lead our neighbors away from God.
• If we do not murder, we support life and justice.
• If we do not commit adultery, we do not spread diseases, break up families, and leave children in broken relationships.
• If we do not steal, we do not take away portions of others’ lives that they invested in acquiring their possessions.
• If we do not covet what belongs to our neighbors, we will not be tempted to take what is not ours or create jealousy that disrupts our relationships.
• If we love God, we find freedom from guilt and maintain a reservoir of power to love ourselves and others.
  
• The one exception to the Ten Commandments is the requirement to do no work on the Sabbath, which is Saturday. It is the one command that was strictly ceremonial rather than focusing on morality in relationships. The early church met in synagogues that the Jews already used on Saturdays, so there was a practical need to meet on another day. Moreover, two elements of symbolism came into play. First, the seventh day (Sunday) was the day on which the Lord had risen. Second, the Sabbath symbolized resting from working to earn salvation. It represented approaching God in faith without self-righteous works. Since the New Testament teaches that mature Christians esteem all days alike, the early church met on Sundays instead of on Saturdays. 

By keeping the Ten Commandments -- or more correctly, using the Ten Commandments to help us decide how to love God and others -- we exemplify and enact God’s grace, both for ourselves, and for those around us.

I originally posted this as an answer to a question on Quora. If you copy it, please give credit where credit is due.

Separation from God, and Reconciliation

How was Adam separated from God?

God is perfectly holy, and His presence is sacred. Think about what it means for something to be sacred. It means that a thing is dedicated to holy purposes and not to be used for an unholy purpose.
We’ve seen Muslim extremists in Iran riot and kill after somebody allegedly defaced a Quran or drew an image of Muhammad. While we can judge the reaction as unacceptable, we can recognize that they respect the concept of sacredness in a way that people in the West no longer recognize.

We can see respect for sacredness in Roman Catholic churches. During communion, the priest allegedly turns the communion wine and wafer into Jesus’s blood and flesh. That makes the wine and wafer sacred to Catholics. To prevent defiling Jesus’s body by letting it fall to the floor, an assistant holds a plate at mid-chest level in front of the person receiving the wafer to catch Jesus in case his alleged flesh falls. This prevents defiling the sacred.

Through Adam and Eve’s disobedience to God, they did, as God had warned, die. It was not a physical death, although it made physical death inevitable. It was a spiritual death. Whereas physical death is separation of a person’s spirit from their soul, spiritual death is separation of a person’s spirit from God.

We inherit that condition from our ancestors. Although we are all born physically alive with functioning spirit and body, we are all born spiritually dead with spirit separated from God.
Separation from God means that fellowship with God is broken and needs to be restored. Sacred, holy God cannot just ignore sin. The Bible describes the situation several ways.

• Sin incurs a debt that we cannot pay. We owe obedience and all good deeds to God, so we cannot pay for sins with what we already owe. That would be like paying the bill from last month with what we saved up to pay for this month’s bill. That is why our good deeds could never cancel or outweigh our sins.
  
• The penalty for sin holds us for a ransom that we cannot pay. (Contrary to myth, Satan does not hold us hostage; God’s justice does.) The penalty is proportional to the importance of the one you offend. If I lie to my wife, I might have to sleep in the doghouse. If I lie to the government, I might go to prison. If I lie to infinite God, the consequences are infinite or everlasting.
  
• Sin defiles me, so if I stood before God without having been redeemed, then I would defile God’s presence, which God will not tolerate.
  
• Sin’s defilement changes my nature such that if I were thrust into God’s presence without having been redeemed and reconciled, I would try to flee from His presence.

This is why Jesus’s time on the cross is so crucial to us. When God created the universe, that included creating time and space. Having created time and space, God chose to experience time and space as three centers of consciousness or “Persons.” Each Person voluntarily took on a distinct role: Father, Son, or Holy Spirit.

The titles Son of Man and The Word: God the Son is called the Word because His role was to be the expression of God to human beings. When the time was right, the Son donned a human body and lived as the man, Jesus of Nazareth. As the Son of Man, Jesus experienced all the temptations and torments of life and death as our representative.

The title Son of God: Being God, Jesus lived a perfect life, never sinning. Thus, He had no sins to pay for. This kept Him free to become our substitute. Like a big brother taking the whoopin’ for his little brother and sister, Jesus took our place and bore sin’s penalty.

The title Savior: Whereas the penalty for sinning against infinite God would have destroyed us, Jesus could not be held by death. He rose from the dead, proving that He was divine, that God was satisfied with the payment, that God would restore us to spiritual life, and that God can one day raise everybody from the dead. Thus, God offers this gift of redemption to all who will receive it as a gift. Those who receive the gift as a gift receive forgiveness and spiritual life, but those who refuse the gift will be sent into separation from God’s presence, forever stuck in their guilt and anger.

You might have been bothered by an apparent redundancy, receive the gift as a gift. The point is important because all the world’s religions depend on achieving or earning something to receive redemption. Within “Christianity,” many denominations swerve off into the world’s religions by teaching that one must do something to earn the gift — which is self-contradictory.

If someone suggests that you have to take part in a ceremony or do good deeds or persevere in the faith to earn or retain grace, their teaching lies outside of explicit biblical teachings. It even lies outside the definition of “grace?”

To receive the gift, you need to do exactly two things:

• Understand in your heart your need for the gift,
• Trust God to endow you with the gift.
• Any more than that turns the gift into something you could never earn in a million lifetimes. And God will not stand for having His generosity insulted.

One of the characteristics of separation from God is a lack of His immediate presence and influence in one’s life. When one is redeemed and restored to relationship with God, God sends the Holy Spirit. Before Jesus’s resurrection, the Holy Spirit came “upon” people to achieve a specific purpose such as prophesying, giving strength and skill in battle, or leading a nation. Since the resurrection, the Holy Spirit has indwelt believers to begin transforming them into holier people, give them insight when reading the scriptures, empower them to serve God and each other, and intercede for them when they don’t know how to pray.

To summarize what “separation from God” means, it means that a person who has not received the gift of redemption as a free gift has none of the blessings of forgiveness or intimate relationship with God. Unless he receives the gift as a gift, he remains forever outside of relationship with God.


I first posted this as an answer to a question on Quora. If quoting, please give credit where credit is due.

How to Get Spotless Garments

From a question on Quora

What did the Bible mean when it said "Only those that their garment was without impurity will see Jesus"?

Our first challenge is to determine what passage in the Bible the question refers to. It has me stumped. It sounds like a paraphrase from memory of a sermon. The closest Bible wording would come from Hebrews 12:14, Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord.

However, the quote states biblical principles using the Bible's symbolic language.

Clothes, in this sense, symbolize your history of thoughts and actions. Impurity symbolizes sin. For example, save others, snatching them out of the fire; and on some have mercy with fear, hating even the garment polluted by the flesh (Jude 1:23). The garment polluted by the flesh represents the lifestyle and trappings of a worldly, carnal lifestyle. For example, the “party animal” may seem “cool,” but charisma, popularity, and pleasure can be deadly moral traps.

Another form of polluted garment is the life of self-righteous hypocrites. "But they do all their deeds to be noticed by men; for they broaden their phylacteries and lengthen the tassels of their garments (Matthew 23:5). Phylacteries are small leather boxes containing Hebrew texts, worn by Jewish men. The tassels were white to symbolize purity, with a blue thread symbolizing heaven. Some wore over-sized tassels to draw attention, as though it made them holier than thou, like the priests who wear elegant robes or backwards collars. The point is that they dressed to impress other people when they went to synagogue rather than presenting themselves humbly before God.

Many miss the warning that God is so holy that nobody can defile His presence without being cleansed of their guilt. We think of the Beatitudes as rules for peace and beauty, but the passage includes this razor-edged gem: Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God (Matthew 5:8)

People think the Ten Commandments were given so we could make ourselves holy. However, they are just the summary of 613 commandments in the Old Testament. Their most important purpose is to show us that none of us are pure in heart because by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified in His sight; for through the Law comes the knowledge of sin (Romans 3:20).

Obeying the Ten Commandments is profitable, but it cannot make us righteous. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). For all of us have become like one who is unclean [ceremonially defiled or diseased], And all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment; And all of us wither like a leaf, And our iniquities, like the wind, take us away (Isaiah 64:6). If we understand that, then we can understand that the Law has become our tutor unto Christ, so that we may be justified by faith (Galatians 3:24) instead of trying to be justified by deeds or heritage.

The Bible uses two metaphors for how we can have clean clothes, that is, be freed from our guilt.

The first metaphor is being washed in the blood of the Lamb. In Old Testament Israel, animals were sacrificed to temporarily cover sin. The sacrifice of an animal was a substitute for punishment of the sinner. The animals symbolized Messiah Jesus whose sacrifice would permanently remove guilt. He [God the Father] made Him [God the Son] who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him [Christ] (2 Corinthians 5:21). When we place our faith in Christ, God credits our punishment to Jesus’s death on the cross and credits Jesus’s righteousness to us.

You can find this language in the first epistle (letter) of the apostle John: if we walk in the Light as He Himself [Christ] is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin (1 John 1:7). Another place is in Revelation: These are the ones who come out of the great tribulation, and they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb” (Revelation 7:14).

Whereas the first metaphor focuses on sins being washed away, the second metaphor emphasizes the substitution. I advise you to buy from Me gold refined by fire so that you may become rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and that the shame of your nakedness will not be revealed… (Revelation 3:18).

The command to “buy” in a spiritual sense confuses many. They think the “price” is sacraments and good deeds, but the price of God’s grace is the opposite. It is free. Ho! Every one who thirsts, come to the waters; And you who have no money come, buy and eat. Come, buy wine and milk Without money and without cost (Isaiah 55:1). The price is our pride.

We must come to God in utter, desperate humility. Grace means “gift,” and a gift cannot be earned. To offer God our efforts, the efforts of others, or our heritage as a price of grace is to insult the Giver. Note that the symbolic purchase of gold makes you rich; but if you had something to buy it with, you would already have been rich. Pride is the reason it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man — or a religious man — to enter the kingdom of God (Luke 18:25). When you let go of pride and exchange your need for God’s grace, He makes you spiritually rich.

Also note that the transaction has to actually take place. We cannot simply agree with the exchange intellectually or desire it without understanding. The mind, heart, and soul must motivate an act of the will.

Summary

The quote is not from the Bible. It does summarize biblical principles using biblical symbolism. Clean garments represent the righteousness of God the Son. God credits this righteousness to those who let go of any merit of their own and trust in, and only in, Christ and the price He paid for our sins on the cross.



Since I already posted the bulk of this on Quora, I can't copyright it. But I trust that if you use it, you will give credit where Credit is due.

Hyper Grace, Hyper Repentance, and the Middle Ground

Response to

Rooting Out Fuzzy Theology Behind the Hyper-Grace Message

DAVID & NANCY RAVENHILL
Charisma Magazine online 9:21AM EDT 4/2/2013
http://www.charismamag.com/blogs/prophetic-insight/17255-rooting-out-fuzzy-theology-behind-the-hyper-grace-message

Two Types of Repentance

Most Charismatics Christians (they mistakenly call themselves Pentecostals) fail to distinguish between two types of repentance. Peter explicitly names the first type, and only regarding changing minds FROM rejection of Messiah TO receiving Him. The New Testament only describes the second type without naming it "repentance." We label the second type "repentance," but the label is not Biblical, although it works as long as one does not confuse the two.

Unfortunately, many people DO confuse the two.

The first repentance exchanges a broken-down death trap of a clunker for a brand new car. The dealer has stamped "IT IS FINISHED" on the papers, sent the clunker to the recyclers, and placed the new owner's name in the Lamb's Book of Car Registrations. That new car irrevocably belongs to the new owner.

The second repentance leads to cleaning up the car, driving on better roads in accordance with the Car Ownership Bible, repairing any damage and wear, and learning to use it for profitable purposes. The owner may dent the car, soil it, and fail to maintain it until it's no earthly good. A judge may tell the owner to take it off the road. But the car will always belong to the owner.

Confusing Grace and Repentance

Many people confuse the two. When the car gets dirty, they foolishly keep returning to the dealership to ask for the car again. As the author implies, however, they would be wise to return to the Dealer as many times as needed to maintain and learn more about their car.

Just as one extreme insults the blood of Christ by excusing sin that has been washed away, the other insults the blood by ignoring its sufficiency and attempting to re-apply it, even though "there remains no more offering for sin."

Contrasting the Dangers of the Two Hypers

If we wish to compare the dangers of the two, hyper repentance poses the greater danger. Lost people who have learned hyper repentance add self-reliance on repentance to reliance on Christ. Paul explicitly explains that grace and works mutually exclude each other. The Giver does not give gifts to those who ask for wages.

Therefore, both hypers present practical dangers to the saved, but hyper repentance adds an everlasting danger to the lost.

The irony lies not in the Ravenhill's attempt to correct hyper grace (for which I am grateful), but in that he does so from within the territory of hyper repentance.

Dating

My dad warned me against women who would take advantage of me, but he should have warned me against my own predatory, testosterone-poisoned mind.

In the natural mind, the goal of dating is "hooking up" or "scoring." This puts the wrong pressures on people who date. Reaching the goal sets you up for heartbreak and endangers the future of the relationship. Most dangerously, the carnal definition of "dating" risks creating an innocent human life whom you sentence to, at best, the stigma of illegitimacy, the emotional wounds of growing up fatherless, or at worst, the torture of being chemically burned to death or being vivisected, without even the benefit of anaesthetic, before birth.

Proper dating, however, can serve as a tool of socialization: learning self restraint, learning to enjoy, understand, and honor the opposite sex, and developing friendships.

I did not realize until I was around 25 that I needed to correct my goals in dating. I changed from looking for a wife to learning to enjoy women as friends, without the sexual or marital agenda.

Think of how men and women approach shopping. A woman enjoys shopping for the experience, whereas a man sets a goal of hunting down his prey, the specific item or deal. As I matured, I learned to shop at hardware stores just to get ideas and to see what's available for solving problems later. That's similar to the mindset one needs in dating.

Around my 27th birthday, I was praying for somebody to disciple. The Lord revealed to me that a man's ultimate disciple is (or ought to be) his wife. That was the end of that prayer request.

About a month later, God gave me that disciple. It did not take years of dating to know that she was the one. By the end of the year, we were married. It's been almost 30 years, now. The point is, a guy needs to look at dating as practice lessons in leadership, discipling, and responsibility, too.

With the right mindset about the purpose of dating, it becomes a lot easier to counter testosterone poisoning. Date to enjoy, to learn, to develop restraint. Let the goals come in their own time.

Review: Our Favorite Sins

Todd Hunter's "Our Favorite Sins" has the right idea. For the most part, Hunter's insights are thought-provoking and inspiring. Many of his chapter start with specific examples of sins, only to veer away from the topic at hand to discuss sin in a more general sense. This lack of organization would annoy if it weren't for the strength of the rest of his writing.

I found it difficult to put down the book as Hunter found more and more ways to explain his main point - that our evil desires come from within and must be reordered if we are to deal with and quit our sins. Hunter uses the example of Joseph, whose desires were reordered in such a way that he was able to think of God first when Potiphar's wife attempted to seduce him. He refused her.

Hunter says that we can refuse sin, too, if we reorder our desires. Hunter's suggestions, which he gives in the last quarter of the book, clearly show his Anglican background, however. While reading and memorizing prayers, listening to Scripture at church and participating in communion are all good things, Hunter seems to place their importance over that of the Bible itself, of reading the Bible for oneself. And his insistence that these "spiritual disciplines" be done on a regular daily basis morning, day and night would likely have most Christians overwhelmed.

I understand the importance of making certain things regular parts of our lives in order to grow spiritually and stay strong, but Hunter never addresses the possibility that those things can be taken too far - to the point of creating a works-based faith. He never really seems to get to the heart of solution, either. His insights on our sinful desires are wonderful, but there is so much more to be said and done beyond the few spiritual disciplines Hunter focuses on. I know this from personal experience.

So, if you can read the beginning of Hunter's book by itself, or read the whole book with what I've written in mind, you'll be able to take a lot away from this book. Just be careful.

*This book was given to me for free in exchange for my honest review of it.