A Journal Journey with Brad Jersak’s “Different” Jesus - Day 17

 

Examining "A More Christlike Word" by Brad Jersak

Day 17 

“For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough.” (Paul’s concern from 2 Corinthians 11:4) 

The False Filter	The Biblical Filter
The word OR the Word	The Word THROUGH the word

The Anthropomorphic God	The God-is-who-he-is God
Select traits are treated as human qualities applied to God for illustrative purposes alone.	All characteristics of God described in God’s word, the Bible, are inherent qualities of his nature.
God’s “divine anger, judgment, or wrath” are “ever only anthropomorphisms of parental love aimed at restoration” (p. 52).	All characteristics of God described in God’s word, the Bible, are inherent qualities of his nature and mean exactly what they say they mean.
Needs to be corrected by BJ’s “another Jesus” whenever the biblical writers describe Yahweh in what BJ determines is unjust or immoral acts of subjugation or violence.	The same God we see revealed through the Scriptures we now call the Old Testament is revealed in an in-person way by the true Lord Jesus Christ in both his first and second comings.

   I now come to the fightin’ words I was facing as I pitched my tent the previous day. The author writes,

Today, I see inspiration in this way: the authors of Scripture were carried along⁶ by the Holy Spirit so that, through their words, by the Spirit, God breathes (present tense) a testimony to us that reveals our redemption and destiny in God through Christ. Scripture is the witness (and not the only one), and Christ is the revelation. When we read the Bible in that s/Spirit, we see the grand narrative and where it’s all pointing: to Christ and his gospel. To miss this is to miss everything, just as most of the religious leaders of Jesus’s day had—just as I had. (p. 62).

   This is simple: does the Bible say “God-breathed” the Scriptures Paul was speaking about to Timothy? Or does it say that “God breathes a testimony to us” as we are reading the Scriptures (I think is what BJ meant)?

   The word in question means, “God-breathed adj. — produced by the Spirit of God; understood as the air that was physically expelled out of the lungs of God” (BSL). The ESV translates this “breathed out by God”. The NIV has “God-breathed”. The KJV and NKJV have “given by inspiration of God”. The NASB has “is inspired by God”.

   Since the meaning of the word “God breathed” is in reference to the Scriptures (what the Christians already had of the written word of God), I just don’t get where the “God breathes” fits the statement. That changes it from something God did already in giving us the Scriptures (the sense of the text), to something God does in some ongoing way as people read the Scriptures (which isn’t the sense of the text). I will see if anything makes sense as we continue along the path, but it already sounds like there is no room to change “God breathed” the Scriptures to “God breathes a testimony to us”.

   I agree with the author’s assessment that “It’s possible to spend a lifetime studying the Bible without once hearing the Father or knowing the Word” (p. 63). However, not so with what he says next, “Apparently, the inspiration of Scripture is only real and relevant to us insofar as we fix our gaze on the One to whom it points” (p. 63). Again, that depends. Paul was talking about Scripture, which clearly would have included what we have in the Old Testament along with whatever the church had already recognized as the written word of God at the time Paul wrote those words. Since BJ’s argument about his ”another Jesus” requires us to believe he has found something wrong with the Scriptures Paul is talking about, Paul confronts this belief with the declaration that those very Scriptures are God-breathed.

   Think about what Jesus stated to Satan, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God’” (Matthew 4:4). It sounds fair to me that “every word that comes from the mouth of God” and “God-breathed” are synonymous. Both are talking about the Scriptures, the written words of God, and both picture those words coming from the mouth of God. Jesus is quoting Scripture to make his point. That Scripture from Deuteronomy 8:3 says, 

And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.

   Here is why I am taking a “that depends” approach to the point BJ is trying to make. Scripture is not only about Christ. Jesus is not “the One to whom it points”, but the Son of the One to whom it points. Scripture points to God, and Christ is his image. The Scriptures are “the word of God” so they point to God. Christ is the image of God making God known to us so we hear “the word of Christ”. There is no separation of the Father, the Son, or the Holy Spirit in the Scriptures. Even in Jesus’ words, we have Jesus declaring to Satan that everyone is to live by the words that come from the mouth of Yahweh, the very person BJ wants us to believe was represented poorly by the biblical writers while Jesus and Paul said that those words of Scripture came from the mouth of God, the mouth of Yahweh, and are God-breathed.

   So, I can’t agree at this point that “the inspiration of Scripture is only real and relevant to us insofar as we fix our gaze on the One to whom it points” (p. 63) because it is uncertain whether BJ admits that Scripture points to “the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3), or whether he claims it is his “another Jesus” that was being spoken about the whole time and is distinct from the Yahweh revealed in the Scriptures that both Jesus and Paul said were God-breathed.

   As I moved through BJ’s description of how “the complexity of the Scriptures only confirms their inspiration” (p. 63), and how the divine genius “transcends its distinctly human qualities”, I smacked into another loaded statement:

Loaded Question/Statement	Clarification of What we Know
“Amid the polyphony of conflicting worldviews that I see among its authors, I’m always inspired to see God’s fingerprints everywhere across its pages” (pp. 63-64).	The God’s fingerprints analogy sounds good, but nothing has been stated anywhere that says the biblical writers had “conflicting worldviews”. I would say that is not true at all.

   I keep noticing that BJ admits he is sharing what he thinks, what he sees, what he believes, not what is stated in the Scriptures. To believe there are “conflicting worldviews” when the Bible never makes that suggestion is not only an opinion, but an opinion contrary to revelation. It does continue to show that the “another Jesus” of the BJs is not the one revealed by God through his word.

   With that theme of the author suggesting his own ideas, he presents this challenge:

Let’s try this distinction: inspiration is not the same as exhalation. When we read that a biblical author is inspired, could it mean that God’s Spirit breathed into them and then, through their own creativity, worldviews, faith practices, religious beliefs, political biases, personal temperaments, and so forth, they exhaled a range of beautiful, unique, divine-human hybrid texts? (p. 64).

   “Let’s try this distinction,” is a BJ’s suggestion. It is his idea. For us to buy it, he would have to show that the Scriptures make this distinction (and they do not!).

   “Inspiration is not the same as exhalation.” That depends! The biblical word for “breathed-out” (which the author has replaced with “inspiration”) IS synonymous with “exhalation” (breathing out!). By replacing “breathed-out” with “inspiration”, it clouds the meaning of what the Scriptures say.

   This is a good time to expose a clever tactic called “bait and switch”. It means to bait someone with the idea you’re talking about one thing, but, while still using that label, they switch to a different thing. In this case, the bait is that we are talking about whether the Scriptures are “breathed out” by God. By then using the word “inspiration” he has switched what we are talking about. And applying this to the biblical writers instead of the Scriptures, readers will think they are agreeing with a point about Scripture when the topic has changed!

   So, “inspiration” is not what the biblical word says, although it is often used with the same meaning as “breathed out”. And it is not the men who were inspired but the Scriptures that were “breathed out”. BJ has switched “Scripture” to “men” and “breathed out” to “inspired” so that we are no longer discussing whether the Scriptures (what we have in the Bible) are breathed out by God and therefore authoritative over all matters of faith and practice in the church, but whether the men received “inspiration” from God, and what they “exhaled” as Scripture is no longer directly “breathed out” by God but "exhaled" by men. BIG difference!

   Now, I know that unraveling all these slight-of-hand word-tricks is quite time-consuming, but I hope it will prevent readers of BJ’s books to fall for these deceptive bait-and-switch schemes.

   “When we read that a biblical author is inspired,” is another bait-and-switch! Where did we read that the biblical authors were inspired? Didn’t the Scripture say that it was “all scripture” (the whole entire package) that was breathed out by God? I’m saying this because of what comes next. Let’s look at that, and then let’s consider how false it is because of all the baiting and switching that has taken place.

   When we read that a biblical author is inspired, could it mean that God’s Spirit breathed into them and then, through their own creativity, worldviews, faith practices, religious beliefs, political biases, personal temperaments, and so forth, they exhaled a range of beautiful, unique, divine-human hybrid texts? (p. 64).

   Um, how about “NO”!

   How do we know it is “NO!”?

1.     Because we haven’t read anywhere that the biblical authors were inspired but only that the Scriptures were breathed out by God.

2.    Because it couldn’t mean that God’s Spirit breathed “into” them when the text says that God “breathed out” the Scriptures.

3.    Because there is no mention in the Bible that men were free to add “their own creativity, worldviews, faith practices, religious beliefs, political biases, personal temperaments” or any “so forth” whatsoever!

4.    Because the fanciful suggestion that the Bible is “a range of beautiful, unique, divine-human hybrid texts” is the exact opposite of what the text says, that “all Scripture is breathed out by God”. The SCRIPTURE is breathed-out by God, NOT that the writers were inspired.

   I will conclude today’s journey with the last part of this paragraph: 

“A careful reading shows that God indeed inspired (breathed into) these men and women, who then exhaled a text that bears the aroma of both the Spirit’s divine genius and the authors’ truly human agency.” (p. 64).

   NO! A “careful reading” exposes that the text does NOT say “God indeed inspired… these men (and there is no mention of women being used as biblical writers)”. It says that God "breathed out" the Scriptures. And, it does not say that God “breathed into” the biblical writers, but that he “breathed out” the Scriptures. 

   There is absolutely no room for this theory that God breathed inspired thoughts into men who then exhaled a text that mixes divine and human thoughts. God’s word on his word is that “all Scripture (what we have of his word in written form) is breathed out by God”. And I hope you are seeing that if we let the BJs of the world switch words and thoughts to say whatever they please, we end up with that “another Jesus”, that “different spirit”, and that “different gospel” Paul warned us about long before we began this journey.

 

© 2024 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

A More Christlike Word © 2021 by Bradley Jersak Whitaker House 1030 Hunt Valley Circle • New Kensington, PA 15068 www.whitakerhouse.com

Jersak, Bradley. A More Christlike Word: Reading Scripture the Emmaus Way. Whitaker House. Kindle Edition.

Definitions from the Bible Sense Lexicon (BSL) in Logos Bible Systems

A Journal Journey with Brad Jersak’s “Different” Jesus – Day 16

 

Examining "A More Christlike Word" by Brad Jersak

Day 16 

“For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough.” (Paul’s concern from 2 Corinthians 11:4)   

The False Filter	The Biblical Filter
The word OR the Word	The Word THROUGH the word

   Part of my aim in testing BJ’s theorem is to give testimonies of how God is leading me to the Word THROUGH the word (the Scriptures now collected into the Bible). He wants people to believe that the Bible is only one way we learn about Jesus and that it is faulty and needs to be corrected by authorities outside the Bible. However, when he claims Jesus corrected Yahweh of the Old Testament, he doesn’t mean the Jesus of the Scriptures, but his “another Jesus” who is not in the Bible. 

   My testimony is that the Bible is the word of God, that faith comes from hearing the Bible as “the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17), and that every word of it will do in our lives whatever the Spirit of Truth is sent to accomplish. And this day of my journal journey through chapter 4 of this treacherous trail is no exception to God speaking through his word so I know what he is saying, and showing me what he is doing in and around me so I can join him in his work. Here are some introductory testimonies of how God gave me exactly what I needed to continue exposing the poison-in-the-pudding of BJ’s false teachings.

   This morning, three witnesses joined my journey for today’s rugged hike. First, I had a new friend join me last night after my previous post was settled into cyberspace (Day 15). He goes by the name, Mr. Of God. What he brought into the picture was that, when we are challenged to reconsider our relationship to the Scriptures because the BJs do not want them treated as authoritative over the church, this little expression must be included in our understanding of what we have in the Bible. It is not just “the word”. It is the word “of God”.

   This means that the focus is not only on whether “the word” has authority, and especially whether it has a character that is tarnished by the genocidal immorality the BJs claim. But the focus is on what it means that the Bible is the word “of God”. It is the nature of God that determines what we think of his word. If he is immoral, then his word would include immorality. If he is a liar, then his word cannot be trusted.

   However, my friend, Mr. Of God, reminds me that the book I am hiking through is “of man”. It is of people who changed their minds about what they believe and want us to do the same. It is of people who misrepresent and lie about God’s word to make their points that the Scriptures are not the word “of God” (I have shown this in previous days of my journal journey).

   So, with the first of my three new friends for the journey, Mr. Of God is coming along for the rest of the adventure to keep pointing out to me this contrast, that we are always being asked to choose between the word “of God”, and the word “of man”. There are things that are “of God” and things that are not “of God”. And my friend has affirmed to me that the track record of the words “of man” in this book has been dishonest and misleading about the word “of God”, and so everything the “word of God” says about such men applies.

   The second witness to join today’s journey is named Mr. Authority. Here is how he introduced himself. As I began my time with God this morning (May 14, 2024), I came to the description of how people reacted to Jesus (the Word) as he concluded his Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7). The Scriptures tell us, “And when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes” (7:28-29).

   This Scripture gives us a glimpse into the hearts of people who had grown up with the teachings and religiosity of hypocritical religious leaders. In this message, Jesus had denounced them as men who did things for show and applause but not for God. He called his disciples to have a righteousness that exceeded that of these religious elites and then showed that this means his followers must have a righteousness of the heart that is experienced and expressed for Father’s glory, not for applause or recognition.

   When we come to the end of the message and the people are “astonished” (“to be utterly amazed v. — to be or become astounded to such a degree as to nearly lose one’s mental composure” ~ BSL), it is in relation to “the scribes (“a learned person who was able to read and write; probably with a focus also on teaching the meaning of written documents” ~ BSL) who had taught them the Scriptures their whole lives. This is the impact Jesus had, that his teaching was so radically different from what these people had heard from the religious elite that they were involuntarily shaken with amazement at what they were hearing.

   The key word to describe what made Jesus’ teaching different from that of their religious leaders was, “authority” (“ruling authority n. — authority over a domain or sphere of influence; often pertaining to the political or religious sphere” ~ BSL). This means that the people recognized that there was a way Jesus taught that had authority to it. Their religious leaders never sounded like they had authority.

   So, my new friend on the journey, Mr. Authority, will keep pointing out who is claiming to be an authority on the Word and the word and contrasting any manmade claims with the authority of the Word as revealed to us in the word of God. Will we find that the BJs have authority to claim that Yahweh was immoral, or that Jesus authorizes their claim that the word of God (the Bible) needs to be corrected so that it is more “Christlike”? Or will we find Jesus speaking with authority in affirmation of the Scriptures that were available in his day (what we now call the Old Testament), and filling the Scriptures that were written for the church with his glory (what we now call the New Testament)? Our travelling companion, Mr. Authority, will help us see these distinctions.

   And the third witness to join my travels today is named Mr. Experiencing God. When I was asked to read BJ’s book to give the rationale for the strange teachings my friend was posting online, I asked if they would read “Experiencing God” by Henry Blackaby so they would understand where I am coming from in my love for the Bible as God’s word.[1] This is the resource God used thirty-two years ago to change my mind about what I was doing when I met with God in his word. Before that time, I called my time with God “my devotions”. It was what I was doing. It was what I was reading. It was what I was discovering. It was what I wanted to do with whatever I read. Everything was the stereotypical Western Christianity child-centered mindset. And I had no idea that it was all self-focused!

   When I met Henry Blackaby at a Pastors’ and Wives’ Retreat in May of 1992, I heard the most refreshing good news: I could lead a church to attach to God and his work by uniting our congregation to listen to God in his word. I would happily share more of how transforming this was, but the point for today’s journal journey is that God reminded me that what I am bringing to this “countering counterfeits” focus is the plumbline of “truth in love” that shows people how God is still speaking to his people through his word, the Bible. It is the Bible as the word of God that is “living and active” in our lives (the exact opposite of what BJ claimed early in our journey). And it is in our interactions with God in his word that we truly “experience God” in the real and personal ways we read all about in the Scriptures.

   For the rest of this journal journey, I have three companions to help me test everything, hold on to what is good, and avoid every appearance of evil in the book (I Thessalonians 5:21-22). Mr. Of God will keep showing me what is of God and what is not; Mr. Authority will keep showing what has authority and what does not, and Mr. Experiencing God will keep pointing out the glory of how God speaks through his word so we can hear what he is saying, recognize what he is doing, and join him in his work. And, with that, the four of us continue the arduous journey.

   Note: if you are wondering what I sound like in talking about these things, I did up a video version of how God blessed me with these three friends and you can view that in the link in the footnotes.[2]

The Anthropomorphic God	The God-is-who-he-is God
Select traits are treated as human qualities applied to God for illustrative purposes alone.	All characteristics of God described in God’s word, the Bible, are inherent qualities of his nature.
God’s “divine anger, judgment, or wrath” are “ever only anthropomorphisms of parental love aimed at restoration” (p. 52).	All characteristics of God described in God’s word, the Bible, are inherent qualities of his nature and mean exactly what they say they mean.
Needs to be corrected by BJ’s “another Jesus” whenever the biblical writers describe Yahweh in what BJ determines is unjust or immoral acts of subjugation or violence.	The same God we see revealed through the Scriptures we now call the Old Testament is revealed in an in-person way by the true Lord Jesus Christ in both his first and second comings.

   Today’s journey begins with a signpost telling us BJ’s thoughts about what is ahead. He gives “two points” that he claims 

“comprise a central key for interpreting Scripture:

• How does any given passage point to Christ?
• How does any given passage form Christlike people?” (p. 62)

   So often when I hear someone make a claim in certain words, or ask a question a certain way, my response is, “That depends.” Often, we can’t know what someone really means until we know the background, the context, or what they’re trying to get at.

   In our case, these two questions mean two different things based on whether we have bought into BJ’s “the word OR the Word” or we are getting to know “the Word THROUGH the word”. Even though it is one signpost, it is really calling us to choose between two trails. Our chart helps us picture where each one leads.

The False Filter	The Biblical Filter
The word OR the Word	The Word THROUGH the word
Question 1: “How does any given passage point to Christ?” On BJ’s trail of “another Jesus”, it isn’t about how Scripture points to the Christ revealed to us throughout the word (the Bible), but how the Scriptures can be reinterpreted to match the customized Jesus of “A More Christlike Word”. By making the focus on how every Scripture points to Christ instead of to the Triune God, it sets the stage for the author to present “another Jesus” who corrects Yahweh God, something that Jesus (Yahweh the Son) in the Bible never does.	Question 1: “How does any given passage point to Christ?” Because Jesus stated his mission as, “I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do” (John 17:4), we must view Scripture as the word of God that reveals the Triune God. We cannot treat every passage like it is only pointing to Christ since Jesus was always pointing to the Father. It is fair to ask how all Scripture points to Christ if understood as the true Lord Jesus Christ and in his relationship to his Father.

 

The False Filter	The Biblical Filter
The word OR the Word	The Word THROUGH the word
Question 2: “How does any given passage form Christlike people?” When BJ succeeds at getting people to reorient themselves to his “word”, this will mean they believe in “another Jesus”, and that means they will live according to that belief instead of the revelation of Christ in the Scriptures.	Question 2: “How does any given passage form Christlike people?” When we remain oriented to the Bible as the word of God we are able to receive what Paul called “the whole counsel of God” so that our becoming like Christ is, “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (II Corinthians 3:18), and with the knowledge that “God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (II Corinthians 4:6). When all Scripture is showing us “the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” we will become “Christlike” in the way God shows his glory all through the Scriptures.

   I see that the very next paragraph contains fightin’ words (he changes “God-breathed” from II Timothy 3:16 to “God breathes”!)! So I will pitch my tent here for another day and get a bit of rest before taking that one on! I hope that everyone can see that it is not enough to ask whether Scripture points to Christ. It does. But not so that Christ is separated from Yawheh of the Old Testament, or the Scriptures, or the epistles, or any other revelation of God and his word in the Bible. Christ never separated himself from the Father, and we have no right to do so. And Mr. Of God, Mr. Authority, and Mr. Experiencing God agree!

 

© 2024 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.) 

A More Christlike Word © 2021 by Bradley Jersak Whitaker House 1030 Hunt Valley Circle • New Kensington, PA 15068 www.whitakerhouse.com 

Jersak, Bradley. A More Christlike Word: Reading Scripture the Emmaus Way. Whitaker House. Kindle Edition. 

Definitions from the Bible Sense Lexicon (BSL) in Logos Bible Systems 

 

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[1] https://blackaby.org/experiencing-god/

[2] https://youtu.be/cdzXj7Ld-NM?si=0t4zghZ--e58upOU 

A Journal Journey with Brad Jersak’s “Different” Jesus – Day 15

 

Examining "A More Christlike Word" by Brad Jersak

Day 15 

“For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough.” (Paul’s concern from 2 Corinthians 11:4) 

The False Filter	The Biblical Filter
The word OR the Word	The Word THROUGH the word

   Because of how huge it is that the BJs want us to believe that some attributes/characteristics of God are nothing more than “anthropomorphisms”, I will keep these two clarifications before us as we continue our journey:

The Anthropomorphic God	The God-is-who-he-is God
Select traits are treated as human qualities applied to God for illustrative purposes alone.	All characteristics of God described in God’s word, the Bible, are inherent qualities of his nature.
God’s “divine anger, judgment, or wrath” are “ever only anthropomorphisms of parental love aimed at restoration” (p. 52).	All characteristics of God described in God’s word, the Bible, are inherent qualities of his nature and mean exactly what they say they mean.

   Because of the direction we are heading in this next chapter, I will add one more:

The Anthropomorphic God	The God-is-who-he-is God
Needs to be corrected by BJ’s “another Jesus” whenever the biblical writers describe Yahweh in what BJ determines is unjust or immoral acts of subjugation or violence.	The same God we see revealed through the Scriptures we now call the Old Testament is revealed in an in-person way by the true Lord Jesus Christ in both his first and second comings.

   As we continue, I am treating BJ’s book like he is the challenger to what the church has long believed (as he has admitted from his misunderstanding about what it means that the Bible as the word of God is “the final authority on all matters of faith and practice"). Therefore, we are going to look at his challenges to see if he is making his point and we should change our beliefs from what we have understood to be the correct view of God and his word. After hearing him out by the end of the book, we can either come to the conclusion that he has found legitimate truth that requires us to adjust our beliefs, or we can present a rebuttal because we believe this is a false teacher and false teaching that Jesus warned us about and we must shine as the light of the world to help people see the truth and hold fast to what we are given by God. I am quite sure I will be making rebuttals to obvious misrepresentations of God and his word as we continue since that has been the case through the first three chapters. However, my focus is on treating BJ as a challenger to the longstanding belief that the Bible is the word of God and is to be treated as such. He will have to prove that we are to change our minds about the Bible, and his 100% failure rate to this point is not boding well for his success.

   We now begin, “Chapter 4 ‘What Are We?’: Reframing Inspiration” (p. 56). The “What are we?” question means, what is our relationship with the Scriptures. And the first thought is a “loaded question”! I see there are more following, so I will try a chart to address loaded questions/statements, and clarify what we know.

Loaded Question/Statement	Clarification of What we Know
“Our hearts ask, ‘What are we’ when the Bible begins to confront us with grossly unpalatable images of God and immoral acts committed in his name” (p. 56).	The author has not presented anything from the Bible that presents God in “grossly unpalatable images,” or describes “immoral acts committed in his name” (with God’s authorization).

      After sharing some heart-wrenching examples of people walking away from Jesus because they had never attached to him by faith, the author expresses his experience, “But if you’ve known intimacy with Christ and experienced actual liberation, walking away from his love isn’t an option" (p. 56). I will just add my personal testimony of facing all kinds of disappointing experiences with churches and church folk while continuing to grow in my relationship with God on a daily basis by seeking to get to know the Word THROUGH the word. So denigrating the Scriptures as the BJs suggest is not required to have a growing relationship with the Lord.

Loaded Question/Statement	Clarification of What we Know
“Once you stop drinking the Kool-Aid of biblical literalism, any further connection with Scripture needs to include the answer to that awkward question, ‘What are we?’” (p. 57).	Nothing has been shared to explain “biblical literalism” or to justify the Jonestown’ metaphor of “Kool-Aid”. And there is nothing awkward about the “What are we?” question in relation to Scripture.

   The author follows this with, “And it’s tough to know what we are without also asking of the Bible, ‘What are you?’” (p. 57). For sure. When we know what God has given us in his word, we discover that it is saturated with an amazing and clear message of who, whose, and what we are, along with the relationship God desires us to have with his word.

   Now we come to the crux of the conflict, “As I keep insisting, Christ gets the final word, and the Scriptures testify to his authority. I relate to Christ as God’s Word and to the Bible as one (and not the only) venue where I can hear the living Voice” (p. 57). This is why the author needs to create a conflict between the word and the Word. It allows him to bring in other “venues” that are just as authoritative as the Bible (in his mind). Again, he will need to prove that this is necessary and good.

   The two sides BJ puts against each other are simplified into this chart:

Relationship to the word 1	Relationship to the word 2
“the Bible is God’s inspired, infallible, inerrant canon of His self-revelation” (p. 57).	“the Scriptures are actually a witness to Christ and a revelation of human hearts—” (p. 57).

   I am going to counter this challenge with a clarification. BJ wants us to believe that the Scriptures are “a witness to Christ”, which means they are human testimonies about Christ from which we can learn things about him from the best the people knew and understood. The Scriptures want us to believe they are “the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17), which means they are Christ speaking to us directly. Whenever BJ shares about Jesus speaking of the Scriptures as bearing witness about him, I think we will find that it is the way Jesus affirmed that the Scriptures were God’s word, not human words bearing witness to him.

   The author’s claim from here is “When I realized this, it meant I had to reframe how I see, read, and interpret Scripture, especially in its all-important role as the Word’s witness” (p. 57). Yes, if you change what you believe the Bible is, you would then change how you relate to it. This also works for the cults that change what people believe the Bible is which then changes how they relate to it, so we must be careful what we believe and how we behave accordingly.

   Two questions have not been answered. First, are the Scriptures merely a “witness to Christ”, or the “word of Christ”? Second, are the Scriptures merely “a revelation of human hearts”, or the revelation of God through human hearts? Neither of BJ’s claims about this have been shown to be the case. However, he speaks as if “I realized this”, but without any evidence that would make this an objective realization.  

Loaded Question/Statement	Clarification of What we Know
“Nevertheless, it gets a little tricky when I say Christ is my final authority while I’m also dependent on a witness that I call inspired yet seems unreliable at times” (p. 57).	There is nothing tricky about viewing Christ as the final authority and his Book as the final authority he has given us to govern everything we do in the church while he is away. And, to this point, nothing has been stated that shows the Bible to be unreliable, but plenty has been stated to show the author is unreliable in his use of the Bible.

   As to a friend’s question regarding what we can trust in the Bible if the parts BJ doesn’t like aren’t “accurate”, BJ replies, “Let’s begin by addressing the question of inspiration, infallibility, inerrancy, and canon. Then we’ll move on to how our convictions about what Scripture is impact our faith in the Gospel narratives about Jesus” (p. 58). It appears that these will be the three areas that shape what people believe the Bible is, and therefore adjust their relationship to the Bible accordingly.

   Another theme we will need to track is what the author means by “a literalist reading of Scripture” (p. 58). If this means that a person takes every verse of the Bible literally without regard for its genre, then that would be one of the pendulum extremes. The other pendulum extreme would be to take the whole Bible metaphorically or symbolically. The plumbline would be to take Scripture to be the word of God in all its genres. This attention to the literalist focus leads to the next loaded description.

Loaded Question/Statement

Clarification of What we Know

“Our church believed the Bible described a six-day creation (calculated by biblical genealogies to seven thousand years ago). We believed that Noah’s flood was actually global and must have covered Mount Everest. We also believed that literally every living species survived on an ark. At the same time, we weren’t so naïve as to believe Christ is an actual lamb with seven horns and seven eyes2” (p. 58). Note: this is a loaded statement since it words things inaccurately as if that is the biblical view (strawman) which then requires us to pick sides based on those misrepresentations.

Believing the biblical description of creation is good. It is clearly taught all through the Scriptures and is affirmed by science all the time. Believing that the global flood covered Mount Everest as we now see it is a misrepresentation of the facts and the Bible even says so![1] And it is not clear if his church really did teach these things, or if this is merely the author’s take on the matter. No, not every living “species” categorized by modern science was on the ark, but only the “kinds” described in creation (really BIG difference!). And, we can always take the historical accounts as true history while also recognizing the apocryphal accounts as true symbolically.

   I’m surveying the next ground the author leads us on, his journey of learning to question the Bible. His loaded points continue with things like,

Loaded Question/Statement	Clarification of What we Know
“I questioned whether God’s commands in the Old Testament to carry out acts of genocide without mercy truly came from the Abba whom Jesus revealed” (p. 60).	As already pointed out, there has been no evidence of God carrying out any acts of genocide, nor executing justice without mercy. We are not obligated to resolve this problem for him because he has yet to show that the problem exists (20% of the way through the book!).

   The next section continues his journey of processing in his mind how the Scriptures can be breathed out by God but not his authoritative word.

Loaded Question/Statement

Clarification of What we Know

“We don’t read the ugly parts of the Bible as bygone histories or dismiss them for their bad theology. Rather, we enter these stories and experience them as floodlights revealing our own issues” (p. 61).

Terms like “ugly parts” or “bygone histories” or “bad theology” all project imperfections on the Scriptures that have not been demonstrated. And, since the focus is to have a Jesus who reinterprets how we read about Yahweh in the Old Testament, there should have been something from Jesus supporting this viewpoint. It has also not even remotely been demonstrated that some of the descriptions of Yahweh by the biblical writers were nothing more than “a floodlight revealing our own issues”. I get that BJ wants that to be the case, but he has presented zero evidence to that effect.

   What I find along this leg of the journey is that I am constantly correcting bad information. It is like coming to a viewpoint, reading the sign describing what is before us, and pointing out that the sign is describing something different than we can see with our own eyes. So, as I have shown this with BJ’s own thoughts, it is there also in those he quotes as his affirmation for what he believes. Quoting David Goa,

“[I invite] the faithful to a particular spiritual discipline when they read the hard texts in the First (Old) Testament that speak of the anger, wrath, and judgement of the divine, including those that seem to be the wrathful words of God spoken directly, but are instead revelations of human passions, of the appetite for divine justice, assigned to God (p. 62).

   To claim that the words the biblical writers declared were Yahweh’s own words were “instead revelations of human passions, of the appetite for divine justice, assigned to God” is the continuing thread of unsubstantiated claims. I keep asking myself, “Says who?” And where does BJ’s Jesus say these things about Yahweh? If the Scriptures Jesus spoke about in his day were full of human passions parading as his Father’s words, he would have had to say so!

   The quote continues,

…All biblical revelation, along with the revelation of the Holy Spirit, is a light shone on our passions and thus on our way of seeking and knowing the world and our presumptions about God’s ways and God’s will. Revelation illuminates God’s love for us, but we need it also to shine light on our personal and collective darkness, the shadows in our life, our relationships, our moment in history, our place in culture⁵ (p. 62).

   All I can say right here is that something is missing. Revelation is first a revelation of God. It shows God to us. “In the beginning GOD!” it declares, and then begins revealing what God did and said. It is in revealing God to us that we discover everything he wants us to know about ourselves, but so that we are always seeing him first and understanding ourselves through his self-revelation. 

   And, since the author has yet to give any evidence that there is anything in the Scriptures of Jesus’ day that was a false revelation of Yahweh, we still haven’t been given any reason to disbelieve that the ways God executed justice against evil people is exactly the way God wants us to know how he feels about sin. Yes, we will see ourselves in the “collective darkness” as we see God in the holiness and righteousness of his judgment against sin. Whatever anyone believes about these things up to this point, I’m simply pointing out that the sign says one thing, but the scene says another. And nothing in any scene has shown us a Yahweh that Jesus corrected in word or deed.

   And that is a good spot to stop and catch a breath before continuing our journey. 

 

 

© 2024 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.) 

A More Christlike Word © 2021 by Bradley Jersak Whitaker House 1030 Hunt Valley Circle • New Kensington, PA 15068 www.whitakerhouse.com 

Jersak, Bradley. A More Christlike Word: Reading Scripture the Emmaus Way. Whitaker House. Kindle Edition. 

Definitions from the Bible Sense Lexicon (BSL) in Logos Bible Systems

  

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[1] The tectonic activity during the flood is described in Psalm 104:6-9.

You covered it with the deep as with a garment;
    the waters stood above the mountains.
At your rebuke they fled;
    at the sound of your thunder they took to flight.
The mountains rose, the valleys sank down
    to the place that you appointed for them.
You set a boundary that they may not pass,
    so that they might not again cover the earth.

Mount Everest as we know it is after “the Mountains rose”! Before that, it was part of the dry land described in the creation week. During the flood, it was covered with sediment and dead creatures that became the sedimentary rock and marine fossils that are found at Everest’s present height. The deep ocean valleys are “the valleys sank down”. What we see on the planet is quite consistent with Scripture.