watched

When I first started working for my present employer in '86, I was in our breakroom by myself, and a woman walks in and comes up to me and says, “It's OK to use profanity, as long as you don't use God's name in vain.” I don't recall having said anything to her, or what motivated her to even say that to me.

I was operating a stamping press with another man, and for some reason, I showed him a picture of me when I graduated from High school. He thought it was funny that I had kind of long hair—the back touched my collar, and the sides were below my ears. He goes and shows it to one of the supervisors at work. That supervisor comes up to me and points his finger in my face and exclaims: “And that is why I don't go to church!” I don't know what that was all about. I don't recall talking to him about anything before.

One day at work, while running a press, the fork truck driver pulls up near me and says, “stop trying to be perfect, there's only one who is perfect!”   

One day at work (many years ago), I was in a meeting, and everyone who worked in the transfer press department were in that meeting. The group leader put up on an overhead projector something sexually obscene as a joke. The group was all men except for one woman in our group. After the meeting, she comes up to me and says how inappropriate and embarrassing it was for her and asked me if I didn't think it was wrong. I did. And I should have said something about it.

One day a co-worker comes up to me and asks me, “how can a man of God have the tongue of the devil?” I knew who he was talking about. I didn't have an answer for him. It seems that some Christians must think it's ok to use coarse language. I suppose that's why the guy asked me the question, since I didn't talk that way.

Not too long ago a co-worker comes up to me and says, “I'm not pro-abortion, but pro-choice.” I suppose he approaches me and makes this declaration, because he assumed I am prolife. But I said to him that those who are prolife don't see it that way. If abortion is taking a life, then it is wrong to do it.

Someone once said to me that I say more by what I don't say than by what I do say. I suppose that has been my experience. I could have a lot to say if people wanted to actually have a conversation.

A co-worker once said to me that he had to put up with “Bible Thumpers” where he used to live. I've never given him a reason to think I'm a Bible Thumper. I don't think I have ever discussed anything spiritual with him. About a year ago, he came up to me and asked, “you are a church goer, aren't you?” I said that I was. He asked me to pray for him, because he was getting a certain surgery. I said I would. He has always treated me respectfully.

Political Philosophy

 I heard someone recently refer to another man as being political, and I took that as being a negative assessment of the man. I have wondered if there is a difference between being political and having a social philosophy that one seeks to promote. To say someone is political seems to have a negative characterization to it, and I wonder if it is being used correctly in its application. I don't think it is as negative as calling someone a “hypocrite”--which is obviously a negative characterization that is used quite often towards those people someone disagrees with, even if they are only being inconsistent in some way as opposed to be deceptive--which hypocrisy more accurately denotes.

I could see a person being “political” if they side with their political party contrary to their beliefs, but if one has a specific social philosophy and sticks to it, regardless of their political party that they align with, is that being political? 

On YouTube, one can often find the opposing side of a view supporting that view at one time. Of course, people have the right to change their minds on an issue, but is it what they believe or is it simply their party's view that they are now supporting?

Is it right to dismiss someone's views that you don't like by claiming they are being political?  Do you know for sure that it isn't their social philosophy? Both sides of an issue have the freedom and right to claim their social philosophy.  To accuse someone of being political on an issue you disagree with could be political itself.

every answer

Several years ago, a pastor asked me to give the sermon in his place, and he asked me not to say anything controversial. I don’t remember if I had a response to that particular request, but since then, I have thought “what's not controversial?”

I came up with the saying a few years ago that “every answer has an argument against it.” I found that no matter how good of an answer you have on a particular issue, someone has an argument against it.

You can't go anywhere without finding people who you will disagree with.

So, you need to know what you believe, and why you believe it, and decide what you are going to divide over, for you can't go anywhere without finding disagreement.

It's good to be willing to be persuaded--to have a change of mind--but that takes humility, honesty, and objectivity, and I'm afraid we are too often too far removed from these qualities of character. Of course, we don't want to be “tossed to and fro” by every “wind of doctrine” or new idea or argument. Most likely, one won't have a change of mind about anything unless they begin to doubt what they believe. Doubt can be an uncomfortable and scary thing. It can lead to being ostracized.

I don't think it is necessarily bad to be certain of something if you are convinced by the evidence but be just as certain that someone will disagree with you and maybe find fault with what you believe. Every answer has an argument against it.

Boyd's Scripture

 I read Greg Boyd's book,  “Inspired Imperfection.” 

Boyd believes in the Divine Inspiration of Scripture, but he believes it has a multitude of errors in it. 

This came about after he had a crisis of faith, not being able to refute an evolutionary professor of his, after which, for a time, he abandoned his faith.

He eventually came back to the faith, but he concluded that Scripture had a multitude of errors. Yet he still believed in Divine inspiration of the Scriptures.

This can be explained by his accommodation view, that God accommodated all that error, historically and theologically as a kind of consequence of man's sinfulness. And this all fits more specifically with his "cruciform" view of Scripture, that all scripture points to the cross of Christ, the ultimate consequence of man's sinfulness.

Boyd's divine accommodation and cruciform theory understands inspiration of scripture to include exaggeration and lies and myths about historical events and requirements of the law that were Ancient Near East [ANE] in practice but not God's requirements. All the undesirable, offensive, and unexplainable things, and so-called multitude of errors of the OT were accommodations as consequences of man's sinfulness, and these all foreshadowed the ultimate consequence of sinfulness of the future rejection of Christ by crucifixion. God would forgive despite this. This is the love of God in all its fullness of loving your enemy.

This view allows him to explain everything he doesn't like or struggles with. The divine accommodation theory and the cruciform model. 

Boyd's approach to Scripture is all about God accommodating man's sinfulness and the consequences of that, and through that comes a view of the cross that is not penal substitution but the consequence of man's sinfulness, but God suffers that consequence and then offers forgiveness. 

I believe he has it backwards about God accommodating the Ancient Near East's influences being accommodated. The ANE were corrupted views about God and history, and the revelation the Hebrews had was accurate. They had an accurate worship and approach to God. God defined that approach--not merely accommodating an incorrect view of that approach. 

Also, the genocide of Canaanites was not due to the hate of the Hebrews but divine judgment on those nations. 

The OT said to love your neighbor and the strangers among them, but those genocides were divine judgment. 

We are to love our enemies, but the circumstances are not always the same. Some enemies are only philosophically enemies--they disagree with you, but they are not physical enemies as in someone who is trying to kill you.  You love them if you can but there can be circumstances when you have to physically fight back and maybe kill them. 

God uses government to enforce law and order and sometimes to defeat other nations. It is clear in the OT that God used nations to judge other nations, just like he called Nebuchadnezzar his servant. Neb was used to judge Israel and take her captive. 

Boyd can explain everything objectionable in the OT as God accommodating man's sinfulness from animal sacrifices to ethnic cleansing to exaggerated accounts and all this accommodating pointing to Jesus suffering at the hands of sinful man as a consequence of their sinfulness in crucifixion. 

Why would God intentionally mislead us or give us inaccurate accounts and laws that he hates when he could have given us the true account and laws? 

Boyd, as a new Christian,  thought he could take on the evolutionists and higher critics, but he lost. He took their word as truth and suffered shipwreck in his faith. He thought he could turn the world upside down, but he couldn't.   The result was to come up with a view of scripture that he didn't have to defend before the atheists and higher critics for anything that seemed historically difficult to substantiate or morally objectionable.

Boyd's Faith

 I recently read a book by Greg Boyd titled "The benefit of the Doubt."  The book is about faith, doubt, and certainty. I'm concerned that I may not represent his views accurately, but I will try my best. But this is not a book review.

The past few years, I've been hearing this idea that faith and belief do not mean the same thing. One of then includes doubt. I don't remember which one, but Boyd says that faith includes doubt, so maybe it is faith. I must admit that I found this problematic from the first time I heard it. For it seems to me that the words themselves do not support such a distinction. The Greek word for faith is the same for belief, being “pistis”; and of course “believe” is a verb, which is “pisteuo.” I would think the difference between the words is how one best fits in a sentence; that is, the word “faith” may work better than “belief,” and then it depends on whether you use a noun or a verb. However, one can choose to use “faith” to include doubt, and to use “belief” to not include doubt but the words themselves do not give indication that one includes doubt and the other does not. If faith and doubt can be used interchangeably in a context, it would seem they mean the same thing. If one includes doubt, then they both do. Wouldn't they?

Boyd believes that faith includes doubt, and that faith has the idea of “trust”--a trust that allows you to act accordingly in-spite of your doubt. At least that is how I understood him. He sees doubt as being honest, and certainty as being proud and unwilling to change ones view. He even calls certainty idolatry or the pursuit of certainty as idolatry. That's how I understood him.

I'm not sure about the idolatry claim, but I know that certainty can come across arrogant to others. I see certainty as a kind of confidence that can manifest itself as arrogant, depending on how it appears. David had a certain kind of confidence that came across as arrogant to his brother, when he came to where the battle was: “²⁸ Now Eliab his oldest brother heard when he spoke to the men; and Eliab's anger was aroused against David, and he said, "Why did you come down here? And with whom have you left those few sheep in the wilderness? I know your pride and the insolence of your heart, for you have come down to see the battle." 1 Samuel 17:28 Was David's confidence in God idolatry? I see his confidence producing a kind of bravery because of his particular belief in God. Am I wrong about this?

Certainty as a kind of confidence depends on the object and context. There are things I believe that we can be certain about and things that are not guaranteed. I can be certain that God is able to heal me, but I am not certain that he will. I see these as 2 different things, not one thing. I am certain that God cannot lie, but I don't know what He might do in a certain situation. It seems to me that certainty depends on the object of faith and what is actually being offered. Sometimes we are mistaken about what God says or promises in Scripture. If I have faith the size of a mustard seed, can I really tell a mountain to go jump in the water? What is being communicated in those words? Can I be certain that I can receive anything I believe God for? I don't believe so. Yes, I actually doubt it. But I do believe the object of faith is an issue, and certainty depends on the object. I can be certain that Jesus is coming again, but I am uncertain concerning the timing—such as “pretrib.” Though I know that some can be certain about the timing. I might say that I see one view more likely than the other, so maybe that indicates there is some doubt in my own belief. Fine.

Boyd saw a problem, a kind of hypocrisy, in those who considered it pride if one was not willing to doubt their view while they were not willing to doubt their own view. I would suggest that we shouldn't expect someone to doubt their view, but to be willing to consider a different viewpoint. It's not wrong to be certain of something, and yet be willing to consider a different viewpoint. It's probably true that one won't have a change of mind until they begin to doubt what they believe, but it doesn't necessarily have to begin with doubt. I have had a change of mind on some things that didn't necessarily begin with doubt, but a curiosity as to why someone had a different view than I did—so I looked into it.

Boyd sees doubt as a good thing, because then may be willing to consider a different viewpoint. But as I said in the previous paragraph, one does not have to doubt to consider a different viewpoint. If one does have doubt, it is good to consider why you doubt. Because it may mean you lack assurance. John the Baptist begin to be uncertain if Jesus was the one, the specific one to come, and so he sent his disciple to Jesus to ask him if he was the one—which reveals that he still believed he was sent from God, because, how could John even trust him to speak the truth? Jesus answered his inquiry by working some miracles to attest to who he was.

I don't know what Boyd would say about John the Baptist's doubt, but Boyd does make some interesting points about the difference between doubt and wavering. And I think there may be some merit in the distinction between the two, but I tend to think it involves the object of faith. Boyd would say to have doubt is not bad, but to waver would be. He says that the word translated “doubt,” as in James chapter one should be understood as “waver.” I find that interesting (and maybe possible). If one lacks wisdom, one should ask in faith without wavering (as opposed to doubt); in other words, you should precede to trust God for the wisdom and not waver. But I confess I have a little trouble distinguishing between wavering and doubt. So, I trust God and not waver but I can still have doubt? Ok. I'm not sure about this. I guess he means that one should live their life consistent with expecting that God will give wisdom (trust without wavering), but what is the doubt about? I suppose Boyd is thinking that deep down inside me there may be an uncertainty that I will receive the wisdom that God promises., but I should press on trusting that the wisdom will come, regardless of the doubt I might feel—this would be trust God without wavering.

One other thing I want to bring up--and I'm doing this from memory, so I hope I represent Boyd correctly on this—is his discussion of Hebrews 1:1: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for ...” Hebrews 11:1 I am only looking at the first part of this verse, which seems to give a definition of faith. I spent quite a bit of time thinking about this entire verse early this year (2025), trying to understand the Greek words translated “substance” and “evidence” (but not looking at that word here) in the KJV. I was teaching on the topic of “faith” as used in Scripture at Church in a small group, and I was finding myself uncertain how to best translate Hebrews 1:1. What does the KJV mean by “substance?” The Greek word is “hypostasis.” “Faith” is the “substance” of things hoped for—what does that mean? Other translations have words like “assurance” or “confidence.” I understand those words better, but they are quite different in meaning, and easier to make sense of. Faith is the assurance and confidence of things hoped for. I wanted to conclude that the Greek word had a broad range of meaning or usage, and “assurance” fits best. But the Greek word appears elsewhere in Hebrews and seems to mean “substance”: “[Jesus] who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person [hypostasis]” Hebrews 1:3 Jesus is the express image of God's hypostasis. The KJV translates “person,” but it could be “substance.” What does this mean?

My Greek lexicon says the best meaning is “realization”: “faith is the realization of things hope for.” I don't know, does that help? Boyd sticks with the word ”substance” and says that faith is something like the substantializing of things hoped for. I take that to mean that by one's actions, that reveal a trust in God, one substantiates the thing hoped for. Something like that. Does that make sense? There is a connection between what one does and believes, and there is a sense in which actions fulfills faith, and that is one way of understanding James statement about faith being made complete through works: “Do you see that faith was working together with his works, and by works faith was made perfect?” James 2:22 The word “perfect” can be understood as “complete.” So I think that Boyd was saying something about how faith substantializes the things hoped for by how it is made compete in actions of trust in God. I do believe Hebrews 11 is showing what living by faith looks like with the many examples from the Old Testament. So, I don't know if this discussion was of any help. But I will leave it at that.

I do think that calling “certainty” idolatry is rather extreme, but I do understand how some people may come across as arrogant in their faith and could maybe be dishonest or hypocritical in some way. But I think that certainty depends on the object and context and understanding of what is believed. I don't see a problem with being certain about some things, especially the character of God—because if God does lie, everything changes, and nothing is certain.

be ready

 Many years ago, a fellow church member approached me and said that if he studied the Bible as much as I did and the pastor, it would mess up his mind. I can't remember if I even had a response. Maybe I could have thought...”are you saying that my mind is messed up?” I don't know how much Bible study he thought I did, but it wasn't like I spent many hours a day studying it. Usually, I spent a lot of time trying to think through issues I was confronted with, and I read portions of books that addressed issues I was thinking about (by people I would both agree with and disagree with). I had a lot of time to think, because for many years, I did factory work that was very monotonous, standing at the end of a conveyor, stacking automotive parts—for many hours every day.

I have taught adult Sunday School from my early 20's into my 60's, and I had to put some effort into knowing what I was going to talk about in my class. I did have a tendency to pick some difficult topics. I need to understand things and know what I am talking about. A pastor from the same church once called me to his office and said: “Jason, tell us what you know, not what you don't know.” He must have heard me teaching on a difficult topic, and thought I wasn't well enough prepared. I'm sure that he was correct about that. Obviously, I've never forgot what he said.

I remember at the same church on a Sunday night I was doing the speaking, and I was teaching on regeneration. We had a visitor that night, who had family members in the church. I and the pastor went to visit him one night. He just kind of unleashed anger on me for teaching on such a topic. He claimed that he didn't think his parents understood what I was talking about, and even he, an elder in his church, didn't understand what I was talking about. I was just a little surprised and wasn't sure how to respond. (My pastor actually got emotional about it and defended our teaching.) Maybe I made it too complicated; I don't know. 

Maybe it seems arrogant to others to try to understand and have an answer for the things the Bible addresses. I know there are things that I work at trying to understand that others say they just aren't interested. I've had people say or indicate to me that they just aren't interested in prophecy. I guess I understand that, but I am very interested in those things.  A family member once told me that he wasn’t interested in prophecy, but he must have changed his mind later, because I sent him a book on a particular topic, and a few years later, he sent the book back to me, but it was an updated version of the book, not the same copy.