Why Penn State’s NCAA Penalty Hits Us So Viscerally

{RJW Note: I appreciate everyone’s patience and expressed concern over the last several months as I took a much needed writing sabbatical. There is much about which to write as my heart has refilled.}

Joshua 7 tells the story of Achan, who kept some of the treasures of Jericho in direct violation of God’s command. It is not clear how many knew of it, but his disobedience caused Israel to be defeated when it attacked a small hamlet. When confronted by Joshua and the elders, he readily confessed. His punishment was not only loss of the treasure, but to be stoned along with his sons, daughters, and all of his livestock. Finally, their bodies, the treasure and all of his possessions were burned and buried.

One man’s “little” private sin impacted an entire nation, before they even knew of it. Once they found out, he was tried and convicted, with a punishment that spread beyond his own complete ruin, to that of his entire family, and innocent livestock. Scripture does not indicate if his family knew of his theft or not, so I will not make an argument from silence.

The corporate impact of Achan’s sin was the topic of Sunday’s sermon at church. As I and many in the nation wrestled this week with the NCAA’s punishment of Penn State for the coverup of Coach Sandusky’s pedophilia, the similarities to Achan kept resonating in my spirit.

A principle in Scripture is the longer sin occurs and is hidden, the deeper and more far-reaching the consequences. Achan’s sin was discovered relatively quickly whereas Sandusky’s lasted over a decade. Yet both devastated a nation, not just the immediate victims.

Many have complained that the penalties are too harsh—they unnecessarily punish the students, alumni, players, and even the Paterno family. I feel terrible for each of these groups, especially the players, the Paternos, and also the Sandusky family. Watching JoePat’s statue come down was difficult, and I’ve never even been to Happy Valley. The scandal is devastating to one of the most sterling reputations in our nation. The sanctions rub salt and vinegar into still bleeding wounds.

Taking Sides

As I get older, something claiming to be wisdom keeps intruding into parts of my life where opinions are born black and white, demanding that the gray of discerning grace settle over outrage in a calming insistence that I wait.

So often, we hear of some horrible event, and it demands that we root for the victim and curse the perpetrator, as portrayed by the one relating the awful occurrence. We want to rush to seek out cause and blame, that punishment and retribution may be parsed out.

More often than I’d like to admit, the moment I close my mouth after its issuing of my ‘considered’ opinion, more information comes out that either reverses who was really the victim and perp or that both were one or the other. The egg on my face tastes vaguely of some monstrous prehistoric ostrich. My personal opinion is that it goes rather well with the boiled sock lint left over from having my foot in my mouth.

The Church and Sex

A friend posted the following link on the ubiquitous facebook:  “$28-Billion-Crime: New film shows the dark connection between sex addiction and sex trafficking.” I had to really think through whether and how to cover this deep of a subject without diluting it by overhype or platitudes. The topic of sex and sexual sin is both over- and under-exposed in the Church. Because the topic seems so private, it can be hard to realize the global implications of one’s personal choices.

C.S. Lewis put the topic of lust and pornography in his typically unique way by comparing it to gluttony. He described both hunger and the sex drive as natural God-given aspects of being corporeally human, yet, we would think it quite odd for someone to drop a coin in a machine to have pictures of a roast turkey or ice cream or pizza pop up in a titillating fashion for a few seconds before disappearing until the arrival of the next coin. Such a person would rightly be viewed as mentally unstable or not quite right in the head, needing professional help. Why would we consider porn any different?

"If My People..."

“if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”

II Chronicles 7:14

This is an oft quoted verse by Christians, claiming a promise from God for the restoration and healing of our country, the United States of America. As far as that goes, it isn’t a terrible thing. But it is often done out of ignorance or glibly, and that is a problem.

First, we quote it out of context, and that is always a dangerous thing. Who is speaking? Obviously God, but under what circumstances and to whom? Read this larger segment:

Which is Responsible for More Evil, the Church or Atheism?

The last several days have been inspired by comments on the Greta Christina blog post that inspired February’s “Unlikely Bedfellows” post here on TSR. In some of her responses to readers’ comments, she discusses various arguments for and against both faith and atheism. While I passionately disagree with much of what she says and supports, I respect her stated desire to have rational discussion on the merits of different worldviews.

She takes issue with certain classic Christian arguments about atheism, such as more evil has been committed by atheists than the Church, and responds that it is the other way around.

As I thought about the topic, I realized it is a pathetic argument from either direction.

One D--- Thing After Another

“Character is not made in a crisis it is only exhibited.”                      Robert Freeman

The title comes from an old family expression. Not that our clan coined it, but it seems to be a common generational experience. A similar one from a former coworker is “It’s never easy and it’s always something.”

Silly me offered to replace a part on a friend’s car while she was out of town. Another friend who’s much better with cars volunteered to help. Good thing. With much difficulty, we got the part replaced, but discovered the water pump had a puncture in it, which probably caused the problem we were fixing. We just finished the job we were doing, put water in and I drove it back to let it sit until the car’s owner decides what to do next.

The Things We Can't Talk About

“For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.”

I Corinthians 13:12

Have you ever thought about how, even though we live in a free country, there are many things that we just can’t talk about?

I’m not just talking about “religion and politics” or politically correct speech, though those are certainly a large part of it. There are many things that we cannot or should not reveal about ourselves or discuss with others.

Some health ailments, we are taught, have taboos associated with them, so don’t discuss them, even if you are concerned about the health of someone who obviously has one. Are you considering looking for a new job? Better keep quiet or be very careful. Family history should be “kept in the family.” Trade secrets are just that, secret. And so on.

Syllogism of Sin

To sin is to put anything above God.

God is the self-existing one.

Therefore, He is Life and the source of life.

Therefore, to sin is to put something else above the source of life.

This puts a barrier between the one who sins and the source of life.

To be cut off from life and the source of life results in death.

Therefore, it makes sense that the wages of sin is death, as the Bible claims.

SDG

Follow up to “I Want Blood!”

About 10 days ago, I attempted to explain, in response to a reader’s question, why God needs a blood sacrifice, and why it had to be Jesus Christ. I also promised to consult with folks who’ve studied theology formally to get an ‘official’ perspective and follow up. I asked four pastors and a friend about the issue, all of whom I respect highly for their thoughtful responses as opposed to ‘party line’ autonomic responses. I have heard back from four of the five, two by email and two by conversation, and the summary is that all of us pretty much have the same understanding. Tonight, I will include the two written responses, edited for clarity.

My current pastor was the first to respond, hurriedly and briefly due to giving his kids a break in caring for a sick grandchild. His first thoughts are as follows:

1. The question of sacrifice is not a "difference maker" for God. By that I mean sacrifice does not change or make a difference in God, There is no need for him to sacrifice. It is a response of man to God as you have indicated in your house analogy. He did create (sole mover) all things but the point of the sacrifice is not God's need to sacrifice. It is man's need of redemption that creates the need for sacrifice. God created us as free, moral choosing beings, and it is our choice to respond to God appropriately, in this case sacrifice, not God's NEED to make a sacrifice.

2. Jesus was not sacrificed by God. Jesus CHOSE to endure the cross and crucifixion for our sins John 15: 12-17; John 19:8-11; John 1:1-5; Philippians 2:5-11  (just a few references) {RJW Note:  yes, Jesus is God, in the person of the Son, but was not ‘made’ to sacrifice Himself by God the Father. I know, I know, the whole Trinitarian idea of 3 Persons yet 1 Being is a tough one. For purposes of this discussion, think of the Trinity as 3 independent persons whose will is completely unified in inseparable purpose. Yeah, it’s still clear as mud. Let’s move on and see if things clear up as we move downstream.}

3. I am going to give you a web address below just for some reading. Like all things on the internet, I don't agree with everything in this response (even most things) but it is a good foundation on the background of the sacrificial system and the need for sacrifice. http://www.crivoice.org/sacrifice.html

I will try to get more from him this week. The second respondent was my pastor in another town, and a former engineer with a passion for thinking things through. He and I are a lot alike, though he would cringe at the idea! :P He says:

Before getting to the blood sacrifice itself, a couple of preliminary remarks:

(1) We must begin with God's character. If He is righteous, just, merciful, gracious, holy, etc., whatever he does must align with His character, or He is no more than the mythological pantheon of gods who are not consistent, and who are not perfectly righteous, etc. If His character is not perfect, it seems foolish to worship Him other than in fear of what He might do to us.

(2) We must understand the seriousness of sin. Sin is intentionally violating God's character (e.g., if we lie, we act contrary to His character of truthfulness). And, we must understand that we are fallen creatures to our core (i.e., we sin because we are sinners, not the other way around). We sin often and repeatedly.

(3) Now, because of God's character and our character, a "great gulf" exists. As Habakkuk cries out to God, "You are of purer eyes than to behold evil, And cannot look on wickedness... " (Hab. 1:13). God must do something about this gulf. He can

(1) ignore it, and consign us to our fate,

(2) ignore it, and pretend nothing really happened (essentially, universalism), or

(3) deal with it justly.

We know because of His character, he cannot choose either option (1) or (2)

(4) The next key issue is, how serious is the crime? Even if we ignore the death penalty in our culture, a person who murders once is usually sentenced to life imprisonment ("usually" allows for the limitations of our legal system). So, is the scope of the crime God must deal with greater than or less than a single murder? I would argue it is much greater because (a) we ultimately are replacing God with ourselves (idolatry) and (b) Jesus tells us that if we hate another, we've committed murder in our heart. So, I would argue, the crime is much greater, so it is reasonable, based on our own morals, to expect the penalty to be much higher. So,

(5) To satisfy His justice, the penalty for the sin must be paid. At the same time, God is gracious and merciful, so how can He act to perfectly satisfy all His attributes? The cross - Jesus endured the full brunt of our sin, thus the price has been paid. Because he is God, He alone could endure the high price. So, in His death, the price was fully paid legitimately. Because he was man, He legally represented mankind and could substitute Himself for us. His blood, ultimately, implies a life was given as penalty for the severe nature and penalty of the crimes (sin). But, in Jesus, the blood is not the end - the price was fully paid, but Jesus alone, as the sinless sin sacrifice, was raised from the dead. A life was paid because of God's justice, He was raised "for our justification", i.e., showing God's perfect graciousness.

All "blood sacrifices" prior to Jesus portray the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus, but could not pay the required price because the sacrifice was not of a perfect being and was not of a legitimate substitute for man. The blood sacrifice symbolized, however, the high requirement God's justice demands for our sinfulness. The ones making the sacrifice realized (or should have!) that a life was required for life.

I hope this is of help to folks. If there is interest, as I hear more, I’ll share it. Like I mentioned above, the two with whom I discussed this in person shared similar thoughts.

SDG

I Want Blood!

{Note:  Just today, I have had two readers indicate inability to successfully comment on this site. I apologize to all who have had difficulty. I don’t know what’s going on with Blogspot. Chalk it up to using a free service. We’re getting what I’m paying for. If you do have difficulty commenting, here’s what I’ll do:  email me at scholarredeemer@gmail.com with the text of your comment & I will post it for you. Privacy is a big deal to me, so please explicitly state in your email what nom de plume you want published and if you want your URL posted as well. If you do not specify, I will only use your initials and no URL. Furthermore, I will post your comment as you send it to me, with the exception of fixing obvious spelling/grammatical errors. I’d just as soon have all commenters look as good as possible and won’t deliberately leave anyone out to dry unless it is the effect of their content. As this is a Christian blog, I will bleep excessively offensive words to keep things civil. Otherwise, the only other thing to know is that I do moderate comments, but try to publish as many as possible. At most, I have denied only one comment in TSR’s existence, if that. So send in your thoughts!}

Today’s post is in answer to a comment/question on the Unlikely Bedfellows post the other day. JW asked, “The question is: What difference could a "blood sacrifice" make to God, all-powerful as He is? He can create as many entities as He wishes, ‘sacrifice’ them in any manner He prefers, as often as He desires. Jesus appears to have been an example of such: created by/divided from God, "sacrificed" by God, to God. What exact benefit could this have?”

GREAT question, and one of the questions >I< struggled with when coming to faith, and still have to go back and revisit from time to time because it is a deep and complex idea that is foreign to our modern ‘civilized’ minds. So this is just as good a time as any to revisit it. First, a disclaimer:  I am a chemist, not a theologian; nor have I taken any theology or philosophy courses. But I do ask questions, and I think about things a lot. Thus, this is an armchair theologian taking a stab at it. However, I will also email this question to some pastors whom I respect and report back with an update. Also, this is a deep, complex theological topic that has generated controversy and a number of scholarly works over the years (centuries, millennia…), but is probably a bigger issue for us today than it was for early peoples. So, here goes.

Let’s start with a ‘surfacy’ answer, then dig deeper:  God said so. In Paul’s letter to Christians in Rome, he states, “For the wages of sin is death.” (Romans 6:23) A wage is what is due to someone for their activity, so when one sins, they are deserving of death. I know. There are a lot of unhappy readers right now, for a lot of reasons. You are beginning to see the complexity. First, there is the issue of God saying so—the issue of authority. Then there is the issue of Paul saying something, but I’m attributing it to God—it is again an issue of authority. Third, how is sin defined here? How many sins? How big? How small? Fourth, is death a logical wage for sin and why? And so on… And, to me, this is the clearest verse on the topic!

There is no way I can address all of these in one post, so I am going to ask for some indulgence on your part, and roll with me. Jesus taught in parables because stories and analogies help explain spiritual truths more concisely and deeper in many ways than a theological dissertation. So I am going to follow His example and use an analogy. I’m not God, so my analogies are going to be much more limited in their effectiveness than His, but this is a picture that helps me grasp the issue on some level.

Let’s say you own a home. You invite people to come live in your home, and lay out the house rules. They proceed to completely ignore them, and even make fun of you for having such rules and for being so unreasonable as to act as if it is your house. Your home and possessions are being destroyed, and they are acting like it is their house. Therefore, you evict them.

Most of the analogy is pretty obvious. God is the homeowner and Creation is the house. We are the guests and we like to do things our way and find His rules seeming to limit our freedom. So how does He evict us and what does that have to do with blood sacrifice? Throughout Scripture, God is described as the ‘living God,’ ‘the Way, the Truth, and the Life,’ the Source of Life, and so on. Therefore, it is logical that eviction from the source of life is death.

Here’s the rub for God:  in the analogy, who the interlopers are isn’t specified, and as far as you might be concerned, you’d just as soon have the place back to yourself anyway. God is different. He loves the rabble ruining His Creation and dissing on Him. He doesn’t want us to die because He created us to have a relationship together with Him, and eternal death is a bit of an obstacle to that. So what to do?

If eviction is the appropriate penalty for violating the terms of the lease, and death is the nature of the eviction, then we are in a fix. There is nothing left of us to continue in the relationship. Therefore, to resolve the conundrum, someone must pay the penalty who can ‘afford’ it. In other words, someone is needed who has, for lack of a better term, more life than the death of eviction calls for. Someone is needed who can pay for the damage and serve as a guarantor for the behaviour. There is one more requirement:  that someone must also not be guilty of violating the house rules themselves, otherwise they would need to pay for themselves and would not be able to pay for others. The only one who is able to pay the penalty of death and not be wiped out themselves is Life itself, i.e. God. And, as He is the one who set up the house rules, He can keep them. Therefore, He is the only one qualified to pay for the eviction and still be able to restore the desired relationship.

So, the reason it had to be Jesus to redeem us and the reason He had to be God incarnate, living on this planet with us, is because He had to live under His own rules successfully before He could be evicted in our stead. Only then would He meet both qualifications of a substitutionary evictee:  He had to be God to have enough Life to pay the eviction fee, and He had to be human meet the terms of the lease successfully. What’s more, because it was an unjust eviction, you can think of it as the homeowner owing the evictee, so the evictee can apply the payment once for all of the other residents. A payment was needed and a payment was made.

I realize it may still seem a bit stiff, but please reread this putting yourselves in God’s shoes as the homeowner with rowdy, destructive, disrespectful guests. If you’ve ever had a bad roommate situation or children, it shouldn’t be too much of a stretch.

There are still many questions surrounding the topic and the analogy is far from perfect, but I’ve tried my best to answer the question asked as clearly and simply as possible. If you find this answer at least minimally acceptable, please consider the possibility that other questions and the things I haven’t touched on also have answers, and that the true, full and complete answers are better than my weak attempts to explain them.

I recommend reading the book of Romans in the New Testament of the Bible, especially the first 8 chapters. It is probably the most theologically dense section of the entire Bible, so take it slowly, read the cross-referenced passages and have a thorough commentary handy. Alternatively, an easier approach is to find online or in a bookstore various Bible Studies on Romans that will guide you through it by taking it in bite-sized chunks and asking questions for understanding. It really is worth taking the time to do this. If God is going to ask you to trust Jesus’ eviction as good for yours, then it only makes sense to understand it as much as possible, especially if you are struggling with the very idea that you have been served an eviction notice to begin with!

Like I mentioned earlier, I will get input from others who’ve spent more time studying this topic formally and update it. Also, if you do have other questions, I’ll be happy to both do my best and find more formal responses.

PS- I would like to offer one further observation:  many people have understandable difficulty with the exclusivity of accepting Jesus’ eviction as the only way to avoid our own. May I encourage you to read this article on crucifixion, and then consider the question:  why would God even go there if there were an easier way? And, given that He did go there, what does that say about how much He values you?

SDG

God's Anger

“Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God's wrath remains on him.” John 3:36 NIV

What a profound and unpopular verse. Even most non-believers can quote John 3:16, but even many churches stop there, shying away from the subsequent discussion of condemnation. I understand. We spend an astounding quantity of all of our types of resources to put the best face on ourselves, the best spin on our lives.

Yet, God would rather clean up our mess than paint over it. Our mess is there. It’s real. It is the foul odor of our secret places, the weight that pushes our head into our hands when we hope no one is looking. It is the stage IV cancer in our soul.

We want, and need, a doctor that is offended by cancer, that sees it as an enemy to be crushed, annihilated, not someone who takes it in stride between golf games. We need a doctor that is angry with us when we treat it with mild indifference or ignore it—a doctor that will push us to death’s door to force us to acknowledge our dire condition, then, when we turn in fright and horror, will hold us and say I have the cure, here and now. Take it. See life. Be living. Be disease-free.

But who will take a cure for a disease they don’t believe they have? We need to know we are terminal, to know we are condemned, to realize we need a cure, a pardon. Anything else is only half the Gospel, or less. The sad part is that half of a cure can often make the disease worse.

SDG