Who’s in Charge Here, Anyway?

Every once in awhile you run into some one who pulls the strings of empathy and understanding, who opens your eyes to fields of thought you would never have experienced on your own. Such a person is Dee Chadwell. She says about herself and her website A SINGLE WINDOW –

“I have spent more than 40 years studying the Bible, theology, and apologetics and that finds its way into my writing whether I’m writing about my experiences or my opinions. I have two and a half moldering novels, stacks of essays, and one poetry chapbook, from which several poems have won state and national prizes. All that writing – and more keeps popping up — needs a home with a big plate glass window, it needs air, it needs a conversation.”   

Now its your turn to have your world expanded.

 

Who’s in Charge Here, Anyway?   

I recently shocked a friend of mine by declaring I wasn’t a Calvinist. Nothing against Calvin personally, but those who tried to step into his shoes did quite a job distorting some of the most basic Christian doctrines – election, atonement, grace, original sin, just to name a few. Calvinism disfigures the essence of God and with that, since we were created in His image, contorts the nature of man.

Needless to say, whole books could result from such a discussion so I’ll take this one tiny piece at a time. Lately, I’ve been asked by several different people to address issues relating to the sovereignty of God, so I’ll start there.

But first, a caveat – the Bible is the source of specific information regarding the nature of God and man, and the Bible is not just a list of disconnected quotes; it is an infinitely complex, multilayered arrangement of divine concepts and history (both past and future) and must always be understood in the light of its entirety. No doctrine can contradict another. God is rational; He made us to be a shadow of Himself, knew we would fall, and still left us the Bible with the intent that we learn from it and think about it rationally. So let us go as far as we can:

 

1.     Sovereignty refers to God’s supreme majesty, His divine right to control what He has made. I don’t know anyone who doubts that the buck stops with God. Even atheists seem to agree with this idea; that’s why they’re so angry – it’s all His fault, therefore He can’t exist. (!?)

2.     Godness involves more than just sovereignty. Deity (I’m including all 3 members of the Trinity) is also perfect righteousness, absolute justice, love, veracity, immutability, omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence, and eternal life. Add to that the epitome of creativity and an amazing sense of humor.

3.     If God made us “in His image,” we are fallen, lesser versions of those attributes. Are we not concerned with goodness? Do we not strive for fairness? Do we not love? Do we not value truth, stability, and strength? Do we not have intelligence? Life? Presence? We create, not ex nihilo, true, but is not creativity one of our most driving forces? Do we not laugh? And do we not have some limited sovereignty over our lives? Do we not have free will? (Aye, there’s the rub – more about that later.)

4.     God is also the archetype of balance. All of His attributes are in perfect equilibrium. His omnipotence, for instance, is limited by his righteousness – He can’t do evil. His immutability controls His justice – He can’t just up and change the rules. His omniscience informs His veracity – He can tell the truth because He knows the truth. All of His perfections are inter-related and interdependent.

5.     God’s free will, His sovereignty, is limited by His perfection. We aren’t so constrained; we have very little problem choosing to do something that goes against our morals or our intelligence. We eat too much, drink too much, worry too much, lie often, steal occasionally. We suffer a midge of guilt, but otherwise we dive right in, law and common sense be damned. But God can’t do that; God is perfect. His omniscience, His righteousness, His justice, His love, His veracity, His immutability areperfect. Therefore, His sovereignty is both limited and perfected by His other attributes; He cannot choose to do something wicked. He can’t choose to do something unjust. He can’t lie. He can’t just up and change His nature.

6.     If God can just choose, willy-nilly whom He will elect, whom He will save, and whom He will not, then:

a.     The issue of salvation (John 3:16) is false because then our salvation would be not a matter of faith, but a matter of God’s capricious choice.

b.     The Great Commission is a joke – see #1.

c.      Satan would be correct in his accusation of God’s unfairness.

7.     If God is sovereign, can He not decide to share that sovereignty just as He has chosen to share His omniscience?

8.     Isn’t He omniscient enough, omnipotent enough (strange phrases) to control things even though He has shared that free will?  Are we not imposing limitations on God by claiming He couldn’t pull it off?

9.     Calvinism goes off the cliff with its emphasis on sovereignty as if it outranked God’s other perfections. Such an arrangement would make it possible for God to be a petty tyrant, would it not? If He is more sovereign than He is good, or fair, truthful, are we safe? Can we trust Him? I think not.

John Calvin (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

God has not presented Himself as a vacillating, unpredictable player of eenie-meenie-miney-moe. He has demonstrated His fairness, above and beyond, by climbing onto the cross as the Last Adam to make right what went wrong in the Garden. He has said clearly that our salvation depends on faith in Jesus Christ, not on the vagaries of His untrammeled will.

The church today suffers mightily from this error. How can a dying world take Christ seriously if His people proclaim a gospel we don’t believe in? If we really buy the idea that God chooses, irrationally and capriciously, who gets to trust in Christ’s work, then what is the point of evangelism? If grace is irresistible then those who are chosen to believe will and those who won’t, won’t, so why bother?

But most importantly, where is the grace in such an arrangement? Where is the grace in providing salvation only for some? If God can make us believe, then why doesn’t He make everyone believe? (2nd Peter 3:9) Why create a person just to condemn him?

Calvinism’s fixation on sovereignty at the expense of God’s other perfections is forcing the church to attempt to stand, like a broken chair, to stand on only one leg. Liberal Christianity tried that, recognizing only the attribute of love, crippling the power of the gospel, painting a picture of a god who would love his creatures unconditionally, but would kill his own son. Evangelical Christianity is in the same precarious pickle – wobbling around on a one-legged chair.

Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.

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You Can Kill, But Don’t Murder

 

Yesterday Dennis Prager released 10 videos on the Ten Commandments and we have plugged them all in on this website. Those 10 videos had but the briefest of written explanations accompanying them. Today Prager has released the first of many columns to come where he expands on what the video had to say. Here is the first of Prager’s columns on the Sixth Commandment.

 

You Can Kill, but Don’t Murder

Pacifists use a mistranslation of the Sixth Commandment in the King James Bible to justify their cause.

By Dennis Prager

 

Ask almost anyone to recite the commandment in the Ten Commandments that prohibits taking a life, and you will be told, “Thou shalt not kill.”

That is the King James translation of the Sixth Commandment. Overall, it is a magnificent translation. But this one has led to much moral confusion.

Yesterday, PragerUniversity.com, which has had more than 20 million views this year, released eleven courses (each five minutes long) — the Ten Commandments and an introduction.

The reason we made these video courses is that I believe that everything we need to make a good world and rid ourselves of evil is contained in the Ten Commandments.

For the next few weeks, my column will be selected transcripts of the courses, all of which I present.

Whatever your faith, or if you have no faith, I invite you to watch the videos at www.prageru.com — the introduction and the Ten Commandments, or any one of the Ten. They are cleverly animated with text and graphics.

Here is the text of Commandment Six — explaining why the King James translation is wrong:

You would think that of all the Ten Commandments, the one that needs the least explaining is the Sixth, because it seems so clear. It is the one that the King James Bible, the most widely used English translation of the Bible, translates as “Thou shall not kill.”

Yet the truth is the quite the opposite. This is probably the least well understood of the Ten Commandments. The reason is that the Hebrew original does not say, “Do not kill.” It says, “Do not murder.” Both Hebrew and English have two words for taking a life — one is “kill” (harag, in Hebrew) and the other is “murder” (ratzach in Hebrew).

The difference between the two is enormous. Kill means:

1) Taking any life — whether of a human being or an animal.

2) Taking a human life deliberately or by accident.

3) Taking a human life legally or illegally, morally or immorally.

On the other hand, murder can only mean one thing: The illegal or immoral taking of a human life. That’s why we say, “I killed a mosquito,” not, “I murdered a mosquito.” And that’s why we would say, “the worker was accidentally killed,” not, “the worker was accidentally murdered.”

So why did the King James translation of the Bible use the word “kill” rather than “murder”? Because 400 years ago when the translation was made, “kill” was synonymous with “murder.” As a result, some people don’t realize that English has changed since 1610 and therefore think that the Sixth Commandment prohibits all killing.

But, of course, it doesn’t. If the Ten Commandments forbade killing, we would all have to be vegetarians because killing animals would be prohibited. And we would all have to be pacifists — because we could not kill even in self-defense.

However, you don’t have to know how the English language has evolved to understand that the Ten Commandments could not have prohibited all killing. The very same part of the Bible that contains the Ten Commandments — the Five Books of Moses, the Torah as it is known by Jews — commands the death penalty for murder, allows killing in war, prescribes animal sacrifice, and allows eating meat.

A correct understanding of the commandment against murder is crucial because, while virtually every modern translation correctly translates the commandment as “Do not murder,” many people cite the King James translation to justify two positions that have no biblical basis: opposition to capital punishment and pacifism.

Regarding capital punishment and the Bible, as I note in my Prager University course on capital punishment, the only law that appears in each one of the Five Books of Moses is that murderers be put to death. Opponents of the death penalty are free to hold the view that all murderers should be allowed to live. But they are not free to cite the Bible to support their view.

Yet, many do. And they always cite the commandment, “Do not kill.” But that, as should now be abundantly clear, is not what the commandment says, and it is therefore an invalid argument.

As regards pacifism — the belief that it is always wrong to kill a human being: again, anyone is free to hold this position, as immoral as it may be. And what other word than “immoral” can one use to describe forbidding the killing of someone who is in the process of murdering innocent men, women, and children, in, let’s say, a movie theater or a school?

But it is dishonest to cite the commandment against murder to justify pacifism.

There is moral killing — most obviously when done in self-defense against an aggressor — and there is immoral killing. And the word for that is “murder.”

The Ten Commandments are portrayed on two tablets. The five commandments on the second tablet all concern our treatment of fellow human beings.

The first one on that list is “Do not murder.” Why? Because murder is the worst act a person can commit. The other four commandments — prohibiting stealing, adultery, giving false testimony, and coveting, are all serious offenses.

But murder leads the list because deliberately taking the life of an innocent person is the most terrible thing we can do. That is why it is so important to understand that the commandment prohibits murder, not all killing. When people liken killing in self-defense to murder — such as when they equate killing the terrorist who is murdering people with the murders that the terrorist is committing — all they are doing is reducing the evil that murder is. And when they use the Ten Commandments to justify that position, all they are doing is making the Ten Commandments, the moral foundation of Western Civilization, morally irrelevant.

The next time you hear someone cite “Do not kill” when quoting the Sixth Commandment, gently but firmly explain that it actually says “Do not murder.”

 

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/393757/you-can-kill-dont-murder-dennis-prager

 

Related articles

• The Ten Commandments – #6 Do Not Murder
• You can kill, but not murder: The 6th commandment
• You can kill, but not murder: The 6th commandment
• You Can Kill, But Not Murder: The Case for the Ten Commandments
• You Can Kill, But Not Murder

The Ten Commandments – #1 I Am The Lord Your God

I am the Lord Your God – Prager University<!—->// // //

God Wants Us to Be Free Although the First Commandment (“I am the Lord your God”) appears simple at first glance, it actually set into motion the most revolutionary idea in human history — ethical monotheism, the belief that there is one God whose main wish is that people treat each other decently. Dennis Prager explains that without this commandment, the following nine mean little. With it, the Ten Commandments becomes world-changing.

The Ten Commandments – #2 No Other Gods

No Other Gods – Prager University<!—->// // //

There Are More Idols than Ever Today, the idea of idol worship feels ancient and remote to many people. Thus, the Second Commandment, “You shall have no other gods,” doesn’t seem applicable in modern society. But the opposite is true. We have more false gods than ever — art, education, fame, money, to name just a few. Over the past century the worship of false gods has led to massive evil; Communism and Nazism are just two examples. On a personal level, the worship of false gods leads to unhappiness

The Ten Commandments – #3 Do Not Misuse God’s Name

Do Not Misuse God’s Name – Prager University<!—->// // //

The Worst Sin You Can Commit Not all sins are equal. Some are worse than others. The worst of one of all? Committing evil in the name of God. This commandment is often misunderstood because it’s mistranslated. It’s not concerned with saying God’s name “in vain” like “God, did I have a terrible day at the office.” It’s about using God’s name in the commission of evil. We see this today when Islamists invoke God’s name while they murder innocent people.

The Ten Commandments – #4 Remember The Sabbath

Remember the Sabbath – Prager University<!—->// // //

Don’t Be a Slave Setting aside of day of rest each week was a revolutionary concept when it was first introduced as the Fourth Commandment. But this Commandment does more: it extends that day of rest to slaves and animals and thus set in motion the slow process of ending slavery and the compassionate treatment of animals. As Dennis Prager explains, the power of the Fourth Commandment to change your life is no less real today than it was for our ancient ancestors. Just ask the spouse of a workaholic how she would feel if her husband took off a day each week to spend with family and friends.

The Ten Commandments – #5 Honor Your Father And Mother

Honor Your Father and Mother – Prager University<!—->// // //

Even if You Don’t Feel Like It Children owe their parents one thing. And no, it’s not love. The Fifth Commandment understands that sometimes it’s difficult or even impossible to love your parents. But it’s almost always possible to honor them. Dennis Prager explains what that means and why it’s so important. And consider this: if your children see you honoring your parents they are much more likely to honor you.

The Ten Commandments – #6 Do Not Murder

Do Not Murder – Prager University<!—->// // //

You Can Kill, but You Can’t Murder If asked to state this Commandment, most people would say “Do Not Kill.” This is understandable because the classic King James Bible translates it this way. But the English language has changed since 1610. Furthermore, Hebrew has two words for killing just as English does. The correct translation, as Dennis Prager explains, is “Do Not Murder.” Once you grasp this, the meaning of the commandment changes entirely.

The Ten Commandments – #7 – Do Not Commit Adultery

Do Not Commit Adultery – Prager University<!—->// // //

The Best Way to Protect the Family Why do the Ten Commandments single out adultery as particularly harmful? Because adultery can destroy the foundational unit of a society — the family. If exposed, adultery leads to sense of betrayal. If hidden, it forces the offending spouse to lie. Children are often the unintended victims. This may be one of the most difficult Biblical laws to follow, but it’s also one of the most important.

The Ten Commandments – #8 Do Not Steal

 

Do Not Steal – Prager University<!—->// // //

Keep This and You’ll Keep Them All There is one commandment that, if followed by all of humanity, would instantly create a peaceful world: Do not steal. The Eighth Commandment implicitly prohibits murder (stealing a life), slavery (stealing a person’s freedom), adultery (stealing a spouse), humiliation (stealing dignity), and so many other sins laid out in the Bible. If there is one Commandment that summarizes the other nine, this one is it.