Theology

Skepticism in Faith, Part I: Epistemological Skepticism

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I’ve said before, and will likely say many times again, I believe that a skeptical approach is essential to true faith, as it causes us to test ourselves and our beliefs. In this series of indeterminate length, I want to look at a few types of skepticism and why they are helpful to us. We start with epistemological skepticism.

If you haven’t studied formal philosophy (and why would you; you want to have a job, right?), epistemological skepticism is a pretentious way to say doubt (skepticism) about human knowledge (the study of which is called epistemology). I am of the opinion that is highly unlikely (perhaps impossible given the limits of our understanding) that humans have perfect knowledge of any aspect of reality.

Let me borrow an example from eighteenth-century philosopher David Hume. Let’s say you have a billiards table and balls on the table. When you shoot pool, you rely on the expectation that the angle and speed at which the cue ball hits your target ball will determine the direction and speed of that target; this is simply vector physics.

But think about that exchange for a minute. Why do you believe that hitting the target ball with the cue ball—or hitting the cue ball with the pool cue for that matter—will result in the struck object moving? Because every time you have done it before, that’s how it’s worked. In fact, every time you’ve applied force to any object in the physical world, it has reacted in relation to the intensity and direction of that force.

Now ask yourself whether that experience proves the relevant laws of physics. If your answer is “yes,” you’re unfortunately wrong. What you have is a one-hundred percent correlation between the cue ball striking the target ball and the target ball moving in a specific way. Correlation is not causation. You cannot prove that the balls might not do something different the next time they are struck, or that it is steady coincidence that they have moved in the way that they have.

Now, on the one hand, this is an argument ad absurdum.[1] You “know” that that’s how physics works, you’ve relied on that your whole life and regardless of what I say here, you’re going to continue to rely on that. You should; it would impossible to live a reasonable life without relying on that expectation.

On the other hand, it does pose some important questions: how do we know what we know? Do we know what we think we know? In short, the causalities that we rely on are really high levels of correlation that strongly imply but do not prove causality. This is just one example, and epistemological skepticism as a whole is doubt about our ability to accurate understand reality for what actually is.

Epistemological skepticism keeps us humble—it reminds us that we may only have good approximations of answers and not answers themselves. Such a thought requires us always to revisit our ideas to determine if they may be improved, if we may edge just a little closer to actual reality, understanding that we remain ever within a cloud of uncertainty around the actual point of truth.

If we humans through our own efforts can never know exact truth, do we have any access to capital “T” Truth? God’s omniscience understands all things as they actually are and God’s omniscience allows God to reveal that Truth to us according to divine will. Hence scriptures that tell us God’s understanding surpasses human understanding as the stars are far above the earth and that God’s wisdom makes fools of the (human) wise. We have, in modern society, lost much of the mystical and intuitive practice of the Christian faith.

On the flipside of this, skepticism about the quality of our knowledge also helps us discern what might be a revelation from God and what might be us fooling ourselves, or engaging in wish fulfillment, or trying to cover our own desires with God’s permissions.

More important, this kind of skepticism makes manifest the importance of where we put our faith and belief. If there’s little or nothing that we can be absolutely sure of, what statements of truth do you believe so fervently as to call them Truth and live as if they are absolutely true?

Such questions, I hope, make it clear why the Bible warns us not to judge others—can we really be so sure that our judgments are right? If this skepticism leads us to try to live in peace with one another despite our differences, it is priceless.

For the next post in this series, click here.

 

[1] Admittedly, there is a circular logic to the strictest of epistemological skepticisms—if we can’t know anything, how can we know that epistemological skepticism is a valid position? Like most philosophical statements, there is a rabbit-hole to be leapt down here into a wonderland of nuance and complexity. I’ll leave it to you to investigate further if you are so inclined.

Fortune and Glory

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I am concerned about the way we talk about God’s glory in the modern church. Not because there’s something wrong with wanting to pursue God’s glory, but because I think the focus we have on God’s glory skews our theology in problematic ways.

I began preparing for this post by studying the Hebrew and Greek words in the Bible translated into English as “glory”. I thought to go through each of them, but they are similar enough in meaning as to be amendable to summary. The Hebrew words (Strong’s H155, H1926, H1935, H1984, H3367, H3519, H6286, H8597) translate to “glory, splendor, dignity” in most senses, but occasionally “reverence.” There is a strong intimation in the Hebrew (at least for H3519, the most commonly-used word) of importance and weight, as in when we say that something has “gravity” in English. The Greek words (Strong’s G1391, G2744) include “a high opinion” and “splendor or brightness, as of the stars,” in addition to the specific meanings “the majesty belonging to God (or Jesus)” and “an exalted state or glorious condition to which Jesus was raised after the crucifixion and to which true Christians shall enter after the return of the savior from heaven.”

In much of the Bible, when the “glory of God” is mentioned, the intended understanding is that “glory” is an attribute of God, something that is revealed to humanity in the presence of God. I would venture to speculate that “glory” is our crude way of describing the existence-altering experience of a confrontation with the all-powerful and loving uncreated creator of all things. In other places, we are told to “give glory to God.” When the words are used in this fashion, the intent, I think, is to give reverence and deference to God, not to attempt to add to the majesty of God.

I want to dwell on that last idea for a moment, because I think that’s what’s held in mind in the modern usage of doing something “for the glory of God.” God is. When God tells us that God’s name is “I am,” we need to read the full mystery into that precise but expansive statement. God is complete in and of God’s self. Part of the theological definition of God (as omnipotent and sovereign) is that God does not need anything and is self-sufficient. By that understanding, God’s glory is something that simply is, that cannot be added to by humans, because if it could, it would no longer be complete within itself. So, to be clear, our actions do not give God glory in the sense that we add to God’s glory. And so, we must be very careful when we say that we are doing something “for” or “to” the glory of God.

The word “glory” functions in the Gospels in much the same way; when God’s glory is spoken of, word “glory” seems to signify God’s awesome (in the classical sense) and transformative presence. On the other hand, when the words appear to “give glory” to God, the meaning is to praise. A very notable exception that seals this interpretation for me appears in John 17:24, when Jesus asks that the believers see the Glory which God has given to Jesus. This exception proves the rule because the meaning of the given glory is Jesus’s exultation and divinity, not praise or fame or reputation. The use of the same word (in Hebrew, English and Greek) for two very different ideas is confusing.

Looking at Romans, Paul seems to have the same understanding of the usage of the word “glory,” as when he says that men “…exchanged the incorruptible glory of God for an image in the form of corruptible man…” Romans 1:23. Likewise, in Romans 4:20, Paul uses the phrase “giving glory” in the sense of praise.

In Romans 2:9-10, he states that “There will be tribulation and distress for every soul of man who does evil, of the Jew first, and also of the Greek, but glory and honor and peace to everyone who does good, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. I believe that what Paul has in mind here is a promise of glorification in the same way that God glorified Jesus. But the inclusion of the words “honor” and “peace” make us think of glory in the context of fame and reputation—the human understanding of the word. And therein lies the real problem.

In the scriptures, as a descriptor of God, “glory” is ontological: it is an aspect of God’s being. In human uses, “glory” is teleological: it is based upon achievement and reputation. Thus it is that Indiana Jones speaks of “fortune and glory,” the rewards of the treasure hunter—er, archeologist.

The first entry under “glory” on www.dictionary.com says: “very great praise, honor or distinction bestowed by common consent; renown.” Only farther down the list do the Biblical definitions occur.

The linguistic mistake, then, comes with the assumption that all glory comes from the opinion of others. Were that the case, we could add to God’s glory by changing the opinion of others. But, as I said above, God’s glory simply is. The pursuit of God’s glory is a pursuit of God’s presence and being, not cheerleading, or marketing or (as is the sexy term these days) “branding.”

In a sense then, it is entirely appropriate to do something for the glory of God—if the meaning is that one is moved by the experience of relationship with God to do something. But when I hear the phrase used, it seems that the usage of “for” means “for the benefit of.” And in this sense, the phrase “doing something for (or to) the glory of God” is not for God, it is for self.

Such a statement must of course be defended. Let me use an example—sports teams. When fans talk about a sports team they favor, they usually don’t say, “the Patriots won;” they say “we won,” or “my team won.” Psychologists and sociologists attribute this to a pleasure derived from associating oneself with success. Sports on some subconscious and abstract level allow us to appropriate the human glory of others and to claim it personally. This thought is supported by the prevalence of fan superstitions: lucky underwear, ritual action, or even whether one must be watching (or attending) a game in order to assist the team’s chances of success. These superstitions allow us to rationalize our appropriation of the glory of the team; we can tell ourselves that we personally (in some supernatural way, perhaps) contributed to the team’s victory.

Let’s take that back to God. If we believe that God’s glory is in the opinion of others, then by raising God’s reputation we are raising our own reputation as God’s children. There are two fallacies here: that God’s glory becomes our glory by anything other than grace and that God’s glory is dependent on something outside of God.

I’ve been working on this post for a few days now, mulling it about in my head (it still seems clear as mud). Last night I attended a non-study study group at my church led by a young pastor I greatly admire. The subject for that night and several weeks to follow was “Christian Words”: those words we use so commonly as Christians but often fail to think about what they mean, leading to shallow or misguided theology. Use of the word “glory” fits squarely on this list, I think.

So perhaps we are misusing words when we talk about God’s glory. That could perhaps be a minor thing except for the emphasis Christians (particularly American evangelical Christians) place on God’s glory. If we’re going to emphasize God’s glory, we’d better make damn sure we use the words right.

What I see is a belief that, perhaps second to going to heaven, our focus is mainly upon God’s glory, but understood under the human definition as reputation. This idea is so pervasive that I have spoken with many Christians who, some avowedly, believe that the purpose of humanity’s creation was “to give glory to God.”

This is not attractive to the unchurched. In one sense, this can be construed as postmodern—God is only as powerful as we all agree God is. Hmm. Worse, we get the image of a narcissistic God who cares only about being praised. Thankfully, neither of these ideas are theologically sound.

We need to be clear to ourselves and others about the place that God’s glory has in our theology. God does not need our praise and we cannot add to God’s glory. Therefore, God’s own glory is not God’s purpose in creation, nor some demanded obeisance from us.

Of course, it is just and right and proper for us to “give glory” (in the Biblical sense of acknowledgement and praise) to God—God has given us much to be thankful and grateful for. More important, I think, is that one who has a personal experience of God cannot but be in joyful awe.

We ought, then, to focus on helping others to experience God’s glory; that is, to have a personal experience of the transformative glory of God. It is in relationship with Jesus that God’s glory is experienced—once experienced one’s opinion is forever changed. That relationship, I think is God’s purpose in creating us and should be our purpose in making disciples of others.

An Alternative Reading of the Fall

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Here’s how, in my own semi-irreverent way, I would summarize the traditional, mainstream story of Adam and Eve’s Fall in the Garden of Eden:

“So you’ve got the first man, Adam, and the first woman, Eve[1], and they live together in paradise, and everything’s cool. God gives them one command. One! ‘Do not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.’ And God tells them, ‘don’t do it or you’ll die.’ And then comes along a serpent-thing. Maybe it’s a lizard, I don’t know; it’s kind of snake-like but it has legs. Either way, the serpent’s really the devil in disguise. The serpent tells Eve that it’s just fine if she eats the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and she won’t die. It tells her that, if she eats, she’ll be like God because she’ll know good from evil. So she eats some and gives some to Adam. And now they’ve disobeyed God, and that’s the first sin, and everything kind of sucks after that because they messed up. And so, we need Jesus.”

There are a few logical problems with this interpretation, common though it is.

First, while Adam and Eve do disobey a command from God, they cannot be held responsible for this. For the story to make any sense whatsoever, Adam and Eve must be without the knowledge of good and evil before they eat the fruit—otherwise, what’s the point in the first place? But, if they do not understand good and evil when they disobey God, they don’t understand that what they’re doing is wrong. No credible system of justice holds people culpable when they did not understand that what they were doing was wrong and intended to do wrong.

So, if eating the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was the sin that caused the Fall, God has acted arbitrarily in declaring mankind to have fallen. I don’t believe that our God does anything arbitrarily. This by itself breaks the traditional interpretation.

It is undeniably true that Adam and Eve intentionally disobeyed God. I am not disputing that. But if they did not understand that disobeying God was wrong, we need to derive a different meaning from the story.

There is a second problem. If God is omnipotent and omniscient, and God did not want Adam and Eve to have knowledge of good and evil, why put the freaking tree in the Garden? I think that we have to assume that God is purposeful in God’s actions and that the tree is there for a reason.

It would not be sufficient of me to criticize the traditional reading of the Fall so significantly without offering an alternative explanation. I suggest that we read the story of Adam and Eve a little more mythologically[2]—as expressing a fundamental truth about the nature of existence in a way that shows rather than tells. In other words, let’s get metaphysical.

The scriptural passages make clear that Adam and Eve have free will—they have the ability to choose their actions without determinism from God. Otherwise, there is no need for God to give them a command and warning about the tree. While they cannot be held accountable for their actions prior to eating from the tree, it is nevertheless their intentional choice to disobey God.

It is safe to say, then, that the existence of Adam and Eve’s free will leads to their disobedience of and separation from God as an inevitable consequence—without having to bring moral judgment into the interpretation. That’s a profound assertion—free will is a fundamental aspect of God’s creation of humanity, but one that brings a set of problems with it.

If God’s goal for humanity is relationship, as I believe that it is, God must (at least under the laws of reality as we understand them; one can’t ever really say must of God in any truly absolute meaning) give humans free will, because a meaningful relationship requires that both parties to the relationship willingly agree to be in relationship with one another. But with free will, there’s a possibility that one party will choose not to enter into relationship. On the same lines, this means that humans may choose not to be righteous and obedient to God.

How can the lack of righteousness created by the gift of free will be resolved? This, I think, is one of the fundamental problem Christianity answers—through the grace, salvation and guidance of Jesus Christ, humanity may be both free and good.

Under this reading, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is not a catalyst, it is a symbol. If God’s command and Adam and Eve’s subsequent disobedience is indicative of the “problem” caused by free will, then the eating of the fruit is symbolic of the fact that man and woman have a knowledge of good and evil and thus are responsible for the use of their will. In order to be able to choose to be good, they must have this knowledge; now they need a guide in the ways of righteousness. Having this knowledge also means that they are now culpable for their evil; now they need a savior to forgive their trespasses as they struggle to learn to be righteous. Both of these needs are fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ, and this reading of the Fall sets us up to look for our savior almost from the moment of creation.

The writer of the Gospel of John tells us that Jesus is the Word, and the Word was with God at the creation and was God. When we look back to the Fall with that knowledge in mind, now we see a long-term plan from God to create beings that are free and independent of God (and thus capable of meaningful relationship with God) and giving them a path to also be righteous of their own volition.

Along with this reading—to bring things into Wesleyan perspective—we might call the fundamental problem caused by the existence of free will “original sin,” that condition in which we will inevitably separate ourselves from God and creation in an effort to satisfy only ourselves. Having young children in my home, it does occur to me that, upon discovery of the existence of the will, that seems to be the path that naturally follows. “Prevenient grace,” then, would be that grace of God that goes before us and allows us to see beyond our own selfish desires enough to do good and to seek after God.

My favorite theologians, Paul Tillich among them, advise that we ought not to define sin as particular acts, but instead of the condition of separation from God, self and others that occurs because of certain acts. I think that my alternative reading of the Fall lends itself to that definition, which also fits well with what I called in a previous post the “positive morality” of Jesus—sin is what results when we fall short of the Great Commandment. This means that we must look to both intent and result of any act to determine whether it is sinful or not—we cannot simply categorize sin without context.

As I’m sure I’ll discuss in future posts, I think that the reading of the Fall that I’ve provided gives us more logical and more useful understanding of our place in the universe and the nature of sin than the traditional view. What do you think?

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[1] I said mainstream. I’m aware of all the Lilith legendry about her being the first wife of Adam, etc. While a fascinating story, it was probably generated by early attempts to syncretize the two accounts of humanity’s creation (Gen 1:26-27 and Gen 2:7, 18-25). I’m willing to chalk up the two accounts to sloppy editing, but I can’t deny the possibility that some theological insight is meant by the existence of the two differing accounts.

[2] The “curses” given by God either fit into a “traditional” mythological role—a pre-scientific attempt to explain why certain things are the way they are (why snakes have no legs, why we have to work for our food, why childbirth hurts so damn much, etc.), or a theological role—childbirth is a symbol that real creation sometimes requires pain and sacrifice, the requirement to work the land tests our choices when we exist in a world of limited resources, etc.

Toward a Positive Morality

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When K gives Bess a bath, they blare music and sing along. A great time is had by all, I’m sure. Bess is a quick study of melody if not of words and her little voice combines with K’s in a pleasing microcosm of happy home life.

Cute as it is, I don’t really care for the music they listen to. Most of it is old Sunday School songs that K and I heard as kids (and K actually remembered). After bath time, recently, K asked me why I had that look on my face. She knows I’m not a big fan of Christian “genre” music and knew what was going on before she asked, I think.

“I don’t like the music,” I say.

“What’s the matter with it?” she asks.

“I don’t think it’s good theology.”

“What’s the problem.”

“It’s too simplistic.”

“They’re kid’s songs!” she exclaims.

The one that really got me was the “Ten Commandments Song,” and not just because it is still infuriatingly running through my head—“Number One, we’ve just begun; God should be first in your life…” If you keep singing this to yourself, you’re probably a child of the eighties.

I’m not a big fan of the Ten Commandments. Gasp if you must, but I’m just not. I don’t think that they really have much of a place in Christian morality. Gasp again, this time so others turn to look at you.

That’s because the Ten Commandments, like most of the Old Testament law, enforce a negative morality—“thou shalt not.” There are several problems with this.

First, negative morality gives us ample ammunition to infringe upon the warning that we “judge not, lest [we] be judged.” Matthew 7:1. It’s just so tempting to say, “But he did!” when comparing someone’s actions to one of the Big Ten.

Second, negative morality does not allow us to fulfill our calling to follow after Jesus. Consider the Rich Young Ruler episode (Mark 10:17-27; Matthew 19:16-22; Luke 18:18-23). The Rich Young Ruler has followed the commandments all of his life, and Jesus quite readily tells him that there’s still more he lacks.

Negative morality is legalistic. Trust me; I’m a lawyer. It allows one to say, “I have avoided doing those things; I have fulfilled my obligation.” Jesus continually confronts the Pharisees about this problem, largely because the Pharisees hoped to reclaim righteousness through jurisprudence and adherence to the letter of the law. Compare with Jesus’ commands, which seem to be largely positively framed: “forgive those who trespass against you” (Matthew 6:9-13); “give to him that asks of you” (Matthew 5:38-42); “love your enemies” (Matthew 5:44-46); “Be perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:46-48).

This is a point made by E. Stanley Jones in The Christ of the Mount, which I’ve referred to before. Jones argues that, unlike negative morality that allows us to say, “I’ve done (or haven’t done) that, box checked,” the positive morality of Jesus always calls us to do more. “Love your neighbor as yourself” has no resting place—you must always ask what more one can do to love your neighbor. Negative morality tells us not to get worse; positive morality calls us to be better. It brings the spirit of the law to the apex and allows the letter of the law to subside in importance.

There is a good place for negative definitions of behavior—the legal system. Negative commandments allow us to offer societal protection against evils while preserving the greatest amount of freedom in the individual—“if it doesn’t say I can’t do that, then I can.” Excellent for the needs of society to order itself, but not great for those on a journey of sanctification.

Third, negative morality is not terribly responsive to our moral needs. “Thou shalt not kill,” doesn’t help us with questions like, “Is it permissible to kill one person to protect ten from him?” The commandment against bearing false witness is even flatly contradicted in the Old Testament, or at least an exception is made. Rahab, a prostitute (or perhaps innkeeper depending upon how misogynistic you like your translation) hides the Israelite spies in Jericho, lying to the authorities about the presence of the Hebrews in her home. For this lying, she is rewarded and blessed.

We live in a fallen world, so we need moral guidance that allows us to understand and work morally within that world. Black and white commandments of “thou shalt not” do not make room for the myriad potential factors and circumstances that influence any particular moral choice. Our intuition tells us that there’s a difference between killing someone for profit and a soldier killing to protect the lives of his brothers-in-arms.[1]

The positive commandments of Jesus—to “love your neighbor as yourself” is at once imminently simple and infinitely complex and responsive to circumstance. We must ask ourselves, “What does it mean to most love my neighbor in this circumstance? What does it mean to love two neighbors who are in conflict with one another?” Etc.

Fourth—and this is what got me thinking about this in the first place—positive morality is a, well, more positive formulation of behavior for instructing young ones. Isn’t it far better to say, “It hurt little Jimmy when you did that; what would be a way to love him better next time?” than to say, “That’s bad; we don’t hit,” which carries with it the connotation of “you’re bad and defined by that one action.” Am I overthinking this? Perhaps? Is it hippy-dippy (to use the term for the first time in my life)? Definitely. But would it have a positive impact on children’s behavioral development? What little knowledge I have on the subject seems to indicate yes.

I’m fairly well convinced that it’s worth it to start thinking about how we can be better rather than focusing on how we’ve messed up—to avoid hurting others by focusing on our relationships with them rather than sterile commands. What do you think?

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[1] A few caveats here. First, one must admit that, being subject to a fallen world, our intuitions may not always be trustworthy. Nevertheless, I believe in C.S. Lewis’s arguments about “natural law” and the existence of conscience as a signpost to God. Additionally, when we talk about comparative morality—“X is okay in this kind of situation but not this”—we open ourselves up to far more ambiguity than we can handle in this post. Still, that gives a good reason for the theological point that we treat all sin as equal—we’re incapable of knowing with certainty how to rank one sin against another, so let’s not fool ourselves into thinking we can.

On God’s Government

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Within modern Christianity (and admittedly, throughout historic Christianity as well), there is a strong tendency to view the governmental style of God as a monarchy. I beg to differ.

Part of this is because we confuse discussion of “God’s sovereignty” with God’s rulership. Like most philosophical discussions, we need to be clear about our definitions. When we talk about God’s “sovereignty”, what we are really talking about is God’s power and control. For me, there’s not really any doubt about God’s omnipotence, but it’s not the same as governance or rulership. Governance combines power with goodness (or evil) and forbearance in the use of that power. Put simply, perhaps, governance is not just how much power there is, but also its source and when, where, why and how that power is used.

Human governments can at best be analogies to divine government, but let’s take a look at some human ideas on the subject to glean what we can before going to the scriptures and looking at God’s way of doing things.

Perhaps we should start with the purpose of governments. I think that we can agree that there is a valid reason for human governments. At the highest level, good governments provide for those things that individuals or small groups of people cannot. This includes collective defense from internal and external threats (i.e. military and police/judiciary power), logistics (the building of major infrastructure to support life and commerce, think of the U.S. Highway system for one) and the organization of collective resources to provide benefits to citizens, whether in general or targeted to specific needs (i.e. European subsidies to pay for university educations for those who qualify or pension programs, like Social Security). All of this is predicated upon the government having coercive power over its citizens to provide for the collective good—the ability to collect taxes, to punish those who break laws, to regulate certain aspects of daily life, etc.

Coercive power is either given (à la social contract theory from Socrates to Hobbes) or taken (as in dictatorships, old-school monarchies and other governments formed by groups with the power to use force to subjugate others). That coercive force must then be legitimized in some way because such legitimacy makes the use of the coercive power more palatable by those against whom it is used. The emperors of Rome and Japan claimed a semi-divine status that entitled them to rulership. Likewise, the medieval kings of Europe claimed a divine mandate to rule such that opposition to them was opposition to God (convenient, no?). In modern democracy we ascribe to the idea that coercive power exercised by a government ultimately answerable to the people best provides for the collective good.

In gross oversimplification, we can reduce human government to this three things: purpose, coercive power, and legitimacy. And we can see that God, too has all of these things—we have faith in God’s purpose in Creation, believe in God’s ultimate power over all things, and hold that, as the uncreated source of everything, God is as legitimate as it gets. So, under a human view of things, God seems perfectly entitled to have monarchical dominion over all things. I don’t argue with that, but I would point out that it doesn’t seem that God has that in mind. Let me explain.

First, some examples of God’s disavowal of human-style government. In broad strokes, much of the story of Judges and Chronicles is the litany of consequences that arise precisely because Israel asks for a human government in place of the (perhaps more-difficult-to-comprehend divine one). Jesus famously tells the Pharisees to “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; and to God the things that are God’s.” (Matthew 22:21; c.f. Romans 13:1, where Paul makes a claim for a divine right of kings). In fact, the entirety of the gospel juxtaposes Jesus’s heralding of a supernal kingdom (and lack of concern for temporal politics) with the messianic expectation of the Jews and the fear of the Romans of a Jesus who comes to conquer and bring a worldly government. Jesus is crucified as “King of the Jews,” but—as far as we know—never takes steps to foment rebellion or create a movement for any rival governmental authority (unlike other messianic figures before and after him).

This circumstantial evidence points to a divine purpose in government that defies our worldly expectations and understandings. But, even better, God tells us of God’s ultimate plan very plainly in Jeremiah as God proclaims the New Covenant to be found in the Christ:

       31“Behold the days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will
make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of
Judah,
       32“not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the
day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My
covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” declares
the Lord.
33“But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the Lord, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.
34“They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying ‘Know the Lord, ‘for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the Lord, “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”

This passage, I think, is what John Milton refers to in Book 3 of Paradise Lost when he declares that “God shall be All in All.”

What God describes in the above passage from Jeremiah is a future state where the law—righteousness—is so ingrained within humanity that there becomes no need for external coercive force to provide for the great collective good. Remember that the whole of the law hangs on Jesus’s commandments to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind…You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

At the fullest achievement of the “Kingdom of God”, there is no need for government. God’s purpose seems not to be a king to rule over us, but to sanctify us so that we need no rulership—so that each person is so good as to be able to act freely without harm to others and collectively for the good of all. Is this not the ultimate rectification of the Fall, the marriage within mankind of both righteousness and free will?

So, in a curious way that nevertheless makes complete sense given God’s sacrificial behavior toward us and God’s desire for relationship with us, God seeks to destroy the idea of government itself, to render it obsolete.

What does this really look like? Like much of the heavenly state, our own fallenness precludes our imagination from truly grasping the idea. The closest idea in human political thought, I think, is collectivist anarchism. Most people are familiar with anarchy as that 19th– and early 20th-century specter (alongside communism and socialism) threatening the Western way of doing things. The idea of anarchy is usually portrayed as utter chaos, lawlessness and the rule of power to the greatest possible extreme. In a practical sense, given the state of mankind, that’s a fair conception if we were to attempt to apply the practice of anarchy to any given group of people. But, that conception is far from what anarchist philosophers had in mind when developing their ideas—they looked to a time where people could be free of the coercive force of government and its many abuses—an issue that has not left us today.

The theorists of collectivist anarchism (like Mikhail Bakunin) sought a form of government (or lack of government) under which people were free to self-determine but collaborated to provide for the greater needs of humanity—sharing the resources of production and allowing the use of each person’s abilities in service to the whole while eschewing a need for private property and allowing for technological and logistic growth through principles of free self-organization rather than coercive force. Compare this with the early church as described in the Book of Acts!

Now, I’m a firm believer in Churchill’s sentiment that “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.” I have many complaints about the way democracy works, but these are more or less complaints about human nature itself, and I believe that democracy is the best system of government (though far from perfect) that humans have developed to date. Given the state of humanity at present, I have no belief that collectivist anarchism has any chance of ending in anything other than exploitation and misery.

But, I believe that one day, God will have led us to be sanctified such that we care for one another without the need for any form of government humans can create on this earth. What is important for me, here, is nothing about politics itself, but what it says about the nature of God and the extent of God’s love for Creation. There is an ineffable poetry to this scheme that I have no power to deny.

Ambiguity in Scripture, Part IV

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For the previous post in this series, click here.

Last time, we talked about how ambiguity in the Bible prevents us from absolute certainty about theological concepts, and how this leaves us all on level ground when it comes to really following after God. I concluded by mentioning that this does not mean that we should not seek to come to what we firmly believe is the closest approximation of God’s Truth of which we are capable.

In this post, I want to talk about the method of weighing competing theological positions when we find potential evidence for both positions within scripture—or when the same passages could be interpreted in different ways. Things will be clearer, I think, if we do this by looking at really tough and large-scale “problems” in scriptural interpretation.

Let’s start by way of example. In Exodus 22:20, God says, “Whoever sacrifices to any god, other than the Lord alone, shall be devoted to destruction.” Later, in Deuteronomy 2:34, we read, “And we captured all his cities at that time and devoted to destruction every city, men, women and children. We left no survivors.” In Deuteronomy 3:6: “And we devoted them to destruction, as we did to Sihon the king of Heshbon.”

In these passages (and many that surround them in the early story of the Israelites and their conquest of Canaan), we’re told that God has commanded the Israelites to murder the women and children—the non-combatant, civilian targets—of their enemies. That in and of itself is not ambiguous, but it becomes very much so when we compare it to the commands of Jesus to love our neighbor and to turn the other cheek.

What does God want from us? Is it simply that the words given to the Israelites were meant for them alone and the words of Jesus are meant for us? In other words, was this behavior okay then but not now? That answer may provide some moral guidance for us, but it leaves unresolved some very troubling questions about the nature of God.

Adam Hamilton does an excellent job of looking at this issue (and a great number of others) in his book Making Sense of the Bible: Rediscovering the Power of Scripture Today.

I favor the approach of German theologian Karl Barth. His systematic theology is daunting even to the most educated theologian (which is not me), but I’ll try to summarize the salient points for your use.

For Barth, we should not confuse the Bible and the Word of God. As the Book of John tells us, Jesus Christ is the Word of God, not the text of scripture. Though he takes a while to say it, when Barth uses the term “Word of God,” he means a personal encounter with the Christ. This sometimes occurs through the reading of the Bible (and perhaps the ability to bring one to a personal encounter with God is the greatest power of scripture) but the two are not synonymous. I have to admit that it took me a short while to wrap my brain around that (especially given Barth’s rather circumlocutious writing).

In short, what Barth is saying that its Christianity—our goal is to encounter, know and follow the living Christ, not simply to read about him. Reading scripture helps us open our hearts and minds to Jesus, but the reading is a means to an end more than an end in itself.

I’m reminded of a Magritte painting called (in English) “The Treachery of Images”. It’s a painting of a smoking pipe, under which is written “Ceci n’est pas une pipe.” (“This is not a pipe.”). And it’s not a pipe; it’s a painting of a smoking pipe. You can’t smoke with it. It tells the observer something about pipes, but it’s no substitute for the knowledge gained by the experience of the real thing. Latinate languages capture this distinction well, using separate words to denote the cold intellectual knowledge of something (saber in Spanish, savoir in French) from the more intimate knowledge of familiarity (conocer in Spanish, connaître in French). That, I think, is what Barth is telling us about the Word of God.

With Barth’s conception comes a shrewd warning that we be careful not to make an idol out of the Bible. Shocking and perhaps offensive at first, the point that we worship God and not words about God remains a powerful one.[1]

Our understanding of Jesus, as the incarnation of the living God, ought then to be a lens through which we view the rest of scripture. When we see things like the murdering of innocents in Exodus and Deuteronomy, I think it’s fair to say that that behavior does not comport with the words and life of Jesus Christ. Those passages might better be understood as words put by the writers of those books in God’s mouth that represent their own understanding of the nature and person of God rather than the objective truth.

This brings us around in a complete circle to the kind of poetic truth that speaks to our hearts. Ambiguity in scriptures requires us to lean on Jesus to understand them—to put our faith in our savior to resolve discrepancies and inconsistencies in the text of the Bible. It’s not simply that ambiguity requires us to have faith; ambiguity shows us that faith in God—as we understand God through Jesus—works and moves.

Point Four: Ambiguity in scripture leads us to rely on the person of Jesus to interpret and harmonize differing passages within the Bible and to resolve difficulties.

 

P.S. – Since we’re talking about ambiguity, I’d like to throw just one more wrench into the works. Above, I’ve argued that ambiguity in scripture pushes us to seek the Christ to resolve ambiguity, but there’s another layer to all of this. Revelation and personal relationship with Jesus—understandings which cannot be proved to anyone else—aside, the scriptures themselves provide our best view of Jesus through his words and life. God-breathed though they are, the gospels were written by human hands and likely compiled decades after the events they describe, so we ought to be cautious in thinking about them as providing a prefect picture of Jesus.

There are many resources to investigate what scholars know and believe about the origins of the gospels. Having conducted my own exploration of the issue, I’m pretty comfortable in holding the gospels as generally reliable, but I still see plenty of room for reasonable disagreement in the interpretations of the scriptures about Jesus.

So, there is perhaps this inescapable level of ambiguity that lies below all the other things we’ve discussed, ambiguity that might beg the question, “How well do we know Jesus?” For an incarnation of an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent and infinite God, our answer can never be “completely.” But we might always try to know him better, and that journey itself bears fruit.

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[1] Interestingly, Islam has had a similar debate for much of its history about the nature of the Quran. Is it revelation about Allah or is it part of Allah? The answer is an important one and a key part of conservative and liberal theologies in Islam. Reza Aslan gives an excellent primer on the subject (and much more about Islam) in his book, No God but God: The Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam.

Ambiguity in Scripture, Part III

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In Part II of this series of posts, we talked about how ambiguity expands the number of things that scripture can say to us in a single passage. This time, let’s talk about how ambiguity makes room for faith, theology and humility.

We have discussed a few examples of ambiguity in scripture, so I’m not going to devote time to trying to prove that scripture is often ambiguous and subject to human interpretation.

If you want more than a literary analysis to reveal Biblical ambiguities, I would suggest reading Bart Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus. As you’ll probably see in other posts, I have some significant reservations about Ehrman’s approach to the historical Jesus, but I can guarantee that you will learn something valuable if you listen to or read something he’s done. I don’t remember anything in Misquoting Jesus that my general criticism of his work extends to.

Misquoting Jesus will walk you through the many practical problems with interpreting and understanding the Bible. In the New Testament, for example, Koine Greek was written without punctuation and without spacing between words (writing media were quite expensive, after all). When we read the gospels in English (or anything other than the original Greek), all those interpretive aids of syntax and structure are at best guesses by the scholars who edit translations of the Bible. By way of example about how a mere comma can change meaning entirely, compare, “Let’s eat, Grandma!” to, “Let’s eat Grandma!” With a little research, you can find a number of passages in the New Testament—some of them the words of Jesus—about which the proper punctuation and structure remains hotly debated by Biblical scholars.

Here’s my first new point about how ambiguity in the scriptures really is a good thing: without ambiguity, there can be no faith. Faith, by definition, is a conviction of the truth of something that cannot be proved. Existentially, we could not have faith in God if we could readily prove God’s existence—God’s hiddenness from us creates room for faith. The same is true on a smaller scale within Biblical interpretation—because ambiguity allows for multiple interpretations, none of which can be unassailably shown to be correct—none can claim to have the definitive understanding of Jesus.

On the one hand, as we’ve already touched on, this allows us to see more of an infinite God through competing possible interpretations, some of which may be dismissed when weighed against other passages of the scripture, experience, tradition or reason, some of which remain simultaneously potentially valid.

For purposes of this post, I want to focus on the fact that ambiguity is the great equalizer in terms of our faith in God and our following of Jesus. Were salvation, or even an understanding of Jesus, predicated upon intellect, education or interpretive ability, we would have a de facto form of Calvinist or Augustinian election. But, as Ephesians 2:8-9 tells us, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” This includes works of interpretation, I think.

As important, we are told, “Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love” (1 John 8). If God is love, by the transitive property the converse must also be true: anyone who knows love also knows God.

One cannot know love except by experience and personal encounter with it. One cannot reason one’s way into understanding love by intellect alone. In this way, human experience itself allows (through the experience and practice of love) the ability to follow Jesus and to be sanctified.

In this way, theology ought to be viewed as an exploration of what it means to love, what it means to follow Jesus, but it is not the thing itself. Those who do not grasp complex theological concepts, whether by choice or ability, are not to be excluded from Christ’s reach. I find the egalitarianism of that concept awesome in the classical sense of the word.

As someone who derives a great amount of his identity from being an intellectual, I find this realization amazingly humbling. For all my theologizing (which, obviously, I greatly enjoy), I’m not going to enlighten someone; I’m not going to reveal some truth heretofore unknown. As an amateur theologian, all I really do is help people to find ways to think about what it means to follow God or to live in a world where God exists. I’m at best a glorified moving guy—I can help you unpack, but I can’t get you the stuff in the first place.

There’s also an important point in how we deal with theological disagreements. Because we cannot be absolutely sure of the truth of our own theology (or theologies in the collective), we ought not to be too oppositional when discussing matters of faith with others. Overconfidence in one’s theological position leads to persecution of others, turning away the unchurched and generally working against Christ’s goals for us.

Important caveats here. First, I am not saying that theology is relative. I firmly believe that there is an objective truth to reality in all things, including theological matters and the way we are supposed to think about and relate to God and each other. My thoughts are not borne from a lack of belief in objective truth, but a healthy dose of skepticism about human intellectual capacity to clearly understand that truth.

Direct human knowledge of the capital “T” Truth, I think only comes from direct revelation from God. Every other method of understanding requires approximation. I believe that direct revelation from God has occurred and continues to occur, but this doesn’t really change things for humans as a whole. One person may have a revelation from God and know the truth, but since I cannot occupy that person’s consciousness to verify the reality of claims to know the truth, I cannot rule out the possibilities of self-delusion, misinterpretation of experiences, or outright lying. Someone else’s revelation carries with it the same ambiguity as any other form of indirect revelation—like the scriptures. Unless I’m the one who directly receives the revelation, I cannot be absolutely sure of its truth. To date, I have not received any direct revelation of truth from God—nor do I expect to. Everything I have to say is interpretation and should be treated as such.

Along with this, I don’t mean to imply that the lack of direct access to the Truth makes theology worthless. Quite the contrary. We need continuous theological investigation to evaluate our theology and allow it to progress into what we think is the closest approximation of the Truth. Theology may be an asymptote that comes ever closer to infinity but never touches it.

There is still ground for theological debate, and competing theologies can be weighed against one another by the amount of support we find for them through scripture, the application of logic and conformity with experience.

And, as I’ve mentioned above, I think that there is one thing in scripture (and reality) that is completely unambiguous. We are to love God and one another. For me, that’s the only Truth I need; I can live with the ambiguity of everything that follows.

Point Three: Ambiguity in scripture shows us that we are equal in the eyes of God, regardless of interpretive or intellectual ability.

For the next post in this series, click here.

Paganism in Christianity, Part II

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In my earlier post on this subject, I talked about my distaste for military imagery in Christian thought and theology. This time, I’d like to talk about something I think is even more dangerous—the quid-pro-quo.

We all know what the phrase means (from Hannibal Lector in The Silence of the Lambs if from nowhere else): “something for something”, a bargain, an exchange—perhaps especially driven by need more than desire.

The quid-pro-quo formed a foundational aspect of Greco-Roman religion. Given that the gods could be cruel and easily took offense at the unintentional misdeeds of humans, it seems that one might wish to avoid the attention of the gods to the extent possible. Similar to me and cats, for the same reasons.

On the other hand, the Greco-Roman pagans did seek otherworldly assistance in their lives. But, they asked and prayed for things more worldly than we might think of as proper (in Christianity). They wanted good harvests, protection from their enemies (or curses upon them, as many ritual objects attest), the love of someone they desired. Far less time was spent praying for things that would be considered “spiritual” or that concerned cosmic redemption or punishment.

There were many gods to ask favors of as well. There were the Olympian gods, the most powerful of the supernatural beings, but there were also daemones (not to be confused with demons—the daimones or daemones were nature spirits and tutelary spirits, who could be good, evil, or somewhat more ambiguous), genii loci (the spirits of places that had influence over that place) and many other beings of all manner of rank who were believed to have the power to effectuate change in the visible world.

For the ancient Romans (and probably also the Greeks, but I am somewhat less familiar with their religious practices—though fascinating), one simply did not approach a supernatural being empty-handed. Something must be given for something asked, a quid-pro-quo. And so sacrifices were made to the gods when a request was made of them. This could be something personal—an oath or vow made to a god if a request was granted—but animal sacrifice was common and human sacrifice, though quite rare, was not unheard of.

While we may have left animal and human sacrifices behind us, we to a large extent not abandoned the paradigm of the quid-pro-quo when dealing with the divine. This concept runs deeper than the place in prayer we’ve all been: “God if you do X for me, I promise I’ll never do X again,” or “God if X happens, I promise I’ll go to church more.” Other theologians have popularly described this as the “vending machine-God” approach.

It is comforting because it gives us some illusion of control, some ability to predict the movement of the divine so long as we hold up our end of the bargain. And yet, when we repeatedly find that that’s not how God works, our faith is shaken because it stands of the weakest of foundations.

This approach is also tied into the gospel of wealth movement: “If I’m a good Christian, God will make me wealthy and well-liked and powerful and important.” This empty theology has become concerningly popular and widespread in recent decades. Keep in mind, though, that this is only part of the reason the doctrine is so seductive; the inverse can also be a source of comfort from reality: “If I am rich and well-liked and powerful, I must be godly.” Dangerous stuff, that.

But this is not a post about the gospel of wealth. It’s about a more insidious type of quid-pro-quo—the spiritual bargain.

E. Stanley Jones, in his book form the early 20th century called The Christ of the Mount, tells us that we’ve been doing things the wrong way in Christianity  because we mistakenly believe that the point of Christianity is to “get into heaven.” For Jones, the point is “to become perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect,” but for now let’s focus on moving away from the wrong way rather than finding the right one.

Perhaps you’ve heard of Pascal’s Wager, named for apologist and philosopher Blaise Pascal. It goes like this: God is either real or not. In choosing how to live, we are told that God wants us to do certain things but not others, and that there are eternal rewards for those who follow God’s desires and eternal punishments for those who do not—again, if God is real. Without knowing for sure whether God is real or not (is the universe bluffing?), we must bet on whether we believe God is real. There are four possibilities then, based upon our bet and whether God is real. One, God is real and we believed and acted like God is real, so we get to go to heaven. Two, God is real and we ignored God and so we have to go to hell. Three, God is not real but we have lived our lives as though God is real, perhaps sacrificing some worldly pleasures and desires we might otherwise have enjoyed. Four, God is not real and we do not act as if God is real, nothing lost but nothing gained.

For Pascal, the answer to such a quandary is simple—one ought to act like the Christian God is real and try to obey God and be holy. If you’re wrong, your loss is minimal compared to God being real and not trying to obey, falling into perdition. It’s a betting man’s approach to faith, based upon probabilities, severity of the various possible outcomes, and the quid-pro-quo of what each possibility might net compared to the cost of the bet.

Pascal’s bet exemplifies the cynical quid-pro-quo approach to spirituality: “Don’t be faithful because of who God is; be faithful because it’s the fastest ticket to Heaven-town.” If this is the kind of faith that we have, it is no faith at all and we only deceive ourselves that we are seeking relationship with God.

The only way to avoid the illusion of the divine quid-pro-quo is to adopt an attitude of love—the kind of selfless love that we call agape—for God. It is a love that does not expect something in return, that does is not contingent upon a particular situation, that will not be rescinded when the unfortunate comes to pass.

Our God has negated the quid-pro-quo altogether. The work of Jesus Christ cleared the way to salvation and eternal life, not the bargaining or righteousness of man. We are called to sanctify ourselves to be sure, to pursue holiness and to become Christ-like. But this has been separated from salvation freely given by grace without cost. Our desire to be sanctified must come from our love for God, for by the time we make such a decision or have such a desire, God has long since given us the gift of life eternal. There can be no quid-pro-quo; the gifts have been poured upon us until our cups runneth over. We ought to act like it.

Reading Matthew 18:15-17 as a Joke.

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The passage Matthew 18:15-17, where Jesus talks about how to treat believers who continue to sin, is often pointed to as permission to “speak authority into the lives of others” or to cast out particular members of a church. But is Jesus, who generally seems to hate rigid systems, really giving us legal procedure for excommunication in this passage, or is something else going on?

The passage reads as follows:

15 “If your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother.

16 “But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you, so that by the mouth of two or three witnesses every fact may be confirmed.

17 “If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.”

I think that the last phrase, “let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector” should be thought of as something of a punchline of sorts. By way of explanation, let’s look at how Jesus treats a tax collector. In Luke 19, Jesus (as my Bible titles it) “Brings Salvation to Zaccheus’s home.”[1]

In that passage, Jesus elects to stay with Zaccheus, a tax collector. Luke 19:5. This is phrased as a statement rather than a request. We are even told that the crowd “began to grumble, saying, ‘He has gone to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.’” Luke 19:7. Note that the crowd wants to condemn, while Jesus wants to demonstrate compassion.

The presence of Jesus, as it is wont to do, brings about a transformation in Zaccheus, who promises to right his wrongs. Luke 19:8. Then, Jesus tells him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.” Luke 19-9-10.

This takes us back to Matthew. Based on Jesus’ treatment of Zaccheus, I would suggest a paraphrase of Matthew 18:15-17 that does something like this:

“Jesus said, ‘If a believer in your midst is a sinner, go and help him not to sin. If you win him over, he wasn’t an intentional sinner. If he continues to sin, take some other people to talk to him again, to make sure that it’s clear what was said. If he still continues to sin, he might be a true sinner, and you need to put him before the church. If even after being put before the church he continues to sin, he might be a really bad sinner, so you should continue to do the best you can to love him like I’ve been telling you to do this whole time!’”[2]

Comedian Bo Burnham says, “For me, if you distill comedy down, it is surprise and the unexpected. That has to be it on its most base level, in any form.” I think many professional comics would agree, and that’s exactly what Jesus is playing off of here—he knows that (as we see in the Luke passage) the crowd expects condemnation. He twists that expectation with an exhortation to compassion, and there is a hopeful humor to be found there.

It is important to note that Matthew 18:15-17 is followed by the Parable of the Unforgiving Debtor (Matthew 18:21-35), which Jesus begins by warning Peter not to forgive just seven times, but “seventy times seven” times. Matthew 18:22. Keep in mind that seven is a number of Biblical completeness.

In the parable, Jesus contrasts the righteousness of one who will forgive an insurmountable debt with one who, having been forgiven, will not himself forgive a (relatively speaking, of course) trifling debt. The passage concludes with a stern warning from Jesus: “My heavenly Father will also do the same to you, if each of you does not forgive his brother from your heart.”

If we take the “traditional” approach of interpreting Matthew 18:15-17 as the proper procedure to earn the “right” to condemn someone and to cast them out, the Parable of the Unforgiving Debtor is a strange passage to follow. But if we believe that the ultimate point of Matthew 18:15-17 is to tell us not to condemn but to love (and I think it’s fair to say that Jesus’ words in the scriptures never give us permission to condemn), then there is no apparent conflict between the two passages.

Some caveats are probably due here. I am not asserting that we should not oppose sin and help others to defeat their own sin, although how we do that is worth a (very) complex discussion at another time. Instead, I’m trying to communicate through the above interpretation that Jesus wants us to be compassionate to others above all else, and that we are not to condemn.

As important, I want to affirm that there is a difference between distancing yourself from some people and casting them out with condemnation. There will be people in all of our lives who, for many different reasons, it is not beneficial for us to associate with. This could be about temptation, or the abusive behavior or one of many other difficult social and psychological issues. If a destructive person does not want to change, you don’t need to put yourself in that person’s path to be left in his wake. But, as much as you can, as often as you can, in every way that you can, you ought to be compassionate.

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[1] Admittedly, there is a disconnect in jumping from one Gospel to another for explanation here, and there are certainly historical and literary criticisms to be made for my doing so. In one sense, such criticism is lessened if we are to believe Q theory as the source of both Matthew and Luke. For my part, I’m going to take a more Barthian and Tillichian approach and assert that we should use the person of Christ (as the manifest Word of God) as the lens through which all scripture is interpreted. I assume that both passages are generally reliable relations of actual events meant to be taken seriously (even while claiming one is a joke—the best jokes educate and delight).

[2] I am tempted to add expletives for effect to the last line of the paraphrase (mostly because it makes it funnier to me), but I think you get the point as it is.