Notes on Tim’s August 7th Sermon
Sermon Text: Numbers 13 & 14
Summary of Sermon Text: Moses and Israelite on border of the Promised Land. 12 spies are sent into Canaan to bring back a report. They all come back to say it’s good land. Ten say Israel was going to get their asses kicked by the people living there. Two say that they can take them—for the Lord is with us. People go with the majority report, wailed and whined, and threatened to stone the two who said they could all do it. The ‘glory of the Lord’ (some apparent manifestation of power) appeared to save Joshua and Caleb from being stoned to death. Moses pleads for the people’s lives. God relents to sentence them all to 40 years of wandering in the desert until all the people (other than Joshua and Caleb) are dead. Moses dies. Caleb takes his allotment of land. Joshua leads a genocidal invasion of Canaan. Enough said.
This sermon is a typical evangelical cheerleading event to encourage believers to have faith and stay the course for God is with you. The assumptions which are expected to be made here are staggering but evangelical culture, its ceremonies, media empire, music, and political apparatuses provide a rather comfortable context to deliver a simple, unchallenging sermon like this. As Tim has made clear in previous sermons, our (Biblicist) understanding of the Bible is clear, correct, and understandable. Slap self in forehead. It’s so simple! You can do it!
The reason it is so simple is because unity has been found in the evangelical camp for three basic reasons; (1) because of the popularity of both pre and post millennialism eschatology most evangelicals have embraced the use of political power to steer things so Christ will come back. Heaven on earth is bliss for the faithful. (2) Everybody loves success understanding that success is measured by the expansion of audience, power, and influence. (3) Everybody loves money. Having money gets stuff done. And it brings confidence and comfort.
Evangelicals don’t quibble too much about theology with each other even though some of these differences are very significant. The fact that they chose, and still choose Trump shows the world that we will choose power over piety any day. (Don’t get too bent out of shape, the big players (see The Shadow Network by Anne Nelson) have been working on us all for decades through things like the Council for National Policy and the Salem Media conglomerate—for a couple examples.) Trump delivered power to us quid pro quo for our undying support. The complete shitshow, all the lies were worth it because we want bliss, power, money, confidence, and comfort. Therefore, all the debate concerning the angst between the social teachings of Jesus in the Gospels as opposed to the more structured, everything has its place, Pauline theology doesn’t really matter because we are commonly politically committed to the project of saving America for God. Nobody cares about theology. Close enough we say. The common ideology directed by the Council for National Policy and spread through organizations like Salem Media (which saturates the eyeballs and the earholes of millions and millions of faithful Christians everyday) provides the understanding to the means of fulfilling the Great Commission. Therefore, Tim can get away with saying the Bible is clear, correct, and understandable to everyone (who is not wicked.) No one within the club is going to seriously challenge that. Anybody who would is not part of the club because certain things are non-negotiable—like the principle of hierarchy itself for example.
(30: 50) Tim says that our message to the world (primarily) lies in what we do. I agree. Now, in all I’ve been saying above (and throughout this blog,) what are telling the world about who we are? The rabbit-hole goes deep, and it isn’t pretty. It’s embarrassing, and it’s horrifying. Our history rips my heart apart. But Tim is not here to call us to reflect, he is not here to bring up anything which could be embarrassing or controversial, he is not here to offer any advice on determining whether a certain course of action may or may not be ‘biblical.’ But he is the authority in the room. Now on to the assumptions…
(39:30) In the context of Caleb’s story in which his confidence in faith was affirmed by the ‘Glory of God’ (he also talked about Timothy who was affirmed by the authority of Paul) that one should not listen to ‘negative advice’ when you feel you should do something (for the Kingdom of God—I would assume.) He didn’t elaborate much on what might comprise ‘negative advice’ but he specifically used the word ‘feel’ as a guide to what we ought to be doing. This is a very common charismatic teaching about knowing the will of God. After all, fundamentalists must be selective about which parts of the Bible are to be taken literally and which parts are not. Biblical interpretation has always had a ‘feel’ to it. Why not leave it to a feeling—especially if that feeling has come out of a lot of prayer, or a powerful sermon you listened to either recently or a long time ago which has always nagged at you? Tim simply says, ‘God is with you.’ A big assumption here is that that ‘feeling’ comes from some directive touch of God. Joseph Smith, for example, was very specific about feelings being a very important religious test (see Doctrine and Covenants 9:8.) Let’s tear this apart.
Equivocation is something that happen quite often in the mystery of faith. How do we know God is with us? Both the North and the South claimed that God was with them. Should we suppose the ultimate test of whose side God was on went with the victor? The South continued to believe they were right; and many, many people to this day believe this. Timothy was affirmed by the authority of Paul which follows right along with our common practice of ordination and denominational oversight. But then we come to the case of Caleb who was about to be stoned by the ticked off masses unhappy with what he had to say; Caleb was protected and affirmed by the ‘Glory of God.’ This was an apparent manifestation of power which stopped a violent mob in its tracks. Seems a clear indication that God was clearly with Caleb. How is it that a preacher can get away with telling a remarkable story about Caleb’s affirmation to assure the faithful out in his audience that in whatever and however they’re planning to forward the Kingdom of God that God assuredly is with them as well? Well, it’s simply what we what to hear. Nobody in the club is going to seriously question that equivocation. Therefore, don’t be distracted by people questioning because they are clearly being influenced by the foolishness of worldly knowledge. How do we know? Because the ordained authority is telling you the Bible says so (1 Corinthians 1: 20-25.) Enough said.
Granted, Tim’s sermon was not pushing hard to instill assurance that God is with us. It didn’t have to. The many facets of our culture drill this into our heads continually. Our culture has us neck deep in political action led by a bunch of very dishonest people to save America for God. Evangelicals have been actively taught to suppress reason and embrace an authoritarian solution to all problems—real or imagined. Therefore, we are all deeply divided because not all of us are authoritarian. The values of the liberal and the conservatives could act to balance each other if we would reason with one another. But that has been destroyed by a massive political/religious machine which tells the conservative that the liberal wants to destroy the country. Liberals are evil, demonically controlled people…
Well, as a liberal, I level the charge right back at you. From my perspective, the conservative relies on ‘faith’ (a culturally influenced melding of various parts to a common goal) and authority to determine and understand truth. The liberal relies more upon a collective of accumulated knowledge subject to cross examination and democratic peer-review and the methods of science which emphasize evidence collection, hypothesizing, experiment, and repeatability of the results. We are very much interested in the truth as we too believe that truth will set us free. We believe that lies enslave people—fairness and equity is very important to us. The conservative believes in order—this is where we could balance each other out.
But the idea of balance and compromise is dead. It is dead because the evangelical organizations which have mastered the art of political maneuvering, wresting political control from the demonic masses, have taught the average evangelical that he or she is persecuted by the world (especially liberals.) This is by any scientific measure not true; but we understand the false belief is useful politically. Christian prophets have made all kinds of claims which are demonstrably not true. The sky did not fall when gays acquired the right to marry for instance. Life went on as fear began to diminish for an historically marginalized group. Life went on for all of us.
But the engineers of the Christian Right had to instill a mobilizing fear in evangelicals because the reality on the ground demographically is that the white evangelicals are now outnumbered. The preemptive strike organized by religious/political leader is to stoke the fear in conservatives that the others are going to attack, or that God was going send some plagues because of sins of the others, (Evangelical rhetoric is saturated with this,) so the God-fearing must strike hard to keep order (thus a Godly society) by any means necessary. This includes accepting a man who has no scruples as the evangelical’s champion and to accept on authority a whole host obvious lies including the BIG LIE about the election. From this liberal’s perspective, evangelicals foremostly reject the truth. They have betrayed the teaching of Paul to meet their own desire for power, comfort, security, and cultural dominance.
For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. 2 Timothy 4: 3-4
This is the price of unquestioningly accepting the modern definition of faith. Some (Bethel in Redding) go so far as to put gold-colored flecks in the air conditioner, calling it the ‘Glory Cloud,’ to reinforce the parishioner’s notion that God is with them and their ‘signs and wonders’ understanding of how to win the world for God. The statement ‘God is with you (us)’ in our common usage is more than simply a statement concerning His omnipresence and (depending on who you talk to) his universal love and concern for all human beings. Saying ‘God is with you (us)’ in the context of project X, Y, or Z implies His approval in what you are doing to represent Him.
All the engineered miracles and dog and pony shows to whip up emotion are the tip of the iceberg of all the power-hungry, self-affirming dishonesty which has been sanctified to a good purpose. All these ‘displays of divine power’ pale in comparison to what we have accepted politically as a service to ‘God’s plan.’ I for one would never consider it acceptable to tell a bunch of people, as a blanket statement based on my authority, that ‘God is with you’ in whatever you all feel God is telling you to do. Doubly appalling is the thought of me telling people outright to ignore different perspectives on what ‘God’ is saying. What Tim is really saying is that your positive feelings of what you consider being charity and service are indeed equivalent to what God’s will is for you and your life. They may be but it is a grave disservice to imply certainty lies within a feeling. That feeling may very well be what the political/religious machine has taught us to believe is service and charity. If that ‘service and charity’ involves embracing political power and lies then I believe, as a liberal, that it is you all who are seriously misrepresenting God and that the shepherd who trains the people under his charge to not think and to automatically dismiss hostile perspectives is really in the business of making slaves.
Enough said.