St. John Studies

John Bevere makes a good point about foundations in his book Good or God?

As we build a family home or even look at other people’s homes go up, how excited are we about the construction of a home’s foundation?

We are not. Mostly it begins with footing which looks like concrete poured in a hole in the ground and then plain concrete blocks on top of the footing.

My wife and I have watched thousands of episodes of home renovation on HGTV and when there are foundation problems, it is usually a downer. People don’t want to think about what is going on underneath a house. People get excited when the drywall goes in, the kitchen counters and cabinets are installed, and the walls are painted.

The foundation…not too exciting.

But what would a house be without a strong foundation?

A crumbling mess…

Bevere thinks the same about our foundation as Christians, so he lays it all out for us. He references scripture from Romans that says “No one is righteous—not even one…No one does good, not a single one” [from Romans: 3:10-12].

Who is he writing about, this “one” who is incapable of doing good?

He is talking about you and me: we are slaves to sin.

How could this be?

It all goes back to Adam and Eve. When they disobeyed God, they died to God. They did not die in their physical bodies but their spirit nature died. The bad thing about this for you and me is Adam and Eve’s descendants would all be born with their penchant to sinning. The first evidence of this is Adam’s son who was just like him in “spirit and image.”

Don’t get Pastor Bevere wrong, man and woman are capable of doing good but they are also mightily tempted all the time by a new force, the “king of disobedience” i.e. Satan. When Jesus encountered Satan after His baptism, during His forty days of fasting, Satan tempted Jesus by saying he had the authority to give the world to Jesus. Satan was able to say this because this authority was given to him in the garden when Adam and Eve sinned.

Consequently, God could not come to the world to rescue man because earth had been given to humans. God had to come and rescue man in the form of a man—Jesus Christ. He was born of woman so He was 100 percent man and He was conceived by God making Him 100 percent God.

In other words, Jesus was free of the penchant to sin that all of men are burdened with; He was not a slave to sin. He lived a perfect life on earth. He never committed one disobedient act while He was on earth. He came to rescue us from sin by taking the judgement of every sinful man and woman when He died on the cross. He lived a perfect life before God and after three days He was raised from the dead, sitting at the right hand of God almighty.

He is our Savior but Bevere points out that even more than that, He is our Lord. “The word Savior is found 36 times in the Bible. The word Lord occurs over 7,800 times” [Bevere, 46].

Why is this distinction so important? “Lord declares the position He holds in our life, whereas Savior describes the work He’s done for us. We cannot partake of the benefit of His work unless we come under His position as Lord and King” [Bevere, 46].

We have hope.

We can choose to accept Jesus as our Lord. When we do, our sin nature passes away and a brand new person is born. Don’t be confused, the spirit is what is born anew; our physical bodies are still corrupt and will continue to be corrupt until the day we die. This new life comes entirely through the gift of God’s grace and is not associated with our good behavior or our good works. We can’t be good enough or do enough good things to merit this new spirit.

So think of the acceptance of Jesus as our foundation but let’s not react to this like people on HGTV who are dealing with foundations.

Why?

Because this foundation is truly exciting. This is the most exciting thing that will ever happen to you in your life.

Watching a foundation being constructed for a new home?

Not too exciting.

Asking Jesus to come into your life.

Well, words cannot describe the feeling…

I guess we all go through phases and I have been in a phase this year, actually it is a return phase.

When I was recently confined to a chair for three months of recuperation, I used to day-dream about all the things I wanted to do if I was ever given a chance. One of those was I wanted to go fishing.

I used to fish many years ago but I fell out of love with it I guess for about twenty years.

I decided I need to do it again, and have done it; in fact, four times in 2017 already.

I remember the first time I went; I was eager to get to the pond. I was so eager I did not heed warnings about how to prepare. I just rushed to the pond bank because I wanted to catch a fish!

That first trip I did catch about fourteen fish but only one was considered big enough to keep so I put all of them back into the pond.

What I did catch however was a tick infestation on my body.

After finding out how many ticks I had, I then recalled all those newspaper articles, television news segments and internet stories about how bad ticks are this year and what to do to keep from getting bit. It seems that last year’s mild winter never did kill them off the way cold weather usually does.

I did not heed the warnings. I did not prepare for my excursion the way I should. There was a “roadmap” but I ignored it.

John Bevere writes that God provides a roadmap for us in His Word, but do we ignore it in the hustle and bustle of our lives? I am afraid we do. “God looks down from heaven on the entire human race; He looks to see if anyone is truly wise, if anyone seeks God. But no, all have turned away…[Psalms 5:2-3].

You are on a trip over treacherous terrain and Bevere writes: “You’re handed a map that reveals the location of every landmine and sinkhole, as well as clues to look for in avoiding traps, quicksand and poisonous plants. How would you handle this map? Would you stuff it in your backpack with your energy bars and water bottle, but due to the challenges of the trip neglect reading it? Would you consult it only when the opportunity presented itself? Would you view it as casual reading? Would you look it over at the start and then pack it away, confident that you could remember all the information?”

That’s what we do with The Bible.

“All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right. God uses it to prepare and equip His people” [2 Timothy 3:14].

What should we do with The Bible?

2nd Timothy is pretty clear wouldn’t you say?

Add in this from Deuteronomy 5:32 “You must be careful to obey all the commands of the Lord your God, following His instructions in every detail.”

In case you think this is an Old Testament admonition and we are New Testament people, look in Hebrews “So we must listen very carefully to the truth we have heard, or we may drift away from it” [Hebrews 2:1].

What Bevere is really saying is that we must “heed” The Word.

Heed is not a word I use every day but it means that we should pay attention to the warning, take notice.

In his book Good or God? he encourages us to think of the Bible as the blue print for our lives. At the end of chapter 3, he is ready for us to move on to building our foundation but we can’t do that without our direction, our guide, our map, our blue print.
I rushed to the pond that day with very little plan other than to throw my line in the pond. I did not think of all the things I needed, certainly I did not consider that I needed tick repellent.

I went to the pond on Monday morning of this week and I was prepared. I sprayed and I was covered up in a proper manner despite the heat. I knew that it would be hot but I also knew that Lyme disease was not on my list of things I wanted to experience.

I heeded the warnings this time.

When I left the pond and went home

No ticks..

“The Bible is not trustworthy; it was written so long ago. It is not relevant for today’s world.”

“Men wrote the Bible and they wrote it for their own purposes. They wanted life to be ruled by men and that ulterior motive negates the value of the Bible.”

“All religions have a spiritual book and Christianity is no different. The Bible is just one of many spiritual books that exist around the world. It is nothing special.”

“The Bible is placed above other spiritual books by Christians; I find that arrogant and offensive.”

“There are all kinds of books that disprove the Bible, take The Divinci Code. When I read that novel, I began to have serious doubts about the Bible.”

There are so many reasons to doubt God’s divine touch on The Bible. Just as there are many reasons to doubt it, there are many reasons to believe it. Pastor John Bevere uses a statistical argument to bolster his case for the divinity of Scripture.*

I am not going to repeat the detailed argument he makes in his book; needless to say it is impressive. Many today find numbers are impressive; that’s probably why he uses them. He points to Biblical prophecies and the statistical probability that they would come true. Chances are they would not…yet they did. One can look at Old Testament prophecies and see that they came true in New Testament Scripture…over a period of 1,500 years in a series of sixty-six books written by forty men on three continents [Africa, Asia and Europe].

Without coordination, you have to ask yourself “How could this happen?”

One thousand five hundred years is a long time for a book to be written, especially when you consider that the unity in The Book is there with no committee assigned to keep all the writers centered on a central theme, yet there is a central theme: “humankind’s sin predicament, the resulting separation from their Creator, their inability to restore relationship with Him and the divine answer of the Messiah” [Bevere, 32].

Using a different approach, one can look at The Bible and how it has been put together. Recently, I was in a group discussion where people questioned the Bible due to its many translations. Inherent in their argument was the idea that fallible human beings took the Bible and recopied it by hand, making many human errors.

There is a problem with that idea. There is evidence that there was amazing accuracy in the copying of the Bible. Let’s take the Old Testament. Someone brought up the idea that we don’t even have the original “Old Testament.” That’s true. All we have are translations but those translations were not constructed in a carefree manner. Take a moment and look in the preface of your Bible translation and if you want to plow through the details of the planning for the construction of your translation; there you will see the serious methods that were used for your translation to be done.

In 1947 the famous Qumran Cave Manuscripts [Dead Sea Scrolls] were discovered. Doubters will still say that those manuscripts are not “The Old Testament.” However, the Qumran manuscripts were very old; they were one thousand years older than the oldest Old Testament manuscript being used in 1947. A miraculous conclusion occurred when Qumran manuscripts were compared to translations being used in 1947. Scholars found 95% accuracy. That does not sound like careless copying to me.

People may wonder why we don’t have more original versions of the Old Testament. The obvious reason is that two or three thousand years is a long time for documents to last. What is amazing is that we have the fragments that we do have and they are so true to Biblical translations that are in use.

The New Testament is another story. That portion of the Bible is not as old as the Old Testament so copies of the New Testament only go back to the time of eyewitness accounts of the times of Jesus. There are so many extant copies of handwritten New Testament manuscripts [5,366 within 100 years of the life of Jesus] that there is less worry about accuracy and much more material to work with. Do we have the actual handwritten copies of the writers of the Gospels and other New Testament authors? No, but we have many different Testaments to compare which can form a baseline for accuracy. Again the serious nature of translation construction can almost guarantee 100% accuracy.

Today, in English alone there are about 900 English versions of the Bible, an overwhelming number when one begins to decide what version to buy.** The version of the Bible I am reading now focuses on the Divine nature of The Book; it is the Amplified Bible. At the end of many verses in the Old Testament there will be brackets which will refer to New Testament connections you can look up. In the New Testament, the same thing occurs. New Testament references have brackets so one can look up the Old Testament connection.

I remember the first time I had the privilege of attending a Disciple Bible Study at my church. I remember how amazed I felt when the Pastor who was leading the study pointed out the prophetic passages of the Old Testament. I was not a very experienced reader of The Bible in those days so this fact “blew me away”, to use a common expression.

Over the years, the evidence for the Divine nature of Scripture has piled up to the point that I have no doubts about the Bible. My proof is based on my personal study of The Book and my experiences as a believer.

When people point to the age of The Bible, criticize it because it was written in patriarchal cultures, or even admit that contemporary literature can raise doubts, I just smile.

If they would just begin to study, all those doubts would begin to slowly go away.

*pp. 33-38 in his book Good or God?

**from The American Bible Society

“All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right” [2 Timothy 3:16].

Paul lays it on the line.

What do we have with the Bible? Wisdom, Instruction, Guidance, Words from God.

What do we do with the Bible? Probably not enough.

John Bevere from his book Good or God? gets pretty accusative when he says “You and I must ask ourselves (and answer honestly), do I consistently read my Bible? Do I study it? Do I spend time searching out God’s wisdom for my life?” Can you say “yes”, “yes” and “yes”?

He breaks down Paul’s statement in 2 Timothy to support the case for Bible study.

Point number 1: “All Scripture…” What does Paul mean by all Scripture? Yes, there are many parts of the Bible that human beings don’t like, but does that mean that all Scripture does not come from God. In a recent group discussion about the Bible, it was very evident to me that all people don’t agree on the intent of the Bible. When you try to express human intent for God’s word, does that mean that we know God’s intent? From my graduate school days in the study of English, I recall a literature analysis concept called “authorial intent.” As readers, we are like detectives, always trying to determine what an author means [or intends to mean]. As human beings with very limited intellects [sorry but true] we can take passages about gender, sexuality, forgiveness etc. and twist them to fit our mind set. We may be so good with this that we try to speak with authority. But really folks, who can speak with authority…only God can.

My position is that all Scripture is inspired by God. Has man touched it? Yes, all one has to do is dig into the history of the many Biblical translations and the learned theological councils that determined the Biblical canon and see that man has touched the Bible. However that does not negate the fact that God was there when the translations were done and the councils were being held. His all-knowing hand was on the Scripture to guide man’s efforts. [The Dead Sea Scrolls compared to our translations attest to the accuracy of the translators].

Point number 2: Bevere focuses on the phrase “Scripture is useful to teach us what is true and what is right” [31]. We have to be careful here. We can read the Bible and try to get it to say all kinds of things. This is the nature of words. The meaning of some words is very hard to pin down. We can take God’s Word and make assumptions, express opinions and attempt to reason with Bible ideas but there are always hidden dangers. Just like we can be about the temptations of everyday life, it is easy to veer away from the good that God intends in His word. Bevere takes Eve who lived with God, enjoying the riches of His goodness and the wonder of His presence but she became convinced that God’s wisdom was flawed. Wow, think about it. Eve was surrounded by a perfect environment and in touch with God and yet she fell away from the Lord.

Think about what we have to contend with in our lives today? I don’t want to begin to list the snares that can trip us up. The list would be infinite.

Let’s return to Pastor Bevere’s admonition to pick up the Bible and use it. He calls it a “life instruction manual.” That’s what it is. When we pick it up, read it and study it, we may get an inkling once in a while about what God expects from us. Sometimes we may get more than an inkling. Whatever guidance we can get is worth it. Bevere says we are “living on a corrupted planet and also battling the tempter.” I don’t know about you but I need all the help I can get.

Like Eve, we can fall away from God’s truth. That is the sinful nature of humankind. But what a joy when we can stay strong in the face of evil. What a joy when we are in the middle of tragedy and we can know a peace that others can’t understand. What a joy when we have a moral compass in the midst of an ethical dilemma and we can find answers…

In God’s instruction manual…

Good or God…

As we continue on in Pastor John Bevere’s book [Good or God?] we drill down on the idea of good.

How many of us even consider that the idea of good would be separate from God? Most of us would not consider that they could be separate, yet that is exactly what Bevere addresses in the beginning of Chapter Three.

What does the word good mean?

Most of us use the word indiscriminately and spend little time thinking about its origin, but “Good” is a word that is based on evaluation. For example, we might declare something good because it is beautiful or pleasing to the eye. We evaluate the idea of beauty as we compare it to other things. Good may mean useful but we evaluate usefulness by comparing something that is useful to things that are less useful. Profitable may be “good” but only as we compare something to less profitable things. [I hate to use the word thing so much but good covers a lot of territory, a lot of “things”].

All this sounds a bit mundane: David is “making a mountain out of a molehill” so to speak. However, when one consults the Bible, God is in the evaluation game. Reread Genesis and note that when God viewed His work at the end of each day, He declared it good. Bevere states “God shared His image and likeness with mankind that human beings have the capacity to make value judgements.” In other words, since God can declare what is good or make judgements, man can too.

There is a big difference here.

God evaluates perfectly.

Man has a distorted perception of this world due to sin.

Pastor Bevere is laying the foundation for the argument that he is making in his book: God’s evaluation is the evaluation that really counts. Mankind’s evaluation can be very flawed.

I was having a conversation with a man the other day. He seems to be a good guy, chipping in to do his part around his house and he is someone who tries to help his neighbors. However there is something about him that may represent what Pastor Bevere is referring to. He has a very strong prideful tendency. He does not want to admit that he has challenges. He does not want to accept help. He does not want to share too much of what is going on with his life. I mention this conversation because this guy may represent so many people who might say “I know what is right for my life and don’t need anyone to tell me otherwise” [30].

I don’t need to be too tough on him. I don’t know him that well and he is not unique. Bevere thinks that this “I know what is right for me” attitude is man’s downfall. My conversational partner’s attitude is representative.

Let’s be plain.

I don’t know what is right for me a lot of the time. I just think I do.

What if God’s plan for me is very different from what I think I should be doing?

What might I do if I get a Divine notion that I am heading the wrong direction? I may change course and redirect my efforts or I may be stubborn and plunge ahead.

Proverbs 16: 25 says “There is a way that seems right to man, but its end is the way of death.”

That, my friends is a warning. Changing course is the wise thing to do. Plunging ahead may be a big mistake. God knows that we are faced with many temptations in this world. The line between good and evil is not as clear as we wish it was. Pastor Bevere says “God warns that there will be ways—behavior patterns, thought processes, beliefs, customs or even traditions—that seem acceptable by our evaluation but will prove faulty in the building of our lives, and will in time take a toll” [30].

The problem is that our society says many things are perfectly ok when they are not. The bandwagon fallacy is alive and well, you know “everyone is doing it”: therefore it must be ok. The result of these poor evaluations and resulting actions may not be felt immediately, but will be felt late in life.

1 Timothy 5:24 states “Remember, the sins of some people are obvious, leading them to certain judgement. But there are others whose sins will not be revealed until much later.”

Good or God…
Who are we going to trust? Do I trust my own judgement about what is the good thing to do for my life? Am I going to let God lead me?

I know what I want to do…

Do you?

This year I have done something I quit doing several years ago. I have gone fishing. I have been three times to the same pond on my brother’s land and I have experienced little success. Literally, I would describe my efforts as “little success.” I have caught twenty-five or so fish but only two of them were “keeping size.” Two fish on two separate occasions.

I am not going to clean one fish and bring it home; too much trouble.

Those two fish went back into the pond.

I decided to reevaluate my fishing strategy. I remember my Dad having success using rubber worms so I went to the local bait store to purchase some.

On the back of the package, I noticed something that made me pause.

“Caution, Sharp Hooks”
Then under that “This product contains lead, a chemical know to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects and other reproductive harm.”

Wow, I am glad they warned me about the hooks! [Please note the sarcasm]. I guess the California warning is due to the great sensitivity that Californians have about harmful elements.

Anyhow, my little fishing worm lures have warnings.
That is exactly how Pastor John Bevere ends Chapter Two in his book Good or God?.
There is a problem with warnings today.

People don’t want to hear them.

That is one goal for Bevere’s book. He wants to write about what we can do to live the best life we can on earth, but he also wants to warn us about what is not truly good in our life. He says “I want to both warn and teach” [Bevere, 25].

He cites Colossians 1:28 when Paul writes “Him we preach, warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus.”

Paul tells us that we need to pay attention to the warnings of the New Testament. Bevere says “If we heed them, we will have years of successful living in harmony with our Creator. However, if we ignore or violate the warnings, we too will suffer in a manner similar to Adam and Eve.”

Again, people don’t want to hear warnings. I bought a new bike in 2016 and the owner of the bike store insisted that I buy a bike helmet before I left his store. Some would say he just wanted to sell me a bike helmet. I took it as a warning. Don’t wear a helmet and you are courting disaster. I see bikers and motorcycle riders riding all the time without helmets.

Pastors who preach warnings from the pulpit run the risk of dissatisfying their flock. We live in a world where not only do we not like warnings but we really prefer to have the good news. Some pastors are so worried about negative reaction that every sermon is a “feel good” experience. Maybe the congregation will grow, more tithes will roll in and maybe the pastor’s book will sell better.

I don’t mean to be negative but I know of one local church that tired of sermons of warning and they dismissed their pastor quickly.

The Bible says in Ezekiel 3:17 “Son of man, I have made thee a watchman unto the house of Israel: therefore hear the word at my mouth, and give them warning from me.” Some pastors see their role as the watchman. The Bible says “study this Book of Instruction continually. Meditate on it day and night so you will be sure to obey everything written in it. Only then you will prosper and succeed in all you do” [Joshua 1:8].

Bevere says if we would heed God’s warning we could avoid the many “train wrecks among believers…if individuals had been both taught and warned.”

He finishes Chapter Two with these words: “There is nothing good for you outside of God’s wisdom or Word, nothing at all. If you believe this, let’s go further in our search for the difference between good and God” [Bevere, 26].

Maybe I did not really need the warning about sharp hooks on my fishing lure but I can tell you one thing, those hooks are there. I know; I have hooked myself. There is much in life that I am not aware of. As I continue into Chapter Three, I look forward to learning…

from a watchman.

My wife and I were watching a movie on a streaming movie service last night and the film featured an extremely bright young man [about 12 years old] who said “I don’t believe in miracles.”  When he said these words, I was taken aback slightly.  Those thoughts seemed to be a bit unusual coming from the mouth of a young child.  Yet he seemed very confident that he was right.  I immediately thought that it was a shame that this young child has lost the ability to believe in the Divine intervention of God into the lives of people at such a tender young age.

Then this morning I got up and read about revealed knowledge in Pastor John Bevere’s book Good or God? I began to think about many people in the real world and where they stand on God’s intervention in our world.  The movie was only a movie but today there are many “real” people who are very similar to this character in the film.   They believe that God is no longer in the miracle business and further, God does not reveal his thoughts to man directly.

Revealed knowledge is not what I would call a miracle from God; however, Bevere defines it as “when God shows us something directly” [Bevere, 18].  When you take what he writes earlier in the book about this knowledge “not always [being] clear to our natural thinking, reasoning or senses” and you couple that with the idea that revealed knowledge comes from God to man via man’s heart you begin to understand the meaning.   Another way of expressing this is God communicating directly to man’s Holy Spirit [Bevere, 11].

I know a lot of people who are “good”; I know a lot of people who are Christians.  But I also know that many of these people have serious doubts about “revealed knowledge.”

John Bevere has no doubt that God communicates directly to man.

The whole premise of his book is based on the idea of revealed knowledge and in my opinion, he is fighting an “uphill battle” to get his reading audience to believe like him. 

One factor that stands in the way is science.  The young man in the movie was a budding scientist and his father was a university trained biologist.  There is nothing wrong with that.   I certainly think that becoming educated is a valuable pursuit.  What is a shame is that some scientists seem to believe that to value science means that one should lose their belief in God.

Other factors are the growing unfavorability of leading a Christian life.  One can easily go to sources like “Churchleadership.org” and read statistics about church decline: 4,000 churches are closing their doors annually compared to 1,000 church starts.  Two million seven hundred thousand church members are sliding into inactive church membership annually.   The stats are alarming and they support the idea that the Christian lifestyle is not in style anymore.*   My church is no exception.  Most of the members are elderly [I am 65] and younger members are not sitting in our pews.   My Sunday School class can have 18 people in it one Sunday and then only 7 the next.   Attendance is very sporadic.  There is no sense of commitment to regular church attendance.  All this plays into the idea that church attendance may be valuable for the spread of Christian knowledge and that includes “revealed knowledge.”

We could go further into this complex subject citing the lure of worldly activity.  The golf course or the lake can be more enticing than the church.  I live so close to a baseball/softball complex and most churches would be so pleased if the players and fans would leave the complex and go into church on a Sunday morning.  Most churches would be full.   Again, people are probably not going to be exposed to information about “revealed knowledge” on the golf course, the lake or the ball complex.  The reasons for lack of exposure to church are myriad, but let’s give Pastor Bevere his due.  Let’s assume that revealed knowledge actually occurs.  How can God speak to man directly? 

Certainly a person who has dedicated themselves to reading the Bible can get a word from God.  The Bible is an inspired book and God can certainly communicate directly to a reader if that reader has a receptive mind.  Sometimes even an inspired Christian writer in a Christian book can be used to express Godly ideas that can touch a person’s heart.  Quiet prayer time can yield thoughts from God.   Words from a pastor can be words from God via the pastor’s lips.  Then we have people who claim that God has given them a vision.  Christians can risk losing their friends if that vision is revealed to others, but I believe that some people have had visions or at least clear commands from God through the Holy Spirit. 

Bevere states “Sometimes you may hear a still, small voice in your heart.  Other times you simply know because the revelation was dropped into your spirit.  Other times your heart begins to race as you sense the presence of God as you read Scripture…you know you’ve heard from God, and this revealed knowledge cannot be taken from you” [19-20].

After writing this post, I think maybe I should change what I said earlier.  I wrote above that “revealed knowledge is not what I would call a miracle from God.”

Given today’s climate, let’s revise that statement: “today, revealed knowledge is what I would call a miracle from God.”

For God to get past all the distractions of contemporary life and to find a way to communicate to man…

That is truly a miracle…

*Dr. Richard Krejcir “Statistics and Reasons for Church Decline”.

Persuasive strategy is a topic that has always fascinated me.

Persuasion is the art of crafting a message that “provides information that will motivate others to do or believe something you want them to do or believe, or to do or believe something with more vigor than at the present” [C. Gruner, Essentials of Public Speaking, 1993].

Pastor John Bevere poses an important question in chapter two of his book Good or God?.

How did Satan persuade Eve to eat fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil?

What was his persuasive strategy?

On the face of it, it is amazing that Adam and Eve ate the fruit. They had the perfect life. They had all the food they could ever want. They did not have to work in order to make a living. They lived in the most beautiful setting imaginable. They had peace and tranquility. No sickness! Wow, who would want to alter such a lifestyle?

Yet they were motivated to make a change, or rather [at first] Eve was motivated to make a change.

First of all, Satan employed a persuasive technique that is still powerful today. Eve may have been operating with unclear thinking about the tree. In a previous post, I elaborated on the idea that she felt the “tree” was off limits for fruit and also for touching. God really did not say anything to Adam about touching the tree. His command was all about eating fruit from the tree.

But Satan took that very extreme command about eating and touching and made a big deal out of it. In reality, Eve really had it all. She truly was living a perfect life but amazingly she thought what she had was not enough. Today, we may not live in the Garden of Eden but many of us have a lot going right in our lives [aka “blessings”]. How easy it is for us to ignore the blessings and focus on what we think we lack.

Television advertising uses this strategy all the time. We see products displayed in seductive settings with gorgeous people. We think about our lives and we compare what we have to what we see on the screen. We may have a lot going right in our lives,  but we don’t have what is being displayed. What do we need to do about this?  The strategy is implicit in the advertising.

All we have to do is . . . buy the product.

Satan got Eve to ignore all her ample blessings and think that fruit from the forbidden tree would make her life better. He got her to focus on what she lacked.

Then Pastor Bevere explains part two of Satan’s persuasive strategy: he negates the Word of God. In Genesis 3: 4-5, it says “Then the serpent said to the woman, ‘You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil’”.

What can we make of this statement? Satan is implying that God knows something that He is withholding from Adam and Eve. God does not want the couple to experience life on a higher level. Eve thinks God is holding out on them. He wants them to stay right where they are when their life could even be better.

What is going on? Satan is making Eve question the character of God. This strategy is designed to undermine values. Pastor Bevere “recreates” Eve’s changing thought process: “Wait a minute. There’s something good and beneficial in that tree, and God’s forbidden it. My husband and I could have a better life. We could be wiser and happier, but it’s being withheld. I thought our Creator was loving and gracious, but in reality, He’s deceptive. He’s hiding something good from us.”

There it is: “I thought our Creator was loving and gracious…He’s deceptive. He’s hiding something.”

God’s character is perfect but for one moment, Eve thought otherwise.

Eve doubted and that led to Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit.

Second Corinthians 4:18 says we must “fix our attention, not on the things that are seen, but on things that are unseen.”

Satan got Eve to take her eyes off of the prize, off of the perfect situation she had. She focused on what she lacked. Then she let Satan suggest that God’s character was less than perfect and for one moment she believed that.

Those strategies were enough.

And sin came into our world.

*The comments are based on John Bevere’s book Good or God? .

It is rare that I get a chance to write about my “specialty”, which is human communication. Now before you jump to a conclusion, what I mean is I have spent years studying human communication. Do I fall prey to making communication errors?

Ask my wife…of course I do.

Pastor John Bevere in his book Good or God? brings up communication in Chapter 2. He contrasts human communication to divine communication. In particular, he calls human communication “communicated knowledge.” Knowledge from God he calls “revealed knowledge.”

In Chapter 2 he pinpoints that human foibles, with communication as a major factor, may have led to Eve making a mistake about that tree, you know that tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God had “revealed” to Adam that he and Eve were not to eat of that tree. Adam “communicated” that idea to Eve.

What if Eve had received that message from God?

Maybe she would not have been swayed by the serpent? Who knows?

But that is not how the story unfolded. Eve possibly was tripped up by human communication errors. Of course, we are still making those today. Let’s dig into the Adam, Eve and serpent scenario.

God told Adam “You may eat the fruit from any tree in the garden except from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.” Now that is pretty clear but that is not what Eve heard from Adam. When the serpent quizzed Eve about the tree she said that Adam told her God said they should not eat it or “touch” it lest they die.

Where did she get the idea that God said they could not touch the tree?

I am not a theologian by any stretch, but as someone who has studied human communication, when humans talk to other humans I know that listening is problematic. Eve’s thinking may have been based on poor listening, something which plagues us all, all of the time. Listening experts know that humans have a tough time processing messages due to mental distraction. In other words, we can be so distracted that the message does not even get through. Half the time when we are listening to others, we are in “another world”, thinking private thoughts that have little to do with the message at hand.

Then we have to figure in remembering. We forget so much of a message right after we hear it. Communication experts estimate forgetting rates can be as high as fifty percent at times.

If this is true, what do we do when we pass along messages to others? We know we don’t have all the facts but we pass the message on to others anyhow. Sometimes we invent things to fill in the story [which can be the root of a lot of gossip]. Some people hate to report bad news so they substitute “good news” to make a bad report a bit better.

And then one has to figure in the nature of words themselves. Words are not rock solid bits of information that we hand to other people. Words are fraught with meaning. When Eve said that Adam told her that the Lord told them not to eat of that tree or touch it, that idea may have come from how Adam told her the information. Maybe he used a dramatic word that scared her. Maybe he used an emphatic word indicating God’s authority; must, shall or cannot. When we hear words we often respond with feelings. Feelings vary from one person to the next.

We don’t know exactly what happened but we do know that “shall not eat it” also became “nor shall you touch it.” Eve said do either and she and Adam would die.
We have to use human communication. Without it we cannot share ideas, but human communication can easily become miscommunication and miscommunication can be the basis for making grievous errors.

Pastor Bevere is not merely content in his book to discuss human communication. He wants to go much deeper than that. He wants to use Adam, Eve and the serpent to illustrate how we can value communicated knowledge more than revealed knowledge or knowledge directly from God.

Communicated knowledge is all around us all day long. We spend all our days processing communicated knowledge. Some people pride themselves on their ability to have vast amounts of communicated knowledge in their brains but “revealed knowledge” is more valuable that all the communicated knowledge we can ever know.

For Eve, direct communication from God would possibly have made the difference, but that is not how it happened.

God spoke to Adam and then Adam spoke to Eve.

The message that was passed along may have made all the difference.

Direct communication from God would have possibly solved the problem but it was impossible [not part of His plan].

When God was talking to Adam, Eve was not in the picture. God had not created her yet.

What a shame…