2 Peter 1

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As usual, when looking at a new book, I like to check out the wikipedia page and see what it says about date and authorship. We are in the normal situation, both of these items are hotly contested. One thing that caught my eye and made me chuckle, is that one of the arguments that it is not written by Peter is the linguistic difference between 1 Peter and 2 Peter, but 1 Peter was also argued to be not written by Peter. Although I guess that argument would lead to the conclusion that at least 1 was not really written by Peter, even if it can't pin down which is which.

Greeting (v. 1-2)

Peter identifies himself, and then wishes grace and peace to those of the faith.

Basically just a hello.

Make Your Calling and Election Sure (v. 3-15)

God granted us everything that is good, the world is the source of all things sinful and bad.

Same old thing, they give credit to God for anything good and he is free from responsibility from anything bad. If he is an omnipotent creator, shouldn't he take responsibility for the good and bad?

 Supplement faith with virtue, virtue with knowledge, knowledge with self-control, self-control with steadfastness, steadfastness with godliness, godliness with brotherly affection, brotherly affection with love.

Seems odd to have been structured this way, where each item is intended to supplement the last. It doesn't seem to make a ton of sense to me, I think it would have been better to simply have a list of things that a good qualities, which is essentially what this becomes. What does it mean to supplement godliness with brotherly affection?

As for the list itself, knowledge, self-control, steadfastness, brotherly affection and love are good. Virtue and godliness are relatively vacuous terms as far as I'm concerned. What does it mean to be virtuous? "Well, it means to do good things." What good things? "Well such as..." Yeah, whatever goes in that list, that's what I want to hear. And of course there is faith, which is a bad thing. I'm just going to leave this off of my overview post. I hate these lists, and it is a mixed bag anyway. Kinda hard to pick out the good bits and argue those parts make a good lesson.

Christ's Glory and the Prophetic Word (v. 16-21)

Peter says he knows Jesus is really the son of God because he personally heard the voice of God make this claim. He also says that he has prophetic word, which we should all listen to. Prophecy doesn't come from people, but rather it comes from God through the holy spirit.

Interesting that he talks about how awesome prophecy is, and yet he doesn't give any specific prophecies, maybe next book.

For the overview post (If you think I should add or remove stuff from this list please let me know, I think it would make good conversation)

Bad:

1:3-4 God is the source of good stuff, bad stuff is from earth

"His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness...escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire"

James 5

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Warning to the Rich (v. 1-6)

Soon your wealth will rot away and be useless to use, you have chosen to amass your treasure here on earth where it will be useless soon. The rich gain their wealth by fraud and exploitation of their workers. You are responsible for the death of Jesus.

The bible clearly does not like rich people, funny then, that the catholic church has amassed so much wealth. Something I wanted to focus on a bit, I summarized that wealth will soon be worthless, I said this because verse 3 contains "You have laid up treasure in the last days". If you are really pushing for this to make some kind of sense, I imagine you would argue that this is talking about your own personal death, but I think it is pretty clear they are talking about the impending apocalypse.

The other problem here, is that all rich people are lumped into one big pile. They all have ill-gotten gains and apparently they are all responsible for the death of Jesus.

With the Catholic church in mind, the following statement from Guzik made me laugh. "[James] now naturally rebukes those most likely to live independently from God: the rich."

Patience in Suffering (v. 7-12)

Be patient and establish your hearts for the coming of the lord, which is at hand. Do not judge each other or you will be condemned. Be an example of suffering and patience like Job.

I like that patience is extolled here. Other than that, I'm not a fan of this passage. It is mentioned a second time that the apocalypse is right around the corner. It also says that suffering is a virtue, and looks toward Job as a role model. As far as I'm concerned, the story of Job is horrible, God lets the devil torture a guy to prove a point.

Apparently, the apocalypse prediction is not wrong, even though it has clearly failed, as according to Guzik 

"James said that in his day that the coming of the Lord is at hand. Was he wrong? No; we should not think as history since Jesus’ Ascension as moving towards a distant brink known as Jesus’ coming. Instead, it has run parallel to that brink for the last two thousand years or so, ready at any moment to head off it."

So apparently the end is near, and it has been for 2000 years. Great logic there buddy. Gill tries to get out of it in a different way, with a vague reference to the idea that for God "a thousand years are as one day". This seems like a pretty lame cop out to me, if correct it also seems that God is terrible at communicating with us, for if he meant that Jesus would return in thousands of years, he should have not told us it is right around the corner when our lifespan is so much shorter than that.

Do not swear any oath by heaven or earth.

As to the "don't swear an oath" thing, I don't get it.

According to Guzik the oath thing refers to making complicated deals with people, which are presumably complicated because they are deceptive. It says to use simple yes and no, and that is apparently what this is referring to. Being unfamiliar with the history, I'm fine deferring to him on this point. And given that, the spirit of this seems good, don't try to swindle people with complicated contracts.

The Prayer of Faith (v. 13-20)

If you are righteous and have faith your prayers have great power. The prayers of the church elders can heal, and the prayers of Elijah caused it to not rain for the and a half years.

This has two ideas in it that are terrible, first is the idea that prayer can do anything. Are we actually supposed to believe that Elijah made it stop raining for three and a half years? If not, at the very least the story is surely supposed to be telling us that prayers is extremely powerful. I definitely think the verse that says church elders can heal with prayer is supposed to be taken literally. Why is this such a bad thing? Because prayers don't seem to work. But the second bad thing about this section is that if your prayers don't work, it is your fault, you must not be righteous enough.

I didn't mention it, but in addition to having the elders pray, they are supposed to anoint the sick with oil. Guzik interprets this as "seeking the best medical attention possible". Are you kidding me? I mean, I'm glad they found a way around the silly rules in the book and are able to still go get proper care, but to say that is what the text means is a hell of a lot of spin.

He also says "Some have interpreted the idea behind save the sick as not specifically being healing, and raise him up as being a reference to ultimate resurrection." Another no lose situation for God. One more quote "The best approach in praying for the sick is to pray with humble confidence that they will be healed, unless God clearly and powerfully makes it clear that this is not His will."

It is quite telling when the Christians trying explain things hedge their bets immediately like this. "God can heal anything, unless he doesn't want to, so if it doesn't work it's not God's fault"

James finishes by stating that bringing back someone who wanders from the truth will "save his soul from death and cover a multitude of sins"

Are those the sins of the person saving or the person being saved? My first thought was that it was talking about the person saving, that saving someone will offset some of your own sins. But then I looked again and it is talking about saving his soul, is bringing him back covering his sins? I'm not sure.

Guzik agrees with my first thought, that the person helping the other person gets some sins forgiven for helping him.

For the overview post (If you think I should add or remove stuff from this list please let me know, I think it would make good conversation)

Good:

5:7-8 patience is a virtue

"Be patient, therefore, brothers...8 You also, be patient..."

Bad:

5:3,8 the end is near!

"...You have laid up treasure in the last days."

"...Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand."

5:4-6 All rich people are evil

"the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud... You have lived on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence...You have condemned and murdered the righteous person..."

5:16 Prayer is powerful if you are righteous enough

"Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working."

James 3

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Taming the Tongue (v. 1-12)

Although the tongue is small, it is very powerful. It is like the rudder of a ship, which is small and yet controls where the ship goes in a strong wind. Or like a small flame that sets a forest fire ablaze. So be careful who becomes teachers, for the tongue of a teacher can control many.

I think that was the point here, it didn't quite lay it out exactly like that, but it started saying that not many people should be teachers and then spent the rest of the section talking about the power of the tongue, I think this is the intended message.

That being said, I agree with the idea that the tongue is very powerful, I guess the real message there is you should watch what you say. We can do a lot of damage with thoughtless words and we should be careful to avoid it.

Verse 1 says that not many people should become teachers. I definitely disagree with this message, I think everyone should try to teach what they know to other people, it is the best way to learn something yourself and spreading knowledge is always a good thing. We had a saying back in grad school, if you want to learn a topic, teach it to someone else. That being said,  I have a feeling that this is meant as more "leaders" than "teachers" in the way I am thinking about it, so my comments probably don't really apply. Nevertheless I find this idea compelling so I wanted to mention it anyway.

Guzik highlights that this is talking about becoming a teacher in the church and his take on this is basically that the position should not be taken lightly. I agree with this perspective, especially if you are talking about being a real leader in the church (which I think is the intention of the verse), but I do like the idea that many people within the church can take up smaller roles of authority and the congregation can spend a lot of energy teaching each other.

v. 7 "For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind,"

I also wanted to point this verse out just because it is silly. At the time of this being written, we certainly hadn't discovered every type of creature that exists in nature, and I would say it is more than likely that is still true today. And we certainly haven't tamed them all.

Wisdom from Above (v. 13-18)

Wisdom comes from above, and unspiritual and demonic things from from below.

This is yet another one of those times when the bible just claims all good things as coming from God and all bad things as not coming from God. If you just claim that all wisdom comes from God, and then attribute all good things to him, while letting him get away from anything that is bad, of course he will look good, but it's just a bullshit illusion. Oh, actually, it sounds almost like a politician when I put it that way. That being said, there is some good advice here.

As usual, Guzik seems to take this message hook line and sinker.

v 13 says to show your works in the meekness of wisdom.

This is pretty good, being meek isn't always the best thing to do, but I think as a general guideline it is pretty good. 

v 14 says that jealousy, selfish ambition, boasting, and lying are bad.

That's a lot to shove together, but yeah, I agree here.

v 17 "But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere."

I'm actually not completely sure what to say about this one. If by "wisdom from above" we mean the bible, then I disagree with every point here. It's riddled with contradictions, so calling it pure doesn't work for me. There is some peace preached by Jesus, but there is also a ton of violence (some even preached by Jesus). Gentle? there is plenty of heavy-handedness by God, for example, killing nearly everyone on the planet with a flood. Open to reason? not with all of the blind faith talk. Full of mercy? Again, the flood. good fruits, impartiality and sincerity? All of these seem to be destroyed with all of the contradictions all over the place.

They all sound good, and if this verse had said that we should have these qualities I would have put it in my good list, but it is saying that the book has those properties, and I simply disagree with the statement.

For the overview post (If you think I should add or remove stuff from this list please let me know, I think it would make good conversation)

Good:

3:10 Be careful what you say, you can do a lot of damage with a thoughtless word

"From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so."

3:13 Show your works through meekness

"Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good conduct let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom."

3:14 Lying, selfishness, boasting, and jealousy are bad

"But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth."

Bad:

3:15 God gets credit for good things, absolved from bad things

"This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic."

James 1

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As usual, when I start a new book I like to check out the wikipedia page. I looks like this is a letter written by James, although I didn't see anything about who he was writing it for. It says that "[James] consists largely of moral exhortations and precepts of a traditional and eclectic nature." so perhaps it is intended as a letter for a general audience. Hopefully this means there will be plenty of material that will be of interest for me if it focuses on morals. Apparently our earliest copies are from mid to late 3rd century, although it is attributed to James the Just who died in 62 or 69. I'm not really sure how that works out, I guess the early copies were lost?

Greeting (v. 1)

Apparently I was right, James is writing "To the twelve tribes in the Dispersion", I guess it is just written for all.

Testing of Your Faith (v. 2-18)

You should be happy when you face trials, when you stand up to tests of your faith you become more steadfast, and letting this steadfastness have its full effect makes you perfect and complete.

This idea I find interesting, because I find grains of truth in it, but it's all mixed up with stuff I don't like, and the conclusion is pushed way too far. We'll start with the idea that you should be happy to face trials. I was arguing recently that we should accept challenges to our ideas because it is a chance for growth. We can find out if we are wrong and improve our positions, or we can be more confident in our previous position if our ideas hold up and have one more piece of evidence that are are indeed correct. This sounds like I am saying the same thing, we become more steadfast, but what I'm talking about isn't the same as what is written here. I'm talking about becoming more steadfast by employing error correction. Without the option to change your opinion if you are proven wrong this whole thing is worthless. The verse is about faith, it is about standing up to a challenge and never moving an inch. This is a very bad thing, this is the basis that people use to deny evolution or climate change given the ridiculous amount of evidence that we have at this point. Furthermore, I mention that we improve through these trials, which is similar to what is written here, except it says you become perfect. There is really no ideal, there's no end to the pursuit of knowledge. There is no room to improve yourself if you think you are already perfect. This is similar to something good, but it is poison, it is the evil twin of a good message.

If you lack wisdom, ask God and he will give it to you. But you must ask in faith without doubt. If you doubt you should expect to get nothing from the Lord, as you are double-minded and unstable.

So basically, if you ask God for wisdom and you don't get it, then it is your fault. Also, when it says that doubts are not allowed, it is basically saying that skepticism is bad.

Don't blame God when you are tempted, for God cannot be tempted by evil and God tempts no one. You are tempted by your own desires, which grow into sin and then death.

Reading this, I just knew it had to be bullshit. I generally try not to read SAB while doing my blog, but this time it seemed like a perfect time to use it. With it's help, I discovered that God can indeed be tempted, and God does indeed tempt people. 

Everything good comes from God.

Well that's a nice blanket statement. I love that God gets credit for everything good and washes his hands of everything bad. If he created everything and set up the rules for everything, shouldn't he have to take credit for the good and the bad?

I didn't really have time to do my normal inspection of christian commentaries today, but I did glance really quick through Guzik's (if anyone is wondering why I use his so much, they are generally pretty good, and the format is excellent for scanning for specific items) and he seems to have accepted the things I have complained about hook line and sinker.

Hearing and Doing the Word (v. 19-26)

You should be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger.

Now that's good stuff! We should not only listen to the words other people say, but really hear it. Being slow to speak suggests we should truly listen and understand, instead of waiting for the other person to stop talking so we can start talking. And of course being slow to anger is great as well. Patience is a great virtue, and that is really what we are talking about here.


For the overview post (If you think I should add or remove stuff from this list please let me know, I think it would make good conversation)

Good:

1:19 Be a good listener and be slow to anger

"Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger;"

Bad:

1:6 Skepticism is bad

"But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind."

1:13,17 God takes credit for good and distances himself from bad

"Let no one say when he is tempted, "I am being tempted by God," for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one."

"Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change."