2 Corinthians 9

The Collection for Christians in Jerusalem

I have told the people of Macedonia how awesome you guys are, it would be embarrassing to me and to you if you didn't come through on your promise of a gift. So I am sending some of my guys ahead to collect so when I get there with the Macedonians it is a willing gift rather than an exaction.

This section I just find strange, and it feels to me like we don't quite have enough information to make a proper judgement. Paul says that the Corinthians made a promise of a gift, and therefore he is simply making sure they come through. On the surface this seems like a fine thing. If you promise something you should follow through. On the other hand, what is the deal with it becoming an exaction if they don't give it as a gift? That makes the whole thing seem shady.

I suppose a Christian might accuse me of just looking for things to complain about (perhaps this is true) and say that Paul is just trying to make things right.

The Cheerful Giver

The more you sow the more you reap. You should be generous in every way.

This is good stuff. Encouraging generosity is great. Many Christians focus on this kind of thing from the bible and our world is a better place for it.

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:

9:11 Be generous

2 Corinthians 7 & 8

Paul's Joy

Make room in your hearts for us, we care about you. I made you grieve with my last letter, which is unfortunate, however it made you repent so I am glad it caused you temporary hardship since the end result was good. Godly grief produces repentance and salvation. Every time you have had Godly grief you have cleared yourself with God. I did not write to you for the purpose of the one who did wrong, or the person who was wronged, but so you could see your earnestness with God and feel comforted.

This seems like a bad thing to me. They have apparently done something wrong, Paul is not interested in making sure the person who did something wrong learns a lesson, or that the person who was wronged is made whole. The concern is that they are cleared in the eyes of God. It shouldn't be possible to be good with God without also at least trying to make it right with the wronged person.

Encouragement to Give Generously (ch 8)

We were going through severe affliction while in Macedonia, and the churches there gave in abundance even beyond their means. They were in extreme poverty, and yet gave to us generously on their own accord and begged us to take part in "the relief of the saints".

So Paul and his guys basically took advantage of poor people. When I read the title of this section I thought it was going to go on the good side of the overview, but it looks like it should read "encouragement to give generously to us".

This is not a command to you, but a way to prove your earnestness. You should give away your wealth to those who have little so when they have much and you have little they will help you out.

Now this doesn't sound so bad, basically a help each other out story. Basically trying to sell the idea of reciprocal altruism. Which would seem like a good lesson, except the first part of the lesson was about poor people who gave a bunch of wealth to the church. So who is Paul talking about? Is he talking about rich Corinthians helping out poor Corinthians? If so I like it, but I think Paul is asking the rich Corinthians to give money to the church (in other words, give money to Paul). I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt as much as I can manage and put this in both good and bad.

Commendation of Titus

We are sending Titus to you, we like him and we think he will be good for you.

Doesn't seem to be much 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:

8:14 promote reciprocal altruism

Bad:

7:12 Don't worry about the person you have wronged, just get good with God

8:3-4 Poor people should give to the church beyond their means

What is the deal with Creationism?

Recently in a post on Reason Being's blog, a creationist popped up in the comments. My first instinct was to say to him that creationism is simply "God did it", but then I realized, I actually don't really know what creationists say. I know what my parents told me as a kid, and I know what my church told me as a kid, they basically said "God did it, evolution is wrong". I also know that the ID people (who are the same people as the creationist people if I am understanding correctly) claim things like irreducible complexity, which is just nonsense. But apart from that, I'm not really sure what the creationist people say.

So today when I stumbled across the institute for creation research, of course I subscribed to their "daily science updates". I figured it would be a fun post to go through a few of their recent articles and see what I see.

What Does It Take to Make a Jellyfish?

This article manages to say something ridiculous right from the start, it begins with

Many jellyfish are transparent, and they have seemingly simple movements and few visible interacting parts. They should, therefore, be easy to synthesize with man-made parts...

Why would "transparent" and "seemingly simple movements" imply easy to synthesize? The article then goes on describe what the scientists tried to do to mimic a jellyfish and how it was not very well done. For the record, it sounds to me like what the scientists were able to accomplish is very cool. Anyway, the article concludes with the following

The implication is clear. Whoever designed real jellyfish was much smarter than ordinary people.

So to sum up, the author of this article makes the rash assumption that since jellyfish are transparent and have seemingly simple movements, they should be easy for people to synthesize. Then when this assumption proves false, he concludes that the only explanation is that jellyfish were designed, and they were designed by someone smarter than the people who tried and "failed" this time. It seems to me that there are a host of other possible conclusions one could draw from this, but why not just stick to the one that he wants to be true?

New African Fossil Confirms Early Human Variations

This article talks about a recent paper from the journal Nature. Apparently, the paper found some new fossils and the scientists talked about trying to fit the fossils into our currently understood evolutionary lineage. This is a topic I am not particularly well versed in, so I'm not sure how much I can contribute, but the author of this article complains that the nature paper is trying to challenge early concepts of the lineage and might change earlier ideas. He uses this to try to argue that evolution is junk because it changes, I guess he doesn't understand that he is pointing out one of the huge advantages of science, it can always challenge earlier ideas and things can always change. He finishes this article with

On the other hand, the Bible's origins account is compatible with discontinuous fossils like these, since it says that God created people to reproduce after their own kind, not between kinds.

So my instinct was correct, the creationist view is simply "God did it"

 It follows from this that no undisputed ape-to-human transition will ever be discovered. 

I agree, these people are basically pledging to dispute everything of this type that shows up, so it is true, there will never be an undisputed ape-to-human transition found.

If these new human-looking fossils really do represent human varieties, then they only reinforce the biblical and scientific observation that humans can and did rapidly express widely differing variations in form and features. 

Is there biblical evidence for humans variation like he is describing? I'd love to see a verse citation.

Useless Search for Evolution of the Human Brain

This article talks about a review article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It apparently talks about a gene FOXP2 which is seems to be important to human speech as there are some people who have a mutation in that gene and have speech defects. Obviously there is the potential that this gene was important in the evolution of speech.

No. The high hope once held for FOXP2 as a key to explain the evolution of speech in the brain was dashed on the rocks of real research.

Oh, I stand corrected. Apparently this guy thinks he has proof that this gene can not be part of the evolution of speech. Care to elaborate?

Analyses of FOXP2 gene activity showed that it was not only used in brain tissues that facilitate speech, but also in various tissues throughout the body with a variety of uses. 

No problem there. Many features of animals have multiple uses, evolution can happen when a population of animals shifts from one use to another.

This represents an overlooked flaw in the evolutionary research approach. Because FOXP2 turned out to be involved in many traits, its evolution by natural selection is highly improbable.

This is just completely wrong. The fact that FOXP2 is involved in many traits makes it all the more likely it was important for the evolution of speech. Suppose for the moment, that FOXP2 is important for speech. The fact that it is useful for other tasks makes it all the more likely that it was present when all of the other things important for speech were there and it was ready to be co-opted for the purpose of speech. [disclaimer: I don't actually know anything about FOXP2, but I have a general idea of how evolution works and this guy's analysis just seems completely wrong to me]

He then complains that the survey article assumes that evolution is true and it didn't consider ID as an alternative. He states:

Preuss and others did not mention—let alone test—the possibility that FOXP2 was purposely placed to serve multiple functions throughout many body tissues in many creatures.

How would you even test such a thing?

Salmon Use Sophisticated Compass Cells

This article talks about how salmon know how to get back to their spawning ground. Apparently some scientists have found some cells that have magnetic properties. Pretty cool. Also, there are many cells that don't have that magnetic property, if there were too many they would interfere with one another. Again, very neat. So then he says this

Would anybody argue that a fully functional compass, complete with a spinning needle, could ever be arranged by accident? Apparently so. [emphasis mine]

 No god dammit! It is not random and it is not by accident. Randomness is part of the process, but natural selection is not random. In fact, in a very real sense it is the opposite of random as traits that are superior win out and spread like crazy.

So, to the author of these articles, I think it is now time for me to ask the question. Are you stupid or are you a liar? Given that you are writing about how evolution is bullshit, I'm assuming you have studied at least the basics of it. If you think evolution is things simply being arranged by accident, you are stupid. If you just say "by accident" because it fits your narrative better and you think it will play better in your target audience, then you are a liar.
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These are articles I found largely at random. I also looked around the rest of the website a bit and as far as I can tell, they seem typical. If anyone thinks I have missed some obvious good resources or that I'm being unfair, please point me toward something of higher quality.

What am I supposed to tell my kids?

I was recently reading a comment thread about gay marriage and someone asked if they saw a gay couple kissing how they would explain that to their children. My normal response to this kind of thing is that [--edit-- there is nothing wrong with it and] it is irrelevant to the conversation. The fact that you might have trouble explaining something to your kids is not a good reason for censorship, it is certainly not a good reason to take away someone else's rights.

But for some reason, this time the comment struck me a little bit differently. As a parent, wouldn't it be best to look at these "unfortunate" events as a teaching experience? Let's say there is some event (in this case 2 dudes kissing) that your child could potentially witness. Would you prefer it happen when you are around or when you are not? Instead of complaining that something happened that you have to explain to your kids, you should be happy that you get to give your perspective.

So it seems to come down to whether or not you want to accept reality or ignore it. I understand that you want to protect your kids, but how does ignoring problems help them in the long run? This goes for alcohol, drugs, and sex too. Your children will eventually come across these topics on their own, it seems a good parent would want to talk them over with their children ahead of time. Yes, sometimes these topics are hard to broach, shouldn't you then be happy for an easy lead in? If it comes up organically somewhere wouldn't it be better than having a sit down and starting with "we need to have a talk about X"? Those conversations are never comfortable.

But the other option is to just never have the conversation at all. Don't tell your kids about alcohol and just hope they don't wind up going nuts and getting alcohol poisoning, don't tell them about safe sex and just hope they don't get any diseases or unwanted children. These are conversations that need to happen, you can't protect your children from the world by hiding it from them, because if you try it that way, who knows what will happen when they are on their own.

2 Corinthians 5 & 6

Our Heavenly Dwelling

Our home on Earth is just a tent in which we experience anguish, we have a house waiting for us in the heavens. When we are here in our tent, we are away from God. Even though we would rather be away from the body and at home with the lord, we must do everything we can to please him because one day we will all be judged by Jesus for what we have done in the body, whether good or evil.

I find this kind of thing pretty disgusting. The message is basically that this life is shit, we would all rather just die and go to heaven, but you must do the best you can here because someday you will be judged. It is simultaneously telling people that their life is worthless and that they should follow what the church says.

The Ministry of Reconciliation

We know that everyone will be judged after they die, and so we are spreading the word. Jesus died for all of us, and therefore we have all died. Anyone who has accepted Christ is in a new creation. God has reconciled those people and doesn't count their trespasses against them. So we are spreading this word, please accept Christ and be reconciled to God.

So if I am understanding this passage correctly (which I might not be, I found it confusing) we will be judged after we die, but if we accept Jesus our trespasses won't count. So everyone is judged, except if you are with Christ you can do whatever you want because your trespasses don't count. 

(ch 6) (why are the chapter breaks all in weird places?)

The day of salvation has arrived, we have put no obstacles in your way so no fault can be found with our ministry. We are amazing in many ways (listed in detail in verse 4-10). We have opened your hearts to you, you should in return open your hearts to us.

The Temple of the Living God

Do no associate with unbelievers. Go out into their midst and be separate from them.

Confusing to me, how can you do both things?


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:

5:8 death is better than life

5:10 do what the church says, you will be judged when you die for it

2 Corinthians 3 & 4

Ministers of the New Covenant

You [The Corinthians I guess] are the proof that we are doing a good job. We are ministers of a new covenant that surpasses the old covenant of Moses. The old covenant kills, but ours gives life. The covenant given to Moses written on that tablets was so full of glory that the men could not look at it directly, but compared to the glory given to us through the spirit the old one had no glory at all. This is partly because our glory lasts forever and the glory of Moses eventually came to and end. When reading Moses, there is a veil over your heart which can only be taken away through Jesus Christ.

This section I found fairly difficult to understand. I think I got the idea right, but I might be misinterpreting stuff. The whole thing seems very anti-Semitic to me though, as it seems to be comparing Christians to Jews and the Jews are spoken of in poor light. Their religion is talked about in terms of death and behind a veil and with hardened hearts and so forth.  The whole thing makes me a bit uneasy.

The Light of the Gospel (ch 4)

We have this ministry by the mercy of God and we refuse to use any underhanded or disgraceful methods. Jesus said to let the light shine out of the darkness, and it has shone into our hearts the knowledge and glory of God.

So basically, they want to let the gospel out to as many people as possible. Fair enough, if you believe something like this is true the correct thing is obviously to tell everyone about it that you can. You should dedicate your life to spreading this message. 

v3-4 "and even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing. In their case, the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God."

This really caught my eye, especially the fact that the god that was blinding the minds of the unbelievers was not capitalized. I'm assuming this is supposed to be a competing god from another religion. If another god can shield people's mind from God, what does that say about the omnipotence of God? 

Treasure in Jars of Clay

I assume Jar of Clay is supposed to be our bodies.

We accumulate treasures in this world, and yet they will waste away. If we also carry the death of Jesus in our hearts, so will the life of Jesus manifest in our bodies.

Basically just saying that you will die, but if you believe in our stuff you will actually live forever. What an enticing story.

2 Corinthians 1 & 2

According to wikipedia, there is evidence that there are at least 4 letters from Paul to the Corinthians. Apparently chapters 10-13 are very harsh compared to the rest and it is speculated it was actually a different letter. Very interesting.

God of All Comfort

God comforts us when we are afflicted so that we may comfort others when they are afflicted. We share in the sufferings of Christ as well of the comfort of Christ. When we were in Asia, we were so burdened that we thought we would die, but that was to force us to rely not on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead and delivered us from that deadly peril. We want you to pray for us.

So we suffer for the purpose that we can be comforted later. There is some logic to this, if we are always happy then it won't seem like happiness but it will just be what is normal. But if we are sometimes sad it brings meaning to the happiness. Or something like that. There is some logic to this idea, but it appears to me that this is supposed to be an explanation for the pain and suffering in the world, and to me it falls flat. For everyday stuff, sure, dealing with some pain and anguish might help you appreciate the good times that come later, but what about people who don't come out of it? What about people with debilitating diseases (like MS for instance)? I suppose a Christian might say that they will find comfort in heaven later or something, but this only works if the person who has the disease is also a Christian.

Another thing here, it seems to try to equate raising the dead from bringing back from the brink of death. We can all understand bringing people back from the brink of death, but to have someone actually die and be brought back is another thing entirely. Trying to talk of them as if they are the same is slight of hand.

Paul's Change of Plans

It appears that Paul had planned on visiting Corinth a second time and did not show up. This passage seems to be justifying the fact that he did not show up.

I do not follow the whims of the flesh and say yes and no at the same time. I wanted to come a second time, but I knew that I would cause you pain, and this would cause me pain in turn. I am writing you now so that when I come later we can all rejoice together.

Seems to me that Paul didn't come and now he is justifying it. 

Forgive the Sinner (ch 2)

If anyone has caused pain, he has caused it to all of you. Therefore, you should forgive and comfort him or he will be overwhelmed by excess sorrow.

This sounds really good. The idea that we are all harmed when someone in our community is harmed is a good one. We should all strive to help each other out and the world would be a better place.

This is how I am testing you, anyone that you forgive I will also forgive.

What the hell is this? If the lesson is that you are supposed to forgive everyone, shouldn't Paul follow this and forgive everyone, regardless of whether or not the other Corinthians have forgiven them?

Triumph in Christ

We spread the true word of God unlike so many other 'peddlers of God's word'. We have the fragrance of God on us, we smell of life to believers and death to non-believers.

*Shrug*


For the overview post

2:5-7 Be quick to forgive and comfort those who have done wrong