Posted on by deliberationsatmimirswell

A Failed Christmas Prophecy?

One of my favorite symbols comes from the Lord of the Rings movie The Return of the King. The people of Gondor have been ruled by stewards for centuries awaiting the restoration of the line of Isildur while also holding their breath at the growing power of their aggressive, evil neighbor Sauron and his realm of Mordor. Guards hopefully stand watch at the seemingly dead Tree of the King, which is prophesied to bloom when that king returns.

Mordor launches its assault, and the steward’s only remaining son, Faramir, is apparently killed in battle. The steward, Denethor, organizes a party of soldiers to escort Faramir’s body to a funeral pyre where he will burn with him, totally despairing that his line has ended. As the procession passes glumly while Mordor’s forces hammer at the gates below, the camera pulls back to reveal what no one else has noticed—the Tree of the King has a bloom! Gives me chills every time. Even at that moment, King Aragorn is on his way to rescue the beleaguered people.

Believe it or not, something very similar happened at the coming of Christ, though to find it, one does have to look to the extrabiblical sources. It all starts with Jacob’s prophecies about his sons. Judah in particular has become a changed man. It was originally his idea to sell Joseph into slavery,. Not a very appealing character. However, when Jacob’s sons go to Egypt looking for grain, they find Joseph, whom they don’t recognize, as Egypt’s prime minister. Joseph sets a clever trap for them to test him. They had been jealous of his position as his father’s favorite son, so he “frames” the other son of Jacob’s favorite wife, his full-brother Benjamin, as having stolen his priceless cup and pretends that he will keep Benjamin as his slave. A now-changed Judah, prefiguring his descendant Jesus, pleads to take Benjamin’s place so Benjamin can return in peace to their father. At this, Joseph knows his brothers have changed, reveals himself to them, and arranges for them to settle in Egypt.

In the complex familial settlement that follows, Judah comes out on top. Reuben, the actual firstborn, had slept with Jacob’s concubine, and the next two sons, Simeon and Levi, abused the sacred rite of circumcision as a tool for murderous vengeance. The right to lead the nation of Israel thus passes to the fourth son, Judah. Jacob prophecies, “The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come, and unto him shall the gathering of the people be” (Genesis 49:10, KJV). The Messiah is thus to come from Judah’s line.

The image of the scepter means something quite different from what we would assume today. In the Ancient Near East, the scepter was a symbol for the authority to inflict capital punishment. Many in the West shy away from the death penalty, but the Ancient Near East had no such qualms. (Maybe because they remembered in some way that God’s ruling on the subject and the most basic mandate for a just government is, “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God made he man” (Genesis 8:6, KJV)).

The scepter was a symbol for the authority to inflict capital punishment.

The death penalty was too often abused by Ancient Near Eastern kings, but it was recognized as their prerogative and part of their kingly duties. When Daniel describes Nebuchadrezzar’s greatness to his successor Belshazzar, he says, “Whom he would, he slew, and whom he would, he kept alive” (Daniel 5:19, KJV). That meaning of the scepter was the one accepted by the scribes of Israel.

Fast-forward to a period not really covered in the Bible, the thirty years between Jesus’s birth and the start of his ministry. You will remember from Christmases long ago that Herod the Great was king when Jesus was born. Herod killed much of his family in his paranoia, but to his surviving sons he split up his kingdom, which was a client of the Roman Empire, in his will. He gave Judea and Samaria to his son Archelaus. While Herod had been cruel but an otherwise competent client-king, Archelaus was cruel and incompetent. His people complained against him to Augustus, the Roman Emperor, who sacked Archelaus and replaced him with a Roman governor in 6 or 7 AD. That is why in the Gospels you see Herod Antipas, one of Herod the Great’s sons, ruling over the portion of his father’s kingdom allotted to him, namely Galilee, and Pontius Pilate, a Roman prefect, ruling over Judea.

As was their custom in asserting their rule, the Romans took away the right of the Jews to enforce capital punishment—henceforward, that would be the prerogative of the Roman governor. That’s also why the Sanhedrin had to take Jesus to Pilate (and change up their charges against him) for execution after they had condemned him for blasphemy, a capital offense under Mosaic Law.

At this pronouncement of the Romans, the Sanhedrin lost their minds like Denethor and wept in sackcloth and ashes. The scepter had departed from Judah, and from their point-of-view, Shiloh had not come. The prophecy had failed.

But, unbeknownst to them, the Tree of the King was flowering. Shiloh had in fact been born in Bethlehem approximately seven or eight years before. Jesus had not revealed himself as Messiah yet, but instead was growing in wisdom and stature in perfect obedience to his parents, human and divine.

The prophecy didn’t fail—just the wisdom of the scribes and priests.

They actually should have known better. While Herod was still alive, Magi from the East had come with an announcement that they were there to worship the King of the Jews. Their reaction had not been joy, but rather they had been troubled. “Oh no, how is Herod going to take this? Is there another claimant to the throne who will wage civil war?” Apparently, though they directed the Wise Men to take their search to Bethlehem, none of them took the small journey down there with them. (Lest we be too hard on them, I think they might have had some prima facie good reasons. Why should they believe Eastern astrologers? Why should they appear eager to welcome a king whom Herod took as a threat? And would they really want to be the ones to know where a rival king was with Herod still alive?)

Anyway, the prophecy didn’t fail—just the wisdom of the scribes and priests. God kept his word, but they couldn’t see it. We must never attribute to God a fickleness or any inability in keeping his promises. He knows how to see them through when he makes them, and he has the power to always deliver on his word. If we think his promises have failed, that’s on us, not the Word of God.

Posted on by deliberationsatmimirswell

Who Was the Evilest Person Who’s Ever Lived?

If someone asked you that question, I expect you might answer with a dictator with a body count in the millions, like Hitler, Stalin, or Mao. Or you might reply with a serial killer with a much lower body-count, but much more sadistic and agonizing means of execution. (And if you answer with Donald Trump, I really question your priorities and urge you to do a little more reading up on those others and a lot less time listening to propagandists who use those same dictators’ methods to silence dissent).

But, since Halloween is a time for reflection on good versus evil, I will give you what I think the Biblical answer to the evilest person in history was. The choice might surprise you. In fact, in contrast to all the mass-murderers and tyrants in history, this person only has a body count of one. I speak of Judas Iscariot.

The Bible doesn’t spend a whole lot of ink going into Judas and what made him tick. Unlike our modern crime shows and documentaries, we don’t get a psychoanalysis of Judas and why he did what he did. What it does say, however, is chilling enough. Judas was called to be one of Jesus’s Twelve Apostles, a disciple who followed him and attended on him throughout his ministry in return for receiving his teaching. We do know that Judas spent a lot of his time with Jesus pilfering the money box. In the end, he is best known for betraying Jesus and leading the detachment of troops who went to arrest him in a place Judas knew Jesus would be at without a crowd to interfere. The priests intended to get their hands on Jesus to execute him, which they did the following morning. For this, he agreed to receive the measly reward of thirty pieces of silver.

Now, don’t get me wrong. All those dictators and serial-killers are going to suffer unspeakable torments in Hell for all eternity, for they were in fact especially evil. But if we look at Biblical categories of evil, one of the most important factors is how much a sin is a sin against knowledge. Consider what Jesus says to Capernaum in Matthew 11:24, in a statement that should make every Western skeptic tremble, “But I say unto you, that it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment than for thee.”

Let that sink in. The Bible pronounces horrible condemnations on Sodom. In Genesis 19, its entire male population comes out to storm Lot’s house and gang-rape his angelic guests. This crime would have struck the Old Testament listeners even more harshly than it does us since the code of hospitality was so much more sacrosanct to them. Sodom is so evil God wipes it off the map with literal fire and brimstone. There is not one hint of such blatant sinning on Capernaum’s part. Indeed, they welcomed Jesus and crowded around to hear his teaching. What was their sin? They heard Jesus, but “they repented not” (Matthew 11:21).

One of the most important factors is how much a sin is a sin against knowledge.

Capernaum had a revelation Sodom did not. Sodom had Abraham’s and Lot’s righteous examples, but here were people listening at the feet of the Son of God, seeing his miracles performed. Sodom never heard the Ten Commandments or the Sermon on the Mount, but the people of Capernaum did. They marveled at Jesus, discussed the words and works for a few days amongst themselves, and then went right back to their business. Jesus said this indifference to him was worse than homosexual gang rape.

He states it even more clearly in Luke 12:47-48: “And that servant which knew his Lord’s will and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes. But he that knew not and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes.” This key component of knowledge is why Paul goes to such great lengths in Romans 1-3 to show that everyone has a knowledge of God and his law written on their hearts and are therefore guilty whenever they sin. That would be the Sodomites. But those who have been exposed to greater degrees of truth than this are even more accountable when they sin. Or, as Uncle Ben might have put it, “With great revelation comes great responsibility.”

Has anyone else sinned against knowledge to the extent of Judas Iscariot? He followed Jesus for three years and heard practically all his teaching. He saw the miracles Jesus wrought and the extent of his compassion towards everyone. He heard the words Jesus spoke that are not recorded in the Gospels and the “many other signs truly [that Jesus did] in the presence of his disciples” that John didn’t have space to record (John 20:30). Jesus gave him power to do miracles in his name. Had he proven faithful, he had held before him the promise of being “appoint[ed] unto a kingdom” with Jesus, sitting on a throne and “judging the Twelve Tribes of Israel” (Luke 22:29-30). Judas had greater revelation and privilege than any of us alive today. He admitted that he himself knew Jesus was innocent. Yet, he chose to deliver him over to death. And, not that any price would have justified his actions, but the cheap bribe he took for his betrayal was downright insulting to Jesus.

Has anyone else sinned against knowledge to the extent of Judas Iscariot?

In the end, we don’t know why Judas did what he did. Theories have been set forward, from a generous one saying he wanted to provoke Jesus into acting to assert his messianic power, to the more realistic one saying he really was base and greedy enough to sell out the Son of God for thirty pieces of silver. We don’t really know what got him started down the road in the first place. We do know both that Satan was directly involved and that God had sovereignly ordained that it come to pass this way. Neither excuses Judas.

The Bible doesn’t explicitly state who the evilest person who’s ever lived was, though it does state that Judas would have been better off “if he had not been born” (Matthew 26:24). But if we look at the very Biblical approach to evil that sins against greater knowledge are greater than sins against just the universal knowledge that makes everyone guilty before God, Judas must rank as the most offending soul ever.

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What Does the Old Testament Law Mean for Us Today?

A popular trend in skeptical circles is to attack Christianity through pronouncements people would perceive as ridiculous or barbarous in its laws with today’s mores. Not surprisingly, most of these come from the Old Testament. Most delicious to them is the fact that the Church no longer observes most of these precepts. I remember seeing a blog post one time about “Ten Things the Bible Says Not to Do, But You Do Anyway,” or something to that effect. The favorites are usually about the laws for kosher food that nobody observes today outside of Judaism or the execution of the following: homosexuals, adulterers, lazy children, children who curse parents, blasphemers, etc. (basically anything they don’t personally think is a big deal).

It’s amazing how many problems a little consultation with the Westminster Standards will solve. (For those of you not familiar with these sublime documents, they were Parliament’s attempt to bridge the differences between Anglicanism and Presbyterianism during the English Civil War. Presbyterians like myself accept these as secondary standards- that is, our guide to beliefs wherever they are not in conflict with Scripture, which is the primary standard).

Well, what does the Confession have to say about laws like this, which for the most part 17th century Britain did not enforce either? Chapter XIX:

“God gave Adam a law, as a covenant of works, by which He bound him and all his posterity to personal, entire, exact, and perpetual obedience (para. 1).”

“Besides this law, commonly called moral, God was pleased to give to the people of Israel, as a church under age, ceremonial laws […] All which ceremonial laws are now abrogated, under the new testament (para. 3).”

“To them also, as a body politic, He gave sundry judicial laws, which expired together with the State of that people; not obliging any other now, further than the general equity thereof may require (para. 4).”

So, for many of the unusual things in the Old Testament, we don’t observe them because God told us not to anymore. In the Mosaic law, you’ll find intertwined moral, ceremonial, and civil laws. The moral ones, yes, are as binding today as the day they were proclaimed on Mount Sinai. It’s still wrong to commit adultery or murder or to take God’s name in vain. 

The ceremonial law, however, was fulfilled in Christ. It symbolized how Israel needed to be separated from the rest of the world and carefully kept from all semblance of death and disorder to be fit for the presence of God. The ceremonial laws regarding blood, leprosy, etc. represent wholeness of life or stability in distinction from morality, which God dealt with in other laws. God explicitly did away with the ceremonial law when He gave Peter a vision and told him to eat unclean things, symbolizing that Israel was no longer on its own and that the Gospel was for all nations now. Christ has cleansed us with His blood, so we don’t need to make sacrifices or take baths to make ourselves clean in God’s sight.

Nowhere does Jesus or an Apostle try to force Mosaic civil laws on Rome.

I’m not really familiar with any verse as explicit as Peter’s vision in Acts as far as getting rid of the civil law of Israel, but it’s pretty clear God doesn’t want the Church governed like Israel. Israel was prone enough to corruption from without, so God mandated a wide range of capital punishments for wicked Jews to keep the nation pure. Now, though, He wants the Gospel of reconciliation offered to sinners, not war waged on them. Nowhere does Jesus or an Apostle try to force Mosaic civil laws on Rome.

As for executing homosexuals, that was not the Apostle Paul’s practice although he was proudly Jewish. He told the Corinthians: “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind [the KJV is trying to delicately refer to passive and active homosexuals], nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you, but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the Name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God” (I Corinthians 6:9-11).

So, a few observations about homosexuality in this passage that are relevant today. Yes, it is still a sin under the New Covenant; Christ’s death did nothing to change that, only to save from it. Second, it appears that Paul extended his ministry to homosexuals (of which there were many in the cult of Apollo in Corinth) just as readily and lovingly as to any other sinner. Finally, it appears they repented and overcame this sin (though no one said it would be any easier than the drunkards overcoming an addiction). So, there’s something for people to learn here on both sides of the cultural contest over homosexuality.

The moral ones, yes, are as binding today as the day they were proclaimed on Mount Sinai.

A lot of the civil code of Israel rubs enlightened Westerners the wrong way, but Jesus made an important observation about it in Matthew 19. Some of the Pharisees thought that, because the civil code allowed for divorce, they could morally divorce their wives for any reason. Jesus tells them that provision about divorce was only because of the “hardness of your hearts.” In other words, God doesn’t normally approve of divorce, but it could lead to worse if He clamped down on it in His civil law. When you look at the Old Testament’s milieu, with slavery and different tiers of justice being universal practice, a lot of the Torah’s civil law appears a compromise between the crude legal codes Israel was familiar with in the Ancient Near East and the higher ideals taught by Christ and the Apostles. The moral law is at all times the great standard of conduct, but the civil law may not always measure up to it. That said, many times it is a thousand times more enlightened than what you’ll find in Babylonian or Assyrian law.

The one problematic thing remaining is when we don’t know if something was a ceremonial or civil law. Generally, if you can tie it back to a duty required by one of the Ten Commandments or a sin forbidden by them, it’s moral. But sometimes there’s room for argument. There are laws against tattooing, blending fabrics, mixing seeds, interbreeding different species, and transvestitism. (Actually, the law against transvestitism is a little more specific than that; the Hebrew literally prohibits women from “bearing the accouterments of a warrior.”) Some of these seem harmless and are possibly even beneficial, like interbreeding horses and donkeys to make mules. In fact, the Jews were perfectly willing to buy mules from Gentiles as long as they didn’t breed them themselves, and God makes reference to mules in the new heavens and new earth in Isaiah. I’m pretty sure from my own research into these issues that you’ll find a commentator on every one of those laws who links it back to one of the Ten Commandments. I really don’t know on some of these, and I advise caution. As R.C. Sproul pointed out, it’s better to treat a ceremonial law like a moral one than a moral one like a ceremonial one.

Posted on by deliberationsatmimirswell

Six Even More Stupid Things People Thinks the Bible Says, Which It Doesn’t

Here is the 2024 installment of the Six Stupid Things series. Skeptics love to claim the Bible makes these absurd statements, when in fact, it says the opposite.

  1. Jesus denied being God.

The conversation between Jesus and the rich young ruler is important since all three Synoptic Gospels mention it, but it’s badly misunderstood by some. Two misconceptions will be addressed here. First, when the rich young ruler says, “Good master (i.e., Teacher), what good thing shall I do that I may have eternal life?” Jesus answers, “Why callest thou Me good? There is none good but one, that is God” (Matthew 19:16-17). I’ve heard it said that Jesus here is denying being God and being perfect. That would be inconsistent, however, for someone who claims the angels as His own and challenged His harshest critics to convict Him of one sin (John 8:46). I think Jesus says this for two reasons. One, He’s telling the rich young ruler, “You’re not good, so you can’t work your way into eternal life like you suppose.” Two, He’s saying, “If I’m good, it’s because I’m God.” He’s basically anticipating what C.S. Lewis would write 1,900 years later, that someone who makes the kind of claims Jesus makes can’t be just a Good Teacher like the rich young ruler calls Him. He must either be crazy, an evil deceiver, or God Himself. See my post on Lewis’s trilemma at https://deliberationsatmimirswell.blog/2017/10/03/lewiss-trilemma-defended/.

    He’s saying, “If I’m good, it’s because I’m God.”

    2. Christians are to give away everything they own.

      In the story of the rich young ruler, Jesus also tells him to sell all His possessions and give to the poor. Some have felt that all Christians are obligated to do this. St. Anthony’s reading of this is what started the monastic movement. While Jesus has the right to order such a thing from everybody, I think the Bible as a whole teaches that this was a specific challenge to this young man at his particular idol rather than a prescription of poverty for His entire Church. It’s true the Jerusalem Church practiced a form of Christian socialism at first, but the Greco-Roman Church did not. Note how in I Corinthians 16:2 Paul tells the Corinthians “to lay something aside,” not “lay everything aside.” In I Timothy 6, Paul gives instructions to rich Christians to be rich in good works and not to trust in their riches. The fact that he’s instructing rich Christians as rich Christians would make no sense if Jesus had prohibited all Christians from being rich at all times. Otherwise, Paul would have simply repeated Jesus’s command for them to sell all they have. Christians are called to be the most generous people on earth, but God has not chosen to overrule completely man’s propensity to appropriate. He even protects it with two of His Ten Commandments by banning theft and covetousness.

      3. The Apostles didn’t think of Jesus as God.

      Throughout his epistles he says things about Christ no monotheistic Hebrew of the Hebrews would dare say about an angel.

      Those who seek to deny Christ’s lordship will come up with the wildest interpretations of clear Scripture to avoid the plain fact that Paul and the other first Christians thought of Christ as God. Even a hostile witness like Pliny the Younger wrote a little after the New Testament period that the Christians were singing hymns to Christ like a God. No, Paul did not think of Jesus as a particularly exalted angel. He specifically calls Him God in Titus 2:13 and Romans 9:5. Throughout his epistles he says things about Christ no monotheistic Hebrew of the Hebrews would dare say about an angel: “Who, being in the very form of God” (Philippians 2:6); “according to the working whereby He is able even to subdue all things unto Himself” (Philippians 4:21); “And He is before all things, and by Him all things consist” (Philippians 1:17).

      4. Jesus commands us to hate our family.

      Jesus often spoke in a shocking and hyperbolic fashion that people take at face value to their peril. One commentator I heard of took deep umbrage at Jesus’s teaching in Luke 14:26: “If any man come to me and hate not his father and mother and wife and children and brethren and sisters, yea and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.” Anyone with any sense of context of Scripture knows Jesus is not literally commanding any of His followers to hate anyone. If we are to love our enemies, how much more our family? Clearly, Jesus means that love of Him must be above and paramount to any other allegiance, so much so that earthly loves are “hatred” by comparison, and we are to always take Christ’s side over our family’s when they conflict. Jesus did not hate His own parents. He “was subject unto them” (Luke 2:51), and even during the agony of the cross, He found time and precious breath to provide for His mother’s care after His departure. 

      5. The Bible prescribes faith plus works for salvation.

      James writes, “Ye see then, how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only?” (2:24). Latching onto this, the Roman Catholics made their formula of salvation faith plus works. Martin Luther found this book so inconvenient, he called it “an epistle of straw.” Time to let Scripture interpret Scripture. Paul, in a much more in-depth look at justification in Romans, states, “Therefore by the deeds of the Law, there shall no flesh be justified in his sight” (3:20). Jesus repeatedly tells the recipients of His healing, “Your faith has saved you.” James cannot be saying that we become right with God by producing works to add to our faith. (What could we possibly add to Jesus’s righteousness?) Rather, his point is, as he writes earlier, “Show me thy faith without thy works, and I will show you my faith by my works” (2:18). The kind of faith that God uses alone to save us will of necessity evidence itself in works. It’s not that you need to add works to saving faith; it’s that if you don’t have works, you don’t have saving faith.

      6. The Bible commands that we do penance for our sins.

      One popular stereotype of Christians in the unbelieving world is Christians harming themselves in penance for their sins. Take the self-flagellating monk in the Da Vinci Code or, with rather less excuse, my favorite YouTube channel Studio C’s depiction of the Puritan roommate. In the Roman Catholic tradition, prayers and other less self-destructive deeds are used to atone for sins. While penance (of a violent kind or otherwise) did develop as a tradition of the Middle Ages, there is not a hint of it in the New Testament. The closest thing you find to it in the Old Testament is fasting and wearing sackcloth, which are a lot less dangerous than flogging yourself. In the New Testament, with Christ’s perfect sacrifice to atone for our sins, there is nothing we can add to that. We are commanded to mourn for our sins and turn away in hatred from them to do good works, but none of the Apostles tell us to do anything to get right with God other than believe in Jesus’s all-sufficient work.

      Have you heard any of these from skeptics of the Bible? Yes, they are stupid things to say, but, no, the Bible doesn’t say them. In fact, it says the opposite.

      Posted on by deliberationsatmimirswell

      Book Release: The Honorable Spy

      Three spies. Three days. Three secrets.

      It’s 1905. Scottish spy Ranald MacKenzie, suffering from “Soldier’s Heart,” is plucked from his desk job when a report filters in that the Kaiser of Germany and Tsar of Russia are secretly communicating about an alliance to unite the major powers of Europe against Britain. MacKenzie is sent on a sensitive mission to defuse the situation and prevent a world war. Battling anxiety and uncertainty, he soldiers on, fortified by his love of country and his faith in God.

      MacKenzie is partnered with a beautiful, mysterious agent claiming to be Catriona Cameron, who is reported “missing” in Germany. She is a woman haunted by her own secret memories of a terrible event that forever changed her life. Smart, unpredictable, and—in MacKenzie’s eyes— immoral, Cameron will do whatever it takes to complete the mission.

      Trailing the pair’s steps lurks Leopold Tirpitz, German Intelligence’s foremost interrogator. He is desperate to catch the spies lest his own secrets be revealed.

      As events intensify, MacKenzie and Cameron race against time to save lives. And the question remains: How far can you go before your compromise your honor?

      Posted on by deliberationsatmimirswell

      Why I Want My Movies Historically Accurate

      I love historical movies. Thanks to technology, they bring people about as close as they’ll ever come to experiencing the great turning points in history or the deeds of their favorite heroes. They stir interest in particular events that many people before didn’t know had happened. They can help us appreciate the human condition better by depicting how it developed over time. If I were to pick my top ten movies, I’d bet most of them would be historical. What I can’t stand, however, is glaring historical inaccuracies.

      I’m not talking about minor liberties and adaptations to the limited format of the big screen. I think we all know it’s impossible to portray any event with absolute accuracy. We don’t know every detail about any event, so there are inevitably gaps (often quite large) we have to fill in with our imagination. If you’re going to portray a two-year-long event in two hours, there are going to need to be some adaptations. Most historical events had more people involved than is feasible to cast in a movie, so you’ll have to conflate some characters or leave some out. Other things just won’t play well on a movie. To cite one clear example, the Mahdi and General “Chinese” Gordon exchanged a number of letters during the Siege of Khartoum without ever actually meeting in person. Clearly, to keep the audience engaged, though, in the movie Khartoum they have to meet in person and discuss things face-to-face. Or even making a relatively minor character up to witness and tell the story like historical fiction does- I see nothing wrong with that.

      However, I have a few major objections to movies that blatantly fabricate or change major aspects of history. For one thing, it’s dangerously close to lying. People go to historical movies to get a sense of things that happened (if they didn’t care about the past at all, all movies would be set in the present), and the moviemakers are playing to that impulse, but then they betray it by contravening the history. How can you judge the progress of the human condition if you’re being fed false information about it?

      Often, that lying pretty much becomes slander. Rarely do moviemakers change the facts to make the villains less villainous. I love the movie Breaker Morant even though I do not believe there were standing orders to shoot all Boer prisoners besides those caught wearing British khaki uniforms. After all, other companies of the same regiment were bringing in Boer prisoners. In its attempt to portray Morant and his confreres as (relatively) innocent, however, the moviemakers have Ian Hamilton commit perjury by denying the order to shoot prisoners in court after swearing by God.

      While we’re talking about taking prisoners, I would like to say a few words about the portrayal of Banastre Tarleton in The Patriot. He’s called Colonel Tavington in the movie, but there’s no doubting whom Tavington is supposed to represent. In reality, while Tarleton was, no question, a scoundrel and a pain in the neck who could use a heavy hand on the rebels, the most egregious tales of his crimes against humanity are very suspect. Certainly he never incinerated civilians in a church (that was the Nazis, not the British).

      The main report of “Tarleton’s Quarters” (on the basis of which the Patriots themselves sometimes refused to take prisoners) comes from the Battle of Waxhaws. The fighting there (which was almost entirely between Patriots and American Loyalists) did get savage, but that was not because Tarleton ordered his men to take no prisoners. His version, which even has the corroboration of the American officer involved, was that, just as the Patriots raised a white flag, someone shot his horse out from under him. His men, thinking the Patriots had murdered their beloved commander under a flag of truce, went into what Tarleton called “a vindictive asperity not easily restrained.” Evidently he did eventually restore order since they did take some prisoners and did not execute the wounded, like Tavington would have. This brutality was not their standard practice. Tarleton himself said that he took “many prisoners of all ranks” during the pursuit after the Battle of Camden. (For the record, “Light Horse Harry” Lee’s Legion massacred a unit of Loyalists in turn, but you can see his nickname is a lot more complimentary than “Bloody Tarleton.”)

      Historical inaccuracy is also taking advantage of the uninformed. The Da Vinci Code, which historians have thoroughly blasted for the liberties it takes, actually convinced some people that Christianity is a fraud. Some people are too lazy to care about following up on historical stories, but even the thoughtful might only see your movie to get a gauge of what has happened in a particular event. This is often their first real experience of the event. Once you give them a particular visual and audio impression, it can stay with them and color their future perceptions. Don’t mislead them.

      Even the heroes shouldn’t approve of historical inaccuracy when it makes exploits up for them. Basically, isn’t the scriptwriter saying to them, “Your story and what you did aren’t good enough. Here, let me improve it for you”? Isn’t that rather condescending and insulting? Is it really honoring someone to base their reputation on a lie rather than their actual deeds?

      Now, I know the traditional defense is that historical inaccuracies make the movie more exciting and draw in more viewers. I would rejoin that, if you don’t think the story’s good enough as it is to entertain people, don’t use a historical setting. You’re using real people and real events and playing on the “realness” factor (again, that’s why you set movies in historical periods) to bring people in, so don’t lie to them.

      Posted on by deliberationsatmimirswell

      Announcement Re: Blog 5/10/22

      Hello! Thank you for taking the time to read some of my thoughts on Deliberations at Mimir’s Well. My new author website is https://www.douglasbrown-author.com where I post updates on my writings and publications as well as a monthly blog, Thoughts by the Well. Sometimes you will see material from this blog (usually somewhat revised), but often it’s new content. I am active on Twitter @DougBrownAuthor, Instagram at douglasbrownauthor, and Facebook on my page Douglas Brown – Author. Hope to see you there!

      Posted on by deliberationsatmimirswell

      Bears Mauling “Little Children” in II Kings 2

      There’s a rather obscure objection, but one I’ve heard raised, about the Bible in II Kings 2. After God takes Elijah up to Heaven in a sign of approval of his prophetic ministry, his successor Elisha is traveling to Bethel. Verses 23-24 in the KJV: “And as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city and mocked him and said unto him, ‘Go up thou baldhead. Go up thou baldhead.’ And he turned back and looked on them and cursed them in the name of the LORD, and there came forth two she-bears out of the wood and tore forty and two children of them.” Now, any atheist worth his salt knows that this is petty of Elisha and unfathomably cruel of God (I speak as a man) to curse little children and send bears to attack them, so let’s do a little case study.

      In the first place, we might not need to have this discussion at all. It could be that the KJV translation is not particularly accurate in this case. (It wouldn’t be the first time.) The Hebrew word can mean children, but it is used elsewhere in Kings to denote Ben-Hadad’s troops (I Kings 20:17-20). In Samuel, it’s used for Kish’s domestic servant who accompanies Saul (I Samuel 9:3). I think the idea is more of someone in subordinate status rather than necessarily a Kindergartener. It’s like when a British officer refers to “my brave boys” or “my lads” when his troops are all grown men or when we call a waiter garcon(French for “boy”). The connotation of this word, however, is that that subordinate is not acting very subordinate, as here. It’s quite possible that the 42 “little children” in question are a gang of young ruffians out looking for trouble.

      But when we consider the rest of Elisha’s life, do we see a primitive barbarian who we would expect to do something so obscene and frightful as to curse a toddler? Far from it! Kings tells two stories, one for Elijah and one for Elisha, of the prophets pleading with God for the resurrection of their hostess’s sons, which is granted. In Elijah’s case, this is after God has provided for a foreign widow and her son and brought her to faith in the God of Israel. In Elisha’s case, it’s after he’s prayed to God for his hostess to have a son when it looks like her husband is too old to sire one. Elisha, in addition to cursing the “children,” is willing to cleanse Syria’s best general of leprosy, in spite of the danger that might cause to Israel to restore him to the prime of life. When the Syrians send raiders to kill him and they are blinded by God, Elisha takes them to Samaria to have them captured, but then he refuses to allow the King of Israel to slaughter his prisoners of war. When someone loses an expensive iron axe head he has borrowed, Elisha retrieves it from the water. He weeps when he foresees the bloody judgment Hazael is going to bring on Israel. One of the recurring themes in Kings is condemnation of child sacrifice, and Elisha would definitely have agreed with that denunciation. He himself appears to have had a very caring personality.

      So, what happened here? Was Elisha still so stressed about losing his beloved mentor or so vain about his baldness that he just snapped? Well, the one thing Elijah and Elisha were not gentle and understanding about was rebellion against God, which this clearly was. God had shown His almost unparalleled approval of Elijah by sparing him the pains of death, and these “children” were laughing it to scorn. This act of judgment is an object lesson in the fate of all mockers of God’s truth who don’t repent. We only think it’s overly harsh if we don’t take defiance of God when He warns us for our own good seriously. Moreover, this action demonstrates Elisha’s succession to Elijah’s place of prophethood, which was obviously intended to support his credibility before a very skeptical Israel.

      One rather vexing controversy in Christianity is what happens in God’s justice to children who don’t have fully developed moral compasses. Does God send children to Hell? Well, the Bible isn’t absolutely clear on this, but here’s what we do know. The children are born sinners. They are not blank slates society makes a stain on. David, when he feels the weight of the most crushing guilt in his life, traces his evil nature back to the womb. “Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me” (Psalm 51:5). The Bible is clear that Adam passed on a sinful nature to all of his posterity. If this seems unfair, Paul explains that Adam was our representative in Eden. Since he was created as a morally perfect being and fell anyway, we must accept that all of us would have done as our representative did, so we are all under the curse. After all, would God make a representative in a perfect world who didn’t perfectly represent us?

      On the other hand, Isaiah does make a reference in one of his prophecies to, “Before the child shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good” (7:16). It seems that God in His justice does take into account children’s less developed moral compasses. Also, when David’s newborn son with Bathsheba dies as judgment on his horrendous sin, David reassures himself, “I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me” (II Samuel 12:23). The traditional Reformed interpretation is that, when God takes the life of a child, it is because He intends to take their soul to Heaven. Certainly, there is no Biblical reason for parents of children who have died before they were old enough to have faith in Christ to think they will never see their children again because they are in Hell. After all, Ecclesiastes 6 refers to stillborn children having rest.

      Whatever age the “children” here are, they clearly don’t have that excuse. They apparently are old enough to appreciate that all people die and express skepticism and downright scorn that anyone should go straight to Heaven without dying because they have served the Lord faithfully. So much for wide-eyed innocent babes.

      What we have here is not an egregious act of barbarism on the part of the prophet, but a just punishment for rejecting God’s loving words of warning. We don’t actually know how old the “children” were or whether they were really children at all. One thing we do know is that the punishment for their rejection of a miracle was not unjust on the part of God, who wants His messengers taken very seriously when they speak His words.

      Posted on by deliberationsatmimirswell

      The Myths that Made a Nation, Part II: The American Revolution

      In a prior post, I analyzed the myths of the Battle of New Orleans which shaped the American psyche in a crucial formative period (https://deliberationsatmimirswell.blog/2017/11/21/the-myths-that-made-a-nation/). Of course, there were plenty of myths at the nation’s very beginning. Let’s examine a few that still hold currency today. Spoiler alert- the Patriot is loaded with them!

      Myth #1- The Americans had an established right as English subjects to be represented before being taxed. Well, they certainly thought they did, but it was a right they made up. The rule in the English Constitution at the time was that Parliament had to approve taxes, but not every English subject could vote for members of Parliament. In fact, most couldn’t. Virtual representation, the belief that MPs spoke for the whole of Britain, even those who couldn’t vote, was a deeply flawed theory, but it was the one that was on the books at that time. Besides, the colonists told Benjamin Franklin when he went to England that he was not to accept any offers of representation. Translation: we just don’t want to pay taxes to the Mother Country.

      Myth #2- The British were oppressing the Americans. Actually, the whole thing started because the British after a long and very expensive war wanted the Americans to chip in to pay for their own defense, and after all, isn’t protecting subjects the first duty of government? Didn’t the Apostle Paul tell Christians in the Roman Empire to pay some of the most corruptly levied taxes in history for the sake of law and order being protected? The amount of taxes the British were intending to levy from America were only a fraction of what subjects in Britain paid. In fact, one of the reasons it came to war was that Britain often backed off in the years preceding the war. Thus, when the British clamped down on the colonies as they became increasingly lawless, the Americans felt that they could get their way by fighting it out.

      Myth #3- “Bloody Ban” Tarleton and his men were psychopathic killers who took no prisoners and massacred civilians. This is a gross distortion of their actual record, which, while not spotless, is not one of unmitigated barbarism. Certainly, they never incinerated civilians in a church like they do in the Patriot (that was the Nazis). This report of “Tarleton’s quarters,” on the basis of which the Americans themselves sometimes refused to show quarter either, mostly comes from the Battle of Waxhaws. Now, it’s true that the British Legion (whose rank and file were actually American Loyalists) inflicted frightening casualties on Buford’s command, but this was not the result of a premeditated order or natural bloodthirsty inclination. What happened (and this has corroboration from the American flagbearer’s own account) was that, as Buford’s force was being overrun, one of his officers raised a white flag, after which someone shot Tarleton’s horse out from under him. The Loyalists, thinking their commander had been killed by treachery, went berserk, or “were stimulated,” as Tarleton put it, “to a vindictive asperity not easily restrained.” The casualty rate for Buford’s command was out of all proportion to the typical figures for the war, and many Americans were badly cut up, but even then the British Legion did take some prisoners, and they didn’t execute the wounded like Colonel Tavington would have.

      Myth #4- The Loyalists were largely selfish, airheaded aristocrats who cared more for their property than principle. This is the impression movies like 1776 and the Patriot try to convey, but actually there were plenty of humble Americans who fought for the British and plenty of wealthy Americans who fought for the rebellion. The richest man in America, John Hancock, was President of the Continental Congress. The British raised many units with Loyalist rank and file drawn from everyday colonists, though it must be admitted that one of the reasons they lost was that these units let them down at some key moments.

      Myth #5- The Founders were inspired by the Christian religion to fight in the rebellion. Well, it’s true that the Scots-Irish Presbyterians were staunch Patriots and some representatives of the Continental Congress like the Reverend John Witherspoon were Christians, but the leaders of the movement were mostly Deists inspired by Enlightenment principles. The Declaration of Independence nowhere mentions Christ or the Bible, but merely a nebulous “Nature’s God,” which was about as religious as most Enlightenment figures got. In a question I like to pose to those who think this nation was founded largely by Christians, I ask, “Between John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and George III, would you like to guess who the only Christian in that group was?”

      Myth #6- American militia, armed with Kentucky rifles, won the war with infallible marksmanship. Actually, while it had its moments and did inflict a lot of casualties among officers, American militia had a propensity to flee when the going got tough. Before the advent of the Minié ball, rifles could not be used in large numbers because they were too slow to load with a suitably fitted round. It had to fit the barrel exactly, and then it was hard to ram it down all the way. In fact, there were even cases like the opening of the Battle of Princeton when the British overwhelmed slower loading rifle units. Most of the heavy lifting in the war and the winning of the crucial battles was due to Continental regulars trained in European warfare. Speaking of Europe, the fact that three of the greatest European powers ganged up on Britain is a large reason why there’s a United States of America today. The British had conquered New York and Philadelphia and consistently defeated Washington when the French made them reallocate their resources and a Prussian officer taught the Americans how to fight like Europeans. At Yorktown, it was the French general’s plan, the French artillery, and the French fleet that made the whole Allied victory possible.

      Posted on by deliberationsatmimirswell

      When the Good Guys Don’t Win

      We like it when the good guys win in our entertainment. If they lose, like in Avengers 3, there’d better be an Avengers 4 where they reverse the defeat. Well, we all know real life doesn’t work that way. Sometimes it’s really depressing when the ones we’re rooting for don’t win. In those cases, we need to remember that God sovereignly planned that outcome and will work it for good. Here are some case studies.

      I’m going to start with some real controversy here. I have no doubts the “good guys” lost the American Revolution. I mean, is there any other way to see it from a Christian perspective? Jesus and Paul unequivocally instructed their followers in the Roman Empire to pay some of the most corruptly levied taxes in history, on which they had no say whatsoever, to support government’s legitimate God-given task of maintaining law and order. I dread to think what they’ll say to Sons of Liberty who were essentially willing to kill people to evade a few dollars of tax to be spent on their own defense. Lord willing, I’ll explore this and other myths of the American Revolution in a later post.

      But, anyone familiar with American history knows God worked marvelous good out of the lawlessness. Starting from a tradition of English liberties, the Framers of the Constitution set out to build a government that got right what every other government had gotten wrong. They succeeded in creating the best-designed government the world has ever seen. Though the U.S. was not always in the right during its expansionist phase, it built a mighty nation that toppled the greatest tyrannies the world has ever seen. And, even with its flaws, the Framers built in a system to correct the government system as the nation developed.

      Or consider the even bloodier Punic Wars of the third century BC between Rome and Carthage. Now, no one would argue that the Carthaginians were a righteous nation, but they have my sympathies here. Rome displayed raw aggression towards them. The Second Punic War started when Hannibal wanted to get back at Rome for violating a peace treaty to seize Corsica and Sardinia from Carthage and demand an indemnity to boot. The Third Punic War ended with Rome wiping Carthage, now no more than a city-state, off the map because it was still a successful commercial rival. In fact, one of the reasons Hannibal lost the Second Punic War despite his genius was that he, in Carthaginian fashion, fought just to redress the balance of power and clip Rome’s wings while Rome played for keeps. That’s one reason I find Augustine’s just war theory hopelessly naïve. His position that the offended nation can only fight for status quo ante bellumseems selfless and righteous, but how many tyrants would that really stop? They’d catch their breath, cheat during the peace, and come back for round two. Besides, it’s not the way Old Testament Israel fought their wars. But I digress…

      Anyway, there’s no question Rome wound up having a better impact on world history than Carthage would have. Rome had the tenacity and know-how to build an infrastructure to promote cities that God used to grow his Church. They established a peace around the Mediterranean in which the Church flourished.

      1066 is known as a turning point in English history. Although most agree that the long-term effect was beneficial, many would posit that the good guys lost. I personally think that Harold violated his oath and gave William the Conqueror a casus belli, but it’s easy to sympathize with the Anglo-Saxons, particularly when one considers how brutal the Normans got in their attempt at subjugation. Assuming for the sake of argument that Harold and his men who were wiped out at Hastings were the good guys, did God use their disaster to further good purposes?

      Absolutely! Without the Norman Conquest, it’s conceivable there’d be no such thing as democracy in the world today, or at least not of the kind we’re used to. Before the Conquest England was a backwards extension of Scandinavia subject to invasions and raids. The Normans built it up into a great power that could play with the big boys. Meanwhile, they developed the beginnings of the English constitutional government that inspired so many democracies around the world. Magna Carta can be interpreted as Anglo-Norman barons forcing the king to in writing commit to the mutual obligations of the feudal system they had brought over from Normandy.

      This shouldn’t come as a surprise to Christians, who worship a leader who was tortured and executed in the most loathsome way possible despite His perfect innocence. Indeed, if God hadn’t willed that, none of us would have hope. So, even when the Thanos’es win, we can be sure it’s because God ordained it as part of His will for good. Anything He permits, He will work out for the best possible end.