“I’m my favorite rapper.” What Kanye West lacks in subtlety, he makes up for in honesty.
Kanye’s conversion to Christianity and his release of an album which reflects that faith, titled “Jesus is King”, is big news right now.
But to look at this and only see Kanye, is to miss the bigger picture.
Christianity is Not Collapsing in America
There has been much talk recently about the decline of Christianity in the United States. However, reports of decline are overstated. I have explained why the numbers alone do not tell the whole story in these posts:
I’m no expert but between Kanye, Stormzy, Chance, NF & a bunch of others it feels like there’s a Christian revival going on in the Hip Hop world right now pic.twitter.com/10zhtLCihi
Let’s put it this way: Christianity is much more widespread and influential than many would have you believe, and it is not going away any time soon.
Christianity is Thriving Amongst Minority Communities
Why are there fewer Christians were I live, near Boulder, Colorado, than there are in the American South? At least one reason is probably because of the relative homogeny of the population in this area, compared with the number of people of color in the South.
The type of person most likely to be an atheist in America – and in the entire world – are white males. According to Pew Research Group, 78% of atheists in America are white, and 68% are men, even though white males only make up just over 30% of the US population.
According to one study, for example, at historically black universities 85.2% of students identified as Christian, and 11.2% identified as atheist, agnostic, or none. This is contrasted with a national average in all universities of 60.2% of students identifying as Christian, and 30.9% identifying as atheist, agnostic, or none.
As the major Western countries, including the United States, continue to become more ethnically diverse, it is predicted that we will see the number of atheists and agnostics decline, not increase – due to the fact that atheism and agnosticism are overrepresented by white males. For more on this topic, read: Projections for Belief & Secularization Around the World
If you look at Kanye’s Sunday Services, you will notice many people of color. Christianity is not, nor ever has been, a white, Western religion. African American communities have a rich heritage of Christianity, including Christian music, and it should come as no surprise to see African American people making music with gospel themes; it’s nothing new.
Speaking of the gospel and gospel music, I loved this episode of Carpool Karaoke with James Corden and Kanye West – both what Kanye said, and the music the choir sang:
Of course one of the big topics of discussion has been whether Kanye’s conversion is for real. I really appreciated Greg Laurie’s comments on this:
For what it’s worth, here is my favorite song from “Jesus is King”:
To echo Greg Laurie’s words: I am glad for any person who makes a movement toward God, and I think it’s great that he is using his platform to get people talking about Jesus.
This isn’t about Kanye, but I’m glad Kanye is making it about Jesus.
There are at least 11 instances recorded in the Gospels of Jesus stating that whatever we ask for in his name, will be given to us. And yet, if you are a praying person, it is likely that you have asked for things in prayer which you did not subsequently receive.
Furthermore, there are several stories recorded in the Bible in which people prayed and God did not grant their requests. In one of these cases, it was Jesus Himself whose request to the Father was denied! How then can these statements of Jesus be true, that whatever you ask for in His name, it will be given to you?
Many people ask: “If God makes these great promises and has all this power, then why am I not getting the things I ask for?”
A Father, Not a Genie
Timothy Keller explains that in order to understand petitionary prayer, you have to understand that it works on Father-Child terms. (see: Petition: Our Daily Bread)
We pray to “Our Father” not to “the Genie of the bottle”. The genie of the bottle gives you whatever you wish, even if what you wish for is not ultimately good for you. A father, on the other hand, gives you what is best for you; because He loves you, He gives you exactly what you would have asked for if you knew everything He knows.
A Safety Catch
When you have small children around, you have to baby-proof your home. The reason children are a danger to themselves is because they think they know what they are doing, even when they don’t. Children often ask for things they think will be great, even though they will be harmful to them.
The more powerful a machine is, the more important it is that the machine have safety features, to protect people (not only children) from hurting themselves with that machine.
Imagine what might happen if you gave Aladdin’s lamp to a toddler or a young child. They would likely make requests which were not the result of long-term thinking, sage wisdom, or perspective. Their requests might be too shallow or simple, on the one hand – or even dangerous, petty or spiteful on the other, depending on their mood.
Prayer without a safety catch is like giving Aladdin’s lamp to a child.
Many of us assume that we know what we need, or what would be best for us, but the truth is that we don’t have the wisdom or the full scope of knowledge necessary to make those determinations. The good news is that we have an all-knowing (omniscient), and loving God, who relates to us as a Father, not a genie.
The Magic Words?
“In my name” means “according to my will”. If I asked you to go to the pharmacy or the post office “in my name”, it would mean that you were acting on my behalf, according to my will and desires. To pray in Jesus’ name, and to say “Amen” are not the Christian versions of “Abracadabra” or other magic words; they are to submit your requests to God’s will, wisdom, and plans.
There have been times in my life when I have prayed for things which I now thank God He did not give me. I’m thankful that I have a Father, not a genie.
Psalm 84:11 says: “For the LORD God is a sun and shield; the LORD bestows favor and honor. No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly.” Knowing that you have a father, not a genie, helps you to understand that when God doesn’t grant a request, it may be because either that thing is not good for you, perhaps not right now, or that He has something else good, perhaps even better than what you asked for.
Come to Him as a good Father, and trust Him with your needs and requests!
The Beatitudes are the name given to the opening lines of Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount”, found in the Gospel of Matthew 5:3-12. They consist of 9 statements which all begin with the words “Blessed are…”
So what exactly is a “beatitude”?
Not the Be-Attitudes
One common explanation is that the beatitudes are the “be-attitudes”, i.e. “the attitudes you should be.”
Not only is this atrocious grammatically, it’s also incorrect linguistically.
The Happy Sayings
The word beatitude comes from the Latin word beati, which means “happy”, because in the Latin Vulgate translation of the Bible, each of these sayings begins with the word, “Beati” or “Happy are…”
In the original Greek, each of these sayings begins with the word makarios, which also means “happy”.
The beatitudes, therefore, are not a laundry list of attitudes you need to muster up, rather they are a group of sayings, in which Jesus shows us the pathway to true happiness.
Blessed or Happy?
The English translators of the Bible chose to translate the word makarios as “blessed” instead of “happy”.
Other languages, however, retained the simple, straight-forward translation of makarios as “happy” – such as the other language I speak: Hungarian, which translates it as “boldog”, the regular word for “happy”, as opposed to the word “áldott” which means “blessed”. In Hungarian, the beatitudes are called “A Boldog Mondások”, literally “the happy sayings” – which is what beatitudes actually means.
Recently I was teaching at Ravencrest Bible College in Estes Park, and asked a student from Scandinavia how her Bible translated it, and sure enough, makarios was translated as a word meaning “happiness” rather than one referring to “blessedness”.
So, why did the English translators of the Bible translate makarios as “blessed” rather than as “happy”? Many people believe that it was because they felt that the word “happy” was too trite, and not religious enough. Some English translators have translated makarios as “happy” – such as the Good News Translation, but most have kept with the tradition of using “blessed” instead because it is so engrained in the English linguistic heritage.
However, I believe that translating makarios as “blessed”, something is lost in translation. The word “happy” has a different tone than the word “blessed”. After all, you can be blessed without being happy. Blessed doesn’t communicate elation, it doesn’t evoke the image of a smile on your face and lightness in your heart!
When Jesus spoke these words, he was using a word that was common and relatable, and not a religious word: “happy”!
The Pathway to Happiness
The beatitudes would have been surprising to their original hearers! They would have caused people to do a double-take, and listen closely, perhaps wondering if maybe they had misunderstood Jesus in what he said!
Think about it: “Oh how happy are the poor in spirit.” “Oh how happy are you who weep.”
The first listeners would have said, Wait…what?! Poor people aren’t happy! People who weep are literally NOT happy!
It was a set-up, for Jesus to instruct them about his “upside-down kingdom”.
In the beatitudes, the “happy sayings”, Jesus is laying out the pathway to true and lasting happiness. Unlike what many people in the world popularly believe about how to attain happiness, Jesus shows us the true and better way:
Happiness begins, Jesus said, with recognizing and acknowledging your spiritual poverty, and then weeping over that spiritually poor condition. It continues by you humbling yourself before God and hungering and thirsting after righteousness: which if you do, God will give to you as a gift of his grace (His righteousness, not your own!).
For more on how the beatitudes, the “happy sayings”, show the pathway to happiness, check out this message I taught on this section called “How to Be Happy – Matthew 5:1-12”
May we be those who hear what Jesus has to say in these Happy Sayings, and may we follow him down the pathway to true, lasting happiness, which begins with humility and repentance!
Jesus said that his desire was that we would have his joy in us, and that our joy would be complete (John 15:11). He also told his disciples that if anyone wants to come after him, that person must deny themselves, take up their cross and follow him (Matthew 16:24).
So, which is it? Is Christianity about being happy, or is Christianity about denying yourself and dying to yourself?
In my previous post, I talked about happiness and whether there is a difference between “joy” and “happiness”. Check that post out here: Does God Want You to Be Happy?
One question I received in response to that post was how self-denial and taking up your cross to follow Jesus fits into this idea of happiness.
A Means to an End
Is self-denial the goal of Christianity, or is it a means to another end?
This is a very important question, as it shapes the way we think about the purpose of following Jesus.
I believe the answer is quite obvious: self-denial is not the end goal of Christianity, it is a means to another end, which is: joy.
In order to experience greater and increasing joy, we must deny ourselves in some areas. After all, it was for the joy that was set before him that Jesus endured the cross. (Hebrews 12:2)
For Jesus, dying on the cross was a means to an end, not the end in itself. The end goal, the purpose of that act of literally dying to himself and taking up his cross, was the joy of redeeming his creation, and everything that would bring in the future.
Likewise, the purpose of denying ourselves – even to the point of taking up our “crosses” and following Jesus is: joy.
Liberating Constraints
This is true in all areas of life; if you indulge every desire you have, you will end up less-happy, not more-happy. Anyone who wants anything practices self-denial, because there are some things they want more than other things.
Real freedom comes from a strategically forfeiting some freedoms in order to gain others. Greater happiness always comes as a result of giving up some pleasures in order to greater pleasures.
Happiness is not the result of the absence of constraints but is found in choosing the right constraints and giving up the right pleasures and freedoms.
For example, if you want to have the freedom and pleasure which comes with having a good income, you will need to sacrifice many other freedoms and pleasures in order to get a good education, improve your skills, or build your business. If you don’t deny many of your impulses to go hang out with friends, spend money, travel, party, etc., you will not succeed in getting your degree, or building your business.
If you want to experience the elation that comes with being a top performer in sports or the arts, you will need to accept many constraints on your life. You may give up the freedom of where you live; you may have a coach who dictates what you will do with your time, what you will eat, etc.
Having children certainly restricts freedom. I have had to do some pretty gross things for my kids which I did not enjoy. More times than I can count, I have had to not do what I wanted to do in order to do things for them. But what has been the result of all this self-denial for my kids? Greater joy than I would have known without having them in my life.
Imagine a person who loves eating anything he wants, but also loves playing with his grandchildren. He goes in to the doctor, and the doctor tells him: “Unless you stop eating those foods you enjoy, you are going to die.” Obviously death would mean not being able to spend any more time with his grandchildren. So he is faced with a choice: which of the things that give him pleasure will he need to forfeit in order to enjoy the other? To deny himself the foods he enjoys will be driven by his desire for the greater joy of spending time with his grandchildren.
This principle can be found in almost every area of our lives: greater joy and happiness is always the result of denying ourselves something in order to gain something better.
Greater Joy
Why would Jesus tell us to deny ourselves? Because he wants us to experience greater joy. Because there is a difference between momentary pleasures and long-lasting elation.
God loves you, and he wants you to experience the true and lasting joy that your heart longs for, and because he loves you he guides and instructs you on how to experience that greater joy.
Trust him, and follow his lead into that greater joy!
Maybe you’ve heard someone say it before: “God doesn’t care about your happiness, he cares about your holiness.”
Is that true? I don’t believe so.
Recently at White Fields, I taught on the subject of holiness from 1 Peter 1:13-25. You can listen to the message here: 1 Peter 1:13-25, “The H Word”. As I talked about holiness, I made the claim that the reason why God wants us to be holy is because holiness leads to happiness, and God wants us to be happy.
Holiness vs Happiness?
I have sometimes heard people say things along these lines: The world offers happiness, but God doesn’t care about your happiness, He cares about your holiness!
I completely disagree. Not only does it send the absolute wrong message, it is not accurate biblically.
Sometimes people think that holiness is opposed to happiness. “The worse something makes me feel, the better,” this thinking goes, “because the more miserable I am, the more holy and godly I must be,”
Friends, that is not holiness, that is self-righteousness.
While there may sometimes be an aspect of self-denial involved in holiness, the purpose of that self-denial is because it will lead to more happiness, not less, in the end. I will elaborate on the relationship between self-denial and happiness in a future post.
For Christians to pit holiness and happiness against each other is a fundamental error, and a misrepresentation of the heart of God and the gospel.
Jesus: Holy and Happy
In Hebrews 1:9, we are told that Jesus was: 1) holy (he loved righteousness and hated wickedness), and 2) the happiest person who ever lived (anointed with the oil of gladness beyond all his companions).
Furthermore, this verse tells us that Jesus’ happiness was the direct result of his holiness (“therefore…”).
Holiness is not opposed to happiness, rather holiness is the pathway to happiness.
Therefore, when God says “be holy as I am holy” – he is inviting us to be happy as he is happy!
But Isn’t “Joy” Different than “Happiness”?
Sometimes people have tried to make a distinction between “joy” and “happiness.” They claim that whereas “happiness” is momentary and fleeting, “joy” is something which is unemotional and doesn’t depend on circumstances.
Furthermore, this line of thinking tends to say that “happiness” is what “the world” has, but “joy” is something that only Christians can have.
This is a false dichotomy. It is well-intentioned, but incorrect, both linguistically and biblically.
Joy and happiness are synonyms. Not only does Jesus use the word “happy”, but it is found throughout the Bible. Furthermore, the Bible talks about the “joy” of the wicked (see Job 20:5), and it talks about the Pharisees having “joy” when Judas betrayed Jesus.
Consider this quote from Joni Eareckson Tada:
“We are often taught to be careful of the difference between joy and happiness. Happiness, it is said, is an emotion which depends on what happens to you. Joy, by contrast is supposed to be enduring, stemming from deep within our soul, and which is not affected by circumstances surrounding us. I don’t think God had any such hairsplitting in mind. Scripture uses the terms interchangeably along with words such as “delight”, “gladness”, “blessing”. There is no scale of relative spiritual values applied to any of these. Happiness is not relegated to fleshly minded sinners nor joy to heaven-bound saints.”
Our Happy God
1 Timothy 1:11 says: “…in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted.” (1 Timothy 1:11)
The word translated “blessed” is the Greek word markariou, which means: “happy”. In other words, a direct translation of the Greek text would be: “…our HAPPY God”
Furthermore, this word makarios (Greek for “happy”) is found in other places:
Happy are those whose sins are forgiven, whose wrongs are pardoned. Happy is the one whom the LORD does not accuse of doing wrong and who is free from all deceit. (Psalm 32:1-2 GNT)
Happy are those who reject the advice of evil people, who do not follow the example of sinners or join those who have no use for God. Instead, they find joy in obeying the Law of the LORD, and they study it day and night. (Psalm 1:1-2 GNT)
Lost in Translation
As to why the English translators of the Bible in the Middle Ages chose to translate the word “makarios” as “blessed” rather than “happy” is because they considered the word “happy” to be too trite, and not religious-sounding enough. However, in the process, we have lost the sense of mirth that these words were originally intended to have!
In other languages, such as Hungarian, the word “markarios” is translated as “boldog” – which is the normal Hungarian word for “happy”, rather than the word “áldott” which means “blessed”. This more faithful and straight-forward translation conveys the heart and feeling of happiness which has been lost in translation for those of us who read in English.
Charles Spurgeon and Amy Carmichael on God and Happiness
Amy Carmichael was a missionary to India who worked with exploited girls in horrendous situations, and rescued over 1000 of them in the name of Jesus. She spent the final 2 years of her life mostly bedridden. Here’s what she said during that time:
“There is nothing dreary or doubtful about this Christian life. It is meant to be continually joyful. We are called to a settled happiness in the Lord, whose joy is our strength.”
Charles Spurgeon, “The Prince of Preachers” asserted:
“God made human beings to be happy.”
“My dear brothers, if anyone in the world ought to be happy, we are those people. How boundless our privileges, how brilliant our hopes!”
Redeeming the Word
The problem is not with the pursuit of happiness, it is with the pursuit of happiness in the wrong places and in the wrong ways. This is the essence of sin. But rather than throwing out the baby (happiness) with the bathwater (sin), we should redeem this wonderful word which is truly ours as the people of God, and pursue holiness and happiness – the former leading to the latter.
Resources
Randy Alcorn wrote a fabulous book on this subject, which I highly recommend: Happiness by Randy Alcorn
Check out this video in which Mike and I discuss happiness and God:
Here is the video of my sermon from 1 Peter 1:13-25: “The H Word”:
Dictionary.com defines the word “preachy” as: “tediously or pretentiously didactic.”
Apparently this is what the word “preaching” evokes in the minds of many people. Perhaps for this reason, some people I have encountered have suggested that churches abandon the word “preaching” in favor of the word “sharing.” Rather than someone “preaching a sermon,” they suggest we ought to have someone “share a message.”
Is this just splitting hairs? Does it even matter?
A Matter of Semantics…
Semantics: the branch of linguistics that deals with the meanings of words and sentences
Words do matter. Words not only convey meaning, but the reason we have synonyms, i.e. multiple words for a given thing, is because each of these words relates to a slightly different way of thinking about or portraying that thing, and different words convey different feelings.
At the same time, words are culturally shaped, and the meaning of a word can change over time – even if it refers to an objective reality which does not change. Western society, with its emphasis on equality, tends to be more inclined to a word like “sharing” as opposed to “preaching.”
A Biblical Matter
However, we must also recognize the fact that the Bible uses the word “preach” over 150 times (in the NKJV), and doesn’t use the word “share” at all in the sense of speaking with other people about God.
I remember talking to someone once who claimed that Jesus only “taught”, he didn’t “preach”. Her point was that Jesus wasn’t “preachy”; the only problem with her argument is the fact that there are dozens of verses which tell us that Jesus preached. In fact, not only does it say that Jesus preached, but Jesus himself said that the very reason He came was to preach, and then he trained and commissioned his disciples to preach.
“I must preach the kingdom of God…because for this purpose I have been sent.” (Jesus in Luke 4:43)
A Practical Matter
To preach means to proclaim. It means to announce and declare something.
Martyn Lloyd-Jones said that what makes preaching unique, is that the one who preaches “is there to ‘declare’ certain things; they are a person under commission and under authority… an ambassador [who] comes to the congregation as a sent messenger.” [1]
To preach, in the biblical sense, therefore, is not to speak on one’s own authority, or to share one’s own thoughts. Preaching, in the biblical sense, is to convey a message from God to people.
For this reason, I believe we should hold onto this biblical term. However, I believe it is important that our preaching should not be preachy, i.e. “tediously or pretentiously didactic.” It should not be condescending, and it should come from a person who understands and conveys that they are the equal of their listeners – and yet, they come to them not with their own ideas and musings, but with a message from God which deserves their utmost attention.
Martyn Lloyd-Jones on the Role and Importance of Preaching
Here are some further quotes from Martyn Lloyd-Jones on preaching, from his classic Preaching and Preachers:
The most urgent need in the Christian Church today is true preaching; and as it is the greatest and the most urgent need in the Church, it is obviously the greatest need of the world also.
You cannot read the history of the Church, even in a cursory manner, without seeing that preaching has always occupied a central and a predominating position in the life of the Church.
At this point, Lloyd-Jones clarified that ministry to and care for the poor and marginalized is a ministry and a duty of the church, it must happen simultaneous to, not in place of, the proclamation of the Word of God. He points to Acts 6 to make this point, where the apostles appointed deacons, capable people full of the Holy Spirit, to ministry to the needs of the needy in their community, so that they could devote themselves to prayer and the ministry of the Word, deeming it improper for them to neglect those things.
Paul’s last word to Timothy was: ‘Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine.’
What is it that always heralds the dawn of a Reformation or of a Revival? It is renewed preaching.
Preaching is logic on fire. It is theology coming through a person who is on fire.
The chief end of preaching is to give men and women a sense of God and His presence.
Preaching should make such a difference to those who are listening, that they are never the same again.
The preacher cares about the people they are preaching to; that is why they are preaching. The preacher is anxious about them; anxious to help them, anxious to tell them the truth of God. So they do it with energy, with zeal, and with obvious concern for people.
May God use us to preach, teach, and share His truth with others, so that hearts, minds, and lives will be changed for the better.
Come back in time with me, all the way back to the magical year of 2007. I had a beautiful, thick head of hair… My wife was pregnant with our first child. I was living in Eger, Hungary, where we had planted a church which I was pastoring, and I had just gotten broadband internet hooked up in our flat. There was this new thing around at that time called YouTube, we weren’t sure if it was going to catch on or not… I mean, who wants to watch videos on their computer???
There on YouTube, I came across this video called Zeitgeist, which is basically a big conspiracy theory that says that everything you’ve ever been told about everything is a lie, conjured up by people who want to control you. Overall, I didn’t take the movie seriously, but… the beginning of the movie made some pretty serious claims about Jesus and the Bible that gave me pause when I first heard them…
The Claims
For example, the video claimed that 3000 years before Jesus, the Egyptians had a god named Horus who was:
Born on December 25
Born of a virgin
His birth was marked by a star in the East
He was adored by 3 kings
He was a teacher at age 12
He was baptized and began his ministry at age 30
He had 12 disciples
Sound like anyone else you’ve heard of before? They went on…
Stills from video
The basic premise of their claims is that all the stuff the Bible says about Jesus was just ripped off and plagiarized from other ancient religions. For a moment, these claims surprised me and shook me, because I had never heard this before, and I realized that if these claims were true, then Christianity is just a myth and is not true…
The Reality: the “Christ Myth Hypothesis” is a misinformation campaign
I figured it was pretty important to find out whether the things this video claimed were true, so I immediately went and did some research.
Here’s what I found: these claims are nothing new, they have been around for hundreds of years AND they have been disproven and are not taken seriously by anyone who knows anything about history because their claims are false.
Several books and films have been produced by “evangelical atheists” such as Richard Dawkins, Bill Maher, and Tim Harper which promote these claims as the basis for why people should abandon belief in the Bible.
Not only are the claims of the “Christ Myth Hypothesis” not true, but they are intentionally misleading, which is even worse. This is no mere misunderstanding, this is a misinformation campaign aimed at swaying people’s opinions using underhanded and dishonest means.
The Reality: Historical Facts Disprove the Christ Myth Hypothesis
One of the big claims of those who promote the Christ myth is that Jesus never actually existed.
How Do We Know that Jesus Really Existed?
Edwin Yamauchi, Professor of History at the University of Miami says this: “Any argument that challenges the claim of a historical Jesus is so ridiculous in the scholarly community, it is relegated only to the world of footnotes.”
Why? There are at least 10 sources, other than the Bible, that talk about Jesus as a historical person. Here are 2 examples:
Tacitus (Roman official): “Nero fastened the guilt . . . (for a great fire that happened in Rome) on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace.Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of the procurator Pontius Pilatus.” (Tacitus, Annals, 15.44)
Josephus: “About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he . . . wrought surprising feats. . . . He was the Christ. When Pilate condemned him to be crucified, those who had come to love him did not give up their affection for him.On the third day he appeared . . . restored to life . . . and the tribe of Christians . . . has not disappeared.” (Josephus, Antiquities, 18.63–64)
Bart Ehrman is not a Christian, and yet he explains, “There is more evidence for the existence of Jesus Christ than there is for nearly any other person from antiquity,” and “Mythicists as a group, and as individuals, are not taken seriously by scholars,” because “the idea that Jesus did not exist is a modern notion. It has no ancient precedents. It was made up in the eighteenth century. One might as well call it a modern myth, the myth of the mythical Jesus.”
Another reason we can be sure that Jesus really existed is because of the rise of the early Christian church.
The rise of early Christianity doesn’t make any sense if Jesus never actually existed. It was a movement of people who claimed to have known, lived with, and witnessed the life, death and resurrection of this man, and as a result they willingly suffered persecution and death, including the torture and murder of their wives and children. Not even the leaders reaped any personal benefit from these claims at all. The history of early Christianity makes no sense apart from the fact that these people actually saw their leader crucified and then rise again.
Examining the Claims of the Christ Myth Hypothesis
Problem #1: Lack of Primary Sources
Problem #2:Gets basic facts about the Bible wrong
Let’s look at some of the specific claims, starting with the most popular: Horus.
Born on December 25 I hope I’m not ruining your Christmas, butJesus wasn’t born on December 25th. Nowhere in the Bible does it say when Jesus was born, in fact it is most likely it was not in winter, but in fall because it says in the Gospels that the shepherds were sleeping outside with their sheep – which they don’t do in Israel in December because it’s too cold.
It was around 400 AD, when Pope Julius I changed when the day when Christians celebrated the birth of Jesus, to December 25th — in order to subvert a pagan holiday which was celebrated on the Winter Solstice.
Christians have never actually believed that Jesus was born on Dec. 25th — that’s just the day we chose to celebrated it.If you want to celebrate it in August, go for it!So, December 25 is not an actual parallel.
Born of a Virgin
Here’s how Horus was conceived: His mom was a goddess named Isis — his dad was a god named Osiris. Osiris got into a fight with another god and lost (it’s such a bummer when your god loses…) The other god cut Osiris up and chopped him into pieces, and thenHorus’ mom came along and found Osiris’ severed phallus — and yada, yada, yada — she got pregnant, and that’s how Horus was conceived.
I’m pretty sure that doesn’t count as a virgin birth, and it’s certainly not a parallel to Jesus.
Star in the East — Attended by 3 Kings
Again, I don’t want to ruin your Christmas — but the Bible doesn’t say that 3 kings followed a star and arrived at the birth of Jesus. The only people who came at the birth of Jesus were the shepherds from the nearby fields.
In the Gospel of Matthew — it says that a group of magi came from the East, when Jesus was about 2 years old, but nowhere does it says they were kings… “Magi” were magicians, sorcerers, practitioners of Zoroastrianism (Persian traditional religion).
Furthermore, nowhere does it say that there were 3 of them. It says that they brought 3 gifts, gold, frankincense and myrrh —but there were probably more than 3 of them. There could have been 15 or 20 or 100.So, again: this isn’t a parallel.
Teacher at 12 and Baptized at 30
There aren’t any references to any of these things in ancient writings regarding Horus.
12 Disciples
The Hieroglyphics show that Horus actually had 4 disciples — and they were: a turtle, a bear, a lion and a tiger. Also not a parallel
Some people say that Horus was crucified and then resurrected on the 3rd day. However, crucifixion didn’t exist in Egypt — it was invented by the Romans thousands of years later. Furthermore, in most stories of Horus, he didn’t die. In one story, he was killed and cut up into pieces, then thrown into a swamp, in which the pieces turned into a crocodile – and THAT is claimed to be a resurrection which was supposedly copied by the Gospels!
Mithra: Born of a Virgin
Mithra, legend says, was actually born fully-formed, out of a rock. That’s not exactly a virgin birth.
Other “Parallels”
Another resurrection parallel that is sometimes claimed is the Greek god Attis, but if you look at his story, here’s how it goes:Attis gets killed by his father, then his father asks Zeus to resurrect him from the dead, and Zeus said: “No. But, here’s what I’ll do: I’ll make Attis’ pinky finger move eternally, and his hair will grow forever.”
Again that’s not resurrection, and there’s no parallel at all with Jesus.
Conclusion & Further Resources
It’s probably not a great idea to get historical information from YouTube videos and blatant propaganda materials, and yet many people do.
What makes Christianity unique is that it is not based on abstract ideas, feelings, or concepts, but it is based on historical events which either happened or they didn’t. The good news is that because of this, the claims of Christianity can be studied and researched from a historical perspective. Actual scholarly research and material refutes the claims of the Christ Myth Hypothesis and corroborates the claims of the gospel.
Recently I sat down with Matthew Spencer of #LongmontPrays, a local initiative to encourage prayer in Longmont.
In this interview, I share some thoughts on prayer, such as that intimacy is created through shared experience, and we get to share experience with God through prayer, thus building intimacy.
We go on to talk about Jesus and how he was the embodiment of God’s glory, and that he showed us by example what it means to be dependent on the Father.
Check out the interview; I hope it encourages and blesses you!
In my previous post on Gilgamesh, Richard Dawkins and the “new atheism”, I mentioned how some people have made the claim that the Bible borrowed, copied, or stole certain stories from other Ancient Near East mythology. This argument essentially says that the Bible should therefore not be taken as an accurate historical account, but merely as “Jewish mythology.”
What is the Epic of Gilgamesh?
Considered one of the earliest works of literature, the Epic of Gilgamesh is a Sumerian epic poem which tells the story of a cataclysmic flood, and the salvation of a righteous man on a boat. Portions of the story have been found, which archaeologists date back to 2100 BC. A full version of the poem was unearthed in the mid-19th century, dating back to 650 BC.
Similarities between the two stories
There are many similarities between the Epic of Gilgamesh and the story of Noah and the flood in the Old Testament. The story goes that the god Ea, the creator of the Earth, decided to end all life on Earth with a great flood. Ea selected Ut-Napishtim (or Utnapishtim) to construct a six-story square ark and save himself and a few others.
Further similarities:
God, or several gods, decided to destroy humankind because of wickedness.
A righteous man was chosen to build a boat in order to be saved, along with some animals.
Both end with a divine promise not to destroy the Earth again by a flood.
Differences between the stories
In the Epic of Gilgamesh, the flood only lasts 6 days and 7 nights, whereas in the Bible it lasts 40 days and 40 nights.
The Bible says that water didn’t only fall from the sky, but came up from beneath the surface of the Earth.
In the Epic of Gilgamesh, the boat come to rest on a mountain called Nisir, whereas in the Bible the ark came to rest on Mount Ararat. The two are about 300 miles apart.
In the Epic of Gilgamesh, Utnapishtim received eternal life, whereas Noah died.
Other Flood Accounts
Hundreds of flood traditions have been preserved all over the world, with examples being found in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia, as well as both of the Americas, and most share similarities with the Genesis account.
About 95% describe a global cataclysmic flood, 88% tell of a family of humans saved from drowning to reestablish the human race after the flood, 66% say the family was forewarned, 66% blame the wickedness of man for the flood, and 70% record a boat as being the means by which the family (and animals) survived the flood. More than one third of these traditions mention birds being sent out from the boat. [1]
Who Copied Whom?
If, as ALL these stories purport, we all descended from the one family that survived this world-wide cataclysmic flood, then it would make sense that this story would be passed on and re-told in people groups around the world. Thus, accounts like the Epic of Gilgamesh and others which tell the story of a flood only serve to reenforce the idea that such a flood did take place. Interpretation of why it took place, it could also be expected, would differ as each culture would run it through the framework of their particular religious beliefs.
The biggest question is: which account should be considered the authoritative one, which correctly conveys the facts and meaning of the flood?
For the answer, we would do well to consider the nature of the different texts, and this historicity of other Old Testament writings.
On my trip to Israel earlier this year, I was able to witness firsthand how archaeology is consistently proving that the Bible accurately portrays history. (See: Why Should Christians Visit Israel?) In other words: the Bible purports to tell history (not mythology), and it has a proven track record of doing so accurately.
Given the Jews’ reputation for passing down information scrupulously from one generation to another and maintaining a consistent reporting of events, Genesis is considered by historians and archaeologists to be far more historical than the Epic of Gilgamesh, which is regarded as mythological because of its numerous gods and their interrelationships and intrigues in deciding the fate of humankind. [2]
Thus, we can be confident of two things: that a flood did happen, and that the Bible not only purports to tell history, but has been proven to do so accurately.
Does the Epic of Gilgamesh undermine our trust in the Bible? No. If anything it bolsters our trust in the historicity of the flood.
This week I’m in Estes Park teaching at Ravencrest Chalet Bible College, part of the Torchbearers International organization, which has a network of colleges and retreat centers around the world.
I’m teaching Genesis to the first year students, and Leadership in the Local Church to the second year students.
We’ve really enjoyed getting connected to Ravencrest; we’ve had one of their leaders, Frank Cirone, down to our church to teach on a few occasions (listen to Frank’s messages here)
In this interview with Frank which we recorded at our church office after one of his visits, he shares the history of the Torchbearers movement, and some of his ministry experience around the world. It’s pretty interesting! Check it out:
This week Mike and I made our weekly sermon follow-up video up here at Ravencrest, in which we talked about church discipline, laziness, and being a busybody. Check it out:
Pray for the ministry of Ravencrest! They are doing great work discipling, equipping, and sending out young people into the world for the mission of God!
