A council of Rabbis decided that their debater, for the sake of irony, should be a Jewish carpenter. And they chose a man named Mosche.
First the Pope “spoke”. He held up three fingers. Mosche held up one. The Pope waved his fingers in a circle around his head. Mosche pointed to the ground. The Pope brought out a wafer and a glass of wine. Mosche held out an apple.
The Pope threw up his hands. “I admit defeat. They can stay.”
The Cardinals surrounded the Pope and said “What happened?”
The Pope said, “I held up three fingers, to show him the Trinity. He showed me with one finger, that there is one Common God. I showed him God was all around us, and he showed me that God is right here. I explained that God absolves us of our sins, and he used the apple to remind me of original sin.”
When Mosche was asked for an explanation, he said, “I don’t know what happened. He told me we had three days to get out. I said not one of us is leaving. He said the whole city would be cleared, and I said we’re staying right here. Then he showed me his lunch, and I showed him mine.”
I was raised by a woman who would not let us say the word “fool”. My mother believes that that particular word was forbidden by Jesus. That He said Call no man a fool. She didn’t want us to call anyone names, but if you had to, you should say idiot or moron or dolt. But not fool.
I am not criticizing my mother. I’m just using her thought to illustrate a point. She had been raised with the same edict. Jesus said Call no man a fool. Even when I was young, something about that didn’t feel quite right to me. And many, many years later, I found the verse she was talking about.
Matthew 5: 22, Whoever calls another believer a fool will answer for it in hellfire. [God's Word] You notice that my translation says “believer”. And if it’s read in the full context, I accepted that what He was saying was Do not criticize the belief system of another believer. That if the Christian sitting next to you said that the Sabbath was on Saturday, let him go with that. And maybe even if the guy on the other side of you said God was incarnated as a little blue boy, let him go with that.
But then I found so many other translations that said Brother instead of Believer. I found the Greek translation on biblos.com, and it is brother. Literally Brother, so then I thought that maybe my interpretation was wrong.
But then I realized that the key was what we interpret the word “brother” to be.
So what to do.
I looked at other verses, other messages, and more importantly, I talked to God about it, and in the end, at least for now, I have gone back to my original interpretation.
We cannot get too wrapped up in the specific words in the Bible.
A friend of mine gave a sermon, and it was a good sermon and she had an excellent point, but one of the keys to her sermon was that the word “heart” appeared in the three verses that she was tying together. But in my translation, the word “heart” only appeared in two.
This doesn’t negate her message. I think instead it proves mine. It’s the meaning of the verses that matter.
We get in trouble when we try to take everything too literally.
I had a disagreement with a man who thought it was very important that Genesis 2:7 read Then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostril the breath of life; and the man became a living soul. My translation reads living being. He said My Bible was translated from the original Hebrew and Greek. I said So was mine.
I have heard someone say that we must take Genesis 3:20, The man named his wife Eve because she was the mother of all living things, literally. That we had to accept that Eve was the mother of all mankind. But it’s poppycock that the angels had children with earthly women.
We go three chapters further into Genesis and we find a couple of references to the angels laying with human women. Such as The Nephilim were on the earth in those days -- and also afterward --when the sons of God went in to the daughters of humans, who bore children to them. Genesis 6:4.
So which is it? We’re taking things literally, or we’re not.
I could be accused of doing the same thing by ignoring the verses which say that women shouldn’t speak in church. I am not speaking in church but I am putting out a blog, using the internet as a pulpit.
Paul, who incidentally is the one who said women shouldn’t speak in church, settles the argument. He tells us in Second Timothy not to argue over small things and words.
I think we’re better off looking at things through the lens of study, of appreciating the difference in our times and theirs, in viewing the Bible as a source of learning, a guide to spiritual life. I think the key to all of these questions, literal or not, women speaking or sitting silently, is Prayer.
Read the verses, do the research, compare translations, talk to other believers. Or brothers. And pray and let God tell you what you should believe.
God has welcomed them. Who are you to pass judgment on servants of another? Romans 14:3-4 [English Standard Version]
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