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- [00:00]
A
Hello everyone, and welcome to the Sky Pod, brought to you by Holy Post Media. It is a busy season here, as I know it is for all of you as well. With the holidays coming, a lot of the Holy Post Media team are taking time off at the end of the month, so we're scrambling right now to get ahead of schedule to make sure that we have all of our podcast episodes, videos, Holy Post plus content ready to go before everyone heads off for family and vacations and things like that. So in order to squeeze in all that extra content into our production schedule, I've decided to do something a little bit different this week for this Skypod episode. Rather than an interview or a skydive monologue, we've decided to share a talk that I did a few weeks ago at Chicago Fellowship. I have been a part of Chicago Fellowship for probably close to 10 years now. It's a ministry that's been around a lot longer than that, if you're unfamiliar with it. It's a men's ministry that meets on Thursday mornings at a restaurant in downtown Chicago, as well as via Zoom for those who can't be there in person. It's a really great cross section of the city with Marketplace, nonprofit ministry, and sometimes even city leaders all focused, growing in their faith together and especially developing relationships with other Christian men around the city. I speak at Chicago Fellowship roughly once a month, along with a number of other wonderful friends of mine and ministry leaders and others from around the city. The talk we're including in this episode is part of a series that I've been doing at Chicago Fellowship throughout the fall, but we thought it covered some themes and related issues that we've tackled both here on the Skypod and on the flagship Holy Post podcast. So we thought it'd be a good fit for just a heads up. Because Chicago Fellowship meets in a restaurant, the audio can get a little bit muddled and not as clear as our studio setup or even a church setup, so I hope that's not too distracting. If you want to learn more about Chicago Fellowship or hear other messages from me and the other speakers there, then be sure to check out ChicagoFellowship.com for more information. Or if you're in the area and you'd love to join us one of these Thursday mornings again, there's information on the website and I will be back next week for a regular Skypod episode.
- [02:21]
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All right, we're talking about Circumcision again. For those of you who weren't here last time I spoke last month, I'm over the next couple of months, I'm going to do a series of messages that I'll take different texts from the New Testament about circumcision. And really, we're using these as launchpads for other topics. Last time, we looked at 1 Corinthians, chapter 7, and there Paul was arguing back to the Corinthians, who were wondering what conditions of life are best for actually following Christ. Should I be married? Should I remain single? If I'm a slave, do I have to seek my freedom? If I'm circumcised, should I be uncircumcised? Believe that as a thing in the ancient world, or vice versa? And Paul's message to everybody is like, listen, the fullness of the Christian life is available to anyone, in any condition, anywhere. So we covered that. This week, we're going to look at Galatians, chapter 6. Galatians is the letter in which Paul talks about circumcision more than anywhere else. It just. It's all over this letter, and he has a lot to say, and it's a. It's a huge deal. But in chapter six, he's basically summing up this whole argument, and that's where I want to focus our attention. So we're going to look at chapter six, verses 11 to 15. If you have a copy of the Scriptures or on your phone, I encourage you to turn there. Galatians 6:11 begins this way. Paul says, see, with what large letters? I am writing to you with my own hand. All right. Believe it or not, this is actually significant. When you think about this for a minute. Paul usually dictated his letters. He would speak his letters, and then he'd have a scribe, his assistant Timothy. Someone else would be sitting there writing it. There's actually some speculation that that by this stage of his life, Paul may have been blind or nearly blind, which may have been the thorn in his flesh that he's talking about in second Corinthians, that he prayed that God was removed. That's all speculation, but for whatever reason, Paul did not typically write his own letters. He dictated them. So he's writing here with his own hand, and he's writing with very large letters. The fact that he said this is so important, what I'm about to say, that I'm not even going to trust someone else to write it down. I'm going to say it myself. And there's a second significance to this that we probably don't ever think about in the ancient world. Paper or vellum, whatever he was writing on it was an incredibly expensive model. That paper was so expensive that when you look at ancient Greek documents from this era, they didn't even put spaces between words because they were trying to preserve as much of the paper as possible. They didn't use punctuation because it would take up space. That wasn't entirely necessary. So for Paul to basically go, I'm going to use extra large letters on this incredibly expensive commodity and use my own hand. It's all his way of saying what you're about to read next, Galatians is of utmost importance. So what is that? Verse 12? It is those who want to make a good showing in the flesh who would force you to be circumcised, and only in order that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ. Again, as 21st century Americans, we go, whatever. We probably read that before just out in one year, out the other. We need to go back to the ancient world and remember what's going on now. A lot of times when Galatians is taught, and especially when circumcision occurs in Galatians, here's what's normally taught. Of course, in the ancient world, Christians came from two backgrounds. They were either Jewish, circumcised, or they were gentiles, non Jews, who were typically uncircumcised in the ancient world. And this created something of a dilemma because although Jews were not respected in the law of the Roman Empire, they were a legally recognized and protected religious minority. So if you were Jewish living in Galatia, you weren't highly regarded or respected, but were protected by the rolling law. Christians, however, were this new thing, unknown, kind of weird, and they were not an officially recognized religious sect in the Roman Empire. So the way Galatians is often taught is people were being told in the Galatian Church, hey, just everybody gets circumcised because then you're going to appear Jewish. And if we appear Jewish, we're going to be protected by Roman law, because Jews are protected. That's usually how Galatians is taught, but that's not actually what's going on. It's way more subtle and complicated. So bear with me because we're getting into some ancient history before we start talking about what on earth does this mean for us. There's a detail here that you got to see. Paul says that they are forcing you to be circumcised in order that they may not be persecuted for the cross. So here's what appears to be going on. Early church, Jewish, circumcised believers, gentile uncircumcised believers. And they're coming into one new unit, right? The church where they're in fellowship together, they're worshiping together, they're sharing the Lord's Supper together. And this created a particular problem for Jewish Christians because according to Jewish law in the Old Testament, in the Torah, it was strictly forbidden for Jews to associate with Gentiles. They weren't even allowed to share a table together. But it goes even deeper because in the first century, in this time period in which Paul was writing, Jews popularly believed that they weren't just supposed to be separated from Gentiles, but that they were morally and ethnically superior to Gentiles. In fact, you see this even in the New Testament, see it in the Gospels, see a lot of ancient writings from this time period outside the Bible. Jews commonly refer to gentiles in the first century as dogs, subhuman. And the attitude was, well, we choose. We've been chosen by God. Of all the peoples of the earth, he chose us. That must mean we're special. Exodus calls the Israelites a royal priesthood and a holy nation, God's own possession. And of course the Jews talk of all the peoples of the earth. God gave us his law, he gave us the scriptures through Moses and through the prophets. We're special because we are the carriers of divine revelation. And of course, of all the peoples of the earth, God chose to make his presence known to us by abiding in our temple at Jerusalem. Not in Rome, not in Athens, not in Babylon, but in Jerusalem. And so when they look at all this evidence, they know, hey, we are special. We are better than everyone else. And those pagans, those idol worshiping dogs, they're subhuman, they're filth in God's eyes. Given all this context, imagine you are a Jew living in Galatia in the first century. So Paul is right. Paul comes preaching his message that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah, the king that God promised throughout the Old Testament and that in him he's remaking the world. And you hear this message, you go, wow, this is amazing. You're convinced by Paul's argumentation, by his preaching, by studying all these Old Testament prophecies. And you come to believe that Jesus is indeed the Christ, the Messiah, the Jewish king. And then you find yourself entering into this community of other people who believe that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah. And who else do you discover as part of this community? The dogs. The gentiles are bitter. And for the first time in your whole life, you are sitting down at a Table and eating food with checkpoints. For the first time in your whole life, you are actually engaging with meaningful relationship with people outside your generation. For the first time in your life, you are singing alongside and praying alongside people who aren't Jewish. In fact, you get so comfortable with these non Jewish people that you actually start referring to them as your brothers and sisters. It's amazing, it's unexpected. And that's where the problem lasts. Because apart from your Christian fellowship, your little house church that you're a part of, the entire rest of your existence is still within the broader Jewish community. All of your family are Jewish, all of your neighbors are Jewish, all of your business partners and associates, they're all Jewish. And some of them start hearing rumors about what you've been up to. And they go, dude, are you hearing that? Are you hearing about Gentiles? Are you like, sitting down at a table at like, that's against for a law. You're, this isn't true. And these rumors start spreading throughout the Jewish community about what you've been doing. Are you honestly the aiming, like, they're equal to us? This is not okay. Imagine like your business partner comes and like, I know this isn't true, but there's rumors going around about you that you're hanging out with Gentiles. And if that word comes out wire or people start really believing it, that's going to hurt our business. And it might get even worse. If this stuff is true, if you're seen hanging out with these gentiles, you're going to be completely banished from the Jewish community, persecuted, hated, despised. And forget your family. Your kids are screwed. You're never going to get your daughter married. There's repercussions to all of this. So as that's happening, you'd have three options. Option number one, give up. Okay? This Jesus thing, this Christian fellowship thing, it was nice while it lasted, but it just is not worth it. The cost of me and my family, my reputation, it ain't worth it. I'm just going to give up, walk away from the whole church. You just go back to your Jewish enclave. That's option number one. Option number two is you man up and you say to everyone else, yeah, you know what? I actually believe that Jesus is the Messiah. He is the Jewish king. I believe that in Christ, Jews and Gentiles are equal, that we're all sinners, and then we have equal access to God through what Christ has done on the cross. And so, yes, I believe Gentiles are our equals. And I'm Happy to share fellowship with them and a table with them and to call them my sisters and brothers. You can man up. There's going to be serious fallout with that. Right? Or there's a third option. Give up. You can man up, but you come, you can go to your church, to your Gentile brothers in Christ. You can say, listen, I know this is asking a lot, okay? You need a solid. And cut off your foreskin. Because you just listen. If you appear Jewish, it's going to save me a whole lot of trouble. Right? If everyone in this Christian fellowship all is Jewish, then it's not. Everyone's going to think I'm whole. Everyone. I'm going to avoid a whole lot of problems with my Jewish community. So that would be great. That appears to be what's going on here in the story in the book of Galatians and what Paul's reacting to. He's saying, people are coming into your fellowship from a Jewish background and they're saying, you need to get circumcised so they can avoid persecution. Does this make sense? It's not so the Gentiles can avoid persecution. It's so the Jewish believers can avoid persecution. They're trying to hide or cover their own nets, their own reputations. Okay, so now we need to go back and ask the question, why is this such a huge deal for Paul? Why does he, like, give me that pen. I'm writing this myself with really big letters. Think about it. Are these Jewish believers asking their Gentile brothers to do something immoral? Are they asking them to do something sinful? Are they asking them to turn their back on Jesus? No. They're simply being asked to cut off a fairly superfluous piece of skin. So why is this a big deal? The reason why Paul is so upset by this is because he views this as a complete and utter rejection of what Christ has accomplished on the cross. Remember, this entire problem is rooted in the popular Jewish belief that they were ethnically, culturally, and religiously superior to everyone else. These Jewish Christians are going to their gentile brothers in Christ and essentially saying, listen, here's the problem. Everyone in the community I come from thinks you're trash. And can you just do me a favor and allow them to continue that they're to believe that they are superior to you? Can you do me a favor and just passively participate in your own subjugation? Do me a favor and join in the racist rhetoric of my community and take a subservient position. Hey, listen, you and I both know this is trash. Right. We're all good in Christ. We know we're equal. But let's just pretend you're punked. Just humor the racism a little bit. Let them feel like they're superior. You got circumcised. And we can just go on being brothers in Christ and the Jews can go on thinking they're superior to everyone else.
- [16:30]
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It's a win.
- [16:31]
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Win. Not according to Paul. In Paul's view, this is a win lose. It's a win for the Jews in Galatia who get to continue to think they are morally and ethically superior to everyone else. But it's a lose for the Gospel because it communicates that God is a liar, that we are not all deported in Christ, that we are not all equal in sin before the cross. And it declares that what Jesus said on the cross was a joke in Scripture. God declares that there's no longer any separation between Jew and Gentile and that through the cross the dividing well of hostility between these different ethnic groups has been broken down to make one new family in God. Gentiles are not dogs. And Paul believes this is absolutely central to the message of the Gospel that he preached. Go back to chapter three Galatians. Chapter three, verse 26. Paul says this in Christ Jesus, you are all sons of God through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put Christ on. There is neither Jew nor gentile. There is neither slave nor free. There is no male or female. You are all one in Christ. But what some of these believers in Galatia are saying is, yeah, okay, we, we believe that. But can we pretend that some of us are still superior to others? By making everyone get circumcised to look Jewish, they were rejecting what Jesus had done through the cross and perpetuating the false superiority of one group over another. Okay, that's ancient Galatia. How do we apply this to modern America? Right? I don't. Hopefully there's no one in your church going around that. Dude, can I check? No one's doing that. Right? Hopefully. How does this apply to us? My guess is, and maybe you can talk about this and we'll be split into proofs that we all know people in our communities, maybe even in our families, whose sense of value and identity is defined by superiority, may not be obnoxious or overt, but in subtle ways. They generally believe that their group, your group, is better than those before. And those people can take all shapes and sizes. They look down their noses at those people. Sometimes this attitude is shared within a whole community as it was in ancient Galatia. Sometimes it's a smaller group, but core of their identity is being opposed to some other group's identity. The way we see this most clearly in America right now is probably through politics. There's lots of data that shows that the thing that keeps most Democrats together is not a shared vision or policy set, but a general hatred of Republicans. And the data shows the exact same thing of Republicans. They're not unified primarily through a shared set of policies, but by disdain for Democrats. Also refer to this as a negative polarization that we're buying as a group together. It's their hatred for another group. It's been on the rise for decades in America. Of course, the same tendency goes way beyond his politics, spills into cultural, racial, ethnic identities. In some communities, it's acceptable and even mandatory to show disgust and disdain for sexual minorities to talk horrifically about LGBTQ people. In other communities, it's common to look down on blue collar folks or people without a college education. On the flip side, in some communities, including some Christian communities, it's totally acceptable to denounce and badmouth elites or exploits. And of course, there's no shortage of dehumanizing rhetoric today in America regarding immigrants, especially undocumented events. But here's where this gets, particularly in cities, and it's the link that we have to Galatians 6. These people will always try to recruit you into their prejudice. They will expect you to play along with their need to feel superior by demoting the value of another group. Well, imagine that you're with a group of colleagues, friends, people, maybe even in your church. You're in a group whose respect and admiration you desperately want. Maybe your business colleagues, extended family. Pick the group, and it soon becomes clear that it's commonplace in this group to look down your nose at some other group. Just derogatory language. Maybe it's misogyny towards women, I don't know. Just some negative attitude towards another group of people. It's just common currency of the land in that group. And as that's happening, you know what happens? You get a check in your gut, a conviction of the Holy Spirit telling you this ain't right. I know this is wrong. As a follower of Christ, you know that the people they're talking about are loved by it. You know the group they're talking about, it's also made in the image of God, worthy of dignity and respect. You know that Christ died for those people as much as he died for you. Maybe you even have sisters or brothers in Christ who fit in the identity that this group is mocking or demeaning. You have worshiped alongside them, broken communion with them. And in that moment when you are being recruited into their prejudice, you couldn't speak up. You could say something, you could confront the attitude. But like the Jewish believers in Galatia, you know if you speak up and say something, there's a policy, there's a price to be paid. May not be flat out persecution, but it'll be a loss of respect or a loss of inclusion or a loss of engagement with that group. So you'd take the easy option, you cover up instead of man, I know. You stay silent, you play along, you perpetuate the lie that this group wants to believe that they are superior to the group that they are to meet. And in so doing you deny the cross of Christ. I'll share a time when I felt this acutely, probably the first time in my adult life or this really was right in front of me in a stark way. It wasn't about groups within the church, but it still applied. It was right after 911 in 2001. I had graduated from seminary in May of 2001 and could the light would be not get a job. I was married, married about two years at that point. We didn't have any kids. I was getting rejection letters literally every day from churches and ministries, even ones I never applied to. I don't know how but my name and resume ended up on some kind of Internet database for ministry stuff. And they just decided this guy needs to be put in this place. We're going to send him a rejection letter. And he never replied. It was a demoralizing season for me. I was working in my father in law's warehouse. The maven speed grateful for him and the job he gave me. But I was working in the shipping department of a warehouse having spent seven years in college. So I was not at right place. But what I was doing is taking any speaking gigs I could get, pulpit filling on Sundays, certain things. And an opportunity came along just shortly after 9 11. By far the biggest opportunity I've had at that point to do multiple weeks at a very large church with a young adult college group. This is massive, right? So I go in and I'm thinking well the church isn't hiring but yep, this will put me on the radar. That's a good thing. And even if they don't hire me, this looks great on a resume for more people from rejecting to So I show up at this very large church on this week night to do the first session and before. And There's. I know 300 people, this thing, probably young adults, college students. Before I get up onto the stage, the pastor pulls me aside. He says to me, yeah, someone told me that you studied Islam in college. I said, yeah, it's true. And he goes, great. You know, there's a lot of young people here. Lots of questions about faith and lots of questions since the terrorist attacks. After your talk tonight, we're going to do some Q and A. I'm going to throw you some softball questions. Okay, great. Okay. So I give my talk. My talk had nothing to do with 9 11, had nothing to do with current events or comparative religion or anything like that. I don't know what I was thinking of circumcision. I Talked for like 30 minutes to this group. And then immediately when I finished, the pastor was standing in the back of the auditorium. He shouts to me, he says, this guy, somebody who studied Islam, can you explain to us why it's a religion of violence? I was like, oh, it's softball film. Where the furrow ball of me. But I knew exactly what he was up to. He wanted to use the selective fear and anger that you probably remember if you're old enough that was going around our country at that time, the uncertainty in the wake of 911, 11. He wanted to use that as an effective glen against our Muslim neighbors, to make Muslims look bad as a way of making Christians look good. I knew that's what he was up to. I. But I was also like, hey, I, I need to look good with this guy. I, I need him on my resume. Wouldn't mind getting a job here. So I was like, how do I dodge this, this whole situation? So my first instinct was cover up. So I answered this question, but I tried to dodge it and I said something like, I don't know if it's entirely fair to just paint Islam broadly as a religion of violence. There are 2 billion Muslims in the world. There's about 2 million Muslims in the United States. The vast majority of them are peaceful. They don't believe in violence. Who's a tiny fraction leaving jihad against America. But I don't think they're representative of all of Islam, just as we would never say that the kkk, which claims to be Christian, is representative of Christianity. Right. It's just not a fair comparison. So I tried to just dodge the whole thing. Well, he wasn't giving up then. So he threw me another one. And he goes, but doesn't the Quran command Muslims to kill non Muslims? So that is when I had the gut chat. What am I going to do? And I looked around the room and I saw some brown faces in that room that looked a little bit like mine that may have been from South Asian backgrounds, main or even Muslim backgrounds, even all the white kids there. Chances are most of them had friends in college or in the professional lives that were Muslim. And what this pastor was essentially asking me to do was to paint all of our Muslim neighbors as bloodthirsty terrorists to misrepresent them. I said, yes, there are passages in the Quran that could be read as call for violence against non Muslims. And the pastor in the back who's really giving me these, no one could see him and techniques with him, he was giving me this better softball. And so when I said, yes, there's passages on the Quran that do that. He said. And then I said, however. And then able to move up said, however, there are also passages in the Bible which throughout history have been taken out of context by Christians to justify violence. And I don't think it's fair to cherry pick verses from anyone's scripture as a way of trying to understand the old faith. Well, at that moment, before I was even completely out of my mouth, the pastor was charging the sage, took the microphone, pray for a buddy, and dismissed him. After most of the students have left, he ripped finger in my chest. He did not invite you here to defend Islam. So listen, I am not here to defend is. I wasn't defending. I just don't think it's right to misrepresent our Muslim neighbors. And he said, there are young people here questioning their faith who need to know the gospel. I said, I'm happy to talk about the gospel. That's not what he asked. I'm happy to have a conversation about the doctrinal, theological, historical differences between Christianity and Islam. Yes, I studied Islam as an undergrad. There's a reason I'm a Christian. That's not what you asked me. And I said, I'm not going to participate in you misrepresenting people who aren't even in the room to defend themselves. He said to me, I couldn't believe this. He actually said to me, it doesn't matter if I misrepresent them, they are the enemy. Needless to say, I was supposed to teach two more weeks. I was canceled and I did not add that to my resume. Here's my point. When we desire the approval of others, it's easy for us to just swing up a softball to keep our mouth shut, to not Speak of and defend those that are being maligned, misrepresented, dehumanized. And we can say to ourselves, yeah, it's not a big deal. Because you know what? In my heart, I know that Muslims are my neighbors and they're no different than me. We can say, oh, I know you gentiles just get circumcised. It's not a big deal. I know that we're all equal. We can say, oh, these deplorable things that are being said about other people. I don't believe that. In my heart, I know we're all. But I'm just not going to speak up. It's not that big a deal. And it's not really a big deal if people think I agree with that in their prejudices, their racism, their dehumanizing rhetoric. It's just not worth the struggle. And so we remain quiet out of self interest. Or we say to the pastor at our church, you know what, can you just not talk so much about inclusion? It's just upsetting people unnecessarily. Can you just not engage in topic X, Y or Z that would actually defend the dignity and humanity of our neighbors when so many of us feel superior or better by dehumanizing them. It's no big deal, right? Based on Paul's argument, passive participation in prejudice towards others for the sake of gaining acceptance for ourselves is utterly incompatible with citizenship in the human God. When Christians dehumanize another group with their words, their actions, with their attitudes, and we remain silent. We deny the cross that has made us all one. We deny the word of God that says we are all made in the image. And we align ourselves with the enemy of the church has come to divide, devour, put it on the straw. All felt this was so important that he took the pen in his own hand and wrote with extra large letters. And my question is simple. Why don't we think this is important today in our country, in our city, we have sisters and brothers and priests who are suffering not just dehumanizing rhetoric, but humiliating mistreatments. And it is happening in part because we have not man up. We have chosen to remain silent as a header for our self contrist. That is a denial of the cross of Christ. We're afraid of the blowback, we're afraid of the consequences. That isn't just unprecedented, it's cowardly. So as we break into groups, when have you felt this temptation to remain silent? The sake of acceptance? 2. What fears do you have? What losses do you anticipate if you were to speak. And then finally, if you get to this point in your discussion, share with one another when you anticipate the next opportunity, the next roof we might be a part of, well, this is going to be an issue and ask to be held accountable, not cover up. It's not give up, but to actually man up and follow the example. Sam.