So What If You Were Not Called To Seminary?

A few posts back, I shared with you that many of our seminaries are cutting their language requirements in many of their degree plans and why they have chosen to do so. I also briefly addressed why the knowledge of these languages is important to understanding our faith.

As I said at the end of that post, not everyone is called to spend their lives dissecting these languages. We all have different gifts, aptitudes, and callings that should be honored. For instance, I cannot begin to convey how grateful I am for those of you who staff church nurseries, because if it were left to me…well, let’s just say it isn’t my calling nor do I have the aptitude for it. We need everyone to play their part to have a functioning body, and a good elbow makes a horrible foot. (Trying to envision that, aren’t you?)

However, just because you haven’t been called to study dusty old texts doesn’t mean you can’t help keep them alive. Here is a practical list of things you can do to encourage and support those who have been called. Trust me, we need it!

1. The obvious – money. I hate to start out sounding crass, but this is just a reality. To learn this stuff you almost have to go to a private school, and private schools are expensive. Most students end up with tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of student loan debt, and to complicate things further, with the amount of time required for study even a part time job isn’t really an option. And if you have a family, forget it.

And I know what I am talking about on this one, I managed a semester and half of juggling work, school, and family before my body rebelled and I wound up in the ER. In the end, I lost my job because I was unavailable to work the required hours, and I was forced to take out more loans.

So consider sponsoring a seminary student, you have no idea what the price of a tank of gas could do for them. Or a roll of quarters, so they don’t have stare wistfully at the vending machine or they can experience the luxury of a turnpike! (For me, getting to take the turnpike meant thirty more minutes of sleep! Priceless!)

2. Speaking of sleep – if they have kids, babysitting so they can study or sleep is a blessing beyond compare. So often people think that if you aren’t in class then you must be lounging around at home, but the truth is you are *supposed* to study three hours for everyone hour in class. Of course, no one actually does this, but when you are wrestling with Greek verbs you are probably doing more so it evens out.

And if you have kids, when do you study? If you guessed when they are sleeping, you win. Prime study time for me was 9 pm to 3 am, and then it was up at 5 to be on the road by 5:30. God grants sleep to those he loves (Psalms 127:2), so share some of his love.

My mom says she deserves part of my degree as she watched my kids so often, but in reality if she hadn’t I would have never have made it through.

3. Food. Please notice I did not say ingredients. Things ready to eat, no prep, and preferably eaten with one hand so you can hold a book with the other. Carrot sticks, pre-cut broccoli and cauliflower, or prepackaged salads, and of course, chocolate!

Gift cards to restaurants close to their school are also a great choice, or stuff they can toss in a lunch bag and eat in the car like granola bars and trail mix.

4. And travel mugs? Yes, please! They may have a couple, but odds are they are in the car with yesterday’s cold coffee. They can always use another one.

5. Haircuts and manicures are another way you might be able to use your gift to help a seminary student. As I said money is tight, but everyone there is trying to make a good impression. Recruiters are constantly roaming the halls, and who knows which one of these people might wind up being your boss? But guess what the last thing a serious student is going to spend money on?

And work them in an appointment on Sunday afternoon, or 9 o’clock at night – they will love you forever.

6. Mow their yard. Seriously. I eventually just gave up on mine. My uncle wound up baling it.

7. A massage! I know this sounds decadent, but after hours slumped over a computer, the ache begins to wear at you. And a hand massage – dear, sweet, baby Jesus, I will still take one and I am not in seminary. Hands throb after hours of typing.

8. If you do any type of medical/dental/optical services, donating those to a student can make a huge difference in their lives. I don’t remember how many students I saw with throbbing teeth they didn’t have the money to fix, in need of new glasses, or walking around with sinus infections they couldn’t shake and with no money to get any of it taken care of.

9. If you want to be specific in meeting a financial need, commit to buying books for one or more of their classes. However, I should warn you a lot of these books can cost over $100 apiece and you may need three or more for a single class.

Don't have that much to give? A ream of paper, a pack of post-it notes, highlighters, notebooks, or their favorite pens says you care and is a major blessing! And we always need another printer cartridge.

Want to go big? A church collection for a laptop or printer can be the difference between staying in school or not.

10. Offer to type up papers for them. I always wrote mine long hand first and then typed them. A friend of mine typed up many of my papers for me during my years of college. I never would have graduated without her.

11. Good at English? A writer can always use another set of eyes, offer to proof read their work. You get a chance to learn something new, and you might save their grade.

12. Ask us to share what we are learning/have learned. Remind us of why we are doing this, and give us a taste of what it is like to share all this amazing stuff with someone new. It is easy to get discouraged, and a lot students drop out when faced with how hard it really is. There are days when you know that you are attempting the impossible, but then someone comes along, asks  about something you just learned, and you realize that you love it too much to give up. And that's how we get through it, because looking back, you will wonder how many miracles God did just so you could survive.

"Unless You Read Hebrew and Greek"

“There are so many translations of the Bible you really can’t know what it says unless you read Hebrew and Greek.”

And there it was, the conversational hand grenade designed to shut down any further dicussion. I don’t know how many times I had been blasted with it, but I was getting tired of picking shrapnel out of my skin. So I did the obvious, I went to seminary and I learned Hebrew and Greek.

Going to seminary was not the smart decision. The hours were long, and I was dividing my time between classes, work, two kids, and a 19 hour a week commute. Sleep was something I got to do in my car between classes, food was whatever the vending machine offered, and I got really good at studying vocabulary flash cards as I sped down the highway at 65 mph. As if the personal sacrifice was not enough, I was (and am) getting to pay for the privilege to the tune of over $100,000 dollars in student loan debt. Additionally, I got to do it all without one single hint of a clue as to what I was going to do with my degree once I finished.

Unlike most seminary students, I did not go with any hopes or intentions of pastoring a church. I never felt that calling, and frankly, I am glad as I have seen so many of my former classmates grow embittered when they were unable to find work in the field they studied so hard to enter. I had one goal – learn the Biblical languages.

Most churches today are not looking for full time pastors, and that is especially true in places like rural Oklahoma. Churches want someone who preach a sermon that will attract new members without offending the old ones. They want someone they can call at two in the morning because grandma is in the hospital, do the janitorial work, and building maintenance while holding down a full time job that actually pays their bills. In the meantime churches throw mere pittance to their bi-vocational pastors so they feel they have the right to grumble about how lazy their pastor is when the men’s toilets are leaking. And amazingly enough, so many of the men and women behind the pulpit still manage to actually love the people who put all these unrealistic demands on another human being. (Starting to see why I am glad I have never felt called to a *real* ministry position?)

The idea that ministers get a fancy degree so that they can live a life of luxury is one of the silliest myths ever foisted on the American public. Most of the men and women I know serving our body are working hard to provide for a family, spiritual and biological, while attempting to pay back all the student loans they took out so that they could teach with knowledge and integrity.

And I would be willing to wager that 98% of those glitzy preachers you see on TV have never darkened the doors of a seminary other than as a guest speaker. One of the sad truths of our day is people are more than willing to throw money at anyone who is willing to tickle their ears with unfounded promises passed off as Biblical. Charisma and blindingly white teeth gets you far more followers today than solid teaching. Boys and girls, that should scare and sadden you because that type of pseudo-Christianity always crumbles under the burdens of real life and that is all the world is going to remember about these charlatans when their day of reckoning comes – not that these men and women taught a false gospel, but that gospel is false.

Unfortunately, I am not the only one who knows that American church looking for slick packaging. The leaders of the second biggest money making Christian enterprise do too. Seminaries know that many of their perspective students want one thing, a degree that legitimizes their place behind a pulpit. They, like their students, know that hanging a diploma on one’s wall is all the validation most congregations will look for. So the answer? Cut the hard programs. Cut the subjects that require the most dedication and time to master. Offer classes that teach their students how to run the business of church, marketing courses, and retain just enough Bible classes to still warrant the title of Christian. Those are degrees that people will pay for, and that is what will allow seminaries to keep the doors open.

On the surface, it seems like a good plan. Seminaries are struggling to stay alive, and survival is only going to become more difficult when religious institutions lose their tax exempt status. By offering easier course material, they can attract more students. Cutting the hours required for a degree makes seminary an option for those unwilling or unable to devote years and thousands of dollars in getting an education. Lightening the educational load would save future pastors thousands of dollars and make entering the ministry less cumbersome, at least in the financial realm. Pastors might actually be able to make it on a pastor's salary if they didn't have to pay back a mountain of student loans, and going to school while pastoring a church might be an option if it didn't take up so much time. In some ways, it seems like dumbing down the curriculum is the lesser of two evils – people still get a Biblical education even if it is of a lesser quality than the education of previous generations and it beats shutting down all together. 

However, this is short sighted at best and fraudulent at worst. We need men and women who are willing to commit to doing whatever it takes to learn more about this amazing revelation of God we call the Bible. We need people who are willing to wrestle through the intricacies of Greek and try to pin down the abstractions of Hebrew. We need people who will stand against those who pervert God’s word for personal gain, and we need people who know a lie when they hear it because they have been so immersed in the text that any twisted message sends shivers down their spines like cat claws on a chalk board. But most of all, we need people who love the Word and want to share that love the Word with the world.

Sadly, by cutting the language requirements and offerings in seminary we deny these men and women the chance to learn and, in turn, teach about their passion. And this is not merely the problem of perspective students, this is problem that will ripple throughout the church as leaders are allowed to lead in ignorance while professing to have knowledge, congregations will not have access to the informed teaching. Perversion of Scripture will go unchecked, and there will be no one to hold the leaders of tomorrow’s church accountable for their handling of the Word. Christianity will simply continue its downward slide into pop psychology and arm chair philosophy, as we love only those whose teachings bring them pleasure.

And what happens one day, in the very near future, when someone spouts off, “Unless you know the Hebrew and Greek you have no idea what the Bible really says”? Will we just keep picking shrapnel out of our skin? Or will we have someone in our midst who can stand up and say, “I do. I know those languages, and I can testify to the integrity of God's Word”? 

*Not everyone is called to devote their lives to this type of study, but you can help those who are. I will be sharing some ideas in an upcoming post on how you can be a part of persevering our heritage of faith.

Photo from Photopin

Reader Question: A Look At the Devil

Question 1: Why is the devil portrayed as an ugly twisted red thing with fangs and horn when he is said to be the most beautiful angel of all Do you have any idea where the (relatively) modern version of him came from?

There is no straight path to the answer, and most of what we think we know is based on probable leaps of logic by those long dead. I think that unless further evidence is found, the best anyone can offer is conjecture. However, having acknowledged that, the conjecture is based on ideas and concepts accepted by most scholars to be historically accurate.

Let’s begin by looking at the role of goats in Judeo-Christian thought.

They have a rather mixed role within both religions. Goats were considered to be “clean” under Levitical law and therefore an accepted part of the Jewish diet and an acceptable sacrifice. It was a ram that Abraham found in the thorn bush when he was released from the command to sacrifice his son, Isaac. (Genesis 22).

Despite all these good things, we also find the goat present in the story of Jacob and Esau where the goat skins become a means of deception. (Genesis 25). Jesus declares there will be a time when the sheep will be separated from the goats in reference to judgement. (Matthew 25:32). But the most damning element is found in Leviticus 16:8-10, in a puzzling ritual sacrifice in which two goats are chosen for sacrifice and then the priests casts lots for which one shall be offered up on the altar and which one shall become a “scapegoat”. The scapegoat is released, symbolically carrying the sins of the people out into the desert to a demon or fallen angel known as Azazel.

The Bible offers no explanation as to who Azazel is, but his story is recorded in an extra-Biblical work called “The Book of Enoch” which tells us that “the whole earth has been corrupted through the works that were taught by Azazel: to him ascribe all sin.” (1 Enoch 10:8) Many Biblical scholars believe that Satan, and Azazel are all the same entity as the description of each one is mirrored in the others. Additionally, Satan is not strictly a name, despite how it has been commonly used, and is more accurately a title meaning “accuser.” (This is where I will spare you the long theological debate about on how many satans there are and if or why they may or may not be different.) The point is Azazel predates any concept of Satan, and he has always been closely linked with the goat.

A key aspect of Azazel’s story, as told in the Book of Enoch, is that he was the leader of a group of angels known as the Watchers who came to earth and raped human women, giving birth to what were called the Nephilim. It was for this sin that Azazel and all the angels who followed him were condemned.

And we should also bear in mind that the Levitical law was given directly after the Exodus. In Egyptian culture the goat was also sacred – the point that it was not sacrificed. (Think Hindu cows.) In fact, Moses original request to Pharaoh was to release the people of Israel so that they might sacrifice to God in the desert away from the Egyptians who would be offended by the slaughter of their sacred animal.

In Egypt the Goat of Mendes was linked to fertility and some of the rites performed were even said to be sexual as recorded by Herodotus.  This goat god was later absorbed by the Greeks to become the god Pan. Pan would be known for his love of drinking, food, and women and would be worshipped by excessive consumption of all three just as Banebdjetet was.

Skip ahead a few millennium or so, and we have Christianity on the scene. A new religion with deep roots in Judaism and attempting to make a place for itself among the many religions practiced in the Roman Empire. Believing that all gods, apart from the Hebrew God, were demonic being masquerading as the truly Divine the imagery of the Greek/Roman gods was used to depict any spiritual entity in opposition or perceived competition with the Hebrew God.

Additionally, Pan’s mythology shared in several of aspects associated with Satan/Azazel. Pan was deceptive, a glutton, loved to drink, was a talented musician, and was basically the personification of lust. Combine that with the fact he was goat-man creature and that his image was everywhere, and you have the easiest target in the world. Particularly, if you are have two fold agenda:

1. Convince people that the pagan gods are abhorrent by equating them with pure evil. So the most popular god becomes Satan.

2. Strike fear into the hearts of your followers by portraying your enemy as something disgusting so that they will not be tempted to give into temptation. So Satan becomes ugly in the image of Pan.

Personally, I think as Christians we shot ourselves in the foot with this seemingly brilliant move. For while I do believe that there are demonic forces that masquerade as gods demanding to be worshipped, we have allowed the world to believe something that is counter to the teachings of Scripture. Satan is not ugly - the Bible teaches us this. He is beautiful and seductive in his beauty, but no one is on guard against beauty. We are all waiting for the man in red pajamas to scare us because we think we know that this has to be what evil looks like. We have based our ideas about God and Satan on movies, not Scripture. We have accepted superstition, folk lore, and Hollywood scripts as theology instead digging into our sacred text, and in doing so allowed offered up a lie to the world instead of the truth we were entrusted to share.

Speaking of red, I almost forgot. I could find no ancient sources that gave me any indication of color. So I will offer my speculation. Red has long been associated with passion, lust, and fire. Plus, it looks good on film and producers needed to dress up their characters in ways that immediately conveyed who and what this person was to embody. If I had to guess where the red came from, that would be it, but I am open to correction.

Photo from PhotoPin