I have lately gotten out of the habit of doing my old Thursday Three's and Friday Five's. The Friday Five was originally a meme that offered five questions each week which each blogger was to answer and post in his blog and on the Friday Five site. I kind of followed that for awhile then did my own thing with it and also created a little Thursday Three thing like it. I want to try to get back to doing similar things and one thing I want to do is to feature some of my favorite blog writing.
Sooo, . . . I'm going to try this little "Magnificent Monday" thing where I will highlight my favorite blog post from the past week. Maybe I'll come up with a little award I can send along with it - you know something along the lines of an "Oscar" an "Emmy" or a "Tony." I guess it will be a "Jolly." Yes you too can be the proud recipient of a "Jolly." Can fame and fortune be far behind once you've won a "Jolly?"
This week's winner of the first "Jolly" is actually an older post that is one of my favorite posts that I have read in awhile. Over the past month I have been on a mission trip, a two week vacation and so I have been way behind on my blog reading and have been catching up on stuff that has been written awhile back.
This post was by Jeremy Pierce at Parablemania August 10 and was titled, simply Lying.
Everything Jeremy writes is worth reading, but I particularly liked this one because he dealt fairly with a broad range of issues on a fairly nuanced matter. To many the subject of lying is a very cut and dried matter - never do it. So, when they are confronted with stories of the way the Hebrew midwives lied to Pharoah or the way Rahab misled the men of Jericho, they say things like "God honored their faith, not their actions." This is an overly simplistic way of looking at things. First of all it assumes that one can separate faith from its fruits - I suppose you can separate faith and the fruits of faith for purposes of definition, but as James 3:12 tells us, a fig tree can't bear olives, a grapevine can't bear figs and a salt spring can't produce fresh water. You can't say that an unrighteous deed proceeds from a righteous faith. Furthermore, in James 2:25 it is very clear that Rahab was praised for her action, her deed, of deceiving the men of Jericho who were pursuing the spies of Israel. Clearly, in James 2:25 Rahab was considered righteous because of her deed, not in spite of it.
When we talk about lying we are talking about what constitutes a violation of the ninth commandment. We must let the Bible itself define what constitutes a violation of the ninth commandment and it is clear that in the examples I have cited, these were not violations of the ninth commandment.
Jeremy does a thorough job of analyzing these incidents as well as several others and walks through many different situations and arguments on both sides of the issue. He doesn't leave the discussion in the realm of "situational ethics," but at the same time he deals with much of the relevant biblical data and then he applies it to some contemporary situations.
So, if you haven't done so already, go by and read this post - the most magnificent one I have read over the past week and congratulate Jeremy on winning the first "Jolly." I'm sure its an award he'll treasure forever!
So do I get a physical award?
One thing I didn't mean to be suggesting was that because God blesses something you did that means you must have been doing something right. I don't think you meant to be saying that either, but as I was reading your summary it occurred to me that people might think that. It's just that in these cases the Bible explicitly says that they were acting in faith.
Posted by: Jeremy Pierce | August 23, 2004 at 10:56 AM