Preaching to the spirits in prison.

1 Peter 3.19-22.

Today’s passage confuses Christians because it refers to Jewish mythology, and most Christians know nothing about Jewish mythology. (Nor Jewish history, nor the Old Testament, but that’s a whole other—and far more important—issue.) Simon Peter grew up hearing about Jewish mythology, and the people who read his letter likely heard of it too, so they knew what he was talking about. Us, not so much.

Problem is, not all the ancient Christians knew of it. Gentiles hadn’t. Gentiles knew pagan mythology; they grew up in pagan culture, so they knew the stories of Zeus, Hermes, Apollo, Hades, and Zeus’s half-human, half-divine offspring like Perseus and Herakles. They also knew how to make up mythology… and that’s what they did with this passage. This is where several popular Christian myths come from.

One of the most popular is “the harrowing of hell,” as some Christians call it. It’s a story about how Jesus, after he died but before he was resurrected, went into the “prison” of the afterlife, and preached the gospel to “the spirits in prison.” Apparently the Old Testament saints were there, like Jesus’s ancestors Abraham and David; apparently, because Jesus hadn’t yet died for the sins of humanity, they had to be there, to suffer for their sins. But now Jesus had died for them. And once these saints eagerly accepted Jesus as Lord (’cause of course they would; everybody the ancient Christians considered a hero of the faith would) he freed them from prison, and took ’em with him to heaven. So they’re in heaven now. It’s why Orthodox Christians now call them saints (i.e. St. Abraham, St. David) although for some odd reason, even though they do believe these guys are in heaven now, Roman Catholics don’t.

Yeah, you’ve probably heard the “harrowing of hell” story, in one form or another. Doesn’t come from bible. Doesn’t come from this passage either, although many a Christian has pointed to it and claimed our myth is based on it. Nope; this passage isn’t about our myth; it’s about the Jews’ myth.

I’ll quote the passage first, then get to the myth.

1 Peter 3.19-22 KWL

19The One going to the spirits in prison

also preaches by the Spirit

20to those who’d been disobedient

when, in Noah’s days,

God’s patience was eagerly awaiting

the box’s preparation,

in which few—eight lives, that is—

escaped through water.

21Which now corresponds to you² also—

how baptism saves.

Not by removing dirt from flesh,

but a response to God,

in good conscience;

through Christ Jesus’s resurrection,

22who is at God’s right hand,

gone to heaven,

angels, authorities, and powers

submitted to him.

Thanksgiving Day.

In the United States, we have a national day of thanksgiving on November’s fourth Thursday.

Whom are we giving thanks to? Well, the act which establishes Thanksgiving Day as one of our national holidays, provides no instructions whatsoever on how we’re to observe it. Or even whom we’re to thank.

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the last Thursday in November in each year after the year 1941 be known as Thanksgiving Day, and is hereby made a legal public holiday to all intents and purposes and in the same manner as the 1st day of January, the 22d day of February, the 30th day of May, the 4th day of July, the first Monday of September, the 11th day of November, and Christmas Day are now made by law public holidays.

—77th Congress, 6 October 1941
House Joint Resolution 41

The Senate amended it to read “fourth Thursday in November,” and President Franklin Roosevelt signed it into law. So it’s a holiday. But left undefined, ’cause our Constitution won’t permit Congress to pick a national religion, nor define religious practice. Article 6; Amendment 1 Not that Congress doesn’t bend that rule on occasion. Making “In God We Trust” our national motto, fr’instance.

Though our government is secular, the country sure isn’t. Three out of five U.S. citizens call ourselves Christian. (I know; we sure don’t act it. Look at our crime rate. Look at the people we elect.) Regardless, a majority of us claim allegiance to Jesus, which is why we bend the Constitution so often and get away with it. Our presidents do as well; our first president was the guy who first implemented a national Thanksgiving Day.

Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be.

—President George Washington, 3 October 1789

Yeah, Americans point to other functions as our “first Thanksgiving.” Usually a harvest celebration by the Plymouth colonists and the Wampanoag Indians in 1621. Although technically the first Christian thanksgiving day on the continent was held by the Spanish in Florida in 1565—followed by another in Texas in 1598, and another by the Virginia colonists as early as 1607.

Over time, colonial custom created a regular Thanksgiving Day, held in the fall. Sometimes governments declared a Thanksgiving Day, like the Continental Congress declaring one for 18 December 1777 after the Battle of Saratoga. But Washington’s declaration in 1789 didn’t fix the day nationally—and he didn’t declare another till 1795. States set their own days: In 1816, New Hampshire picked 14 November, and Massachusetts picked 28 November.

It wasn’t till 1863 when it did become a regular national holiday:

I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.

—President Abraham Lincoln, 3 October 1863

Lincoln and his successors declared Thanksgiving every year thereafter.

Thus far these declarations weren’t law; they were presidential proclamations. Unlike executive orders nowadays, they weren’t legally binding. Note Washington only recommended, and Lincoln only invited, all Americans to celebrate Thanksgiving. They didn’t enforce it. ’Cause no government official, no matter how devout, has any business ordering people to worship.

So how’d it become a law? Mammon.

In 1939, during the Great Depression, November’s last Thursday was the 30th. Most Americans insist on only dealing with one major holiday at a time, so they don’t bother to shop for Christmas till the Friday after Thanksgiving. (Black Friday, as it became known in the 1950s because of shopper congestion, not because merchants finally found their budgets in the black.) With only 25 shopping days till Christmas, merchants wanted an extra week. So they begged the president, who complied and declared Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday: 23 November.

Republicans made a stink. How dare the President monkey with a sacred day for the sake of materialism? (Yeah, Republicans have changed their tune quite a lot since.) Ignoring Roosevelt, 22 states set the date of Thanksgiving as the last Thursday. But in 1940 and ’41, Roosevelt went even further and declared the third Thursday as Thanksgiving.

Finally the Congress stepped in: Thanksgiving was made an official federal holiday, and set on the fourth Thursday. That’s what it’s been since. There will always be at least 27 shopping days till Christmas.

The Jesus Seminar.

Every once in a while someone informs me a particular Jesus-saying in the gospels wasn’t actually said by Jesus. It’s extremely rare; it’s only happened to me thrice.

“No it was said by Jesus,” I’ll tell them. “Best we can tell, it’s been part of Christian tradition since the first century. it’s not a textual variant.”

“No it’s not,” they’ll respond, “because the Jesus Seminar says it’s not.”

First time I heard this, I laughed. A lot. “Who put them in charge of deciding what’s bible and what’s not?” As far as I knew, the Jesus Seminar people were just a bunch of crackpots.

Eventually I looked into this Jesus Seminar stuff and discovered… well crackpot isn’t the kindest way of putting it, but there’s an awful lot of cracked pottery involved in their setup. Lemme back up a bunch and explain what I mean.

The Jesus Seminar was the brainchild of liberal theologian Dr. Robert W. Funk (1926–2005), who created it to publicize his recently-founded Westar Institute, a nonprofit which promoted biblical studies from a liberal theological viewpoint. And before I keep flinging that term around, I’d better define it: Liberal theology presumes the theologian—not the Holy Spirit, scripture, and orthodox Christian tradition—is the authority when it comes to forming one’s beliefs about God. They decide what’s true and what’s not.

Based on what? Well, the conservative theologian will point to other authorities, like the Spirit, scripture, and tradition. Depending on the integrity of the theologian, they might not quote or interpret these authorities properly… but they do recognize it’s important to point to other authorities, and say, “They say so; it’s not just me.” Whereas liberal theologians don’t care if they’re the only ones saying so. They might point to the Spirit, scripture, and tradition, but they figure what ultimately decides whether something’s true or false about God, is them. And their commonsense, assuming they have any.

Hence liberal theologians don't do orthodoxy, don't recognize bible as authoritative, and frequently don't believe God intervenes in human history anyway. You might notice many of ’em go out of their way to reject orthodox and biblical ideas, just to show off how independent, novel, and radical they are. Plus it's great publicity. You’re not gonna gain notoriety for saying, “By golly, it looks like Jesus was born in Bethlehem of a virgin!”—unless you’re already well-known for denying every other creedal belief.

Funk was one of those guys. In 1985, he invited 50 academics and 100 laymen to join him at the new Westar campus in Santa Rosa, California, and participate in a seminar in which they’d vote on the legitimacy of 1,500 individual Jesus sayings, found in the gospels, the rest of the New Testament, and the Gospel of Thomas. Are they authentic Jesus, or hokum? Each participant voted by dropping a bead in a box:

• RED (3 points) meant it’s definitely Jesus.
• PINK (2 points) meant it’s likely Jesus—they were pretty sure he said something just like that.
• GRAY (1 point) meant Jesus didn’t say those exact words, but it’s consistent with his thinking.
• BLACK (0 points) meant it’s not Jesus at all.

The academics were largely legitimate biblical scholars, regardless of their liberal views. The laymen were… well, laymen. Not scholars. Churchgoers, and not. Filmmaker Paul Verhoeven, who’d just directed his first American movie—hadn’t even made RoboCop and Total Recall yet—was one of ’em. He’s a Historical Jesus fan; he published a book about Jesus in 2008, and has wanted to make a Jesus movie in which he’s a radical political activist. Again, not a scholar. And y’notice the laymen outnumbered—and could easily outvote—the scholars.

What criteria did these people use for determining whether something truly came from Jesus or not? Well, having it in all the gospels certainly helped. They were also looking for certain traits: It had to be memorable; they figured Jesus would say catchy stuff, like “Don’t throw pearls to pigs.” They liked irony, so if Jesus’s teachings sounded ironic to them (“The last will be first, and the first last”) they figured he’d say that. They liked the idea of trusting God, so if Jesus talked about that (“Have faith in God”) they figured that was legit.

What they didn’t consider legit, were End Times stuff, miracle stories, stuff about the church (’cause they didn’t believe Jesus intended to start any church), anything where Jesus talks about himself (“I am the way, the truth, and the life”). Plus if something is found in one gospel but not the others, they presumed the author of that gospel was pushing his agenda, not Jesus’s.

The end result? They published a new translation of the gospels, color-coded to how they voted. Black meant most voted black; red meant most voted red. Thus you wind up with a Lord’s Prayer which looks like so:

Matthew 6.9-13 Jesus Seminar version

9“Instead, you should pray like this: Our Father in the heavens, your name be revered. 10Impose your imperial rule, enact your will on earth as you have in heaven. 11Provide us with the bread we need for today. 12Forgive our debts to the extent that we have forgiven those in debt to us. 13And please don't subject us to test after test, but rescue us from the evil one.”

So the only thing they deem Jesus definitely said was “Our Father,” and he definitely didn’t say “in heaven,” nor “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” nor “Deliver us from evil.” And only mighta said the rest.

In this way, with this criteria, 82 percent of Jesus’s teachings got nullified. Don’t have to follow them anymore! Of course if he’s not really divine, and doesn’t wholly speak for God, you never had to follow him anyway. So this isn’t really about growing closer to Jesus, nor learning to follow him better; this is just a fun intellectual exercise.

Thanksgiving. The prayer, not the day.

In the United States, on November’s fourth Thursday, we celebrate a national day of thanksgiving. Today I’m not talking about the day itself though. I’m talking about the act.

Americans don’t always remember there’s such a thing as an act of thanksgiving. Our fixation is usually on the food, football, maybe the parade, maybe the dog show. If you’re pagan, you seldom even think to thank God… or anyone. Instead you conjure up some feeling of gratitude. You have a nice life, a decent job, good health, some loved ones, and got some stuff you’ve always wanted. Or you don’t have these things, but you’re grateful for the few things you do have. Or you’re not grateful at all, and bitter… and in a few minutes, drunk.

But this feeling of gratitude isn’t directed anywhere. Shouldn’t you be grateful to someone or something? Shouldn’t there be some being to thank?

And that’s a question many a pagan never asks themselves. I know of one family who thanks one other. Civic idolaters might be grateful to America or the president, as if they consciously gave ’em anythng. Those who love their jobs might be grateful to their bosses and customers. But pagans generally suppress the question by drowning it with food and drink. Maybe thanking the person who prepared the food—but just as often, not.

Even among the Christians who remember, “Oh yeah—we’re thanking God,” a lot of the thanking is limited to saying grace before the meal: “Good bread, good meat, good God let’s eat.” Although every once in a while somebody in the family might say, “And now let’s go round the table, and everybody say one thing you’re thankful for.” A game nobody enjoys but them… although I myself have come up with a lot of outrageous answers to that question, which amuse me at least.

But enough about Thanksgiving Day and its not-so-religious customs and behavior. The practice of thanksgiving isn’t limited to just this one day. If you wanna practice more actual, authentic thanksgiving in your relationship with God, great! I’m all for that. So’s God. But it means way more than thanking God only once a year, on the government-approved day set aside for it.

Answering questions. Or not.

Years ago a friend—let’s call him Matty—led the college-age small group at his church. (Not my church; not my denomination either. They’re Christian though. I knew Matty from school.) They’d meet and chat, he’d give them some bible lesson, they’d pray, and at the end he liked to play Bible Answer Man for a bit—he took questions.

Most questions were easy, with nice short answers. But sometimes they needed a more detailed answer, so Matty would put a pin in it, and make it the subject of next week’s lesson, where he could spend a half hour or longer on it. Which, he admitted, he appreciated; sometimes he didn’t know what he was gonna talk about next week, but “God provided.” (Well, when his topics weren’t all that profitable, I’m not so sure it’s God who provided. But whatever.)

So… one week the question had to do with women in ministry. The scriptures have no problem with it, and therefore neither does Matty, so the next week he made a thorough biblical argument in favor of it. Thing is, his church is sexist, so you can already see where this was headed: Someone at the small group who disagreed with him, tattled on him. In their denomination the board, not the pastor, runs the church; and the board decided Matty ought not teach the college-agers any longer. So he didn’t.

Here’s the thing: The young’uns still had questions, and since Matty was the answer man, they’d bring them to him, class or no class. Pastor got wind of this, called Matty in for another meeting, and told him, “You gotta shut that down.” Shut what down? These kids and their questions. If they have questions, they’re to take it to one of the pastors. Not Matty. They didn’t trust Matty.

I’ll be honest: This’d be the point where I left this church. But Matty had a lot of years invested in this church, so, y’know, sunk cost fallacy. He felt he oughta be a team player, so he agreed. Whenever the college-agers had questions, he now said, “Oh, you should ask Pastor.” So they did. Then they started leaving the church.

Matty ran into one of those young people after she’d left their church, asked her what’s up, and got the whole story: Seems when Pastor got a question he didn’t like, his response was, “You ought not ask such questions.” The frustrated young people recognized a red flag when they saw one, and soon left that church. Some of ’em sought and found a church where pastors do answer questions. But more of ’em simply presumed Christianity didn’t have answers, and quit church altogether. (And I find if you grew up in one of those Fundamentalist churches which loudly declares or implies every other church is misled, too liberal, too heretic, or otherwise dangerously wrong, you’re likely to despair: “There are no other churches I can go to,” and likewise quit church altogether.)

There’s more to this story, but I wanna stop here to say this is the point of this article: When churches don’t or won’t answer questions, they’re gonna lose the people who have those questions. And rightly so. I’ll be blunt: If you aren’t allowed to ask questions in church, it’s a cult. You should leave.

Good behavior is part of our ready defense.

1 Peter 3.15-18.

As I said in my previous piece on 1 Peter 3.15, Christian apologists love this verse because they figure it justifies everything they do to “defend” Christianity by arguing in its favor. Nevermind the fact argumentativeness is a work of the flesh; they’re doing it for Jesus, so that makes it righteous.

But when we keep reading 1 Peter 3, you’ll notice it’s not to be done argumentatively. We’re to keep things civil. Respectful. Gentle—with our emotions in check, because it’s a proper fruit of the Spirit, and actually righteous.

We’re not to resort to the misbehavior of fleshly Christians and pagans, who care far more about winning than behaving themselves and being truthful. They’re gonna violate their consciences, ’cause they’re willing to do what they know is the wrong thing—manipulate and cherry-pick data, try to get one’s emotions to override facts, insist their opponents listen to them instead of listening to the Spirit. Roman rhetoricians did all that stuff when they debated, because they sought to win no matter what. But it does matter how we defend ourselves. Still gotta avoid fraud, untruth, anger, and sin.

And if we’ve done that, our opponents can’t point to our misbehavior and use it to justify dismissing us. See?—goodness has its advantages. As Simon Peter pointed out.

1 Peter 3.15-18 KWL

15Sanctify Christ the Lord in your² minds,

always ready with a defense

for everyone who asks you² for a word

about the hope in you.

16But do it with gentleness and respect,

having a good conscience,

so when you’re² spoken about,

those who verbally abuse your² good lifestyle

might be disgraced.

17For, God willing, doing good is better

than to suffer for evildoing,

18because Christ Jesus once also suffered for sins—

the just for the unjust—

so that he could bring us to God,

putting us to death in the flesh

and making us alive in the Spirit.

Finite amounts of faith.

Christians regularly talk about putting our faith in God. But we don’t always get the definition of “faith” correct. Sometimes we think of faith as a substance—same as we sometimes think of grace. We think of it as a supernatural object God has to grant us. Because Jesus’s apostles asked him about increasing their faith, Lk 17.5 they got the idea it’s a spiritual material we have in us… and there’s only a certain amount we can hold. Like the battery in your phone; like the gasoline tank in your car. Sometimes the “faith tank” is full; sometimes it’s low.

But precisely like grace, faith is not an object. It’s an attitude. It’s our trust in God. And either we have it or we don’t.

The supposed amount of faith we have, isn’t really an amount. It’s whether we have faith in God in a given situation. I’ve known Christians who absolutely believe God can cure illnesses; they’ve seen it happen! But when it comes to whether God will cure them personally, they’re not so sure.

I know how they feel. I knew, hypothetically, God can cure the sick, ’cause Jesus does it all over the gospels. Didn’t really trust him to cure me… until one day, when I was seriously nauseous and finally, finally prayed, “God, could you please just take this away?” and he immediately did. I was fine. Hadn’t happened before; haven’t been in a situation where it happened again; but at the time I think God wanted me to experience for myself how he can do that, so he did that.

It didn’t increase my faith level; it meant I didn’t really have faith before, but I definitely have it now. My attitude changed. Because again, faith is an attitude.