Desacralizing Money by Using It to Support Christ’s Alternative Society (Acts 2, 4)

 ⁴⁴ All the believers continued together in close fellowship and shared their belongings with one another. ⁴⁵ They would sell their property and possessions, and distribute the money among all, according to what each one needed (Acts 2:44-45, Good News Translation, here and following).

Possessions Bind Us to Pluto (Luke 18:18-25)

Today a certain ruler asks Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life (Luke 18:18-25). For now, let us define eternal life as an unconditional companionship with Jesus which survives our death.

Jesus starts with the basics: You know the commandments. Today’s embarrassing truth: Jesus could not assume we Christians know these basics. To refresh our memories, these are the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:1-17): (1) no other gods, (2) no idols, (3) no misuse of the name of Yahweh, (4) keep the Sabbath, (5) honor father and mother, (6) no murder, (7) no adultery, (8) no stealing, (9) no false witness, and (10) no coveting (wanting what others have). Let us note that the first four commandments concern our relationship with Yahweh; the second six, our relationships with our neighbors.

Hoarding and Self-indulgence or Sharing (Luke 12:13-22)?

Global society and culture are Olympian; that is, they are structured in terms of devotion to six gods that the ancients thought lived on Mount Olympus. These six Olympian gods are (1) Jupiter, god of politics; (2) Mars, god of war; (3) Vulcan, god of technology; (4) Venus, goddess of sex; (5) Pluto, god of money; and (6) Bacchus, god of consumption.

Globally, every one of us human beings has two personalities. Each one of us is both fully Olympian and fully Christian. Our Olympian personality conforms to social and cultural norms by devoting itself wholeheartedly to those six false yet enticing Olympian gods. Our Christian personality devotes itself to Jesus Christ. Which personality we express varies from one moment to the next.

In the Parable of the Rich Fool, Jesus contrasts devotion to the gods with devotion to Abba (God the Father) through him (God the Son) by the power of the Holy Spirit.

A First Attempt at a Christian Understanding of Marriage and Sexuality

1. We will attempt to understand any biblical passage in its biblical context. In Leviticus 18, we may read this prohibition: You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination (v. 22, New Revised Standard Version, here and following).

Let’s put that verse into its biblical context. Leviticus 18 is largely about the prohibition of certain sexual acts. In it Yahweh forbids sexual intercourse between close relatives (vs. 6-18, 20), with one’s wife while she is menstruating (v. 19), between two men (v. 22), and with any animal (v. 23). In this passage Yahweh also forbids the sacrifice of children to Molech (Jupiter).

How We Christians Make the Issue of Homosexuality an Olympian One

1. We treat it as a moral issue rather than as a spiritual one. Jesus did not come to get us to conform to some new moral code—not even one based on the Bible. Instead, he came to free us from any and all moral codes. The question, then, is not one of morality. The question is one of spirituality. In our way of living, are we devoting ourselves to the six rather dull Olympian gods of power? Or are we witnessing to the one true god of freedom?

A Chalcedonian Glance at Platonism and Augustine on Human Nature

In The Civilization of the Middle Ages (1993), Norman Cantor tells us that the “most influential philosophical system in the ancient world…was Platonism” (14). Everyone who was anyone had to understand, if not embrace, this dominant Olympian way of thinking. According to it, “ignorance was the cause of evil and…properly educated men would exercise their rational faculties and do good” (75).

Understanding Human Nature Using the Chalcedonian Formula

Today we will briefly discuss an understanding of human nature from a Chalcedonian, paradoxical, biblical point of view. Quickly, we may say that every human being has (1) a wholly Christian personality as well as a wholly Olympian personality, (2) without separating the two, (3) without mixing the two, and (4) keeping them rightly ordered.