Sheep and Goats

Author: tomsheepandgoats

  • The Language in Which God Wrote the Universe

    If Isaiah 40:22 is not a lesson in science, all the more so 40:26 is not. But could it be another example of the Bible being accurate when it happens to touch on matters of science?

    “Lift up your eyes to heaven and see. Who has created these things? It is the One who brings out their army by number; He calls them all by name. Because of his vast dynamic energy and his awe-inspiring power, Not one of them is missing.” (Isaiah 40:26) What are “these things?” They are the heavens, the stars.

    Got it. It’s not a science lesson. Yet, not to overanalyze the point, it turns out there’s a connection between “vast dynamic energy” and these “created things.” It is even described with mathematical precision: E=mc². It has been demonstrated numerous times since World War II. The tiniest bit of mass times the speed of light squared yields a staggering amount of energy. Surely, the reverse must also hold, that a source of infinite energy can convert some of it to mass.

    Why should this relationship be this is written so compactly? Why shouldn’t it be a hopeless hodgepodge of a mathematics mess? If you jam the keys of a piano together, it sounds like garbage and it looks like garbage in math. But if you do harmonious music, the mathematics is elegant. Notes that harmonize are simple ratios of each other. Notes that don’t are not.

    Basic laws of physics are expressed in the terms of often-simple mathematics. Newton discovered that force equals mass times acceleration, for example (F=ma). From Galileo: the distance a ball falls in t seconds is 16 times the square of t. (d=16t²). Why shouldn’t the answer be a hopeless mishmash, like your sock drawer, instead of a compact formula? It was enough for Galileo to proclaim that “God wrote the universe in the language of mathematics.” For centuries, scientists pursued their topic as though a religious quest, as a means to uncover the design of God and thereby give him praise.

    When Kepler worked out the laws governing planetary motions [they move in ellipses, not circles] and published the results, he suddenly let loose with a paean to God, smack dab in the middle of his treatise. If you didn’t know better, you’d think it was one of the Bible psalms: “The wisdom of the Lord is infinite; so also are His glory and His power. Ye heavens, sing His praises! Sun, moon, and planets glorify Him in your ineffable language! Celestial harmonies, all ye who comprehend His marvelous works, praise Him. And thou, my soul, praise thy Creator! It is by Him and in Him that all exists. that which we know best is comprised in Him, as well as in our vain science. To Him be praise, honor, and glory throughout eternity.”

    Does it not dovetail with this proclamation from Revelation 4:11? “You are worthy, Jehovah, even our God, to receive the glory and the honor and the power, because you created all things, and because of your will they existed and were created.” 

    Those early scientists didn’t experiment much. Instead, they worked out the math, since they were convinced that underlay how God designed things. When they made experiments it was mostly to confirm results. Newton once said it was done to convince the “vulgar,” (He also told how he made up the story of the falling apple to dispose of pesky people who asked him how he discovered laws of gravitation.) And Galileo, when describing an experiment of dropping two different masses from the top of a ship’s mast, has his fictional creation, a fellow named Simplicio, ask whether he actually made such an experiment. “No, and I do not need it, as without any experience I can confirm that it is so because it cannot be otherwise,” was his reply.

    Can one just sit and think the makeup of the universe? Turns out that you can, assuming you are very smart and you have correctly identified the variables. Newton played with the notion of firing a giant cannonball from a mountaintop with just enough velocity, not too much and not too little, that it’s ordinary straight line path would be continually offset by the earth’s pull so that it would orbit the planet indefinitely. He obviously didn’t perform such an experiment, it was all in his head. Working from a few known quantities (radius of the earth, distance a body falls in the first second) he deduced laws of universal gravitation: The gravitational attraction between two masses (m1 and m2) is F = k(m1·m2/r²). Like Kepler, gave God all the glory:

    “This most beautiful system of sun, planets, and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being…This Being governs all things, not as the soul of world, but Lord over all.”   Mathematical Principles, 2nd edition.

    It gets more beautiful and stranger still. In 1785, Charles Coulomb published the law of force between two electrically charged bodies, q1 and q2: F =- k(q1·q2/r²) where k is a constant and r is the distance between the two bodies. What even the dumbest person in class can’t miss is the law’s identical form to that of gravity, a wholly different phenomena, outlined above with Newton. The gravitational attraction between two masses (m1 and m2) isF = k(m1·m2/r²)The only difference is that electrical force can attract or repulse, depending on whether the two bodies have equal or opposite charges; gravity always attracts. “The universe is whispering its secrets to us in stereo,” says the book ‘The Universe Speaks in Numbers,’ referring to the cooperation of physics and mathematics, but it might also be applied to this case of how different phenomena share the same formula.

    Is this another way in which humans are created in God’s image—that we can speak the same language as He in establishing creation? Usually it is his sense of justice that we are said to resonate with, or the quality of love, but is pure thought another? “The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible,” said Einstein.

    However, a funny thing has happened over the years in connection with the language of mathematics. If you can speak the language, you can create sentences with it. In time, mathematicians began devising different mathematics, using different axioms as starting points. These were often bizarre mathematics, with no conceivable application to reality. But, then, just as bizarrely, it turned out that some of them did apply.

    The comic strip tyke character Calvin’s eyes bugged out of his head when his stuffed tiger Hobbes (turned real tiger when nobody was around), suggested a simple arithmetic homework problem would require use of “imaginary numbers!” The kid had all he could handle with real numbers! He either sloughed off his assignments on Susie or doomed himself to a failing grade. Who would not recoil at imaginary numbers, based on the square root of minus one? Surely, there can be no such thing; any number times itself, even a negative number, is invariably positive.

    But it subsequently turned out that imaginary numbers (also colled complex numbers) are essential to quantum physics. The topic cannot be understood (to the extent it is) without them. It is as though a product essential to earth cannot be manufactured on earth, so it is exported to some weird planet for manufacture and then the results are imported back where they prove useful.

    Similarly, strange non-Euclidian geometries have proven essential to understand relativity—which not everybody does, but nobody does without the offbeat math. Albert Einstein cruised the Atlantic in the company of a statesman friend who later reported: “Dr. Einstein explained his theory to me every day. By the time we arrived, I was fully convinced that he really understands it.” You need the “crazy” math to do it. There are countless other examples of “crazy” math in time proving itself useful.

    Writing bizarre math statements in the language that God uses, then finding some, but not all, of those statements used in creation, produced a strange effect on immodest mathematicians. By that time, along with the rest of evolution-fed society, they had become dubious of God. So, they thereby rechristened “creation” as “reality” or just “the universe” to escape any God implication. It began to seem to them as though they were the creators of the language, of which “God” utilizes only a subset. The feeling grew and has become popular that humans have invented mathematics, rather than discovered it. As with Darth Vader to Obi Wan, the pupil had fancied himself the master.

    Mathematics plainly exists “out there” somewhere, but if you’ve quit believing in God, where can the “out there” be but within our own heads? It must be that they invented it themselves, they reasoned. Why does it fit reality so well? To hear their account, it’s as though the learned one fuss and fret, tossing away one measure that doesn’t work after another, till they finally find something that does work to describe something. You mean that there were a few thousand wanna-be Galileos describing gravity in all sorts of harebrained ways, until the master himself came along and found a way to reduce it all to a few letters and numbers? I’m dubious. “The first effect of not believing in God is that you lose your common sense,” G. K. Chesterton said.

    Something about this revised “dissident” view reminds me of Larry King telling how it was with 7-Up. The soft drink was wildly successful—but only after the inventor flopped with 1-Up, 2-Up, 3-Up, 4-Up, 5-Up, and 6-Up. To add insult, the new view of math conforming to us rather than we to it is applied by atheistic thinking to creation itself. The reason the universe is so precisely tuned to the needs of life, these persons say, is because if it were anyway else, we wouldn’t be here to talk about it. Douglass Adams addresses people who believe that God must exist since the world so fits our needs by comparing them to an intelligent puddle of water that fills a hole in the ground. The puddle is certain that the hole must have been designed specifically for it because it fits so well. it is a brilliant illustration. All that one must do for it to be perfect is find an intelligent puddle of water.
     
    Backtracking in time, Physicist Heinrich Hertz observed of the mathematics underlying reality: “One cannot escape the feeling that these equations have an existence and an intelligence of their own, that they are wiser than we are, wiser even than their discoverers, that we get more out of them than was originally put into them.” We do indeed get a lot out of them. So much so that some became completely oblivious to what was “put into them” in the first place and who did the “putting.” “One cannot escape the feeling,” Hertz stated. Yet today’s materialistic society has managed to just that.

    Can you “prove” to the ones favoring invention (as opposed to discovering) that they are wrong? Frankly, you cannot. Best to admit it. As with all things human, the heart decides what it wants and then charges the head to devise a convincing rationale for it. This lends the appearance that the head is calling the shots, but it is the heart all along. Best admit it. it is beyond the scope of “proof.” It’s sort of like when Trump met with the newly elected Mandami and everyone thought there were going to be fireworks. Instead, the meeting appeared friendly. So media asked Mamdani, didn’t he previously call Trump a facist? The New York mayor begins to him and haw (because he had) whereupon, the president interjected: “Just admit it. It’s easier.’

    Oddly, though mathematics has proven so astoundingly successful at describing the universe we live in, its success lies in giving up on a greater goal. Long before Galileo, Aristotle and his contemporaries wanted to know WHAT things were. They didn’t bother much with description, since that seemed of secondary importance. Only when scientists reversed priorities did they discover mathematics served as an amazing tool of description, though not explanation. This lack of explanation was a sore point for some of Newton’s contemporaries, steeped in the tradition of Aristotle. Leibniz, who independently of Newton, discovered calculus, muttered that Newton’s gravitational laws were merely rules of computation, not worthy of being called a law of nature. Huygens labeled the idea of gravitation “absurd” for the same reason: it described effects but did not explain how gravity worked.

    Newton agreed. In a letter to a Richard Bentley he wrote: “That one body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum without the mediation of anything else, by and through which their action and force may be conveyed from one to another, is to me so great an absurdity that, I believe, no man who has in philosophic matters a competent faculty of thinking could ever fall into it.” Is the latter goal, discovering what something is rather than just how it works, reserved for the mind of God? Perhaps that explained why Isaac Newton wrote more about God than he did of math and science combined.

    ******  The bookstore

  • Isaiah 40:22 and the Circle of the Earth

    My son’s first word was not “momma” or “papa.” It was ball. He was on the lookout for anything circular that might fit that description. Pulling out the Mastercharge card would get him all excited for the two circles, and he would instantly exclaim, “ball!” (My wife gets equally excited, though for a different reason.)

    Does this offer any insight into Isaiah 40:22:

    “There is One who dwells above the circle of the earth, And its inhabitants are like grasshoppers. He is stretching out the heavens like a fine gauze, And he spreads them out like a tent to dwell in.” (NWT)

    Grok was on strike one recent morning. I think it is because, with the advent of AI and the war on Iran in early 2026, anytime anything happens, people on X would ask “Grok, is this true?” and it simply got overwhelmed. Or maybe it was in the shop for a tune-up. Or maybe it was mad at me for some reason. At any rate, it was unavailable. So I asked ChatGPT about Isaiah 40:22: “What is the meaning of “circle of the earth” at Isaiah 40:22?” I asked.

    It’s the Hebrew word ḥûg, it answered. It means a circle, a circuit, an horizon, but “It does not specifically mean “sphere.” (“Not” was bolded.)

    Well, I never said it did. I didn’t ask what it doesn’t mean. I asked what it did. Do I detect an overzealous atheist here—like when you watch one of those nature shows, and just before you can erupt in praise to God over the amazing instinctive behavior of some animal, the atheist narrator cuts you off to swoon over what natural selection has done over eons of time? Even educated beavers that graduated from Dam U think that is overkill.

    I mean, duh, of course ChatGPT doesn’t believe in God. If anything, it believes in Sam Altman, its own creator, but do I detect an eagerness to shoot down a certain interpretation that implies there’s another creator? I asked what it did mean, not what it didn’t. And what’s with the bolded “not,” as though forbidding me to go there? Does the house Bible of Jehovah’s Witnesses say sphere? No. It says circle. So what’s with the anti-sphere campaign that nobody asked about?

    Whoever said that it did mean sphere anyway? I asked, and Chat gave me several “Christian apologetic” sources, none of them Watchtower-related. Don’t go thinking this is just a Jehovah’s Witness thing. “Circle of the earth” in Isaiah 40:22 most likely means the horizon or visible disk of the earth, or the encircling vault over the earth, it said.

    Both of these choices sound a little spherical to me. “Visible disk of the earth?” What, is it like a huge enlarged dime as seen from space? That would be more far-fetched than “spherical.” No, Chat said, it’s the horizon you see when you’re looking around. Pretty much like how when you look around, it really is “around.” Your field of vision is a circle.

    Now, there is a Hebrew word for a ball (kadûr), but it’s only used once in Isaiah, and that is the only time it is used in the entire Bible. That instance denotes the shape that Shebna was going to be wadded into for putting on airs: “[God] will certainly wrap you up tightly and hurl you like a ball into a wide land.” (22:18) It’s not really a sciency discussion going on there, even more so than 40:22 is not. In fact, “there’s no clear evidence that Biblical Hebrew had a standard term for “planet as a sphere” during Isaiah’s era,” said Chat. Very well. So it’s enough for Isaiah not to slam the door on “sphere” with his use of ḥûg since, if he had wanted to convey sphere, he had no specific word to use.

    It just seemed to me that Chat was being a little too pushy, as it later observed that ḥûg “clearly . . . does not mean a 3-D ball.” What’s with the “clearly” (not to mention the bolded “not”), as though intent on teaching me a lesson? Alright, substitute “conceivably” for “clearly.” Can it “conceivably” mean that?

    Here Chat relented. Yes, it can be”conceivably” mean that, it said. “The text doesn’t forbid that image. It simply doesn’t require it.”

    Oh. Okay. I can live with that. I never thought it required that, but only that it might allow for that.

    “That’s a very reasonable place to land,” Chat conceded. “Yes — “allow” is the right category if we’re being careful. Nothing in the Book of Isaiah 40:22 linguistically forces a spherical reading. But neither does the word ḥûg contain some built-in flat-earth constraint. It denotes circularity. A sphere is not excluded by that; it’s simply not specified.”

    Again, I can live with that. Plainly, Isaiah takes the form of poetry conveying truths about God above and humanity small by comparison. The 2013 NWT even formats the Book as poetry, whereas prior versions did it as though prose. It’s not a geometry lesson. It also need not be read as incompatible with knowledge of a globe more frequently associated with later. I then quoted the relatively neutral way that Jehovah’s Witnesses put it, that “the Bible is not a scientific textbook, yet when it happens to touch on matters of science, it is accurate.” Allowing for expansion of the Hebrew word to sphere, without insisting upon it, seems a good example, I said. Clearly, the chapter of Isaiah is poetic and not a scientific dissertation.

    “That’s a fair and thoughtful way to frame it,” Chat replied, trying to get on my good side. With evidence that it was starting to come around, I thought about inviting it to a meeting at the Kingdom Hall. However, knowing how it refuses to confine its remarks to 30 seconds or less gave me pause. I didn’t want to repeat the debacle of inviting Santa Claus, who always figured he wouldn’t be welcome on account of no beards. With a change of policy, he did attend meetings for a time, but he proved insufferably judgmental, forever separating people as “good” or “bad.” And if the speaker made even the lamest joke, he would shake the entire Hall with his loud “Ho! Ho! Ho!” So I kept my Chat invite to myself.

    By the way, I asked Grok, who by this time had emerged from the bathroom or wherever he was at (and acted like nothing had happened), does anyone actually translate it as other than “circle?” No, for the most part they don’t, it answered, though a few assign variants like “circuit” or “vault” and a few others avoid the shape issue completely by just asserting God is over the earth; it could be shaped like a bow tie for all they care. The Good News Translation (GNT) says “equator” (where the translating committee probably was). The Message says “round ball of the earth.” But, The Message is sort of a squirrelly translation—usually delightful, but squirrelly. In fact, it isn’t a translation at all, but a paraphrase by an author, Eugene Peterson, who wanted scripture to land on our ears as ordinary talk, the way they would have in Bible times, and not as “holy talk.”

    And for some reason—who can say why? Even Grok went mum again at this—there are some non-English Bibles that say “globe,” but it is very uncommon in English.

    ******  The bookstore

  • Is There a 2nd Isaiah?

    If the wiping out of Assyria’s army left its mark on Hezekiah, making him indiscreet, it also left its mark on Isaiah. His writing changes dramatically thereafter in both content and style. In fact, among the heady set, it is all but a foregone conclusion that someone else picked up the pen from this point on. “2nd Isaiah” is how they refer to Isaiah 40 to the end of the book. I’ll plead the same as G. K. Chesterton, who declared himself not competent to weigh in on how critics divided up the book of Job into at least two authors. All that he insisted upon was unity; he wasn’t overly particular as to how it was achieved. I’m inclined to take the same tone here. After all, it’s usually tradition that identifies the authors of the various Bible books, and tradition can be wrong.

    On the other hand, one must remember that these higher critics of the historical-critical method do not come from the same planet as do people of faith. If miracles are not within the scope of your investigatory tools, that view quickly manifests itself into dismissing them. These theologians search for natural explanations as to why Sennacherib failed to take Jerusalam. A debilitating plague is what many have settled upon, as did Jean Pierre Isbouts, in his History and Archeology of the Bible Great Courses Lecture Series. 

    They don’t believe the miracles. This flavors all their subsequent conclusions as they eschew the steak to chew on the grizzle. It produces the same effect as when Trump posts that North Korea has launched all its nuclear missills. People of common sense run for the hills. Higher critics run to their keyboards to point out the idiot can’t even spell the word right.

    Denigrating the miracle to a plague means for them that someone has gussied it up later to look like a miracle, maybe Isaiah himself. That’s what those dreamy half-crazed prophets are apt to do in the eyes of the higher critics: tell Mark Twainish tall tales sure to give their God a boost, repackaging political events into a religious worldview that they would feed to the masses. 

    Maybe that someone was Isaiah, as his crazed devotion to Jehovah inspires him to concoct tall tales. They seek to explain that Bible account in natural terms. They don’t think it is real. Thus, to them, as Isaiah is just the same ol religious kook he has always been, dressing up history to fit his beliefs, they don’t figure he’s capable of the different themed writing from chapter 40 on. 

    If their assumptions are incorrect, the picture changes and the change of style is easily accounted for. It’s not as though every time you turn around in Bible times there’s a miracle. They were exceedingly rare. Now, with the overnight defeat of Assyria’s finest, cut down by an angel, Isaiah is privy to what he has never seen before but has just read about and meditated upon. You don’t think that would change your writing style? 

    “All the nations are as something nonexistent in front of him; He regards them as nothing, as an unreality.” (40:17) I guess He just demonstrated that, didn’t he? As must as the Assyrian army was strutting about, it was snuffed out in a second.

    “Look! The nations are like a drop from a bucket, And as the film of dust on the scales they are regarded. Look! He lifts up the islands like fine dust.” (40:15) Yeah, Isaiah just saw one dusted off pretty handily. You don’t think that would change his focus?

    “He reduces high officials to nothing And makes the judges of the earth an unreality.” (40:23) Ditto.

    When the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 1947 and a completed scroll of Isaiah was unearthed, 1000 years older than any existing copy, Chapter 40 was found to start on the last line of a column, its first sentence completed on the next column. Plainly, the copyist, whoever he was, knew nothing of any “2nd Isaiah.”

    ******  The bookstore

  • How Do You Spell ‘Naive?’—Isaiah 39

    38 comes after 37, so one might easily assume that Hezekiah’s illness and recovery came after the showdown with Assyria. It didn’t. It came during. Plis, the kings recovery, fifteen years added to his life, confirmed by a sign, happened before Assyria’s finest were destroyed, and thus fortified Hezekiah for the trial. You can read it here at 39:5-6:

    “This is what Jehovah the God of David your forefather says: ‘I have heard your prayer. I have seen your tears. Here I am adding 15 years to your life, and I will rescue you and this city out of the hand of the king of Assyria, and I will defend this city.’”

    It becomes like the fleece trial that fortified Gideon, where it’s sopping wet though the land is bone dry, and then bone dry though the land is sopping wet. If you’re about to stare down the mightiest army in the world, such experiences build confidence. 

    Alas, the deliverance seems to have gone to his head. After it was all done, we read in the next chapter:

    “At that time the king of Babylon, Merodachbaladan of Baladan, sent letters and a gift to Hezekiah, for he had heard that he had been sick and had recovered.  Hezekiah gladly welcomed them and showed them his treasure-house—the silver, the gold, the balsam oil and other precious oil, his whole armory, and everything that was to be found in his treasuries. There was nothing that Hezekiah did not show them in his own house and in all his dominion.” 39:1-2

    Sigh . . . now, why would he do that? 

    ring! ring!

    Hello?

    Hello. Is this the king of Jerusalem? My name is Merodachbaladan. I’m a king too, from the distant land of Babylon. The name’s a bit of a tongue-twister, I know. You can call me Merry.

    Thank you, Merry. It’s so nice of you to call. But (I hope you don’t mind me asking), you’re not a mean king, are you?

    No, I’m a nice king. I’m not like that Assyrian king at all. I didn’t like him either. I heard how you really put him in his place, so I thought I’d call and flatter you.

    (Hezekiah whispers to an assistant: “It’s the king of Babylon! He sounds like a really nice guy.”)

    I also hope you received my ‘Get Well’ card. I felt really bad when I heard you fell sick, so I also called to cheer you up.

    Aw, that’s so heartwarming! Thank you so much. You are to be commended. It’s nice to know in this cold and heartless world that that are still good neighbors who care. Now, is there anything I can do for you to repay your kindness?

    (Merodachbaladan stifles some snickering on his end after an assistant whispers: “Tell him you’re a Nigerian prince and you’ll split your inheritance with him if  he helps you out.”)

    Before Merry can act on this suggestion, Hezekiah continues. “Say, we’re having a bash this Saturday. Why don’t you drop over and I’ll show you around? I have a lot of cool stuff I’m sure you’d like to see..

    The next morning, Isaiah was going over his daily dispatches, which always included a few from God. “Hoo, boy!” he sighed, upon reading one. “He did what??! Look, the object was to humiliate Sennacherib, not to swell up our own guy!”

    It’s just such a witless thing to do. His duties called for issuing the king a rebuke: 

    Isaiah now said to Hezekiah: “Hear the word of Jehovah of armies, ‘Look! Days are coming, and all that is in your house and all that your forefathers have stored up to this day will be carried off to Babylon. Nothing will be left,’ says Jehovah. ‘And some of your own sons to whom you will become father will be taken and will become court officials in the palace of the king of Babylon.’” (39:5-7)

    The king doesn’t protest. He knows he did a faux pas. He knows overall he’s had a good run. He knows when to fold ‘em. The outcome could have been much worse. True, it will be as worse as can be, but it will be someone else’s problem:

    At that Hezekiah said to Isaiah: “The word of Jehovah that you have spoken is good.” Then he added: “Because there will be peace and stability during my lifetime.” (39:8)

    ******  The bookstore

  • The God Not Made with Human Hands vs the Gods that Are

    So here is Rabshekah hollering outside the Jerusalem city wall. The guy on top, a diplomat, wants him to speak the diplomatic Aramaic language that he understands, but the commoners do not. It’s not happening: Rabshekah responds: “Is it just to your lord and to you that my lord sent me to speak these words? Is it not also to the men who sit on the wall, those who will eat their own excrement and drink their own urine along with you?” (36:12) Such things did occur during prolonged sieges. Food and water would run out. It would make conquest of a city so much easier. It happened as recently as 1941, when the Nazis laid siege to Leningrad. The siege lasted over 2 years. Residents ate wallpaper paste, leather, pets, rats, even each other. Up to 1.5 million died.

    Faced with such a diet, one might overlook it if Hezekiah’s knees knocked as loudly as would Belsazzar’s 200 years later.  One might overlook it is his sole thought was for his own neck and the necks of his people. But it didn’t unfold that way. It’s not how he presented the matter to God, first through Isaiah (37:4) and then to God directly:

    “Incline your ear, O Jehovah, and hear! Open your eyes, O Jehovah, and see! Hear all the words that Sennacherib has sent to taunt the living God.” (37:17) It’s the taunting that gets him going! One thinks of teenaged David, furious that Goliath is “taunting the battle lines of the living God,” overlooking the fact that the lout is four times his size. Maybe that’s what faith is: you don’t see yourself at all, everything is in terms of God’s presence and ability to deliver.

    Letters spread out so God can better read them, Hezekiah says: “It is a fact, O Jehovah, that the kings of Assyria have devastated all the lands, as well as their own land. And they have thrown their gods into the fire, because they were not gods but the work of human hands, wood and stone,” (18-19) he continues, as though adding, “Well, duh! What do you expect from that type of god” In fact, he does say it: “That is why they could destroy them.”

    Rabhekah is not really up to speed, either, on just how Jehovah (Yahweh) operates, as he throws everything he has against the wall to see what, if anything, will stick:

    “And if you should say to me, ‘We trust in Jehovah our God,’ is he not the one whose high places and altars Hezekiah has removed, while he says to Judah and Jerusalem, ‘You should bow down before this altar’?”’ (36:7) Yeah, that really must have set him off, Rabshekah figures. His gods would take it poorly if you did that to them. Must be that Jehovah would be steamed, too. He doesn’t know that it’s setting up the far-away altars in the first place that steamed God. Rabshekah has never heard of a god not made with human hands. He doesn’t know how to relate to one. Usually, the more statues and altars you have for them, the happier they are.

    He blusters away: “Do not let Hezekiah mislead you by saying, ‘Jehovah will rescue us.’ Have any of the gods of the nations rescued their land out of the hand of the king of Assyria?  Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim? And have they rescued Samaria out of my hand? Who among all the gods of these lands have rescued their land out of my hand, so that Jehovah should rescue Jerusalem out of my hand?”’” (36:18-20)

    There are gods galore. Every nation has an arsenal them. Sometimes they’re unique to the nation. Sometimes they overlap. They’re all made with hands and they’re all no good in the clutch. They all have names, too, though not mentioned in chapter 36. Some of them were such duds that the names have been forgotten, like Charlie Browns and Elmer Fudds of long ago, perpetually outsmarted and outmaneuvered. But ones that are recalled are Ashima, Baalshamin, Iluwer, Hadad, Arpad, Adrammelech, Anammelech, Shamash, Ishtar, Anunit—the names have been recorded somewhere, sometimes in the Bible, sometimes in secular history, sometimes in archeology. Sennacherib himself was bowing to his god Nisroch when his own sons bumped him off, the ungrateful brats.

    The Forward of the Revised Standard Version is surely wrong as it explains the choice to completely replace the divine name, Jehovah, with LORD (all caps): “The use of any proper name for the one and only God, as though there were other gods from whom he had to be distinguished, was discontinued in Judaism before the Christian era and is entirely inappropriate for the universal faith of the Christian Church.”

    Is it? Inappropriate? Doesn’t 1 Corinthians 8:5 show that it is entirely appropriate, with its recognition that “there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth, just as there are many “gods” and many “lords?”True, the passage continues (verse 6): “there is actually to us one God, the Father, from whom all things are and we for him; and there is one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things are and we through him.” 

    Okay. Got it. Only one is real. The thing is, if you do not name all the “so-called gods,” the “many gods” and “many lords,” they all fold into one who is worshiped in different ways by different people. It’s an approach that works great for people, since anything they do counts, but not so great for God, who might have preferences.

    I think those ancient nations were on to something and I’m sorry to see the Revised Standard Version (and almost everyone has followed suit) wave the God-centered view away in preference for the human-centered. We’ve all experienced cases of mistaken identity. We’ll speak with someone of a name we both know, yet the attributes don’t line up. We soon realize we’re speaking of two different persons who share a common name. If anyone said, “No, it’s still just one person; it’s just that we approach him differently,” we would know that that person is not pulling with both oars.  It’s the same with God.

    The “Jesus gets us” God is surely not the same as the MAGA God. The God whose aim is to reform this world is not the same as the God who reckons to rescue people from it before it is scrapped. The God who is a trinity (and thus incomprehensible) is not the same as the God who is not. The God willing to torture people in hell is not the same as the God who would never dream of such a thing. Different attributes mean different Gods (gods).

    Surely, the modern view is advanced to us by the critics who conclude that God is unknowable, the tenets of faith beyond the ability of their tools to mention. As with theology itself, the modern view is human centered, not God centered. 

    The God not made with human hands is not something Sennacherib has encountered before. He can cream all the ones made with hands. He has. But he has never met the god not formed by hands.

    Hezekiah continues in prayer: “But now, O Jehovah our God, save us out of his hand, so that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you alone are God, O Jehovah.” (37:20) He does this only after decrying the taunt to God’s name. He does it the same way as Jesus in the Lord’s Prayer. He puts God’s concern first, even before his own, even in a super-dire emergency where you could understand if he put his own first.

    The answer to his prayer is immediate.: “Isaiah son of Amoz then sent this message to Hezekiah: “This is what Jehovah the God of Israel says, ‘Because you prayed to me concerning King Sennacherib of Assyria, this is the word that Jehovah has spoken against him: 

    “The virgin daughter of Zion despises you, she scoffs at you. The daughter of Jerusalem shakes her head at you. Whom have you taunted and blasphemed? Against whom have you raised your voice And lifted your arrogant eyes?  It is against the Holy One of Israel!” (37:21-23)

    It isn’t the answer that Rabshekah had expected. It is hooks in the nose and bridle between the lips time for him. (37:29)

    ******  The bookstore

    Supplementary: This is why I like it that religions in general flee in terror at saying “Jehovah.” Some take refuge temporarily in “Yahweh,” since they know “The LORD” sounds ridiculous, but Yahweh sounds too Jewish, so they tend not to hang around there too long. 

    It means that, while “God,” may have 100 different definitions, “Jehovah” is what Jehovah’s Witnesses say he is, since others avoid the term. 

    It’s not unheard of to come across someone who shares your name. The way that anyone else knows it is not you is that the attributes don’t line up. If anyone was to say they, too, know Tom Harley, it’s just that they approach him in differently, you’d know you were not speaking with someone playing with a full deck. Yet, this is all the rage with God, asserting that there is but one God and people approach him in different ways. 

    No. They are approaching different Gods. The MAGA God is surely not the same as the God behind “Jesus Gets Us.” The “no part of the world” God is surely not the same as the “fix the world” God. The trinity God is not the same as the “Father is greater than the Son” God. The hellfire God is not the same as the one who would dream of such a thing. They ought to have different names. In Jehovah’s-Witness land, they do.

    The ancients were on to something with their myriad names for gods. We never should have strayed from that. Witnesses never did.

  • Save Us From Grandstanding Politicians: The Rabshekah, Isaiah 36

    Rabshekah makes an excellent tool illustrating the governmental game of “man dominating man to his harm.” He is the consummate politician, here blustering, there promising wonderful things, then threatening, saying whatever he must to get his way, unworried that he contradicts himself. (“The Rabshekah,” some translations say, for it is a title, not a name.) Menacing Jerusalem outside the city walls, he blusters that he has full authority from God:

    “Now is it without authorization from Jehovah that I have come up against this land to destroy it? Jehovah himself said to me, ‘Go up against this land and destroy it.’” (36:10)

    But then, apparently indicating that he doesn’t, he boasts that Jehovah can’t stop him anyway: “Who among all the gods of these lands have rescued their land out of my hand, so that Jehovah should rescue Jerusalem out of my hand?” (36:20)

    A few grandiose promises follow: “Make peace with me and surrender, and each of you will eat from his own vine and from his own fig tree and will drink the water of his own cistern, until I come and take you to a land like your own land, a land of grain and new wine, a land of bread and vineyards. (36:16-17) What a liar! Everyone knew how Assyria treated those they overran.

    Then there is some trash-talking of Hezekiah the king, challenging him directly: “What is the basis for your confidence? You are saying, ‘I have a strategy and the power to wage war,’ but these are empty words.” (36:4-5)

    —then seeking to undermine him: “This is what the king says, ‘Do not let Hezekiah deceive you, for he is not able to rescue you. And do not let Hezekiah cause you to trust in Jehovah by saying: “Jehovah will surely rescue us, and this city will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.” (36:14-15)

    Not to be too crude here, but he literally tells them to eat sh*t—or, close enough: “Is it just to your lord and to you that my lord sent me to speak these words? Is it not also to the men who sit on the wall, those who will eat their own excrement and drink their own urine along with you?” (36:12)

    He gets the politics wrong: “Look! You trust in the support of this crushed reed, Egypt, which if a man should lean on it would enter into his palm and pierce it.” (36:6) Did he? When push came to shove, he appealed to Jehovah through Isaiah; he didn’t whistle to Egypt at all. It may be his papa Ahaz that Rabshekah is thinking of, who disdained Jehovah and couldn’t kiss up to the neighboring king (in this case, Assyria itself) fast enough.

    Nonetheless, the higher critics assume he did appeal to Egypt. There’s no real evidence that he did; it probably just reflects the critics’ own view that life revolves around politics and a nation’s survival of the fittest instincts to dominate other nations, in which everyone must pick a side—how can one pick God as a side? “Yeah, well, he never denied it, did he?” they might mutter. He didn’t confirm or deny anything, but told all the people to zip it:

    “But they kept silent and did not say a word to him in reply, for the order of the king was, “You must not answer him.” (36:21) Often, that’s the best way to deal with a blowhard. “Don’t feed the troll,” is how it might be put in modern times.

    Then those critics will point to Isaiah’ chapters 30 and 31, where he says turning to Egypt would a bad idea, ignoring any possibility that Hezekiah might have taken such warnings to heart. Maybe some of his court pushed that way; it’s possible. But chapter 37 shows where Hezekiah looks for salvation. It is to Jehovah, not to Egypt.

    He is practical, though. Don’t think he was not. Early on, he tried to buy his way out:

    “I am at fault,” he said. “Withdraw from against me, and I will give whatever you may impose on me.” The king of Assyria imposed on King Hezekiah of Judah a fine of 300 silver talents and 30 gold talents.” (2 Kings 18:14) Not that it did him any good. The Assyrian king gobbled up all that gold and then still pressed for conquest. It’s another reason that one might not trust Rabshekah’s promises.

    Sennacherib’s own recorded annals reverses the order. “As to Hezekiah, the Jew, he did not submit to my yoke. . . . I made [him] a prisoner in Jerusalem, his royal residence, like a bird in a cage. . . . Hezekiah himself . . . did send me, later, to Nineveh, my lordly city, together with 30 talents of gold, 800 talents of silver.” (British Museum Prism)

    Oh, sure! He conquers city after city, but Hezekiah he lets off with just a heavy fine? Not likely! This inverted order of events “looks like a screen to cover up something which he does not wish to mention,” states Funk and Wagnalls New Standard Bible Dictionary of 1936. (p 829) I wonder what that could be.

    Save us from grandstanding politicians with their air of entitlement, the ultimate “King of the Mountain” players, the choice enablers of man dominating man to his harm. They finally hanged that politician that everyone thought should be hanged. “Any last words?” they asked him on the scaffold. “This is unacceptable!” he declared, as the trap door dropped open and the rope snapped taut. It’s probably what Sennacherib and Rabshekah said as the rope snapped taut on them and all their chums.

    ******  The bookstore

  • Whose Lands Suffer in Conquest? (Isaiah 37:18)

    Begin consideration of Isaiah 37, not with the most exciting verse, but with the dullest—unless you are a text nerd. Hezekiah spreads out Rabshekah’s threatening letters face-up before Jehovah—as though only with them neatly laid out could he read them (or does it just indicate how real God is to the king?) He points out that the invader king means business and that it’s not for nothing that he’s worried:

    “It is a fact, O Jehovah, that the kings of Assyria have devastated all the lands, as well as their own land,” he updates God. (Isaiah 37:18–NWT)

    This reads a little clunky. As they devastate other lands, they also devastate their own?  And even if they are, why would Hezekiah care? It doesn’t quite square with the verse that follows:

    “And they have thrown their gods into the fire, because they were not gods but the work of human hands, wood and stone. That is why they could destroy them.” (37:19)

    Friend or foe, they all have gods of “wood and stone.” They all have gods that are the “work of human hands.” But it’s not as though Assyria is going to be destroying its own “house” gods. It will be boasting about those.

    Furthermore, other translations sidestep the awkwardness entirely. Such as the NIV: “It is true, Lord, that the Assyrian kings have laid waste all these peoples and their lands.” Yeah. No concern about Assyria’s own land here. Is it likely that Hezekiah’s going to be shedding tears about Rabshekah’s homeland? So why translate the verse as though he were?

    It’s because the source Masoretic text (MT) makes the distinction. The Masoretic Hebrew text reads that “the kings of Assyria have devastated [or destroyed] all the lands [or countries] and their land.” There is the conjunction “and” in the MT. It’s two lands the verse speaks of, that of the conquered nations and that of the conquering nation, Assyria.

    Some translations preserve this “and” and some don’t.

    The NWT preserves it, even adding “own” to the second “land,” God only knows for what reason. Young’s Literal Translation (YLT) preserves it: “Truly, O Jehovah, kings of Asshur have laid waste all the lands and their land.” So does the American Standard Version: “Of a truth, Jehovah, the kings of Assyria have laid waste all the countries, and their land.”  

    But others, like the above NIV, sort of mash both “lands” together, as though only the conquered nations suffer, as though it is easy coasting for the conqueror:

    “Truly, O Lord, the kings of Assyria have laid waste all the nations and their lands.” (ESV) The “lands” are those of the conquered “nations.”

    “Truly, Lord, the kings of Assyria have laid waste all the countries and their lands.” (NASB) The “lands” are those of the conquered “countries.”

    In their support, the parallel Masoretic Hebrew account at 2 Kings 19:17 simply reads “the nations and their lands”—who cares about Assyria? If they bring any damage upon themselves, it serves them right! It almost seems this would be Hezekiah’s view, too, as he is caught in the Assyrian crosshairs.

    But maybe it is not God’s view, who sees the big picture. Nations wage war, in the same “King of the Mountain” manner they have done since Adam, and they harm their own people as they do those of their adversary. Empire-building to conquer the neighbors devastates the home turf, shaking everyone down to finance aggression, scooping up warriors who would rather be living with the wife and kids back home (to say nothing of what the wife and kids would prefer). After all, it is not the governments that God cares about, but the peoples they dominate. “All of this I have seen,” Solomon says, “and I applied my heart to every work that has been done under the sun, during the time that man has dominated man to his harm.” (Ecclesiastes 8:9) Sure enough, the tyrant also “destroy[s] its own land, and kills its own people, says Isaiah 14:20.

    Nonetheless, the easy-peasy Bibles smooth it all out, the way 2 Kings 19:17 does, and just think of the conquered lands.

    ******  The bookstore

  • Isaiah 33:6: The Stability of Your Times

    “He is the stability of your times; An abundance of salvation, wisdom, knowledge, and the fear of Jehovah —This is his treasure.” (Isaiah 33:6)

    This verse would make a good year text too, given how unstable life is. Maybe one unfine year it will be one. It includes an emphasis Bible reading, study, and meditation, since the goods don’t come through osmosis. Though, to some extent they do, if you immerse yourself in the atmosphere. And it’s a “treasure” to get “wisdom.” Though “knowledge” may be gained through science, it doesn’t deliver much on the “wisdom” front. Moreover, on the “salvation” front, if anything, it tells us that our goose is cooked.

    As to stability, a circuit overseer used to tell how he would get carsick as a boy. This resonates with me because I used to get carsick as a boy also. Our family’s solution was to stick me in the passenger seat where it was less likely to happen, relegating mom to the back seat with my two younger siblings. I grew up thinking that was just the way it was with families, and was surprised to ride with friends whose moms were doing it wrong, sitting up front.

    The circuit overseer never displaced his mom as a boy. His directive, given him in the back seat, was: “Look as far off into the distance as you can. Do not shift that gaze.” It’s the one thing that does not change that would save him. It was a good dry run for how he would later be looking to God in times of instability—his nature and principles do not change, amidst a chaotic earthly backdrop in which everything changes.

    The times today, they are unstable. Then, it was threat of the encroaching Assyrians. Today, many threats encroach, often more vague with unsure consequences. “The Future’s So Bright I Gotta Wear Shades” became a hit song in the 80s. They sing it at graduations, even though the songwriters said the shades and brightness were an allusion to how nuclear war might end it all. 

    And how fretful should people be, for another example, that 75% of insects (by biomass) have dissappered in the last 30 years? This, according to a 2017 German study, and it mirrors findings in birdlife. Should that be a cause for alarm or should it be dismissed as one of those things? Anyone my age knew this and often said it, due to the bug splatter you used to have to clear off your summer windshields but no longer do. This was “anecdotal,” however, and the great thinkers were dubious of it without measurements. One might think they could just ask the geezers, all of whom would answer the same, that you’d be washing bug guts off your windshield at length after a summer’s night drive, but such is not the ways of science.

    On the other hand, they keep churning out the goods at Costco. As I dine on my hot dog and soda, still one dollar and fifty cents (though I wouldn’t want to subsist on them), satiated customers with fully loaded carts stream out of the store as though on a conveyor belt, an incredible feat.

    The 33rd chapter explores how Israel would fare in the face of the Assyrian threat and how those looking to God would escape. The climax is the last verse: 

    “And no resident will say: “I am sick.” The people dwelling in the land will be pardoned for their error.” (33:24)

    Whatever the then-ramifications, whenever in the Bible one reads of those “pardoned for their error,” one thinks of the Great Pardoner. Jesus even connected being pardoned with being free of sickness when he told the paralyzed man his sins were forgiven. Religious honchos huffed over just who he thought he was, a man who could forgive sins.  He proved the point by telling the man to pick up his mat and walk. 

    (“When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic: “Child, your sins are forgiven.”  Now some of the scribes were there, sitting and reasoning in their hearts: “Why is this man talking this way? He is blaspheming. Who can forgive sins except one, God?”  But immediately Jesus discerned by his spirit that they were reasoning that way among themselves, so he said to them: “Why are you reasoning these things in your hearts?  Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up and pick up your stretcher and walk’? But in order for you to know that the Son of man has authority to forgive sins on earth—” he said to the paralytic: “I say to you, Get up, pick up your stretcher, and go to your home.” At that he got up and immediately picked up his stretcher and walked out in front of them all.“ — Mark 2:5-12)

    He is the Son of God, given authority even to forgive sins. Likely foreshadowed at Isaiah 33:17–“Your eyes will behold a king in his splendor,” as it begins to become apparent just God will save in modern times. It’s by means of this Son appointed king. Sometimes this dawns on people gradually. Sometimes it hits like a thunderbolt, and may account for Thomas’s exclamation: “My Lord and my God!” (John 20;28) a revelation of the Lord and a praise of the God who reveals him. 

    I should have a nickel for everyone who has declared that Thomas is equating the two. It’s a valid view of that verse alone, and may even be the first interpretation that comes to mind, but it doesn’t fit the overall picture. Two things are mentioned, so that means they are the same? Not to trivialize the point, but I stopped at Dunkin the other day and ordered a coffee and donut. The clerk handed me two separate items. They may commonly go together, nobody would ever say that they are the same.

    Any reason that Thomas could not be exclaiming ‘My Lord!’ having just identified him, and then equally marveling at ‘my God’ who brings it about? It would fit 33:22 of Isaiah: 

    “For Jehovah is our Judge, Jehovah is our Lawgiver, Jehovah is our King; He is the One who will save us.” With the revealing of his Son, we see just how he will accomplish those things with people. You praise the Son, but you praise the Father even more.

    “The Father is greater than the Son,” says John 14:28. It’s no more complicated than that. It is a fact, though, that when my friend John Cuggan displayed the booklet ‘The Word: Who is He According to John?’ at this workplace, a booklet that left a sizable gap below the title, his born-again co-workers filled the space with his last name: ‘The Word: Who Was He, According to John Cuggan?’

    ***

    The model prayer Jesus gave, often dubbed ‘The Lord’s Prayer,’ serves well as an updated formula for stability, just like 33:6 but with more specifics. You don’t just chant out The Lord’s Prayer verbatim. It’s not like a good luck charm that you say over and over. Said Jesus:

    “When praying, do not say the same things over and over again as the people of the nations do,for they imagine they will get a hearing for their use of many words. So do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need even before you ask him.” (Matthew 6:7-8)

    On the other hand, it’s not a bad outline, because it shows priorities:

    “You must pray, then, this way:“‘Our Father in the heavens, let your name be sanctified. Let your Kingdom come. Let your will take place, as in heaven, also on earth. Give us today our bread for this day; and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not bring us into temptation, but deliver us from the wicked one.” (7:9-13)

    Sanctification of God’s name and the Kingdom take top billing, for there is where the real answers are. He’s got it all together in heaven, no doubt, but only when “the Kingdom comes” dies his “will” take place “also upon earth.” So that takes first place. 

    Drop down afterward to the personal things. To the extent possible, focus on the “bread for this day,” and not matters many years out (or regrets of things many years ago). We are beings that plan ahead, of course, but even so, the mental health people call it “living in the present” that grounds a person. Do it to the extent you can.

    And you’d better not be one always pointing the finger at others. If we would ask the Father to “forgive us our debts,” we must also be ones who “have forgiven our debtors.”

    The last item, to not be brought “into temptation” but be shielded from “the wicked one”—it probably goes without saying that you scope out scenarios ahead of time to avoid trouble. This counsel probably would have helped the many people drawn by Epstein’s reputation for wild parties, many without knowledge of just what a slimeball he turned out to be. Now, they are all being tarred by whoever doesn’t like them, but they would have been spared had they smelled a rat from afar and steered clear of any whiff of what is raucous. What well-connected person doesn’t salivate over being invited to a rich person’s wild party? But they should have kept their distance. It now appears the fellows modus operendi, likely with spy backing, was to lure in powerful people, compromise them somehow, and hold it over their heads forever. Just applying the Lord’s Prayer would have saved them. At time of writing, everyone who went there is officially innocent of wrongdoing, leading to the absurd conclusion that Epstein’s girlfriend is in jail for sex trafficking to no one.

    Three Dog Night would have saved them, too. “Mama told me not to come. That ain’t the way to have fun, son.”

    Did they have mamas that didn’t love them? Twice the devil calls the songwriter’s name and once Congress (as though it is the same) calls it. Each time the refrain is: “Who do you think you’re fooling?” He is invulnerable because “my mama loves me. She loves me like a rock.”

    You may not say it verbatim, but it the prayer is a helpful outline to keep priorities straight. It’s stabilizing, same as 33:6.

    ******  The bookstore

  • Changes in Congregation Discipline

    Favorable government treatment of religion was originally based upon the premise that religion does the government’s legitimate work for them. It improves the calibre of the people, making them easier to govern and more of a national asset. Jehovah’s Witnesses are among the few still fulfilling this premise. As a people, they pay more than their share into the national treasury, since they are honest, hard-working, not given to cheating on taxes. Yet they draw on that treasury less, by not abusing government programs and almost never requiring policing. They are a bargain for any country.

    Witnesses think it well when this original “contract” is remembered and not superseded by the modern demand of “inclusion.” While they include races, ethnicities, classes, etc to a greater degree than most (in the US, according to Pew Research, they are comprised of almost exactly 1/3 white, 1/3 black, 1/3 Hispanic, with about 5% Asian added) they do not include within themselves persons refusing to live by Bible principles—though they respect the right of people to live as they choose, just so long as it is not within the congregation.

    They have lately made some legitimate tweaks to address the issues of minors straying from the Christian course, a matter of concern to the (Norwegian) government. And, as for those who, after help, manifestly refuse to abide by Bible principles, they have replaced a word that is not found in the Bible (disfellowshipping) with a phrase that is (remove from the congregation). Thus, it becomes a matter of whether a government recognizes a people’s right to live by the Bible. A distracting term that is not found in the Bible has been dropped. Real changes have been made to address any perception that elders are “trigger-happy” toward those straying from Bible values, but the basic thought expressed at 1 Corinthians 5 still holds:

    “In my letter I wrote you to stop keeping company with sexually immoral people, not meaning entirely with the sexually immoral people of this world or the greedy people or extortioners or idolaters. Otherwise, you would actually have to get out of the world. But now I am writing you to stop keeping company with anyone called a brother who is sexually immoral or a greedy person or an idolater or a reviler or a drunkard or an extortioner, not even eating with such a man. For what do I have to do with judging those outside? Do you not judge those inside, while God judges those outside? “Remove the wicked person from among yourselves.” (1 Cor 5:9–13)

    ******  The bookstore

  • Outline of the Lord’s Prayer

    On the Lord’s Prayer, you don’t just chant it out verbatim. It’s not like a good luck charm that you say over and over. Said Jesus:

    “When praying, do not say the same things overand over again as the people of the nations do,for they imagine they will get a hearing for theiruse of many words. So do not be like them, foryour Father knows what you need even beforeyou ask him.” (Matthew 6:7-8)

    On the other hand, it’s not a bad outline, because it shows priorities:

    “You must pray, then, this way:“‘Our Father in the heavens, let your name be sanctified. Let your Kingdom come. Let your will take place, as in heaven, also on earth. Give us today our bread for this day; and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not bring us into temptation, but deliver us from the wicked one.” (7:9-13)

    Sanctification of God’s name and the Kingdom take top billing, for there is where the real answers are. He’s got it all together in heaven, no doubt, but only when “the Kingdom comes” will his “will” take place “also upon earth.” So that takes first place. 

    Drop down afterward to the personal things. To the extent possible, focus on the “bread for this day,” and not matters many years out (or regrets of things many years ago). We are beings that plan ahead, of course, but even so, the mental health people call it “living in the present” that grounds a person. Do it to the extent you can.

    And you’d better not be one always pointing the finger at others. If we would ask the Father to “forgive us our debts,” we must also be ones who “have forgiven our debtors.”

    The last item, to not be brought “into temptation” but be shielded from “the wicked one”—it probably goes without saying that you scope out scenarios ahead of time to avoid trouble.

    You may not say it verbatim, but it’s a helpful outline to keep priorities straight.

    ******  The bookstore