Today is the IDOP for the persecuted church worldwide. Many people today are languishing under torture or duress for the sake of the Name. What about us? We go to church, chat afterward, and rush home to watch the Cowboys game. Eat, drink, and be merry.
This is not how we should be. We must be constantly alert soldiers, armored with righteousness and faith, with the Sword of the Spirit -- the Word of God -- as our weapon. When Paul uses that phrase in Ephesians 6 (and in 1 Timothy 4), he is referring to words with God: prayer. Prayer is our weapon, and we must be constantly diligent and alert, praying at all times.
I only hope these stories will give you an idea of the need for this warfare.
Brave men like Gao Zhisheng of China stand up in opposition to the Communist Party's policy of brutal control over religious affairs. He was captured in February this year and carried away to brutal torture. He has not been seen publicly.
Women of steadfast faith like Asia Bibi of Pakistan are under duress because of their faith. Asia was arrested and is awaiting trial on charges of blasphemy. She belongs to one of the three Christian families in her village of 1500 families. When her Muslim coworkers began to pressure her to reject Christianity for Islam, and she said that "Our Christ is the true prophet of God." As the story says: "Upon hearing this response the Muslim women became angry and began to beat Asia Bibi. Then some men came and took her and locked her in a room. They announced from mosque loudspeakers that she would be punished by having her face blackened and being paraded through the village on a donkey." Christians got the police to intervene before this could happen, but she still awaits trial on blasphemy charges.
Some Christians were not so lucky as to have police intervention. In Gao's case, police intervention was the problem and not the solution. During one of the last times he was kidnapped, they tortured him grievously, leaving no place untouched and no torture means unused. They used the electric baton everywhere. His testicles. His anus. His mouth. They stuck toothpicks into his... "lamp."
It's not just men and women. Children are suffering, too. Silvia Merry Sarker, a Christian girl in the 8th grade, was kidnapped by four men of a Muslim family who wants to take her father's land. They forced Silvia to convert and marry one of them, Al-Amin by name. She is not even twelve years old, but a forged affidavit claims that she is 19, married, and converted to Islam. Her kidnappers were detained as suspects, but got out on early bail before police could garner any useful information. She's been missing for three months, and Silvia's father is afraid to send his older daughters to school ever since his youngest, Silvia, was kidnapped. The government of Bangladesh is being negligent of this Christian minority's plight.
The way of peace is being killed. As Revelation explains, for righteousness to truly come, the righteous must first shed their blood and fill the cup -- "for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure" (Gen 15:16).
See also the Persecution Blog. "Fear none of the things you are about to suffer. Behold! The Devil is about to cast some of you into prison so that you may be tested and may have affliction for ten days. Become faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life... Whoever overcomes will by no means be affected by the second death." Rev. 2:10-11.
Oklahoma Christian University's student-run newspaper, The Talon, ran a patriotic opinion article recently.
I decided to publish a response article: "A Christian Perspective on Warfare." I forgot to title it, but the editor gave it a good title.
Update: Someone decided to respond to me: "Defending this Nation's Guardians."
I love taking any questions about pacifism -- or religion in general. Please approach in kindness, love, and humility. I hope that I've exhibited those traits so far.
I want to challenge people to really read their Bibles. Not just vaguely remember that some passage exists somewhere that mentions this or that, but actually know what's going on and why. Biblical education is necessary, because the Bible is too good to not share, and God is too good to keep to ourselves.
The ESV has been a refreshing translation to me in some ways, though I am not fully convinced of it yet. I don't take it at face value simply because it has an affiliation with the Church of Christ.
So, in reading Ephesians 2:1-4, here is the ESV text:
1 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. 4But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us,(courtesy of biblegateway.com)
Overall, the ESV's intent is to preserve the original flow and syntax of the Greek text as much as is intelligibly possible in English. This comes with its advantages and disadvantages, of course. On the one hand, reproducing the connectives (..."and") at beginning of sentences does preserve the original pattern and allow readers to see the connection between passages more readily. The lack of clear paragraph division also preserves the ambiguity of the original text, which leads to some fun for the English and Bible majors.
Verse 3: I can understand rendering ἐπιθυμίαι (desires) as "passions"; perhaps that is the better translation than what I usually use. However, the beginning connective for the sentence is removed. Verse 3 is an admission that it is not just "you" but "we" also who lived among them once. The circumstantial participle "carrying out" is fair, thought contextually influenced. However, I can see why they did not render ἐπιθυμίαι as "desires" before, since they use it here for θελήματα. While that's all well and good, I have to scratch my head about the desires of the body and mind. How should I word this objection?
Firstly, let's look at the word for "body." Precise translation of σάρξ (flesh/sinful nature) is a tricky matter. Literally it means flesh, but the metaphors they attached to the word flesh are different from the ones we attach to it now. As Dr. Joel Hoffman, a biblioblogger with a much clearer understanding than my own, says:
"In our culture, “flesh” has at least three main metaphoric uses: physicality (“he’s here in the flesh”), robustness (“flesh out”), and sex (“the flesh trade”)."
While it may be debated that Paul meant sinful nature by σάρξ, the debate is over my head so I won't go there. However, it sure seems odd to translate it as "body." No doubt it was for euphony since it fits well corresponding to "mind." Yet, the biblical word body should not be attached with sinfulness; Ephesians particularly uses the church image of the "body" of Christ. Should we really use the word "body" in such a context as this, given the treatment of body (σῶμα) in Ephesians? I think translating σάρξ as body is a bit of a stretch, and euphony does not grant proper justification; it mars the otherwise-positive uses of body in Ephesians: church as body of Christ, and woman as man's body (i.e. "without your wives, you would have an empty existence like a disembodied floating head [watch Futurama]. Knowing how irreplaceable your wife is, love her."). Body in Ephesians is not ever used negatively, so this is a poor choice.
I also have problems with "mind" here. διάνοια can mean mind/heart, the thinking faculty/understanding, or simply thought. In the Septuagint it was sometimes used as a translation for לֵב (e.g. Gn 17:17), but here it occurs in the plural. Really, my concern comes down to a theological question: "were/are the body and mind of unbelievers corrupted in a way that a believer's mind and body are no longer corrupted?" Perhaps this isn't the right question, and perhaps διάνοια has been translated effectively. However, I still find that the difference in number between σάρξ (singular "flesh") and διάνοιαι ("minds/thoughts") leads me to believe "flesh and [corrupt] thoughts" would be more precise. While the plural can mean minds, or perhaps could be translated as a collective singular "mind," (which is way over my head), I still find "thoughts" to be more natural. Or, if collective singular, "mind-set" would be better than simply "mind."
Theologically, Paul said that the Gentiles were corrupted completely, body, heart and mind - in Romans 1, but Romans is the latest Pauline epistle and so contains his fully developed understanding. Would it be a mistake to retro-interpret Ephesians 2 in light of Romans 1? I take the canon as it is (though I value Tobit as I value Mere Christianity), and so I accept the final form. Ephesians was also written by Paul, the Paul of faith, and for me that qualifies applying Romans to Ephesians without regard to historical authorship or time of writing.
So, the "sons of disobedience" were fully corrupt, body and soul. However, in Ephesians 2 we have the "before" and the "after" of the transformative power of the Gospel. And the fact is, Christians are still subject to corruption in both "flesh" and "thoughts," though I do not think it right to call us utterly "depraved." I must ask my more scholarly friends reading this: how does this theological subject impact the translation of Ephesians 2?
Moving on, this text fails to take into account the difference between the English perfect tense and the Greek perfect tense. There is some overlap, and sometimes a Greek perfect should be translated as an English perfect, but here it would be better rendered "by grace are ye saved," as the King James says. While the King James translators may have had inferior textual witnesses and a weaker grasp of Greek than modern translators, they did know English quite thoroughly. So, the King James Version's treatment of the perfect tense is better than some of the more modern translations (see Daniel Wallace's Greek Grammar: Beyond the Basics on the intensive perfect).
Another critique: participles are rendered without flavor, as if our flexibility in participle use is correlative with its use in Greek. Actually, there is quite a bit of overlap, but English readers are simply not acquainted with usage of the participle. The average American does not even know what a participle is, in fact. So, it's a poor idea to say in v 4 "God, being rich in mercy..." Even though one can use an English participle with a causative idea, it's so awkward to us that few readers indeed would be able to grasp its meaning.
Now, let me give you my [rough] translation, then I'll let you go on your merry way.
And you were dead in your transgressions and your sins, in which you once walked according to the custom of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air -- the spirit now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all also once conducted ourselves in the desires of sinful nature, doing the bidding of our sinful nature and our [futile] thoughts. But God, because He is rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us,
All in all, I consider the ESV a good translation to be used by very well-read readers who want to have a greater understanding of how Hebrew and Greek syntax works. This particular text they do alright with, but I still disagree at least on the "body and mind" part.
Overall, this critique was a fun exercise and nothing more.
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