Category: Exegesis

From the Mailbox; Dear Pastor, What About Equity?

Dear Bret,

“Today I noticed that in both the ESV (which I read) and the KJV, the term “equity” is mentioned around ten times, whereas “equality” is mentioned only around once. These verses point out that God judges the peoples with equity and that judging with equity is a positive good. Could you explain the difference between biblical equity and the equity desired by the woke community that forms part of the DEI triad. Has that community bastardized a perfectly good biblical word and given it a contradictory meaning ? In short, if someone asks if I am in favor of equity, what should I say? Thank you for your time and attention.

Greg Settles
Tennessee

Hello Greg,

This link to Strong’s Concordance suggests that equity is also translated as uprightness

https://biblehub.com/hebrew/5229.htm

Likewise this Hebrew word can be translated as equity, uprightness, even-ness;

https://biblehub.com/hebrew/4339.htm

This link is also helpful;

https://strongsconcordance.org/results.html?k=equity

Clearly, the way that the word equity works in the OT is differently than the way we use the word “equity” today. In Scripture equity guarantees that any judgment or justice will be done on the basis of uprightness or even-ness. Equity, in our current climate in the context of DIE (Diversity, Inclusion, Equity) means that any judgment or justice will be done in such a way to be uneven towards those who are gifted or talented vis-a-vis those who are not gifted and have lesser talents. So, I would say you are on to something when you ask;

Has that (DIE) community bastardized a perfectly good biblical word and given it a contradictory meaning ?

You finish by asking me;

In short, if someone asks if I am in favor of equity, what should I say?

I would probably answer that question by saying that, “Why, yes, by all means I am in favor of Biblical equity.”

Hope that helps Greg. Thanks for trusting me enough to ask your question.

Pastor Bret

 

 

 

Does God Only Love “Love” & Always Hate “Hate?”

 

They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate.

Edmund Burke

“To idolize love as an absolute value without defining this love in relation to God’s Law is no other sin than Adam’s: to decide for ourselves, arbitrarily, what is good and worthy of being loved, and what is not. Do to so is to put ourselves in the place of God and to confuse all values; it is to put good and evil both beneath the foot of equality. And in this sense, equality — a great idol of our time — abolishes the difference between God and man, between good and evil, and even between creatures themselves, all created by God to respect the place that our Lord and King has assigned them.”

 

Jean Marc-Berthoud

In Defense of God’s Law — p. 10-11

In the above we find the response to those sodomites and others who argue in defense of sodomite marriage that “you have no right to determine who people are allowed and are not allowed to love.” It is true I as the creature have no right to determine who people are and are not to love but God does have that right and as God as assigned sodomy as evil we must hate sodomite marriages and sodomites because of our Love to and for God and for the godly.

Consider God’s Word which underscores my point;

Romans 12:9 Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil. Cling to what is good.

Cleaving to that which is good is commended with abhorrence of that which is evil. The one cannot be done without the other. The strength of our love for good measures itself by the energy with which we hate evil. This is the great failing of the modern Church. The modern Church along with the rest of the culture bemoans “hate” and comes up with stupid little phrases like “Love wins” and that quite apart from any consideration of what is being hated and what is being loved. A rightly directed hate is every bit as loving as a wrongly directed love is hateful. It is not love which is good and hate that which is evil. Love and hate can each be a virtue or vice, depending upon the objects to which they attach themselves. And what ultimately differentiates good from evil — in love or hate — is the very person of God, His eternal nature, and Holy character. Further, as God’s Law is a reflection of God’s character we likewise can determine our proper loves and proper hates by looking to God’s law as the norm that norms all our norms of love and hate.

Once Reformation falls again upon the West it will be typified by the elimination of non-discriminating love — which is idolatry — and the embrace of a discriminating law-defined hate.

Genesis 1 Contra Polytheism

What Genesis 1 is undertaking and accomplishing is a radical and sweeping affirmation of monotheism vis-a-vis polytheism, syncretism, and idolatry. Each day of creation … dismisses an additional cluster of deities… On the first day, the gods of light and darkness are dismissed. On the second day, the gods of sky and sea. On the third day, earth gods and gods of vegetation. On the fourth day, sun, moon and star gods. The fifth and sixth days take way any associations with divinity from the animal kingdom. And finally human existence, too, is emptied of any intrinsic divinity — while at the same time all human beings, from the greatest to the least, and not just pharaoh, kings, and heroes, are granted a divine likeness and mediation.

H. Conrad Hyer
Biblical Literalism: Constricting the Cosmic Dance — pg. 101

Deuteronomy 21:18 … The Rebellious Child

Deut. 21:18 “If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and who, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them, 19 then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city and unto the gate of his place. 20 And they shall say unto the elders of his city, ‘This, our son, is stubborn and rebellious; he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard.’ 21 And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones so that he die. So shalt thou put evil away from among you, and all Israel shall hear and fear.

The graciousness of God’s law

1.) Note that this law ends the idea that children are absolutely owned by the parents to do with what they will. Instead, the Parent must go to a larger deliberative body in order to convict the child. The law thus gives the child a higher court outside the home where he would essentially be able to appeal a wicked parents desire to kill him. Remember, the way the pagans treated their children. This law is a safeguard against that.

2.) Clearly, this law applies to an older adolescent or young adult child still living in the home. Toddlers aren’t prone to be drunkards. We are likely looking at an adult child who has established a pattern of rebellion and criminality.

3.) Allowing such a delinquent child to live would be to allow the leaven of wickedness to infect the whole social order. One unrepentant adult child allowed to exercise their sovereign will over God’s will would breed more of the same and eventually, the whole Godly social order would be overthrown. Stoning such a guilty offspring is thus grace to the whole covenant community.

4.) I find it beyond astonishing that a culture that is so glib about torturing and killing the unborn as followed by selling the unborn body parts on the free market finds the ability to be outraged over a God who would legislate the death penalty for an adult child who has set a pattern of rebellion and criminality. Modern man complaining about the God of the Bible being cruel is like Miley Cyrus complaining about Madonna’s lack of virtue.  Clearly, we see here that this commandment is graciousness to God’s covenant community.

5.) Finally, there is no record in Scripture of this ever happening.

Mary’s Magnificat and the Liberation Theology Narrative

he has brought down the mighty from their thrones
    and exalted those of humble estate;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
    and the rich he has sent away empty.

Luke 1:52f

The position of Mary (or Zechariah, or Simeon, or Anna, etc.) is not important because they were low on the social ladder but because they were saints of God despite their poverty and oppression. Poverty as poverty doesn’t score you any points in the Kingdom of God if one doesn’t belong to Christ and the people of God. The antithesis of the Scripture is not between rich vs. poor but between the Seed of the Serpent vs. The seed of the woman. This is underscored also in Dr. Luke’s parabolic account of the rich man (Dives) and Lazarus. Lazarus is not in Hades because he was rich and Lazarus is not in Abraham’s bosom because he was poor. Dives is an occupant of Hades because he would not listen to Moses and the prophets regarding the Messiah while Dives did listen. God does not hate the rich because they are rich and He does not love the poor because they are poor.

The emphasis in Mary’s Song is that God remembers His people who are being oppressed by the wicked mighty. The whole thrust of Luke’s songs is to demonstrate that God has not forgotten His people despite the fact it might look that way and despite the fact that they are being oppressed by wealthy wickedness in high places (Herod, Augustus Caesar etc.). The fact that the Lord Christ is born among the lowly does not prove that lowliness as lowliness is a virtue. After all, Jesus was born of the line of great King David and God includes the High Born in the nativity story by including visitation from the Kings of the East. In Scripture, God esteems those in Covenant, rich or poor, and destroys those outside of covenant, rich or poor.

The point in Luke’s Songs is not that God favors poor wicked people over righteous rich people. The point is that God has remembered Israel and He has remembered Israel despite her captivity and the low status she has sunken into. This is Redemptive History and what is being accentuated is God remembering His promise to raise up a Messiah. The character of God is what is being put on display, not the status of those whom He is remembering. What is not being accentuated is that God is social class conscious. Believe me, if the nativity story were written today, given how much the Wealthy are hated by our current Cultural Marxist clergy, God would have His Messiah born among the rich and royal to add the factor of “isn’t God amazing that He brought His Messiah among such ignoble filthy rich people.” However, what we don’t see in the nativity narrative of the cultural Marxist clergy is the amazing God who keeps His promises no matter what. No, what we see are the amazing poor people who, “naturally enough” are lifted up. Given their noble poverty they deserve it after all.

Does God bring down all the “Mighty” from their thrones? Did God bring down Job? Abraham? David? Are Zaccheus or Joseph of Arimathea to be counted as inferior saints in the New and Better covenant because they were wealthy? Is the New and Better covenant characterized now by God hating all wealthy people and loving all poor people regardless of their faith or lack of faith in Christ? Has the lack of wealth now become the new standard of inherent righteousness? Is God now for the proletariat and against the Bourgeois? Did God inspire Das Kapital?

This preoccupation of the Church in the West with Marxist categories completely flummoxes me. God loves the righteous in Christ regardless of their socio-economic status and he hates the wicked outside of Christ regardless of their socio-economic status… even if they are as poor and wretched as Dicken’s Fagin.

Why is it that we seem to think that God loves the impoverished more than the wealthy simply on the basis of their impoverishment? God loves His people in Christ. It is a certainty that the wealthy saints have a charge to keep in terms of their brethren of low estate but those of low estate are not superior to those of wealth if they are both looking to Christ and resting in him, just as the wealthy are not superior to those of poverty in terms of status before God just because they are wealthy.

God hates the unrighteous wealthy wicked because they do tend to oppress the poor but he equally hates the unrighteous impoverished wicked because they do tend to envy the rich. It strikes me that we have made the envious unrighteous wicked poor some kind of gold standard to aspire to. This is not what Scripture teaches and it is all very strange.

This then is the verdict – the light has come into the world, but men have hated the light because their deeds were evil. If you walk in the light as he is in the light, then they will hate you too, regardless of your socio-economic status. Oppression is due to the gospel and very often the estimable poor are poor due to their righteousness eliciting persecution and not because the in Christ wealthy are keeping them down.