Bournagain

Joseph is a fruitful vine, a fruitful vine near a spring, whose branches climb over a wall.  Genesis 49:22

This curious verse is found in Jacob’s blessing of his son Joseph.  The fruitfulness of Joseph is a constant theme in the last thirteen chapters of the book of Genesis, and “fruitful vine near a spring” seems consistent with devices used throughout Hebrew poetry, where an initial thought is repeated and expanded upon in in the following phrase.  But what’s the idea with “branches climbing over a wall?”

I have an aunt whose neighbours have a very prolific grapefruit tree.  This tree has a few branches reaching out over the fence into my aunt’s property, and they are usually laden with delicious grapefruit.  Rather than cut the branches off, the neighbours freely invite my aunt to pick and enjoy the grapefruit on her side of the fence.  My aunt does not own the tree, she does not prune or care for it in any way, and she does not pay for the grapefruit she takes.  All she has to do is pick them, and enjoy them.  Sometimes there are so many grapefruit that she gives some away.  But she has no right to the grapefuit tree as such – it is the property of someone else.  The grapefruit are simply a free gift from the person who owns and nurtures the tree.

Some have accused the God of Israel of being an exclusive God, who shows favouritism toward one particular people.  There were strict laws governing intermarriage and even association between Israel and people of other ethnic groups, and the Bible is clear that God identifies himself as the God of Israel, and gives special blessings and responsibilities to this people.  It is as if there is a wall around this people, preventing other nations from entering in and sharing the blessing, and indeed down through the centuries many Jews have perceived their particular “blessing” in this way.

But the fruitfulness of Israel is like a tree that has branches that climb over a wall.  There are hundreds of ways of showing from the Scriptures that the covenant blessings God bestowed upon Israel were in fact for all nations, and that Israel was to be the bearer of this blessing to the nations.  Like with my aunt’s grapefruit, the nations outside the wall do not own the tree, but they can nevertheless enjoy its fruit, as its branches extend well beyond the confines of Israel.

Joseph’s own life is a clear example of this, as it was a result of his intimate relationship with the God of Israel that Egypt was finally saved from a devastating famine.  And the saving work of Joseph simply foreshadows the life of the most famous and most influential Jew of all history, who also made a trip to Egypt in his early years, and whose house would be called a house of prayer for all nations, and who, many centuries before his birth, was identified by the prophets as being a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of his people Israel.

My aunt could choose to react to the branches of the grapefruit tree in different ways.  She could complain about the intrusion of wayward branches into her property and insist that the neighbour cut them down.  She could become jealous, wishing that she herself had such an excellent tree on her own property.  She could refuse to pick the fruit because she doesn’t want to feel indebted to the neighbour in any way.  The nations have reacted to the fruitfulness of Israel in all of these ways and more.

But the most intelligent thing for my aunt to do (and the approach she has in fact chosen) is to gratefully take as many grapefruit as those branches can produce, to enjoy them herself and share them with her guests, and to express her appreciation to her neighbours – something which she has been able to do in a variety of practical ways.

Quite a good deal, really, when you think about it…

Jumping ahead a few chapters in Genesis so as to not get too far behind in this year’s reading programme.

Have you ever noticed how often the figure 70 appears in the Bible?  There are a few occurrences in Genesis that are particularly interesting.

Terah was 70 years old when Abraham was born.  Genesis 11:26

There are 70 names in Genesis 10, leading to the Talmudic tradition of the 70 nations.  The Septuagint (Greek translation of the Tanakh, the version that is quoted in the New Testament) counts 72 names.  Interestingly there is a similar discrepancy in the gospel of Luke, where in relation to the number of disciples that Jesus sent out to preach and demonstrate the kingdom of God, the numbers 70 and 72 are more or less evenly distributed in the manuscripts (Luke 10:1).  Rather than getting upset about the fact that the manuscripts don’t all the same thing, let’s be intrigued by the fact that this same discrepancy exists both in the Old and New Testament texts, probably a strong clue that they are referring to the same issue.  Other examples:

The members of Jacob’s household as they travelled down to Egypt during the time of the famine were 70.  Genesis 46:27

When Jacob died the Egyptians mourned for him 70 days.  Genesis 50:3

So what?  What does it matter how many days the Egyptians mourned for Jacob?  Traditionally the Jews have strongly associated the number seventy (or seventy-two) with the Gentile nations.  Terah’s age at Abraham’s birth could have been coincidental, but it is certain that his illustrious son was the first to receive the call to be a blessing to all nations, a call which to a greater or lesser degree has always featured in Jewish thought as being a significant part of their national identity.

Long before his descendants were conscious of being Jews, or Israelites, Jacob led the 70 members of his family southward to escape a terrible famine.  It is not clear to what extent Jacob, was actually conscious of his particular mission, as Abraham’s grandson, to take the blessing of God to the nations.  But he ended up doing it in spite of himself.  His own son Joseph became the saviour of Egypt, which opened the way for his whole family to set up shop in a corner of that land where they became a shop window for the kingdom of God.  Why 70 family members?  Perhaps a reminder of the call to go out into the world and demonstrate what being a righteous nation was all about.

The presence of Jacob’s descendants in Egypt, or “Israel” as they came to be known, left a lasting impression on people – so much so that when Jacob died, 70 of the greatest dignitaries of the nation were in the cortege to carry Jacob’s remains back to the land God had promised him.

Whether or not Jacob understood all this, it is strongly suggestive of the mission of God to reach every nation with the message of the restoration of his kingdom.

Other “seventies” elsewhere in the Scriptures may serve to confirm this, such as the 70 bullocks sacrificed at the tabernacle (II Chronicles 29:32), the 70 weeks of years in Daniel 9:24-27 during which Jerusalem would be trampled by Gentile powers or the 70/72 missionary disciples Jesus’ sent out as forerunners.

Toreo

This is a painting by an exceptionally talented New Zealand artist who also just happens to be my sister.  You can see more of her works on her website Melbourn Art.

We now have four of her pieces gracing our walls at home, and they are quite a talking point.  Her paintings are full of interesting detail and texture, and striking colour, especially in her more recent work.

She does commissions, and mail orders from anywhere in the world.

I’m allowed to be biased, ok?!  But she really is good – take a look for yourself.

What will you be doing, the day after tomorrow?

This is the question I will have exactly 12 minutes to answer with 11 other speakers at Bless Talks: a day of thought-provoking talks, music and dinner in Dudley, UK on February 4th.  I’m not exactly sure where Dudley is, or how I’m getting there, but I’m sure it will be fun.

According to the blurb:

For years people have been predicting the end of the world in 2012, but the one thing we lack as a church, it seems, is a long-term plan.

What if it isn’t the end of the world?  What would you want the church, above all else, to do? What priorities of God’s mission would you address?  What kind of church do you dream of for the day after tomorrow?

We’ve asked 12 creative and innovative leaders to answer this question, and we’ve given them each 12 minutes to share their answers with you.

Not entirely sure about the creative and innovative bit – but I must at least look the part, and I’m happy to be joining friends Gerard and Chrissie of the Bless Network for this event.  They run a centre for missional formation near Lisieux in Normandy – a place we have really enjoyed visiting and hope to do so more.

Back to Genesis, and in light of the “christocentric hermeneutic” in the book The Bible Made Impossible  reviewed in the previous post, how should we understand the story about Noah?  A good place to start is to see how the earliest Christians understood the story.

A question before we go there: is the story historical?  In other words, did it actually happen?  Nowhere in the New Testament is the historicity of the Flood either questioned or defended.  It is simply assumed.  The early Christians certainly appear to have believed the account to be accurate, and up until about the eighteenth century it was generally assumed to be historical.  In our day it is generally assumed to be complete fantasy.  Modern scholarship tends to envisage an impassable chasm between history and myth, whereas the line between the two is actually very blurry, particularly when we are dealing with ancient history.  One way of viewing “myth” is to consider it an interpretation of events, focusing on meaning rather than simply a blow-by-blow account of what actually happened.  Part of the reason history as it is taught in schools is often a source of great boredom for children is that events are listed without any presentation of the great uniting themes that give sense to them.

Let me say that I have no compelling reason not to consider that the basic elements of the story actually happened.  That said, I cannot prove the story in an empirical sense any more than it can be disproved, separated as we are from the events by several thousand years.  I don’t believe we are intended to try to prove or disprove the veracity of the account within the limitations of modern historical method. There is undoubtedly meaning in the story that goes beyond a dry and technical analysis of whether or not the events actually occurred as written (even though I see no reason to accept that they didn’t).

The first thing to note is that Jesus himself spoke of the ark, the days of Noah and the flood, with the clear assumption that his hearers knew what he was talking about  (Matthew 24:37-39).

Similarly, the writer of the epistle to the Hebrews uses Noah as an illustration of practical faith, when he built the ark to save his family in response to God’s instructions (Hebrews 11:7)

The apostle Peter seems to have been the first to explore the theological significance of the story of Noah.  He interprets the ark as an image of salvation, pointing to the fact that 8 people (the family of Noah) were saved from the waters of the Flood thanks to the ark.  He then draws a direct parallel between the waters of the Flood and the waters of baptism “that now saves you also” (I Peter 3:19-21)  Here we enter right into a christocentric interpretation of the story.  There are many ways in which the Flood story points toward Christ.  The extreme nature of the Flood as a judgement reflects the gravity of mankind’s disobedience, in a similar way that the extreme seriousness of the cross of Christ does.  In many ways the ark is a reflection of Christ, carrying his people through the waters of judgement for sin.  Peter specifies that baptism is not so much about the removal of dirt, as the pledge of a clean conscience toward God.  A just God cannot turn a blind eye to disobedience and sin.  The dirt is real, but in spite of the dirt, if we respond obediently to the solution that God has provided in Jesus Christ, we may approach the throne of God with confidence, a major theme of Hebrews chapter 10.

In so many ways walking through door of the ark and stepping out onto dry ground was like a resurrection for Noah.  Just as baptism is an identification with Jesus’ rising from the dead, so Noah and his family embarked (no etymological relationship implied) on a completely new life in a new world which bore some resemblance to the world they had known but in many respects was completely different.  Not only a new world, but a fresh start, like the fresh start that Jesus offers us daily when we lay our dirt at the foot of the cross, pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and keep heading up the road, taking on more and more of his likeness as we move ahead.

There are other fascinating ways in which the Flood account foreshadows Christ.  The ark rested on the mountains of Ararat on the 17th of Nisan – the 7th month in the Hebrew calendar, which also happens to be the date of the Jewish feast of Firstfruits, the first day of the harvest, and also it would seem the date of Jesus’ resurrection, the day after the feast of Unleavened Bread.  The apostle Paul seems to confirm this.  Just an interesting coincidence?

I’m also fascinated by the following enigmatic comment, following Noah’s entry into the ark:

 Then the LORD shut him in.  Genesis 7:16

We cannot save ourselves.  Even after doing everything God had commanded him, there was still a final step that Noah was incapable of fulfilling: closing the door of the ark.  Jesus is the author of salvation in the sense that left to our own devices we can no more escape sin and live righteously than fly to the moon.  If we can live rightly, it is only through his achievements and his presence in us.

Just finished reading the first item on my booklist for 2012, The Bible Made Impossible by Christian Smith.

The strapline of his thesis is “why biblicism is not a truly evangelical reading of Scripture”, and one of the strengths of his book is that he spends the first four chapters defining what he means by “biblicism”.  He preempts accusations of having liberal tendencies by making clear in his introduction that his book is not an attack on the inspiration or authority of the Bible, but rather a “critical interrogation of certain aspects of one specific account of biblical authority that I think reason and evidence show is impossible to defend and employ with integrity.”  He calls this account “biblicism”, and demonstrates that it is the most common approach to the Scriptures in American evangelicalism.

I am not an American evangelical, and Smith has been criticised for being too centred on the American scene, although I find this criticism somewhat unfair – Smith is addressing the situation he knows best, and in such a short book the scope is necessarily limited.  In France evangelicalism is a relatively young movement and in many respects has more in common with its American counterpart than with the Christian traditions and approaches to the Scriptures native to its own land, therefore many of Smith’s findings are also applicable here, as in other parts of the world.  The fact that Smith has apparently joined the Catholic church and considers himself an “evangelical catholic” makes his study particularly interesting for the French situation, where many evangelicals would consider the term “evangelical Catholic” an oxymoron.

The book is very technical – Smith is an academic sociologist by trade – and you have to plough through to the end as he defines his subject for the book to make sense.  Even the title of the first chapter – “Biblicism and the Problem of Pervasive Interpretive Pluralism” would be enough to discourage some readers.  This is possibly one of the weaknesses of the book in the sense that his arguments probably apply more to popular evangelicalism, that is evangelicalism as it is actually practised in the churches and homes of large numbers of American evangelicals, who may find the book inaccessible.  But the effort is definitely worth it.

“Pervasive Interpretive Pluralism” is the primary problem addressed in the book, and in short it refers to the fact that Bible interpretation leads to a wide variety of different and contradictory understandings of what the Bible actually means on a very wide variety of subjects, all of which claim to be authoritative.  Smith points out that evangelicals disagree on many issues, including some that have very significant repercussions on the way we understand and practice the Christian life, and his argument is that the reason for this is the “biblicist” understanding of what the Bible actually is and how it should be read.  He defines biblicism in the introduction as being:

“a theory about the Bible that emphasizes together its exclusive authority, infallibility, perspicuity, self-sufficiency, internal consistency, self-evident meaning and universal applicability…a constellation of assumptions and beliefs that define a particular theory and practice”.

So what’s the problem?  That sounds like a fairly “biblical” approach to the Bible.  The problem is that in actual practice, Christians expect the Bible to speak unequivocally on all the subjects it addresses in such a way that all Christians should be able to arrive at the same conclusion about it’s meaning by just taking the text at face value.  In actual practice the exact opposite is true, which has led to the multiplicity of church denominations that we know today, and the sometimes vociferous arguments between Christians about what the Bible actually means.  Smith demonstrates through logic and through practical examples that biblicism as a theory of biblical interpretation is, quite simply, “impossible”.

In so doing he pulls the rug of security and certainty out from under large number of Christians who may find themselves destabilised by the thought that on numbers of subjects raised in the Scriptures there can be a diversity of valid interpretations, and not necessarily one “right” one.  He also goes into some detail about how modernistic approaches to knowledge and epistemology have also profoundly influenced the biblicist belief that it be desirable or even possible to arrive at the “right” answer to whatever question we might ask of the Bible, and that this approach to knowledge is not what the Bible intends.

In terms of what should replace biblicism, Smith gives several leads in the second half of the book, but without developing them or illustrating exactly what they might look like in practice.  This is a little frustrating, but again, consistent with the scope of the book.  He points to other authors who have already done good work in these areas, and perhaps he will address these issues in more depth in future publications.

For me this has been a very important and liberating book.  It is important because of the approach to biblical interpretation espoused in chapter 5, entitled “The Christocentric Hermeneutical Key“.  Put simply, the entire Bible is above all a revelation of Christ.  To quote Smith:

Seeing Christ as central compels us to always try to make sense of everything we read in any part of scripture in light of our larger knowledge of who God is in Jesus Christ…We only, always, and everywhere read scripture in view of its real subject matter: Jesus Christ…Christ is the center, the inner reason, and the end of all of scripture.  From the Bible’s account of the creation of the world in Genesis to its final consummation in Revelation, it is all and only about the work of God in time and space in the person of Jesus Christ for the redemption of the world.

Most evangelicals would agree with that statement, but often there is a significant gap between agreement and actual practice, because of our tendency to go to the Bible just to find answers to our questions.  We take our questions as the starting point, rather than the Bible itself.  We can usually find answers to these questions, but often we ask questions that the Bible itself does not ask.  We can too easily force the Scriptures to tell us things that they were never intended to.

It was also liberating, because it opens up for me a world where when I am questioned on what is the correct understanding of topics like women in ministry, tithing, church government, or any number of topics which I am frequently asked about where there seems to be some ambiguity in the Bible, I am perfectly free to give my own opinion on the topic without feeling under pressure to be sure to give The authoritative correct answer.  It also gives a strong foundation for genuinely close fellowship with other Christians who may have a completely different view to me on these subjects, because it’s normal that there be different views, as the Bible is not completely clear on every subject.  It is also liberating to think that the fact there are ambiguities in the Scriptures is intentional, and this in no way detracts from the inspiration or supreme importance of the Bible.  Above all, it will potentially lead me to an even greater love for the Author and Perfecter of faith, the central focus of human history, and the all-encompassing theme of the Scriptures: Yeshua.

So practically speaking, next time I read the genealogies at the beginning of I Chronicles (a passage most Christians avoid out of sheer boredom – let’s be honest) I am going to start with the assumption that Christ is the central focus of this passage, and I am looking forward to seeing how this assumption might change my understanding and appreciation of the usefulness of this and other passages that are often left aside because they seem too boring, too strange, or to controversial.

It seems that Eve did not fully understand the reasons why the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was not to be eaten (we see later that it was in fact Adam that was held accountable for his wife’s actions), but this lack of understanding did not mitigate in any way the requirement that she obey.  I don’t suppose Abel understood exactly why God approved the offering of an animal but didn’t approve an offering of vegetables (Genesis 4:2-5), any more than we do today, but nevertheless God’s reaction to his offering shows that Abel had obeyed, but Cain hadn’t.

Noah is an excellent example of what obedience looks like.  We can barely imagine life inside the ark those 40 long days and nights, shut up in that huge windowless box, buffeted in all directions by the waves.  But forty days is only just over a month.  What we don’t always notice is that once the rain had stopped, Noah waited over 7 months before leaving the ark. After the ark stopped moving, 7 more months living on stale food with all the smell and mess of those animals, presumably in the dark, breathing old air.  Why did he do that?

Why did God require that of Noah and his family?  We can only guess – he had his own reasons.  But we see by Noah’s obedience that he had unshakeable faith in the fact that God knew best, that he loved him, and had his best interests at heart.  This is what gave Noah the confidence to obey, even in such difficult circumstances.

“Faith” has become a very esoteric word, meaning something like a vague positive feeling that everything is going to work out ok.  At least that’s how the term is often used in popular music and Disney movies.  This is not at all the same kind of thing as the faith that we find in the Scriptures, which is a very concrete, day by day discipline of believing God: believing that God is who He says he is, that His vision of my identity is the correct one, and that He really does have my best interests at heart.  On this basis, trusting and obeying him is the most intelligent response I can make.  This is not a once-and-for all decision, but a choice that has to be made several times each day, when we are faced with situations that on the surface would seem to call God’s love into question.

How did Noah’s family feel about being cooped up in the ark for so many months following the end of the rains?  We don’t know, but I imagine that Noah’s decision not to leave the ark until God explicitly told them to possibly didn’t go down very well.  There were a hundred and one reasons why it would have seemed a good idea to get out of that place.  ”Did God really say that we had to wait….?” – echoes of Eve about eating the fruit.  ”Did God really say…?” is the question at the root of all doubt concerning the integrity and goodness of God.

But not only did Noah stand firm, but what was his first act in the new world?  No sooner had his feet touched terra firma than he was looking for materials to construct an altar:

Then Noah built an altar to the LORD and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it.  The LORD smelled the pleasing aroma and said in is heart:”Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood.  And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.  As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease. Genesis 8:20-22

Much more could be said about the significance of altars and sacrifices, but for now let’s just notice that Noah shows by his obedience that he is acting consistently with the line of Abel, and his obedience is what saved humanity, and continues to be a protection for us right up to our day, regardless of the evil inclinations of human hearts.

That’s because God doesn’t forgive because of man.  God forgives because of God.  Obeying Him because it’s in our best interests is as good a motivation as any when we start on our journey, but we are on a path heading for a deeper understanding of obedience, and a higher motivation, which is that we obey him for no other reason that He is who He is.

Still reading in Genesis, and will be for much of the month of January – the beginning is always a good place to start, especially at the beginning of a new year.

It must have been awful.  It has always been a mystery to me why one of the ghastliest events in literature is treated as a cute children’s story.  The Flood was all of the scariest disaster movies rolled into one.  And in many respects it could be considered a man-made disaster, in the sense that the root cause of this catastrophe can be summed up in one word: disobedience.  Christians sometimes talk about the unconditional love of God.  While the unconditionality of love is a moot point (there are cases to be made for God both loving and hating in the Scriptures), there is clearly a condition involved with living “righteously” – that is being like God, living the way we were designed to live.  Adam chose not to respect it, and had to abide by the consequences.  The Flood seems like an awfully harsh solution for disobedience, but that is probably because we don’t grasp the depth of human depravity, nor how widely spread evil was in Noah’s day:

Every inclination of the thoughts of [man's] heart was only evil all the time.  Genesis 6:5

Disobedience is a simple matter.  Parents deal with it all the time.  Disobedience is rarely spiteful.  It is usually the result of children misguidedly thinking they know better than their parents.  In small children this is more impulsive than thought through.  In older children, they can rationalise that perhaps “tidy your room” was actually intended as a piece of advice rather than something that was actually expected to be accomplished, or perhaps it was only binding up until the point where the child found something more interesting to do.  In teenagers it can even become a conviction that the parents actually don’t know what they are talking about (especially if disobedience hasn’t been addressed in earlier years).  Children get tired of parents saying “it’s for your own good”, because very often the “good” that the act of obedience is supposed to produce is something intangible in the future, and children don’t really get delayed gratification.

But delayed gratification or the child’s agreement or disagreement with the parent’s instructions have very little if any bearing on what is good for the child, or whether or not the child should obey.  Unfortunately the child-parent relationship has been terribly marred by the same kind of evil that originally produced the Flood.  Nevertheless, deep down we instinctively know that in a “normal” world, children should obey their parents, because the parents are the immediate reason that the children are alive, they have their best interests at heart, and they know what is best for them.  (Part of “normal” here denotes a world where parents don’t require that their children do things just for their own convenience, or to bolster their own ego, amongst other unhealthy motivations for seeking a child’s obedience).

Obedience does not require understanding.  Understanding and wisdom grow as a child gets older, and in retrospect a child will understand better why a parent makes certain requirements.  It’s amazing how once you have your own children your parents can start to seem quite intelligent after all…

It’s pointless negotiating with a small child, or trying to explain the rationale behind why we give them the instructions that we do.  They don’t have the necessary maturity to cope with that.  But they are perfectly capable of being trained to obey.  Of course they don’t always do it perfectly, and when they slip up good parents don’t love them any less.  But the fact that it can be a long and sometimes exasperating process doesn’t negate the fact that training a child to obey is a realistic and desirable outcome, and is in the best interests of the child.

We go through very similar processes in learning to obey God.  But the ancients didn’t learn.  To be continued…

How on earth did Noah manage to get all of those animals into the ark in only 7 days?  This point is often included in a long list of supposed impossibilities and inconsistencies to show the fanciful nature of the story.  This question at the very least, however, has no reason to figure on the list, as Noah did not have to go out looking for the animals.  They came to him.

Pairs of clean and unclean animals, of birds and of all creatures that move along the ground, male and female, came to Noah and entered the ark, as God had commanded Noah.  And after the seven days the floodwaters came on the earth.  Genesis 7: 8-10

In addition to serving as an example as to how God never demands anything of us without giving the wherewithal for us to achieve it, it illustrates something of the nature of the originally intended relationship between humans and animals.  Adam was commanded to govern the animal kingdom (Genesis 1:28), and to name the animals as a mark of his authority over them (Genesis 2:20).  It was under the new post-flood conditions that God put the fear of man into the animals, but this was seemingly not his original intent.  There are some people today who have a certain affinity with animals, and even a limited ability to communicate with them, but this is the exception rather than the rule.  Perhaps these animals knew by instinct that their safety lay within the ark.  In any case Noah did not have to go out looking for them.  This is simply one of the examples of the favour that Noah enjoyed as the one righteous man alive at that time, along with the family he headed.

But Noah found favour in the eyes of the LORD.  This is the account of Noah.  Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God. Genesis 6:8-9

Being a prophet has always been a dangerous occupation, but Noah was one of those prophets who managed to survive.  It seems likely though that by his time people would have though he was simply crazy, not exactly a threat to public order.  In fact, there probably wasn’t any public order.

At the time of Noah’s 8 x great grandfather Enosh, people first began to “call on” the name of the Lord (Genesis 4:26), which by all reports seems to be a somewhat misleading translation.  The real sense of this verb seems to be to “call on” in the sense of misuse or profane.  It was at this time that people began to curse God for the hardship of life.  Adam blamed his wife for the loss of paradise.  By Enosh’s time people began to blame God.  We do the same every time we say “if God really exists, why is there so much suffering in the world?”  We blame God for suffering.

After 8 generations of profaning the name of God, people were probably out of touch with the concept of “righteousness”.  Noah was a righteous man, he taught about righteousness, but evidently nobody understood what he was going on about.  The word “righteous” is similarly misunderstood today.  I like to think of it as a very simple concept: living the way we were designed to.  We were created in the image of God – we are meant to be like him.

A curious point:  Enosh might have been Noah’s 8 x great grandfather, yet he only died 14 years before Noah was born – check out the math in Genesis chapter 5.  If Genesis is to be taken seriously, then Enosh was Adam’s grandson, so in this sense in Noah’s day people were not so very far removed from the time when man dwelt in God’s presence, and yet Noah and his family were the only ones who “walked with God”.  Amazing to think there were people alive who would have known people of the generation of Adam’s grandchildren, who would have presumably heard tales of the paradise that was lost, and yet nobody but Noah had figured out how to walk with God.  But Noah proves that it was possible.  And remains is possible today.  So how did Noah do it?  How did he find favour with God?