I just finished Richard Friedman’s Who Wrote the Bible? It’s a classic popularization of the Documentary Hypothesis, which claims that the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible) is actually a medley of four earlier sources called J (the Yahwist), E (the Elohist), D (the Deuteronomist), and P (the Priestly source). Friedman’s survey of two centuries of Biblical detective work is quite fascinating. What truly shocked me, however, was learning that a bunch of liberal theologians converged on a vulgar Public Choice theory of the evolution of their most sacred book.

Friedman begins by explaining that J and E are the earliest sources. The most obvious difference between the two is that J always calls God “Yahweh,” while E initially calls him “Elohim.” But it’s the non-obvious differences that are telling. He presents strong evidence that the author of J came from Judah, the southern Jewish kingdom, while the author of E came from Israel, the northern Jewish kingdom. J elevates Aaron and slights Moses; E does the opposite.

What’s going on? Friedman explains that these two countries had conflicting religious establishments. Those in the north – or at least a major faction – were Mushite (claiming descent from Moses); those in the south were Aaronite (claiming descent from Aaron). Through this lens, J and E turn out to be thinly-veiled bids for money and power. Here’s one example of how E tries to push Mushite interests:

Recall that the [Mushite] priests of Shiloh suffered the loss of their place in the priestly hierarchy under King Solomon. Their chief… was expelled from Jerusalem. The other chief priest… who was regarded as a descendant of Aaron, meanwhile remained in power… The Shiloh prophet Ahijah instigated the northern tribes’ secession, and he designated Jeroboam as the northern king. The Shiloh priests’ hopes for the new kingdom, however, were frustrated when Jeroboam established the golden calf religious centers at Dan and Beth-El, and he did not appoint them as priests there. For this old family of priests, what should have been a time of liberation had been turned into a religious betrayal. The symbol of their exclusion in Israel was the golden calves. The symbol of their exclusion in Judah was Aaron. Someone from that family, the author of E, wrote a story that said that soon after the Israelites’ liberation from slavery, they committed heresy. What was the heresy? They worshipped a golden calf! Who made the golden calf? Aaron! [emphasis original]

—The Public Choice of the Ancient Hebrews, Bryan Caplan

You may want to click through to EconLog to read the rest of Bryan’s summarization. It’s all fascinating.

A Christian might also suggest that all sins are sins against God, not men – but that is simply nonsense. Whosoever harms me, harms me (a better argument is the idea that God wants you to forgive as you were forgiven, but that proves a lack of need for blood). God is by all accounts undamaged. Indeed, the only crime against God must be simple, completely ineffective rebellion – which we must assume does not hurt God’s feelings, because that would suggest we have some power over Him – and the idea that God can’t put up with that suggests He’s not merciful at all.

I disagree, for perfectly valid libertarian reasons. But to follow the logic, you’ll have to temporarily assume that the Bible is what it claims to be: God’s attempt to reveal who he is and what he’s all about.

Propositions:

1. God created the earth. (Genesis 1:1)
2. God created man (Genesis 2:7-8)
3. Ownership comes from mixing labor (John Locke)

Though the earth, and all inferior creatures, be common to all men, yet every man has a property in his own person: this no body has any right to but himself. The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. It being by him removed from the common state nature hath placed it in, it hath by this labour something annexed to it, that excludes the common right of other men: for this labour being the unquestionable property of the labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to, at least where there is enough, and as good, left in common for others.

Conclusion: God owns the earth and everything in the earth — including us. Further conclusion: Because God owns us, he can do with us as he likes. He has, in fact, done so by giving us the Law and requiring us to obey it. I’d say that most of the Old Testament assumes this point of view.

Deuteronomy 10:12-14

And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments and statutes of the Lord, which I am commanding you today for your good? Behold, to the Lord your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it.

1 Samuel 2:8

He raises up the poor from the dust;
he lifts the needy from the ash heap
to make them sit with princes
and inherit a seat of honor.
For the pillars of the earth are the Lord’s,
and on them he has set the world.

1 Chronicles 29:11

Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is yours. Yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and you are exalted as head above all.

Nehemiah 9:6

You are the Lord, you alone. You have made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them; and you preserve all of them; and the host of heaven worships you.

Psalm 24:1-4

The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof,
the world and those who dwell therein,
for he has founded it upon the seas
and established it upon the rivers.

Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord?
And who shall stand in his holy place?
He who has clean hands and a pure heart,
who does not lift up his soul to what is false
and does not swear deceitfully.

To repeat my argument: God created the world and everything in it, including us. Therefore, God owns us and is perfectly justified in doing with us as he likes. God has designed his world (his universe) to run according to certain laws. Every violation of those laws is a violation of the “natural order” of things and a rebellion against God. Rebellion is nothing more nor less than taking that which doesn’t belong to you, namely power.

True, your sin of theft is between you and your victim. He’s harmed by longer having that which once belonged to him. But your theft is a crime against God: you’ve also usurped his power to decide what is and isn’t right. You’ve placed your own judgment and desires above his.

Jonathan Edwards makes the argument that punishment must be proportional to the degree of sin. He goes on to argue that sin is a crime against an infinite God and deserving of infinite punishment.

A crime is more or less heinous, according as we are under greater or less obligations to the contrary. This is self-evident; because it is herein that the criminalness or faultiness of any thing consists, that it is contrary to what we are obliged or bound to, or what ought to be in us. So the faultiness of one being hating another, is in proportion to his obligation to love him. The crime of one being despising and casting contempt on another, is proportionably more or less heinous, as he was under greater or less obligations to honour him. The fault of disobeying another, is greater or less, as any one is under greater or less obligations to obey him. And therefore if there be any being that we are under infinite obligations to love, and honour, and obey, the contrary towards him must be infinitely faulty.

Our obligation to love, honour, and obey any being, is in proportion to his loveliness, honourableness, and authority; for that is the very meaning of the words. When we say any one is very lovely, it is the same as to say, that he is one very much to be loved. Or if we say such a one is more honourable than another, the meaning of the words is, that he is one that we are more obliged to honour. If we say any one has great authority over us, it is the same as to say, that he has great right to our subjection and obedience.

But God is a being infinitely lovely, because he hath infinite excellency and beauty. To have infinite excellency and beauty, is the same thing as to have infinite loveliness. He is a being of infinite greatness, majesty, and glory; and therefore he is infinitely honourable. He is infinitely exalted above the greatest potentates of the earth, and highest angels in heaven; and therefore he is infinitely more honourable than they. His authority over us is infinite; and the ground of his right to our obedience is infinitely strong; for he is infinitely worthy to be obeyed himself, and we have an absolute, universal, and infinite dependence upon him.

So that sin against God, being a violation of infinite obligations, must be a crime infinitely heinous, and so deserving of infinite punishment.

Therefore, I argue, God is perfectly justified in any punishment he cares to deal out.

Pastor John has written a short pamphlet entitled, appropriately enough, “Don’t Waste Your Life“. His intro to the book provides a succinct answer to the question:

God created us to live with a single passion: to joyfully display his supreme excellence in all spheres of life. The wasted life is the life without this passion. God calls us to pray and think and dream and plan and work, not to be made much of, but to make much of him in every part of our lives.

Later in the second chapter, he expands on that a bit more:

God created me—and you—to live with a single, all-embracing, all-transforming passion—namely, a passion to glorify God by enjoying and displaying his supreme excellence in all the spheres of life. Enjoying and displaying are both crucial. If we try to display the excellence of God without joy in it, we will display a shell of hypocrisy and create scorn or legalism. But if we claim to enjoy his excellence and do not display it for others to see and admire, we deceive ourselves, because the mark of God-enthralled joy is to overflow and expand by extending itself into the hearts of others. The wasted life is the life without a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples.

The book itself attempts to answer the question “What does this mean I should do?” He says:

It has become clearer that God being glorified and God being enjoyed are not separate categories. They relate to each other not like fruit and animals, but like fruit and apples. Apples are one kind of fruit. Enjoying God supremely is one way to glorify him. Enjoying God makes him look supremely valuable.

And, later:

Jesus said, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23). Daily Christian living is daily Christian dying. The dying I have in mind is the dying of comfort and security and reputation and health and family and friends and wealth and homeland. These may be taken from us at any time in the path of Christ-exalting obedience. To die daily the way Paul did, and to take up our cross daily the way Jesus commanded, is to embrace this life of loss for Christ’s sake and count it gain. In other words, the way we honor Christ in death is to treasure Jesus above the gift of life, and the way we honor Christ in life is to treasure Jesus above life’s gifts.

… But what I know even more surely is that the greatest joy in God comes from giving his gifts away, not in hoarding them for ourselves. It is good to work and have. It is better to work and have in order to give. God’s glory shines more brightly when he satisfies us in times of loss than when he provides for us in times of plenty. The health, wealth, and prosperity “gospel” swallows up the beauty of Christ in the beauty of his gifts and turns the gifts into idols. The world is not impressed when Christians get rich and say thanks to God. They are impressed when God is so satisfying that we give our riches away for Christ’s sake and count it gain.

This was part of what gave rise to my original question. By this definition, am I wasting my life? I’m rich. Historically speaking (as we’ve previously discussed, Adam) I’m ridiculously, fabulously wealthy. I can listen to almost anything I want — spoken or musical — at any time. I can watch nearly any form of any entertainment at any time. I have access to thousands of books within days or minutes. Most of the world’s knowledge is at my fingertips, thanks to the Internet.

I’m pretty well-off by American standards as well. Our household owns 3 computers, 2 iPods, 2 completely paid off cars, 18% of a house, lots of nice clothes, and plenty of food. We can eat out nearly anytime we want to, we can and do fly around the U.S., we rent nice cars and stay in nice hotels on vacation. I have a beautiful, helpful wife who loves me. We have two beautiful daughters. All four of us are in perfect health. In short, I’m doing pretty well at doing as Voltaire’s Candide said: “‘, i.e. enjoy your work, wife, and life – in short, function as you were made to function – and leave the rest up to God.”

But, so what? Is that really all there is? Just be thankful that I’m one of the lucky ones and enjoy my wealth? Most days, I’m very tempted to say “yes”. God gave it to me, why should I complain about it? But other days I wonder — am I wasting His gifts? Am I wasting my life?

If, tomorrow, everything were to disappear in a Job-like orgy of destruction, how would I react? Would I praise God and say “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21)? Put differently, is God the most important thing in my life or are my things the most important thing in my life?

My original post also referenced the Rwandan genocide. Many Rwandan Christians reacted as violently and savagely as non-Christians when everything was stripped away from them. I’d like to think I wouldn’t do the same thing in the same situation. I’d like to think that my reaction would show that God is the most important thing in my life — even more important than my family.

God willing, I’ll never have to go through that situation and I’ll never have to find out the hard way. But it’s something I think about as I examine my own priorities and how I react to my stuff.

Now, you also mentioned Luther’s solution of passive righteousness to the dilemma of how to improve yourself — how to become more like God and less like a sinner. And, Luther is right. The two opposite extremes are excessive pride in your accomplishments and excessive despair at your failures.

Personally, I’ve found Tim Keller to be a big help in understanding how this works. I’ll quote from his book The Reason for God. He says:

Religion operates on the principle “I obey–therefore I am accepted by God.” But the operating principle of the gospel is “I am accepted by God through what Christ has done–therefore I obey.” Two people living their lives on the basis of these two different principles may sit next to each other in the church pew. They both pray, give money generously, and are loyal and faithful to their family and church, trying to live decent lives. However, they do so out of radically different motivations in two radically different spiritual identities, and the result is two radically different kinds of lives.

The primary difference is that of motivation. In religion, we try to obey the divine standards out of fear. We believe that if we don’t obey we are going to lose God’s blessing in this world and the next. In the gospel, the motivation is one of gratitude for the blessing we have already received because of Christ. While the moralist is forced into obedience, motivated by fear of rejection, a Christian rushes into obedience, motivated by a desire to please and resemble the one who gave his life for us.

I’ve long lived my life with a constant fear of failure. I’m afraid to try new things because I’m afraid of the consequences of failing at them. That’s carried over into my Christian life. I’ve been afraid to do things for God because I’ve been afraid of lousing them up and making a bigger mess. Keller (along with C.J. Mahaney and John Piper) has taught me that I can’t possibly be any worse than I am. I don’t have to worry about God’s unhappiness if I fail to live up to his standards and I don’t have to bend myself into a pretzel trying to be perfect. Jesus already paid for every single one of my rebellions and moral failures.

I am free to live out my life without endless agonizing over every decision. I’m free to go out and “just do it”. I don’t have to figure out how to be perfect before doing “it”. Whatever I decide I want “it” to be. In a way, I feel like my options are opening up for the first time ever.

Will I do it? Will I step out and do something for God? Will I prove that God is more important than my stuff? Or will I still refuse to take risks, because I don’t want to endanger my stuff? Will I use my life profitably or will I waste it?

“Something I’ve been thinking lately,” our dear webmaster Joe has recently written. “Am I different as a Christian than I would be if I wasn’t a Christian? Am I just wasting my life?”

Then he linked to a rap video appearing to strenously urge its viewers not to knock over convenience stores. DON’T WASTE YOUR LIFE, it demanded at its end via big white letters.

It probably goes without saying (but here it is anyway) that I’ve been worrying for Joe ever since. I had no idea he was knocking over convenience stores. And what’s worse, I still don’t know what’s driven him to it. Does he need the money for crack?

Here’s the worst of it: Separated as we are by just under 900 miles of amber waves of grain and purple mountains’ majesty, I’m practically powerless to help the guy – except perhaps to wire him a little green, and wouldn’t that just be enabling? My budget says yes, yes it would be, which means all I have left are my words.

And here they are, Joe – and on a public blog, no less, because the best antidote for darkness is the bright beam of posterity.

Joe, your dilemma highlights another problem with modern-day Christian theology: that is, what exactly a good Christian is supposed to do with his or her new life in Christ. Many (even most) Christians will of course scoff at the idea that this is any sort of quandary at all. “What does the Bible say?” they might respond. But my opinion stands that ’tis truly a tad tricky.

Here’s why: the Christian New Testament of the Bible is an extremely apocalypse-focused collection of texts. Many scholars in fact agree that early followers of Jesus expected the end of the world to occur within their lifetimes or shortly thereafter, possibly because Jesus told them so (Matthew 24:34 – and no, He’s not referring to the Transfiguration). Thus the overriding directive for Christians was to go forth and create new Christians, occupying yourself with as little else as possible – indeed, relinquishing the gift of marriage unless you just couldn’t resist your sexual urges, and living as if you weren’t married if you were.*

(*And as an aside, boy has that advice from our dear apostle Paul resulted in headaches for young Christians since; many are the Bible-believing boys and girls who have had to struggle with the idea that they’re settling for serving their beloved God less by exchanging vows. Would that Paul had never written the stupid part – if he actually did. Anyway:)

If you desire to compare your accomplishments to that original standard, Joe, simply ask yourself how many people you’ve recruited for the Christ, and deduct points for all the time you’ve spent married when you could’ve been SAVING SOMEONE FROM ETERNAL TORMENT IN THE SNAKE PITS OF HELL.

Ahem.

There are other yardsticks available with which to measure your faithfulness, though, since as you are probably aware we are now well past those early, heady days, and we must now take note that God’s Holy Church has been caught somewhat flat-footed by just how big a procrastinator its saviour has turned out to be. Pastors and priests usually explain our unexpectedly long wait for Jesus’ second coming as an act of mercy on the part of the Lord; they say He is pushing back the final hour to allow more chances for salvation. Knowing that God’s love is infinite and that He has now shown the sinners of this world so much love that they have waited well over a thousand years longer for His return than they waited for His arrival in the first place (the first references to a messiah at best occur in the Book of Isaiah, written in the 700′s B.C.), the Church and we members of it should probably figure out how we’re supposed to pass the time.

We will toss Paul’s suggestions into the recycle bin, then (because Lord knows, someone will dredge them up again), and consider other Biblical advice. The Teacher of the Book of Ecclesiastes has some, though readers disagree as to precisely what that advice is; Christians and Talmud-lovers suggest Qohelet pushes for his readers to keep their treasure in Heaven, as Jesus would say, while people who actually read the book understand him to be basically proferring the same advice as Voltaire’s Candide: “tend your garden”, i.e. enjoy your work, wife, and life – in short, function as you were made to function – and leave the rest up to God.

I find it an attractive suggestion, Joe. What say you?

I should warn you, modern Christian thought rather rejects the Qohelet Theory. Rather, the view of today’s mainline Protestant congregations is that your lifespan here ‘pon Earth is a self-improvement project. You are meant over the course of your days to be slowly but surely perfected, to morph from a vile, despicable convenience store robber into a poor copy of Jesus Christ. The climax to this evolutionary narrative is your death, whereupon you are to complete your transformation (no matter what your spiritual state at the time of your deceasing) into a glorious new creature.

This option is also attractive, actually, but in my experience deceptively so; self-improvement is hard, stressful work if you take it seriously. Martin Luther addressed the difficulties in a treatise on Galatians. To paraphrase him, if you try to become a good man and think you are succeeding, you are a deluded egomaniac – and if you try to become a good man and fail, you will beat yourself up about it, since Mankind cannot be good enough.

Unfortunately, Luther’s solution for this problem – “passive-righteousness” – is one of those ideas that sounds great on paper because it makes use of theology, but doesn’t make any sense when you actually try to apply it. He claims that we must simply cease to struggle to be good (presumably “active-righteousness”) and allow the Holy Spirit to do the work for us.

One only has to ask, “What does this mean I should do?” to realize it’s hogwash. By and large, good things happen when we do them; nothing happens when nobody moves. Mankind’s effort is clearly involved, So it clearly doesn’t pass the real-world test (and is also horrifically debilitating) to declare nobody can be “good” via their own devices. Yes, you can argue that the results will never equal the amazing goodness of an omnipotent, omniscient person, the every action of whom is the standard by which Goodness is judged even if we don’t understand how it could possibly be good at all – but what in the world kind of standard is that? A standard which you cannot reach, as I’ve learned since meeting my mother-in-law, is really no standard at all (and on the opposite side of the coin, any standard which you will reach no matter what is not exactly worth striving for either).

I would therefore say that the modern Christian concept of Life’s purpose is usable, but the theology that accompanies it is not. Clearer some people are better than others and you should strive to be one of them. By all means, consider the question of whether you are a better person than you were five years ago and rate yourself appropriately, if you like.

But I’m personally still not quite crazy about it. To quote one of Franklin Deleanor Roosevelt’s cabinet members (I forget which), “In the long run, we are all dead.” Self-improvement is not a value in and of itself; taken alone, it is but vanity. Reward for self-improvement is only found in its context. Does being a better man, for instance, result in your being a better husband and father, thus benefiting the people you love? Is that a goal of yours? If yes, it is good.

I’d argue instead for a result-focused lifestyle (and yes, “self-improvement” can be a result – but as I said, it’s of no real use as the ultimate one), in which we strive to create the reality we desire.

Note that I am not suggesting a result-oriented life; there is a difference. A man who sets out to be a good husband and father has a chance of dying satisfied only if he keeps proper perspective about how much control he has over such matters.

We have actually come full-circle, since a result-focused lifestyle is exactly what the apostle Paul was suggesting nearly two thousand years ago, the important difference being of course that he had already taken the liberty of choosing the result on which to focus. When I first met my fiance, I was surprised to find her very skeptical about that focus; unlike me, she’d never thought of the commission as binding upon her. Nowadays I agree, if only because so many of my ideas about Christianity are currently in flux that I don’t feel I have enough answers to share with others.

But I digress! Let me know which of these options you choose, Joe, or if you’ll be selecting another. In the meantime, remember to adequately scope out your targets before you strike, and pay your taxes on whatever your take is.