Author: Sodwana Bay

Last month my esteemed Christian Today colleague Martin Saunders wrote a piece about the “three words that could save the internet (and make you happier)” – an irresistible headline that turned out to refer to “Be Kind Online”. “It feels good to help each other, to encourage, build up; shine a light into someone’s day,” he wrote. I’ve tried, I honestly have. And in writing about a National Geographic author interview with someone who’s written a book about the 12 apostles, I will make a titanic effort not to say exactly what I think about the editorial policy that lets such books into print. The work itself, Apostle, isn’t out till next month, so I haven’t read it. Normally, therefore, I wouldn’t comment on it. However, by giving an interview to the Nat Geog, author Tom Bissell has made himself fair game. Bissell, a lapsed Catholic, set off “to discover whether the Twelve Apostles were actual historical figures or merely characters in a fictional story”. His idea of historical research is to walk the 500-mile Camino de Santiago pilgrim route in Spain, visit the place where Judas reportedly hanged himself, and hunt (in vain) for a mysterious monastery in Kyrgyzstan where Matthew is supposed to be buried. He admits one of the greatest inspirations for the book is Monty Python’s Life of Brian. He tells the interviewer: “A couple of the names recorded in the New Testament are probably actual people. There was probably a Peter and a John, definitely a James (the brother of Jesus), and probably a Thomas. Beyond that, there’s nothing historical that verifies their existence other than the gospels themselves. So I think they’re a mixture of fact and fiction.” The trouble is that this might equally well be said of Bissell’s book. He tells us, for instance, that James, the brother of Jesus, “definitely existed”, but uses contested evidence from the Jewish historian Josephus to back up his claim. He asserts, on no evidence whatsoever, that James was Jesus’ older brother and that this “confounds everything orthodox Christians accept about the virgin birth”. Of the infamous “James Ossuary” which supposedly contained his bones, he says: “I’ve not seen the ossuary and I’m not a trained archaeologist, but I’m perfectly willing to believe that James could have had a secreted away tomb, with an ossuary.” But it’s in his comment about what would “verify the existence” of the apostles that he shows his hand, and a pretty poor one it is. For something to be “true”, he says, it has to be confirmed by a secular – and therefore rigorously factual, unbiased and trustworthy – account. If it’s only in the Bible, you can safely assume it’s fiction. All we have to go on is the interview, and the book might be full of far more detailed analysis, but I doubt it. So here are my gripes about this kind of writing, which has more in common with Dan Brown than with any serious historical research. 1. It fails to take the Bible seriously as history. Bissell – and plenty of others like him – have decided the apostles probably didn’t exist on grounds that would also rule out the existence of Jesus and Paul. If you’re going to pick and choose what you believe, at least be honest and say that’s what you’re doing. 2. It’s bad history. Anyone who blithely asserts that James was the elder brother of Jesus and so this disproves the doctrine of the Virgin Birth is not a serious historian. 3. It privileges the secular over the sacred. It assumes ‘real’ history comes from outside the Bible; anything in it is automatically suspect. But granting – as Bissell himself does – that these stories were shaped toward an end rather than being bald narrations of fact, the idea that the authors would simply have invented whole chunks of narrative just doesn’t hold water. They were concerned for the truth. We might, depending on our theory of biblical inspiration, accept they made mistakes; accepting they told lies is a different thing altogether. 4. It appears to argue from the insecurity of later traditions about the apostles to their non-existence at all. But if Bissell goes to Santiago de Compostella and finds no evidence James was there (it’s not clear from the interview), this says nothing about the existence of James. Ditto if he goes to Kyrgyzstan and finds no evidence for Matthew. There’s no earthly reason why he should, and the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Most Christians are perfectly at ease with biblical criticism and with the idea that the Bible can be analysed in terms of how and when it was written. Things aren’t always as they seem, we know that. The last 200 years has seen the Bible comprehensively taken apart. But it’s also seen it put back together, as well, and the onus is still on those who doubt the fundamental reliability of the New Testament stories to prove their case. In fact, nothing’s more likely than that the minor characters in the Gospel story should have disappeared. The story is not about them, it’s about Jesus. A far more interesting question than why most of the apostles faded out of history is, why Jesus has not.

The Bible is decorated with stories of ordinary people who exemplified extraordinary courage, character and faith through the lives that they lived. The examples that many Bible characters gave included living out a life of faith and excellence as leaders, parents, children, and even as wives. God likens a relationship between a husband and wife to the relationship between Christ and the church. He gives solid guidelines and clear principles on how a woman is to respond to God’s grace and, as a result, she will live out a life honoring God through being a blessing to her husband and other people around her. God is not just calling women to be exemplary women in the workplace, as parents or as church leaders. He is also calling women to be great examples of faith by being a blessing to their husbands. The key to being exemplary wives is by relying on God’s love and grace and being filled with His joy and love so that she will be a channel of it to others. Here are four biblical examples of exemplary wives. Ruth Although single for a majority of the storyline, Ruth would become a bride that Boaz would be proud of. She exemplified extreme trust and loyalty to her mother-in-law Naomi, and extreme hard work and perseverance. Esther The Queen Esther embodied true courage that comes only through the power of God. In boldness, she stood before the king to plead with him to lift a sentence that would eradicate all of her people even if it meant danger to her own life. She also showed great respect for her husband, the King Ahasuerus, by not judging him for making the wrong decisions. Sarah Imagine one day your husband telling you to pack all of your things and resign from all your endeavours because he was going to take you and all you own to a place that he has never even heard of. This is what Sarah had to go through, and with great faith she submitted herself to her husband, Abraham. Though she wasn’t always perfect, she remained faithful to her husband and to her God. Priscilla The wife of Aquila, Priscilla is one of the key reasons why the early church flourished and grew. A businesswoman by profession, Priscilla responded to the call of God to participate in the work of spreading the gospel by participating in various missions trips. Priscilla and Aquila were referred to by Paul as “fellow workers in Christ Jesus, who risked their necks for my life,” showing great loyalty to the church and to the work of Jesus Christ.

“…and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” Matthew 19:5-6 The Pharisees in Jesus’ time often followed Him around asking Him questions. However, it was not that their motivation was to learn from Him, in fact they had a malicious intent; to try to find a way to catch Him out, corner Him and ultimately have Him killed. One question that the Pharisees once threw at Jesus concerned grounds for divorce. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?” citing a civil command from Moses allowing divorce at the time that the Israelites were wandering in the desert, making their way to Canaan Land. Jesus as always had the best answer, and one that drew out truth from the root. I can’t encompass all cases and considerations, but we can lay some groundwork together and build a strong basis and foundation that will hopefully help each one of us come up with our own God-honoring stands when the time is right. God’s plan was perfect To truly understand marriage, we should stop using the 21st century as the basis of reasoning because our world today has been messed up and twisted by sin and selfishness. We are to always look at things with God’s original and pure plan as the foundation of our reasoning. In Matthew 19:8, Jesus answered, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning.” God’s perfect and unstained plan for marriage was to be between a man and a woman for the rest of their lives, unhindered and blessed. We messed it up “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard.” What Jesus was saying here was, “I made marriage perfect, I gave you all authority to nurture it and stepped back to let you handle it, and you messed it up.” It’s not God’s fault that marriages today are broken. God’s original plan has been distorted by the sin of man. Infidelity, selfish motives, lying, deceit, violent behavior and a long account of marriage-breaking mistakes cause separation, and we must remember, God is not the one who acts this way. We do. There is grace Though grace must never be an excuse to sin, it does have the immeasurable power to give pardon to a measure of mistakes. He also gives grace to reconcile broken relationships, and gives even more grace to help us make sure that we never have to break relationships again if only we trust in Him to take control. Does God allow divorce? We can understand from the Bible that in certain extreme instances it may be the best solution, because of our sins and imperfections (because our “hearts are hard”), but it was never God’s plan for their to be divorce, and it was never God’s idea for marriages to be broken. It was our idea. But God in His graciousness finds a way to love us still and help us experience His love today.