Perfectly Imperfect: Get Out?

I came across this while reading for a class this week:

“I do not require my clients to be virtuous in order to continue in therapy. There would be few clients and few therapists if the standard of full moral integrity was imposed on all of us.” (Doherty, 1995)

That’s comforting, right? I mean, the reason most people seek counseling is because they are having trouble with their values, feeling, emotions, etc. So it makes sense that a counselor wouldn’t kick a client out because they’re not perfect! But the author also says there wouldn’t be many counselors either, if they were expected to be perfect. Hmm…

The church is like that… right? It should be. Could you imagine what it would be like if we had to be perfect in order to be a part of God’s family? I think sometimes we expect perfection, and we should most definitely try our best, but we’re just not. We need to stop expecting perfection out of imperfect people who just want to come worship God and have a church family to be a part of. This also goes for ministers, teachers, elders, and deacons… no person in the church, no one on this planet is perfect.

One big difference in the church and a counseling practice, is our Wonderful Counselor (Isaiah 9:6) is perfect! But the same as an earthly counselor, he doesn’t expect us to be perfect, he understands us (Hebrews 2:17, 4:15). This isn’t an excuse to not strive to be perfect, to be like Jesus, what it is though is love. He loves us even though we’re not perfect. We need to love each other, even though we’re not perfect.

 

Doherty, W. J. (1995). Soul searching: why psychotherapy must promote moral responsibility.

The daring rescue of Lot

In Genesis 14:1-16 we read an account of Lot being taken captive and rescued by Abram.  Its only 16 verses, but in these verses is a lot of information and confusing names, I just want to take a few minutes and break it down a little bit.

Four rebellious kings went to war with Chedorlaomer king of Elam, the king they served for 12 years, in year 13 they rebelled.  The rebellious kings were:

• Bera king of Sodom
• Birsha king of Gomorrah
• Shinab king of Admah
• Shemeber king of Zeboiim
• the king of Bela

The kings loyal to Chedorlaomer were:

• Amraphel king of Shinar
• Arioch king of Ellasar
• Tidal king of Goiim

This group, 5 kings vs 4 , fought in the Valley of Siddim.  When we talk about kings fighting a war, remember that it wasn’t just 9 men going at in a royal rumble, but their armies battled each other.  Thousands of men were on that battle field. King Chedorlaomer and his combined armies won the battle and sent the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah running back through the Valley of Siddim.  King Chedorlaomer’s armies gave chase and took all of the Sodom and Gomorrah’s possessions and provisions along the way, including capturing a man named Lot and his family and possessions.

Abram heard about his nephew’s capture from an escapee.  Abram didn’t take the news lightly.  He led 318 of his family to Dan, where he divided his small force and attacked by night.  Abram and 318 men defeated 4 armies, not only did they win, but they chased them away!  With God’s help, Abram was able to rescue Lot, his family, and his possessions from a far superior foe.

The Nephilim

I’m reading the Bible through, and thought I would blog about some topics that I find interesting along the way.

The first mention of the Nephilim is in Genesis 6:4.

 The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.

There are several theories about the origin of the Nephilim and what they actually were.  The most probable to me is they were the offspring of a union between two differing peoples.  They may have differed in physical traits, beliefs, or even social status.  It may have been that Godly people married un-Godly and their offspring were evil in God’s sight.

Another theory is that the Nephilim were offspring off angels and humans.  One branch of this theory is that the angels were rebellious fallen angels who found humans to be beautiful and had children with them.  Another related idea is that the union of angel and human was sanctioned by God.  I don’t believe the God would sanction such a union because He created marriage between a human man and woman (Genesis 2:18-25), also Genesis 1:11, 1:21, and 1:25 says that God’s creations reproduce after their own kind.  Angels are heavenly beings and humans earthly (although in God’s image), this is a thing that I don’t think God would allow to happen.

The Nephilim aren’t mentioned again until the Hebrew spies are sent into Canaan to scout the land.  The more faithless of the spies said this about the people of Canaan in Numbers 13:32-33.

So they brought to the people of Israel a bad report of the land that they had spied out, saying, “The land, through which we have gone to spy it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people that we saw in it are of great height. And there we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim), and we seemed to ourselveslike grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.”

But in truth the people of Israel wouldn’t know what the Nephilim looked like, because they were all destroyed in the flood.  They would only know of them by stories passed down by Noah and his sons.  My personal belief is that perhaps the Nephilim were used as scary stories by the Hebrews and when the spies saw the giants of Canaan, think Goliath of Gath, they immediately thought back to the stories they were told growing up.  Of course this is pure speculation on my part, as the Bible doesn’t mention any more about the Nephilim than what has been quoted in these few scriptures.

I just want to make note again that these are human ideas, some of others and some of mine, there is very little said about the Nephilim in God’s word.