IT’S THE QUESTION OF THE WEEK.
It comes from Debbie Curto, who gets a free book for her trouble.
I’ve condensed her question quite a bit because Debbie gave me lots of info, to help me understand what she was talking about.
Here’s her question:
The Bible says God doesn’t play favorites. So why did Jesus play favorites with his disciples, since John was one of his three favorites?
Fair enough.
Jesus did seem to have three favorite disciples, and John was one of them. John’s brother James was another. Peter was the third.
They were Jesus’s best friends, as the Gospel writers reported it.
He hung out with them more than he did with the others. He took them places he did not take the others.
- “Jesus took Peter, James, and John up on a mountain to pray” (Luke 9:28 NLT).
- “Jesus… wouldn’t let anyone go with him except Peter, James, and John” (Mark 5:37).
- After the Resurrection, “Mary Magdalene… ran to Simon Peter and another disciple, the one Jesus loved” (John 20:2 NIRV). Many scholars ID John as the “loved” disciple and also the writer of the book bearing his name.
Clearly, Jesus had his favorites – at least as the New Testament writers tell his story.
But Debbie says she wonders how that lines up with this verse, which, ironically, comes out of the mouth of one of Jesus’s favorites, Peter:
“God plays no favorites!” (Acts 10:34 The Message).
Not true of Jesus.
Thumbs up for
- Kids. “Let the children come to me. Don’t stop them!” (Matthew 19:14 NLT).
- Roman soldier. “I tell you the truth, I haven’t seen faith like this in all Israel!” (Matthew 8:10 NLT).
Both thumbs down for
- Religion scholars: “Frauds! You’re like manicured grave plots… six feet down it’s all rotting bones and worm-eaten flesh. People look at you and think you’re saints, but beneath the skin you’re total frauds” (Matthew 23:27 The Message).
It seems to me that some Christians today go overboard trying to defend a rigid interpretation of the Bible here.
They argue that Jesus did not show favorites. And they do it as a of show allegiance to a starched interpretation of what Peter said.
I don’t see the value of the starch.
Peter was talking about something entirely different than the kind of favoritism Jesus was showing – which is the same kind of favoritism we show to our closest friends and family and to people who do good things. As for people who do bad things, we show them the door – which is pretty much what Jesus did with the religion scholars of his day.
Addressing a Jewish crowd, Peter was making a case for the spiritual acceptance of non-Jews. He was saying God is not a racist.
“It makes no difference who you are or where you’re from—if you want God and are ready to do as he says, the door is open” (Acts 10:34 The Message).
God is not going to build a wall to keep out Hispanics or Palestinians.
He is not going to gas the Syrians.
He is not going to water board Americans. (Including the ones I would like to water board.)
That’s what Peter meant when he said God does not pick favorites. Or as the Contemporary English Version puts it:
“God is pleased with everyone who worships him and does right, no matter what nation they come from.”
It’s in that sense that God doesn’t play favorites.
Jesus, walking the planet, was allowed to have best buds.
Thanks for answering
Great answer Stephen! It’s amazing that your article was written back in 2013. How relevant it is to the 2016 Presidential election! How disappointing so many Christian leaders are blindly supporting Trump … ;(
Yeah, I don’t get it either. The kindest way I can think of them is to consider them terribly misinformed.
Sorry author, but everyone knows it’s true. But like a blindly loyal soldier you will twist the truth to make the god who created the gotcha trap of Eden and hell to hurt humans for fun into someone else’s fault. Let’s ask Esau how “fairly” God acted when he literally created him just to hate him and literally rewarded Jacob and his mother for lying.
Hello A.
I don’t agree with a single sentence you wrote. I don’t believe anyone knows God well enough to make judgments about his intent. He does what he does, usually, it seems, without explaining why.
I’m not a blindly loyal soldier. I get in God’s face, privately and in public. Google my blog about having to put down my dog, Buddy. I’m still mad with him about that.
As for Eden and hell, I don’t take either of them literally. The Creation story seems more about portraying God as Creator than about a how-to-create-the-cosmos tutorial. As for hell, look up the word Jesus used when he spoke of it. The word is the name of a valley outside Jerusalem’s walls, which were used as a trash dump. The word “hell” is an English invention, a term used to translate the concept of divine punishment.
As for God trashing Esau, we know almost nothing about Esau except that he was hairy, didn’t plan ahead, and he made bad decisions. As for God’s role in Esau’s story, it’s hard to know how much the anonymous writers were drawing from their cultural understanding that God controlled everything, good or bad. The ancients tended to teach that if something bad happened it was because God was punishing the person. The Bible book of Job seemed written to show that this idea was incorrect.
Bible writers blamed God, I suspect, for a lot of things that were caused by human choices instead of God’s intrusion into the matter.
In the blog article, I don’t think I said God doesn’t play favorites. Bible writers said the Jews were his “chosen people.” That sounds like “favorites.” Gentiles from West Virginia roots, like me, didn’t make the cut. What I did say is that the Bible teaches that God welcomes anyone who comes to him for help. As the Bible tells it, he always has. Even while accepting the Jews as his Chosen Ones.
Keep in mind that ancestors of Jewish people were apparently writing most of the Bible. They would have been the ones to say God chose the Jewish people. I wonder if West Virginia Gentiles writing the Bible would have said they were the Chosen Ones. And if they would have been right to do so.
I wonder about things like that. But in the end, in God I trust. And I do my best to follow the advice of Jesus…which I can’t always do. But I want to.
Steve