Chutzpah, Jesus’ Word for Faith revised.

What does "faith" mean?

What does it mean to believe?

That's a pretty important question for anyone interested in being a serious Christian because so many of the Bible's promises are conditioned on faith. For example:

Matthew 17:20 And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.

One of the best explanations of what Jesus meant by the word "faith" was advanced by Robert Lindsey. LIndsey is one of a group of scholars including David Flusser, Brad Young, Marvin Wilson, Shmuel Safrai, Joseph Frankovic and others who are working to explain how the words of Jesus would have been understood by Jesus' audience, i.e. first century Jews. Along these lines Bob Lindsey suggests that the English word which best corresponds to the actual word that Jesus used for faith is  "chutzpah." Here's a nice explanation of this I came across from a book by Francis MacNutt called, Healing. Mr. MacNutt used to be a Catholic priest and has a pretty well known healing ministry. Here's the blurb about "chutzpah" from his book:

So when Jesus tells us to have "faith" when we pray, he means for us to have confidence, boldness, assuredness, even brashness. The English word which I think best defines "chutzpah," is audacity. To have faith is to have audacity. To have faith in God is to be bold, assured and brash. To have faith in prayer means to be audacious in praying. Most Christians have little confidence in receiving what they pray for. Most think of prayer as  thoroughly unreliable. They have absolutely no idea if their prayer will be answered. In other words, where prayer to God is concerned, they lack chutzpah, they have little faith.  The Christian with chutzpah, on the other hand has a confidence so bold, so brash, so assured of receiving what he has asked of God that most Christians would consider him to be arrogant and impertinent and presumptuous and they might even say, "What Chutzpah!"

Let me show you from one of Jesus' parables, the one normally referred to as the Parable of the Importunate Friend, that this is exactly the attitude that Jesus expects us to have when it comes to prayer.

Luke 11:5 And he said unto them, Which of you shall have a friend, and shall go unto him at midnight, and say unto him, Friend, lend me three loaves; 6 For a friend of mine in his journey is come to me, and I have nothing to set before him? 7 And he from within shall answer and say, Trouble me not: the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot rise and give thee. 8 I say unto you, Though he will not rise and give him, because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him as many as he needy. 9 And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. 10 For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.

Before I can show you what this parable means, I need to first show you why the traditional interpretation of this parable is wrong. The traditional picture of this parable is something like this: The guy came at midnight to his friends house and began pounding on the door asking for bread. The friend leans out of his window and shouts down that he and his family are already in bed and to go away. The guy who needs the bread keeps knocking until the friend finally yields and gives him the bread.

Because of this picture the parable is usually interpreted as teaching persistence in prayer. Most interpreters of this parable conclude that Jesus is saying that if you keep praying…, if you keep asking God …, if you keep bringing your prayer before God…, (I'd say, if you keep nagging God…), He will eventually answer your prayer.  Sometimes it's described as "shameless persistence" which I take to mean continuing to ask even after being turned down the first 500 or so times. An example of this interpretation from the Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary:

"The sense is obvious: If the churlish and self-indulgent-deaf both to friendship and necessity-can after a positive refusal, be won over, by sheer persistency, to do all that is needed, how much more may the same determined perseverance in prayer be expected to prevail with Him whose very nature is "rich unto all that call upon Him"

But what I need you to see is thatit is what is inferred about the story not what the story actually says that gives rise to the idea that the parable is about "persistence." The actual parable doesn't say that the man kept asking. Can you see that nowhere does the parable, as Jesus taught it, say anything about the man being persistent?But where does this idea come from that the friend kept on asking? What in the parable gives rise to this idea of persistence?

The idea arises from the phrase, "…and he from within shall answer and say…" This phrase paints a picture of the man responding to his friend by saying, in effect, "No!" But since Jesus implies that the friend  eventually gave in to the request, the conclusion we draw is that the man in need must have kept asking or insisted, or persisted in some way, because at the first his friend answered "No." I believe this phrase has been mistranslated and that is what is causing this parable to be misunderstood.

I was first clued in to the fact that this phrase was mistranslated after teaching about this parable on three consecutive Sundays. During the course of those messages I came to understand that what the phrase actually meant was, he, i.e. the friend, "said within himself," i.e he thought it. I knew that when the guy called asking for the bread, his friend, now in bed, did not shout down to him, he just thought it. I knew that's what happened because that's what most people would have done. If a friend showed up at my house in the middle of the night ringing the door bell asking for bread I wouldn't shout out to him to go away. I'd be too shocked to do that. I'd open the door, find out what he wanted and then say, "Well lets go see what we have." But as we were walking to the kitchen you can be sure I'd be thinking, "Is this guy a nut or what? I can't believe he's coming to my house at midnight, getting us all out of bed. What chutzpah!" But while I was thinking this I'd be giving him all the stuff he needed. In fact that's Jesus whole point. I wouldn't give my friend what he needs because I love him, at that moment I don't even particularly like him, but I'm giving it too him because of his chutzpah, his audacity in asking.

Luke 11: 8 I say unto you, Though he will not rise and give him, because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him as many as he needeth.

Since I was pretty convinced that this was what would normally have happened in this situation, I was pretty sure that the phrase should be translated something like:

Luke 11:7 And he from within shall answer and say within himself said, Trouble me not: the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot rise and give thee.

So that's what I knew. But now I needed to see if what I "knew" lined up with the Bible. First, I knew that the phrase " he answered and said" didn't necessarily mean that he actually responded to his friend, because it is often used in the New Testament where no question is being asked. In Mark 11:13-14, for example, Jesus "answered and said" to a fig tree which hadn't said a word to him. I also remembered reading that the phrase, "he answered and said," was in fact probably an artifact of an original Hebrew idiom more properly translated as just plain  "said." (You can read more about that particular point here.)

So the "answered" part didn't raise any objection to my theory. So let's change the translation to take that into account:

Luke 11:7 And he from within shall answer and say, Trouble me not: the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot rise and give thee.

Next, I looked up the words which make up the phrase "from within" and it turned out that the phrase was translating only one Greek word, "esothen" which according to Thayer's means:

"1) from within 2) within, that which is within, the inside 2a) your soul."

Well after seeing that, particularly the "soul" part, I was feeling pretty good about my understanding of the parable.

Next, I needed to see how that word " esothen" was used in the rest of the Bible. Thanks to the wonders of modern Bible software that took about 5 seconds, and here they are, all thirteen of the instances where this word is used in the Bible with the relevant words in red: ( Just to be clear. What follows are all the instances in the Bible of the Greek word "esothen" which in Luke 11:7 is translated by the two English words, "from within.")

So that's pretty clear. In the Bible the Greek word, "esothen" translated in the parable as "from within" is almost always used to refer to the inside of man, the heart of man. That fit perfectly with my understanding of what Jesus meant in Luke 11:7. Given that the word literally means "within" and that it is almost always used in the New Testament to refer to that which is within a person, his heart, his soul or his spirit, it seems to me it would be perfectly reasonable to translate the word as simply "within":

Luke 11:7 And he from within shall answer and say, Trouble me not: the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot rise and give thee.

This translation still allows for the traditional interpretation but also allows for my interpretation and so seems pretty reasonable.

Okay, so according to my understanding of this verse Jesus is not saying that the man spoke out loud but rather that he thought, "Trouble me not…" etc. So what? Well, the traditional interpretation of this parable is based entirely on the fact that the man has to be nagged into giving his friend some bread. The idea that he has to be nagged into helping is based on the understanding that he at first told the friend who needed bread to go away. If he just entertained the thought that his friend was a jerk for waking him up at midnight but got up and gave him the bread anyway, then the picture painted by the parable changes.

To summarize, by eliminating the spoken refusal to help and turning it into an unspoken thought we have eliminated the only basis that exists in the parable for thinking that his friend had to persist, i.e. ask more that once. We have eliminated any basis for concluding that the friend already in bed did not immediately, albeit grudgingly, get up and help his friend in need.

So here is the correct picture of this parable. Some visitors show up at a man's house late at night. They've been traveling all day with nary a MickeyD's in sight, but he doesn't have anything to feed them.  He decides he'll go to his friend and ask for some bread but by now it's midnight. He gets to his friends house, all the lights are out, the dogs are asleep, the children nestled in their beds, but the man knocks on the front door and yells up to his friend, "Hey, Bobby Joe, get up man, I need to borrow a loaf of bread. C'mon hurry up." The friend roused from the amorous attentions of his wife, thinks to himself, "God I hate this guy. He can't be serious showing up here at midnight, waking up my kids, getting me out of bed. I need to give this guy a piece of my mind." 

Luke 11:8 I say unto you, Though he will not rise and give him, because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him as many as he needeth. 9 And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. 10 For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.

Now that we have a correct picture of what is happening we will be better able to understand what Jesus is saying in this parable. The key word in this parable is the word translated in the King James Bible as "importunity." Jesus said the reason the man answered the prayer of his needful friend was because of his importunity. If we want our prayers answered, whatever this "importunity" is, we need to get some. So let's look at what "importunity" means.

Importunate means to be " troublesomely urgent : overly persistent in request or demand." Most of the modern translations have used the word "persistence" in place of the King James' "importunity." The one exception, seems to be, the NIV which translates the original Greek word as "boldness" though the NIV does suggest "persistence" in a footnote.

The word translated "importunity" in the King James is the Greek word "anaideian" which according to Thayer's Greek English Lexicon: is a compound word made up of the Greek word "a" as a negative particle and the Greek word "aidos" which is defined as "a sense of shame or honour, modesty, bashfulness, reverence, regard for others, respect," So anaideian breaks down as:

"a" (a negative) + aidos (a sense of shame etc. )

So "anaideian" literally means the negative or opposite of "aidos" i.e. "without shame," "shameless," "without honor," "immodest," "Irreverent," "disrespectful" etc. You can see from the discrepancy between what the Greek word means and the word choice of most of the translations that the translators have been heavily influenced by the traditional, mistaken picture of this parable. The majority of the translators are apparently using "persistence" not because that's what "anaideian" means but because of the mistaken picture of the man having to make repeated requests for help from his friend.

Brad H. Young in his book, The Parables, argues that, "Probably the Hebrew word that best translates the Greek word, 'anaideia' is a form of the word "chutzpah" which has become idiomatic in English …" Parables, pg 50. Young insists, though, on translating, "chutzpah" as involving some aspect of "persistence."  So, for example, he defines it as, " determined persistence", "bold perseverance", "relentless diligence" though he does acknowledge "raw nerve" and "impudence" as definitions as well. Young also quotes Michael Sokoloff, from A Dictionary of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic, "He translates the verb 'chatzaf' (A form of the Hebrew word Jesus probably used.) as 'boldly insist upon.' " I believe Young appends this unusual "persistence" aspect to his definition of "chutzpah" in order to stay in line with traditional interpretations of this parable. But as we have seen it is these traditional interpretations which are wrong and it is only by sticking to the standard definition of "chutzpah" that we are going to be able to understand what Jesus is trying to teach us about prayer. The normal definition of "chutzpah" as, "supreme self-confidence" "nerve"  "gall" "audacity" "impudence," corresponds almost perfectly with the definition of the Greek word "anaideian" as "shameless" "irreverent" "immodest" and "disrespectful." So I think it's pretty clear that Prof. Young is correct. The word Jesus originally used in this parable was some earlier form of our modern word "chutzpah." But what is Jesus trying to show us?

To get a clearer picture of what Jesus is saying let's substitute a word which means the opposite of the word he used. Instead of "shameless, irreverent, immodest, and disrespectful"  lets substitute, "humility", "reverence", "timidity", "apologetic manner", "politeness." So for example:

 Luke 11:8 I say unto you, Though he will not rise and give him, because he is his friend, yet because of his chutzpah humility he will rise and give him as many as he needeth.

According to Jesus it wasn't his humility that got him the answer it was his lack of humility, i.e. his shamelessness. According to Jesus it wasn't reverence which got him the answer it was his irreverence. According to Jesus it wasn't timidity which got the answer it was audacity. According to Jesus it wasn't politeness which got the answer it was his rudeness. Wow! Jesus is turning our idea of prayer completely upside down. We thought that in order to get God to answer our prayers we needed to come with humility and reverence but Jesus is saying just the opposite. This probably explains why the translators labor so hard to mis-translate this passage of scripture, it sounds like Jesus is contradicting everything we've ever heard about prayer. He is! Let me share a couple of stories with you which I think will clearly illustrate what Jesus is saying.

Honi the Circle Drawer was a Jew who lived in the first century B.C. He acquired the nickname, "Circle Drawer" when he was asked to pray for rain. Here's the story from a translation of The Mishna, by Herbert Danby. The story of Honi, (Danby translates his name Onias.) is found on page 198 and is as follows'.

Once they said to Onias, the Circle-maker, 'Pray that rain may fall'. He answered, 'Go out and bring in the Passover ovens that they be not softened'. He prayed, but the rain did not fall. What did he do? He drew a circle and stood within it and said before God, 'O Lord of the world, thy children have turned their faces to me, for that I am like a son of the house before thee. I swear by thy great name that I will not stir hence until thou have pity on thy children'. Rain began falling drop by drop. He said, 'Not for such rain have I prayed, but for rain that will fill the cisterns, pits, and caverns'. It began to rain with violence. He said, 'Not for such rain have I prayed, but for rain of goodwill, blessing, and graciousness'. Then it rained in moderation (and continued) until the Israelites went up from Jerusalem to the Temple Mount because of the rain. They went to him and said, 'Like as thou dist pray for the rain to come, so pray that it may go away! He replied, 'Go and see if the Stone of the Strayers has disappeared! Simeon b. Shetah sent to him (saying) 'Hadst thou not been Onias I had pronounced a ban against thee! But what shall I do to thee? —thou importunest God and he perfometh they will, like a son that importuneth his father and he performeth his will;…"

Now that's chutzpah.

Let me point out a few things about this story which will shed some light on what Jesus is talking about in the parable of the friend with chutzpah. First, Honi is expecting his prayer to be answered. Honi tells the people to bring in the Passover ovens so they won't be ruined by the rain which he is certain is going to come. The kind of chutzpah in prayer that Jesus is talking about is certain as to what the answer will be. God's will is not an issue for Honi. Honi knows God will give him what he asks. The man who comes to God with chutzpah knows what the answer will be.

Second, Honi is certain that God will answer his prayer because he sees God as his very own, personal, father. At the end of the story Simeon b. Shetah accuses Honi of talking to God like to his very own father. Simeon b. Shetah is a representative of the Jewish Sages, the Pharisees, Rabbinic, style of Judaism. Honi on the other hand represents Hassidic, i.e. charismatic Judaism.  What's important about this for understanding Jesus' parable of the friend with chutzpah is that according to Shmuel Safrai in his article, Jesus and the Hasidim, available at Jerusalem Perspective Online:

It appears from the above passages that the Hasidim and those associated with them, including Jesus, considered their relationship with God to be one of extreme familiarity. It is true that already in the Bible the people of Israel are referred to as sons or children of God: “You are the sons of the LORD your God” (Deut. 14:1). Likewise, in rabbinic teaching Israel is called “sons” of God: “Beloved are Israel for they were called sons of God; still greater was the love in that it was made known to them that they were called sons of God.”[36] One sage stated that even when Israel sins, they still are sons of the LORD their God."[37] However, in Hasidic circles the relationship of a Hasid to God was not just one of “child of God,” but of a son who can brazenly make requests of his father that someone else cannot make. The Hasid addressed God as “abba,” “my father,” or “my father in heaven,” and the LORD responded the way he responded to “Hanina, my son.”

" A son brazenly making requests of his father that someone else cannot make." That's exactly the type of chutzpah that Jesus is pointing his disciples toward in this parable. In fact, if you look at the context of the parable, three verses before Jesus begins to relate the parable of the friend with chutzpah he, in response to his disciples request for instruction in how to pray, says:

Luke 11:2 …When ye pray, say, Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth.

Jesus is teaching them to pray just like Honi prayed, like a son making requests of his father with "extreme familiarity," "brazenly," i.e. with chutzpah. If you go back to the parable, one of the things we've overlooked in our desire to interpret it as saying that the secret to answered prayer is persistence, is that the man in need of bread is making a request of a friend. He didn't just start knocking on the first door he came to. He didn't even go to his next door neighbor, he went to his friend. He went to someone he had confidence in. Someone he knew would answer his request. Someone he could be brazen with. That's Jesus point, if we want God to answer our prayers then we need to come to him with confident boldness that we will receive what we ask. Jesus said the exact same thing here:

Mark 11:24 Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.

One last point before leaving Honi. The religious authorities of Honi's day hated his chutzpah. They wanted to excommunicate him. Geza Vermez in his book, Jesus the Jew, pg. 71 even suggests that the appellation "Circle Drawer" is a"…rather sinister Hebrew epithet…" That's one way you can identify chutzpah or faith, the religious authorities hate it.

The story of Martin Luther praying for the healing of his friend Melanchthon, who was on his death bed, is another example of the chutzpah in prayer Jesus is talking about, from pg. 263-264 of The Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 1896-1897

" 'May the Lord preserve us,' exclaimed Luther, as he looked at Melanchthon; 'how the devil has abused this organ of the divine truth.' Then turning to the window, and placing himself with his back to the company, he prayed fervently to God. 'The Lord,' says Luther, 'was constrained at this time to grant me my desire, for I threatened to have nothing more to do with Him, and poured into his ears all the promises to importunate prayer that I could bring from Holy Scriptures; so that He must needs hear me if I was ever again to trust His promises.' He then took Melanchthon by the hand, saying, 'Be of good cheer, Philip, you will not die' ; and behold, Melanchthon began to revive, and in a few days was on the road to recovery. Such is Luther's account of the famous event, which some have regarded as a miracle of healing. The English version, however, reads more smoothly that the native German, where, if one may translate literally, Luther declared that he 'rubbed the ears of our Lord God' with His own promises. The late Sir William Hamilton was so repelled by the language of Luther on this and other occasions, that he went back and walked no more with him."

It's a replay of Honi's chutzpah. Luther doesn't "persist" in prayer but rather insists that God answer his prayer. Luther doesn't humbly petition God but rubs God's ears with God's promises. Second, Luther knows that the prayer has been answered as he says to Melanchthon 'Be of good cheer, Philip, you will not die,' though there was apparently no immediate physical manifestation of  healing. Finally the religious authorities are angered by Luther's chutzpah.

When I first became a Christian it was through the ministry of Fred Price, pastor of Crenshaw Christian Center in Los Angeles. When Pastor Price taught about prayer he would often say, "God always answers my prayers." He didn't mean it in that sappy evangelical way of, "God always answers my prayers, sometimes he says yes, sometimes he says no, sometimes he says wait awhile." No, Pastor Price meant that God always gave him what he asked for. That's chutzpah! I remember thinking, "I wish God always answered my prayers." That kind of statement from Pastor Price often elicited cries of outrage from the religious peanut gallery. "How dare he say that, the nerve." "Why, he's putting God in a box." "The arrogance of the man to say that God always answers his prayers." That's how you can know that Pastor Price was full of chutzpah, he set religious people's teeth on edge.

Years later I was meditating on the last verses of this parable, only in the version contained at Matthew 7:7 which omits the parable:

Matthew 7:7 Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you:

I was repeating over and over to myself, "Ask and it shall be given you… Ask and it shall be given you… Ask and it shall be given you." As I was doing that I changed the scripture a little to make it personal, and I began to say "When I ask it is given to me… When I ask it is given to me…, When I ask it is given to me…" As I meditated this same way over many days I came to accept the truth of this scripture. I saw that Jesus was telling me that God wants to answer my prayers. God wants my prayers answered more than I want them answered. I came to see that Jesus was trying to build my confidence in the effectiveness of prayer. As I was thinking about this I remembered what Pastor Price had said, "God always answers my prayers." and I realized that he was just paraphrasing what Jesus had said in Matthew 7:7. So I started agreeing with Pastor Price and Jesus and now I say, "God always answers my prayers."

To sum it all up. Jesus responded to his disciples request for instruction in prayer by teaching them to pray, "Our Father…," which according to Shmuel Safrai is akin to the Hasidic understanding of a son who can brazenly make requests of his father that no one else can. Jesus then illustrates this with the parable of a man who comes to his friends house at midnight demanding bread. The friend is irritated by the man's audacity in waking him and his family up at such a late hour. Jesus then says that though he won't get up and give the man the bread because of friendship he will get up and give him the bread because of his chutzpah, his brass, his supreme confidence, his boldness, his bold insistence, his audacity in asking. Jesus then finishes the lesson saying,

"Ask and it shall be given you, seek and ye shall find, knock and the door shall be opend. For everyone that asketh receiveth and he that seeketh findeth and to him that knocketh the door shall be opened."

How are we to pray? With chutzpah. With bold confidence that our prayers will be answered. With an audacious certainty that our request cannot be denied. Where does this audacity come from? From getting to know God as you very own father. When you get to the point where you can, from your heart say, "God always answers my prayers." then you've got chutzpah.

Ask and it shall be given you.