tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-96083082024-03-07T02:34:08.525-05:00Little Gidding"We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time." T.S. EliotAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10837198581605171542noreply@blogger.comBlogger142125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608308.post-80587263045049186172017-01-27T15:39:00.001-05:002017-01-27T15:39:46.852-05:00Jeremiah 29<p style="margin: 0px; text-indent: 18px; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal; font-family: Palatino;"><span style="font-family: Palatino-Roman;">Jeremiah is the prophet of Lamentations, speaking to his people on the eve of the Babylonian Captivity, when they would lose their nation, their capitol city, and their temple, and be taken into exile to Babylon the Great, the ascendant world empire of that time. This exile was a fulfillment of the great curse in Deuteronomy 15, when God set before His people a great blessing if they remained faithful to Him, and a great curse if they did not. It is hundreds of years later, hundreds of years of the Israelites repeatedly choosing other gods to trust in, and there is now no longer any reprieve. </span></p>
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<p style="margin: 0px; text-indent: 18px; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal; font-family: Palatino;"><span style="font-family: Palatino-Roman;">Yet here on the eve of disaster, God sends his people comfort. Even though they will lose their own land, and become strangers in a foreign land, yet they are to seek there a full life, not a life of sulking or violent resistance. They are to build homes there, plant gardens, marry and raise children, and, in sum, prosper. Furthermore, they are not to seek to undermine or terrorize their Babylonian captors, but are to seek the good of that city full of pride and idols. </span></p>
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<p style="margin: 0px; text-indent: 18px; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal; font-family: Palatino;"><span style="font-family: Palatino-Roman;">The Israelites know what is good; they have been taught by God for hundreds of years. They know it includes justice for all and especially for the weak and disenfranchised and for the foreigner among them. They know it involves trusting in God rather than in powerful men or alliances with powerful nations. They know it involves faithfulness to wives, husbands, and children. They know it requires the teaching to one’s children all these things so that these truths will not be lost beneath the press of generations, but will continue on the earth. They know how to prosper. </span></p>
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<p style="margin: 0px; text-indent: 18px; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal; font-family: Palatino;"><span style="font-family: Palatino-Roman;">In the book of Daniel we see this command to live well among the Babylonians, and to seek their good, carried out by Daniel and his friends. They learn all the lore of the Babylonians, become experts in their ways, but live in such a manner as to show a better way. Daniel is a faithful prime minister to Nebuchadnezzar and his successor, giving them godly advice, and in his living, in his continued open worship not of their gods but of the true God, he brings them to give glory to God and, no doubt, makes Babylon a more just nation than it would have otherwise been. </span></p>
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<p style="margin: 0px; text-indent: 18px; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal; font-family: Palatino;"><span style="font-family: Palatino-Roman;">Today the Church sojourns in a land not its own, which is similar to Babylon in many ways, and which may in fact be the spiritual Babylon the Great depicted in the Revelation to John. We should likewise seek her true Good, and live within her as just and honest and merciful exiles awaiting our true home while making the land of our exile as good as she will allow. This Babylon will fall as surely and as completely as her namesake of old did, in fact, more completely and finally. But while we live within her, let us seek to do good to all persons and live out the Way that we have been shown. </span></p>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10837198581605171542noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608308.post-28674704243106121802016-05-18T10:53:00.001-04:002016-05-18T10:57:43.670-04:00Love for the SojournerDeu 10:17 For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who is not partial and takes no bribe. 18 He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing. 19 Love the sojourner, therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt. <div><br></div><div>This is one of several reasons I cannot vote for Donald Trump, and one of the reasons I am an uncomfortable Republican. Love and care for the stranger, for the aliens among us, is one of the fundamental attitudes of God, and therefore should be fundamental to God's people. There is no question about what is meant: the Israelites were a foreign people living and working in Egypt during a time of famine and therefore economic hardship in their homeland, and were discriminated against by the Egyptians in later years, to the point of slavery. They were not just visitors to Egypt; they had migrated to Egypt and settled there while poor and needy. </div><div><br></div><div>Love and care for the stranger, for the alien among them, was everywhere enjoined upon God's people in the Old Testament, always referring back to this fact that they themselves had once been oppressed aliens in a foreign land. In the New Testament, this concept is brought forward even more explicitly and strongly, in that non-Hebrews were not only to be tolerated, but were also given the right, with the Jews, to become God's people with equal inheritance. </div><div><br></div><div>Definition of citizenship and immigration regulations is clearly the right of the sovereign state, but God's people cannot think that advocacy for prevention of immigration, especially the immigration of the poor seeking better economic opportunities, much less the advocacy of restriction of rights to aid and healthcare and education, is Godly advocacy. Do we really think Jesus, if he could vote in US elections, would vote for sending poor families back to their poor land of origin so that we Americans could enjoy a still better standard of living? Is that not precisely what Israel was told not to do?</div><div><br></div><div>God is specifically concerned for the poor, and specifically concerned for aliens. The alien poor are doubly his concern, and should be ours also. Sorry Donald, and sorry Republicans, but I can't be with you on this issue. </div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10837198581605171542noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608308.post-1107662917692978092016-01-15T12:46:00.001-05:002016-01-15T13:01:49.647-05:00Alas, BabylonI have just been reading <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Isaiah+13" target="_blank">Isaiah</a> chapter 13 and following; an oracle against Babylon. What a perspective one gets from reading literature that is over 3000 years old!<br />
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Babylon was the premier empire and culture of its age. Huge public works, a walled city, a complex government with grand viziers and satraps. It was beautiful and prosperous. Almost certainly the people who lived during its prime could not imagine a world in which it was not preeminent, let alone nonexistent.</div>
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Now, some 2500 years later, it is utterly, completely gone. Covered by sand. No trace except archeological digs. Again, gone. First it was overthrown, then abandoned and occupied only by wild animals, as described in the prophecy, then (now) simply gone. How sobering.</div>
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Today we in the US, and certainly in the "West" generally, consider ourselves "the greatest people, the greatest nation, nothing like us ever was." </div>
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We worry about ISIS. We worry about economic slowdown and collapse. We worry about global warming, that will cause desertification of our tropics and inundation of our coastal cities. From the 3000-years-hence point of view, all these fears will almost certainly be realized. We will be utterly gone and forgotten, just like the Babylonians. The Egyptian pharaohs, The Medes and Persians, the Roman Empire. Read the beginning of Ecclesiastes. There will be no remembrance of us. </div>
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Does nothing last? If our greatest works become dust and ashes, to what end do we live? </div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10837198581605171542noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608308.post-498053247149112882015-09-14T10:48:00.000-04:002015-09-14T10:48:07.191-04:00Sacrifice as true giving.Hebrews Chapter 8: In this chapter the author points out that Jesus is an eternal, undying high priest. He notes that the purpose of the priest is to "offer gifts and sacrifices." What about this idea of God requiring sacrifices and gifts? <br />
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This idea is offensive to the modern mind, as it seems primitive to us. In its worst case, we think of ancient Aztec gods, or the ancient near eastern god Molech, requiring human sacrifice. So how does the idea of sacrifice, and the giving of gifts to God, jibe with the concepts of God's love for us, and with his self-sufficiency, ie, the fact that he needs nothing? <br />
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Let us start with giving in general. When we give something, generally, we lose it. When we buy someone a present, we lose the cash that bought it. When we give of our talents, generally we lose the one thing we cannot otherwise buy: time. Even when we "give" someone something intangible like "the benefit of the doubt", we are forfieting our right to make our own judgments. True giving always has an associated cost. King David understood this when he refused the offer of land upon which to build an altar, saying, "I will not offer to the Lord somewhich which cost me nothing." Such an offering would not, in reality, be an offering at all, <br />
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Next, consider what giving signifies: love, or at least good will, toward the receiver. We give to those for whom we wish the best, to those for whom we feel empathy, compassion, love. Even when we give to our enemies it is with a view to breaking down the enmitiy from our side. When we give out of guilt (the gift that we mean to say, "I'm sorry") it is, in its best manifestation, an approach to healing a breach with someone we esteem. This is not to say that gifts cannot be motivated by crass self-interest, but in that case there is a better word: bribe. We generally reserve the word "gift", in its purest or most fundamental sense, as something given out of love and good will. We give most frequently to those we love: our spouses, our children, our friends. <br />
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So, giving gifts to God is, in its purest sense, something to be expected in a lover of God. God is represented, in the Bible's ultimate denouement in the New Testament, as a loving Father who wishes his children to be made whole and hence loving like himself. He is revealed to have given of himself the ultimate gift, his own life/death on the cross, to heal the breach that we created. In his request that we give him gifts, especially of things that he doesn't actually need, he is merely encouraging the behavior of a loving child toward a beloved parent. How many useless and inscrutable drawings and clay sculptures do we parents retain as tokens of our children's affection? We value these gifts not only because they betoken our children's love for us, but because they demonstrate that our children love and are learning to give, a behavior we recognize as good and mature. To the extent that we give to God, we likewise learn to be lovers and givers, which is his design for us. <br />
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The requirment of sacrifice, likewise, can be seen as an appropriate requirment of a loving parent. We want to see our children learn to accept responsibility for their bad actions, and especially if they have insulted or injured another, we seek to find consequences that embody the idea of restoration and reconciliation. We want our children to become the kind of people who try to make it right, at whatever cost to themselves, when they have made it wrong with someone else. In this we are like God, who wants us to see and acknowledge that we have offended against him, against his love for us. We know that no sacrifice can actually atone for that offense; we own nothing in proportion to that offense. That is not the point of the exercise of sacrifice. The Sacrifice will be made for us, by God himself. But we must understand the nature of restorational giving if we are to be made truly in his image, and if we are to understand the magnitude of his love for us. Hence, we learn to give sacrificially in symbolic recognition of the grief we have given One who loves us. Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10837198581605171542noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608308.post-58096854831185587352015-09-13T16:39:00.001-04:002015-09-13T16:39:58.330-04:00Return to blogging. It has been a long time since I have written here, and even longer since I have written with any regularity. I am now well on in life, and have been reflecting on how I might live better, and decided that I must spend more time in organized, regular discourse with myself, to clarify for myself what is important, what is true, what is beautiful and worth contemplating. On the chance that such meditations may be helpful to others, and the likelihood that others may have some wisdom to impart back to me, I hope to make some of these thoughts public, in this space, going forward. <br />
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One thing that I have learned in my years here: the best is the enemy of the good. I will attempt to make these posts useful and clear, but I will not wait for them to be perfect, or perfectly organized, before posting. A structure may evolve over time, perhaps, but I expect the topics to be somewhat rambling; perhaps stimulated by a new item, or my reading, or some observation. We shall see....Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10837198581605171542noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608308.post-86955623580054772922013-09-21T11:41:00.001-04:002013-09-21T11:43:03.254-04:00The Better CovenantHebrews 8:8-12 contrasts the Old Covenant (Old Testament) with the New Covenant. What was the problem with the old covenant? We were the problem. The covenant required that we comply with its requirements, that we follow the revealed laws of God. In this it required somethat that was impossible. At the end of the book of Joshua, Joshua challenges the people to "choose this day whom you will serve", and they say, "We will serve The Lord." To this Joshua replies, "You are unable to serve The Lord." Just so. Any covenant that requires us to unswervingly love and serve God will not work, not because it is itself an unfair covenant, but because we will never keep our side of it, unless we are changed from within. <div><br></div><div>The New Covenant is better because it does not require the impossible, but rather provides it. "I will put my Laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts." The whole rest of the paragraph shows that what is promised here is a change in nature, a change in the heart. Whereas formerly we hated th law and saw it as foreign, now we shall love the laws of God and be drawn to Him and them by our very hearts. </div><div><br></div><div>This is the only way to God. He must change us. He must change me. I despair of my old selfish nature which repeatedly disappoints me. If I am ever to have fellowship with God, it will be because he has reached in and actually, actively changed my heart and the kinds of things I love. I cannot make myself love the things I do not love. But God can and does. This is the new birth and the new nature that is spoke of elsewhere in scripture. </div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10837198581605171542noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608308.post-79135326837614827412013-08-29T13:23:00.001-04:002013-08-29T13:23:14.762-04:00Today if you hear His voice...I am using M'Cheyne's schedule for Bible reading, in which one reads four selections from scripture each day, eventually reading through the entire Bible. One of today's readings is Hebrews chapter 3, in which the author speaks of a day of rest for believers. <div><br></div><div>The exhortation is, "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as they did in the rebellion." Also, "Exhort one another every day, as long as it is called today". So when is Today?</div><div><br></div><div>This may seem like a silly question, but it is not, especially in light of yesterday's post. One interpretation is that, when one once hears God's voice, one must respond that day, or be cut off. One chance, one day. Because the next day is tomorrow, and today becomes yesterday. You miss out, it's too bad. You blew it. </div><div><br></div><div>Alternatively, the author is getting at the point that for us every moment is "today". Being bound into the flow of time, we can only ever act "today"; there is no real possibility of acting tomorrow, until it becomes today. I have made many plans for many tomorrows over the years that I failed to carry through when they became "today". It is what one does now that matters. The least important time is the past, wherein one can neither act nor plan. The less important time is the future, of which one knows little and can only plan. The most important time is the present, which one can know and in which one can act. </div><div><br></div><div>For us, it is always Today. And, as I suggested yesterday, the future, even the future as pronounced from time to time by God, is changeable, at least in the only way which we can understand. When we kneel before God and repent, the world changes. When we open our hearts to God today, regardless what we did yesterday, the world changes. Today is the only day in which we can act. Now is the only moment in which we can act. And as we are born along in time, every moment is new and therefore a new opportunity to enter the rest that God has offered us. </div><div><br></div><div><br></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10837198581605171542noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608308.post-43408529409015087022013-08-28T16:19:00.001-04:002013-08-28T16:19:28.455-04:00Hezekiah's prayer: Does God change His mind?I have always been intrigued by the events recorded in 2 Kings 20. It seems to me to be one of those verses which raises very deep questions about the nature of prayer, time, causality, and God's will. It begins with Isaiah telling King Hezekiah that his illness will certainly lead to death, and that the king should get his affairs in order. There is no doubt that he is speaking as a prophet, not a physician, in that he uses the formula, "Thus says The Lord." On the basis of this pronouncement of coming death, the prophet also suggests specific action, the putting of affairs in order. It seems in every way an announcement of the determined will of God with regard to Hezekiah. <div><br></div><div>Isaiah leaves, and Hezekiah turns his face to the wall and asks God to remember his good deeds and his wholehearted walk, then weeps bitterly. Immediately Isaiah receives another word from The Lord, before he has even left the palace, and must turn around and deliver a new, completely different message to the king. Now, the King will live another 15 years, and Jerusalem will not fall to Assyria. Hezekiah is astounded, and asks, like Gideon, for a miraculous sign, and is given one. </div><div><br></div><div>So what just happened here? We have what appears to be a clear cut, unequivocal announcement of death, through the prophet Isaiah no less, followed by its retraction, in response to prayers and tears. Did God change his mind? </div><div><br></div><div>According to the most basic and straightforward sense of that question, the answer is clearly, "Yes, He did." As a human being, interacting with another person, this is in every way meaningful to me a case of God's changing His mind. At 1:00PM (let's say), God tells Hezekiah that he will die from this illness, and at 1:30 He tells him that he will live. God pronounces the future, a human weeps and prays, and God pronounces a different future. From Hezekiah's perspective, from Isaiah's who had to go back, from any human's perspective in that palace, God had changed his mind. </div><div><br></div><div>(Let me insert here the practical encouragement this affords. Even when it appears that God has pronounced doom upon us, even via a prophet, yet that doom may be changed by our prayers and tears. Not only the things we don't know may change, but even the things that we believe we have heard "straight from a prophet" may change with prayer. Mercy may be found even after pronouncement of the sentence.) This is mind-boggling. </div><div><br></div><div>Now for the boggle....</div><div><br></div><div>Perhaps it is presuming too much to say that God had changed his mind. However, He certainly changed his message to Isaiah and Hezekiah. Did He not speak His mind the first time? If not, then in what sense are we to interpret His messages to us, even his explicit prophecies? Notice that this is not the only time such a thing happens. Remember Jonah, who carried God's message all over Ninevah, that it would be destroyed in 40 days, only to find that after they repented the message was changed to one of mercy. Jonah actually expected Him to change his message (or mind): that's why He didn't want to carry the message in the first place! What does God mean when he speaks to us of the future? </div><div><br></div><div>Without time there can be no change. Without change, perhaps, there can be no meaning to time. God is always the same, which fits with his being eternal, ie, not affected by, perhaps not even in, Time. We, however, live in time so fundamentally that we cannot imagine the world apart from time. Do you think of movement? That implies time. Of growth? That implies time. Of speech? Music? Rhythm? Sound? Stories? All these require time to make any sense at all to us. We are swept along always by time, and cannot comprehend being otherwise. </div><div><br></div><div>So what is God doing when He speaks to us of the future? He is representing something to us that He knows but that we can never see "from here". The future is an idea in our minds that is always changeable, always speculative, never fixed until it ceases to be tomorrow and becomes today. He sees the end from the beginning, but we can never see in that way, being by nature creatures in time even before our fall. Perhaps when God speaks to us of the future, he is communicating to us specific ideas that are as real as such ideas can be to temporal beings. We consider and respond to those ideas, and in so doing, we change. As we change, our relationship to the unchanging God and to the world He has made also changes. The change comes from us, not from God.</div><div><br></div><div>Face it, we do not understand time. When we think of the future, we perhaps think of it as something that is fixed by a chain of causality that we just can't see but which is there nonetheless, and quite impersonal. But perhaps that is wrong, or at least incomplete. Perhaps personal beings are the most fundamental things, and time is a created dimension or context for such beings as we are, a medium so to speak, which both we and God use to express our mutual relationships. In that case, change is fundamental to our very existence and to our relationship with God, and the future, from our perspective, is always being changed. When God re-pronounces the future, perhaps He is simply re-announcing the future that has changed as a result of our changing. </div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10837198581605171542noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608308.post-83945110254887919612013-08-28T15:15:00.001-04:002013-08-28T15:15:04.613-04:00Note: On-the-fly blogs comingFor the one or two of you who "follow" this blog (in the sense of reading it twice a year or so, when I manage to write something...), I want to note that in an effort to write more often, I may write less well. In considering the reasons why I write so infrequently, it occurs to me that I conceive of each entry as requiring a lot of time that I don't have. Perhaps a simple "thought dump" is something that I can achieve with less effort, lowering that particular barrier to writing. So, here goes. Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10837198581605171542noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608308.post-19175893868067890802013-03-27T08:47:00.000-04:002013-03-27T08:47:20.834-04:00By the will of God...In the west, especially in America, we like to think of ourselves as "self-made", as having become who we are through our own individual efforts and choices. Even a little thought demonstrates the fallacy of that conceit. Why are you the race you are? Why are you a citizen of your country? How did you come by your physical and mental capabilities? Look around; are there others around you that are markedly different in their opportunities and capabilities? Could you as easily have been born and raised in their circumstances? Even when in comes to our "raisin's and bringin's up" as my Irish grandmother used to say, we are formed largely by our parents, for good or ill, whom we did not choose. The most fundamental "material" underlying who we are was not our choice. <br /><div>
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OK, granted, you may say. But what I do with that material is my own choice. And indeed it is, from one perspective. From the human, in-the-flow-of-time perspective, whatever you do that was not forced upon you was done freely, by your own choice. The Bible recognizes and assumes the reality of this choice. Joshua told the Israelites, "<a href="http://www.esvbible.org/Joshua+24:15/">Choose </a>this day whom you will serve...as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." God definitely calls us to choose, and respects those choices. </div>
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Nevertheless, there is an out-of-the-flow-of-time, eternal perspective that belongs only to God and is the realm of His own will. We cannot comprehend this, as we cannot move our own minds out of temporal ways of thoughts. We live in time as fish live in water, or, more precisely, as we live in the three dimensions of space. Though we can mathematically describe additional dimensions, we cannot perceive them, we cannot hold them in our mind's eye in the way that we can recall or imagine a smell, a landscape, or a conversation. We live in time and space, and probably always will (presuming that our resurrected existence will be like it was before the Fall, wherein Adam lived in time and space.) So we can recognize and talk about the eternal will of God, and say true things about it, but we cannot fully comprehend it, and in fact all we can know about it is what is revealed to us by one who lives in it, namely God. </div>
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Paul opens the letter to the Ephesians by noting that he is an apostle "by the will of God." The full story is told in <a href="http://www.esvbible.org/Acts+9/">Acts</a>. Paul, being born into a prominent Jewish family and into Roman citizenship with all its privileges, received an education from Gamaliel, a rabbi who is still famous and whose writings are still studied today. Paul was a persecutor of the followers of Jesus. In fact, Jesus himself states that Paul was a persecutor of Jesus! Keep in mind that, from our Western perspective, this was all Paul's own choice. Paul became an apostle of Jesus because Jesus forcibly knocked him from his horse and blinded him while he was on his way to arrest Christians in Damascus. Paul was told to go into Damascus, blind, and wait for further instructions. So when Paul states that he is an apostle "by the will of God", he knows that quite literally, and forcibly, and through no choice of his own, his course in life was redirected 180 degrees, and from being a persecutor of Jesus and Christians he would become himself a persecuted Christian and "doulos" (bondservant/slave) of Christ. This was not because Paul chose this way after much consideration and reflection, but because God chose him and forcibly intervened in his life, against Paul's will. </div>
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This perspective of Paul, that what he is, he is by the will of God, is key to understanding much of the rest that he will write to the Ephesians. </div>
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But consider: what are you "by the will of God"? Are you a wife, a mother, a husband, a father? Do you really see these as being "by the will of God"? If so, then you will see that you are called to those roles, that they were assigned to you by your maker. Were you given a strong body? a capable mind? If so, you were assigned those resources by your Father. Were you given a broken body or mind? If so, then no less than the able-bodied, you have been given these limitations for a purpose, and you are who you are "by the will of God". Let us think first about what we have been given, and only then about what we "will" do. </div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10837198581605171542noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608308.post-14349664438698110372013-03-26T14:26:00.000-04:002013-03-26T14:26:47.016-04:00Thoughts on EphesiansOne might call the letter to the Ephesians the "Deep Gospel" or the "Full Gospel". It moves beyond the core teaching of the substitutionary death of Christ and of salvation by grace through faith to consider "the mystery of (God's) will" regarding His plan for the whole sweep of history and for all the nations of the world. The core teaching of the gospel is restated and affirmed, of course, but its underpinnings in God's intentions and choices before the foundation of the world, and its goal for the fullness of time, these are the ideas which excite Paul's exuberant praises, thanksgivings, and encouragements to his brethren in Asia Minor. God has had an incredible plan all along, since before the creation, key parts of which had remained hidden from the understanding of mankind but which are now revealed to His people in the current, last days of the world: all things created, whether in Heaven or Earth, are to be united in Christ, and all his people, from all the nations (not just or even primarily Jews) are to be united into one body, which will manifest this fullness of all-in-all. And we are and will be part of that body. <br />
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This letter answers the question, what are we saved <i>for</i>? To what end our salvation? Why all these ages before and after the coming of Jesus? I am a Christian, I have left the bondage of sin and the world, but into what have I entered? What is the point? What is God's purpose in history, whether the history of the whole world down through the ages, or the history of my own relatively brief life?<br />
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An understanding of these mysteries is the great news that Paul is sharing with the Ephesians, and it is in light of this understanding that we are to live as befits a people with such a glorious past and future. <br />
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I am currently teaching Ephesians to an adult Sunday school class. As a reference for those students, and an exercise for myself, I will in the coming days attempt to place in this blog space some thoughts on that text. </div>
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10837198581605171542noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608308.post-5645417102192041412012-08-12T20:34:00.001-04:002013-03-26T14:27:34.178-04:00Jeremiah 29: The comfort of the Lord's disciplineThis is a wonderful chapter. God's people have abandoned Him and served other gods, over and over again, and as a result they are about to be taken into exile to Babylon. There is no doubt in the text that this is punishment for their unfaithfulness, and a fulfillment of the Curse which Moses warned them of, should they abandon their Lord and Saviour. <br />
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Yet, love and gentleness are evident here. In Jeremiah 27, God has told His people that if they submit to this inevitable exile graciously and humbly, and do not resist the Babylonians, that they will be spared the murderous destruction that was typical of conquest at that time, and their lives will be spared. But the false prophets argue and subvert Jeremiah's admonition by telling the people that Babylon will fall in two years (it does not.) The people do resist, and we know that their city fell in fire, rape, pillage, and the dashing of infants' heads against the rocks. This was not what God wanted.<br />
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In this chapter, Jeremiah addresses the exiles who were taken in the first wave, before the total destruction. Daniel was among these. They are told to embrace life there in exile, not to pine and despair, but to live, to marry, to have babies, to grow food, and to increase in number (very similar to the command to Adam and Eve to "be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.") Most surprisingly, rather than try to undermine or sabotage the Babylonian culture, they are to pray for it, to seek its good, to seek the good of any Babylonian city to which they are taken, for "in its prosperity shall be your prosperity." Why? "Because I know my plans for you, plans not for calamity but for a future and a hope." (My wife's favorite verse.) This whole terrible experience is part of God's plan for their good, for their cleansing, even as a loving father sadly chastises his son or daughter so that they will grow up straight and good and have a good life. <br />
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We know that God did ultimately judge Babylon for its great pride and brutality, but that was not to be the goal of his people. They were to seek the real good of these pagan cities, and in so doing, could still have a good life even in the midst of their punishment. Many, even most of the exiles would never see Jerusalem again...seventy years was longer than the normal life span. Yet their children would, and these exiles were to make sure that there would be children to return, and that those children understood why they had been exiled, that they would never fall into idolatry again. <br />
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As we find ourselves disciplined by the Lord, we should remember Babylon. Though He chastise us, it is because He loves us and seeks our real prosperity. Furthermore, as we live in these pagan cities of the West, knowing that they are not our homes, we should nevertheless live fully in them, seek their prosperity, for in their prosperity will be our prosperity. Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10837198581605171542noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608308.post-25961177338869746492012-08-09T19:51:00.001-04:002013-03-26T14:27:54.140-04:00Acts 19: Magic and the name of JesusIn Ephesus, Paul finds a small group of disciples who apparently heard the gospel in a very indirect and incomplete way, yet believed what they had heard. Paul finds that they have only heard and entered into John the Baptist's baptism of repentance. After explaining the full gospel, they are baptized "in the name of Jesus", and immediately begin speaking in tongues as a manifestation of their receipt of the Holy Spirit. This, I think everyone will agree, is rather miraculous.<br />
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Later we see Paul teaching for an extended period in Ephesus, and teaching carefully and accurately about Jesus, as we noted yesterday. In this context of careful teaching and preaching of Jesus, Paul also performs many miracles. This catches the attention of "spiritual practitioners' (exorcists) who try to cast out demons in Jesus' name, but cannot. In another place, a magician named Simon is impressed with Paul's apparent ability to "cause" the Holy Spirit to fall upon his hearers, and offers to buy this power, earning a strong rebuke from Paul. <br />
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These incidents seem to offer some insight into the meaning of doing anything "in the name of Jesus." Jesus taught that if we ask anything "in his name", the Father will grant it. This sounds almost like magic. However the episodes in Acts show that it is not merely a matter of saying, "In Jesus' name", but rather of being in a real, actual and personal relationship with Jesus. The miracles performed by Paul were incidental, not central, to his ministry of serving others by bringing them into a relationship with Jesus. The miracles occurred because he had a relationship with Jesus, knew Jesus, and shared His heart and desires. Simon and the exorcists had no such relationship, and their attempt to use Jesus' name in a formulaic way, like an incantation, was abortive.<br />
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We are asking "in the name of Jesus" only when we have a relationship with him and are in a position in which we represent His desires when we pray. If we are simply stating our own desires, without reference to that relationship, and add the words, "In Jesus name", we are using His name in a magical way, and can expect no particular answer, except possibly discipline. Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10837198581605171542noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608308.post-75246210563960143512012-08-08T20:49:00.001-04:002013-03-26T14:28:11.964-04:00Acts 18: Reasonable faith.Twice in this chapter, it is stated that Paul "reasoned" with his hearers, trying to persuade the Jews of the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Late in the chapter, Priscilla and Aquila take aside another preacher of the gospel and instruct him more carefully, so that what he states will be more accurate. All the persuading and refutation going on here is based upon reason and an accurate understanding of scripture and historical facts. <br />
There is no touchy-feely, loosey-goosey gospel here, but sober, careful, prolonged reasoning in which accuracy is paramount. Paul does not rely on tricks, or emotional appeals, but seems to rely upon careful discourse with educated men and women. Earlier in the book of Acts, a possessed slave girl known for divination follows Paul around and proclaims that he is telling the truth. One might think that Paul would welcome this testimony, but he does not. He is annoyed with it, and eventually casts out the demon, even though the demon was "supporting his message." He is content with the gospel message, carefully and reasonably preached and discussed, and needs and wants no dramatic sideshows, even if they support his message. <br />
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Today, the gospel, taken seriously, learned carefully, and discussed faithfully and accurately, is equally persuasive. The reason of man may not be sufficient to discover the gospel or attain salvation, but it is nevertheless a gift to man from God which is to be used in all our discourse about the gospel. Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10837198581605171542noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608308.post-40876821037398530142012-08-07T16:37:00.001-04:002012-08-07T16:37:22.277-04:00Thoughts on ReadingsNot much...almost nothing...has been going on here. I am convicted that despite all the reading and thinking that I do, I don't very often share what I have learned. Each time I pray the Daily Office, I pray the line, "Lord, Open our lips". Perhaps, if I simply write down some of the thoughts I have when doing my devotional reading, someone out there might find it useful. So here goes....Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10837198581605171542noreply@blogger.com1Americas (null)40.233231 -76.650142tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608308.post-17684991801593814082010-08-18T11:06:00.000-04:002010-08-18T11:06:33.143-04:00Beauty, againToday I was reading Exodus 35 and was again struck by the Lord's concern for beauty, and that we participate in it. This section concerns itself with the provision of materials for the construction of the tabernacle and its furnishings, and provides for the participation of the people in the making of these beautiful things. <br />
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It strikes me that the participation was not mandatory, but in proportion to the degree to which each person felt led by his or her heart. Anyone who felt moved to do so would contribute items of beauty and value to the material needs of the tabernacle: earrings, brooches, signet rings, beautiful dyed clothes and skins and valuable woods. Furthermore, anyone who found within her a skill (in the Hebrew, the same word as "wisdom") for the making of beautiful materials could participate in that way, by spinning beautiful yarns and weaving beautiful fabrics, by casting and forging the precious and strong metals into beautiful hooks and eyes and rings and implements, elaborating upon the basic parameters given by God to Moses on the mountain. Both men and women were welcomed into this process. In a large sense, God is saying to his people, "Here is the overall plan of the tabernacle, and some of the themes I would like to be represented. Now you gather up all the best materials, as you feel led, and use your creativity, your skills, the gifts I have given you to make it come alive and be a beautiful place, the place where your creativity and eye for beauty are lifted up to me."Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10837198581605171542noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608308.post-33932212717432230912010-07-26T22:34:00.000-04:002010-07-26T22:34:18.358-04:00The Patience of Moses: Exodus 24In Exodus 24, Moses is called up the mountain to meet with God, and to receive the Ten Commandments from God's hand. Together with seventy elders from Israel, he "sees God" and does not die, remarkably. They ate and drank in God's presence. Then, Moses makes arrangements for governance in his absence (v. 15), and goes up the mountain to meet with God. A cloud covers the mountain for six days, and it is only on the seventh day that God calls for Moses. He waits upon the mountain for six days. <br />
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I have read this account many times over my lifetime, but only today was I struck by the patience of Moses, and how foreign his experience is to my own. Consider it in your imagination: You are the chief judge and governor for a huge multitude of people traveling through a wilderness, and you have made some arrangements for judicial coverage in your absence, and you have been called into the presence of God upon a mountain in the middle of a wilderness. You live a couple thousand years BC, so no iPhones, no white-gasoline Whisperlite stoves, no nylon tents, no communication of any kind with persons out of sight or shouting distance. You have climbed a mountain, a strange mountain that you do not know. It has become covered with a cloud, so you do not have a view, you do not see anything in the valley, the world has closed around you, you are completely isolated. You wait, for hours, and nothing happens, no call from God. You relieve yourself, you make a fire perhaps and prepare some food. Still nothing. Night approaches. You have to make some sort of shelter, you wonder what else is up there with you on this mountain. Where is God? What is the point of this past day? What is going on in the camp below? Did you misunderstand God? Did he want you to come up higher? Did you do something wrong? Did you leave something out? Really, what is the point of this? What are you thinking to yourself as hour after hour of waiting in this fog creeps by? You make some sort of shelter, you fall asleep, and you awake the next morning to more fog. You have to prepare, maybe find food. How much food did you bring? How long did you expect to be up here? Another whole day goes by, and no call from God. No change. Nothing. Minute by minute, hour by hour time passes, and nothing happens. The end of another day approaches. This happens for six consecutive days. Yet Moses waits. <br />
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I cannot identify, I cannot conceive of doing this. Six days with no word from God, isolated on a mountain in a cloud. I would have second-guessed myself any number of times by the end of the first day. I must have misunderstood, I must have gotten something wrong, surely. God would not waste my time like this. What is going on in the camp without me? (a legitimate concern, because Moses' absence does, in fact, lead to the camp taking matters into their own hands and creating the golden calf.) What kind of faith, what view of time and life allows a man to stay on a mountaintop, waiting, for six solid days? Is it patience? Is it humility? Was the culture that incredibly different from today? I wish I understood this. I wish I were the kind of man that could content himself with waiting in the dark, with nothing at all happening, for even one day, without busying myself and making excuses for why I am not waiting upon God, why I cannot wait upon God but must busy myself in the meantime. I cannot comprehend doing absolutely nothing but what is necessary to stay alive, and waiting upon God for an entire week. What was Moses thinking? Really, what was going on in his mind? I think I need to understand this. How did he occupy his mind, what were his conversations with himself, as he waited upon God? What did he see in his mind's eye?Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10837198581605171542noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608308.post-46449198317196899112010-07-22T18:03:00.000-04:002010-07-22T18:03:02.476-04:00Law with a HeartToday my reading through the Bible using M'Cheyne's schedule took me to Exodus chapter 23, headed "Sundry Laws" in my New American Standard version. Sounds dry, but it isn't. I was immediately struck by the high level of personal integrity required by these laws. One is to do what is right by another person regardless of what everyone else (the "masses" in v. 2) is doing, regardless whether he is rich (this sounds modern) or poor (this does not), whether he hates you, or whether he is a stranger. You are not to accept a bribe, because a bribe will distort your judgment. There is a very strong sense here that each person stands before the Lord and must answer for his treatment of another, with no pleading of others' opinions or actions, and no extenuating circumstances. Furthermore, one's treatment of another is here linked closely with sympathy and empathy for that other. One is not to oppress a stranger, not only because it is not right, but specifically because the Israelite should <i>know how it feels</i> to be a stranger, since they were strangers in Egypt. <br />
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The sabbath rest every seven days for man and beast, and every seven years for the land, are likewise explained in terms of empathy and sympathy, not agricultural technique. In the seventh year, the self-seeded food crop will feed the hungry, who will have to go and pick it. The seventh-day rest allows refeshment for workers and working animals. <br />
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Finally, God's sympathy for his people is demonstrated in his driving out the nations gradually, so that the wild animals will not grow too numerous or the fields be ruined by too long neglect.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10837198581605171542noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608308.post-74974209450652834052010-07-09T14:00:00.001-04:002010-07-09T14:59:38.230-04:00Man's works and God's works<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px;">Today's reading included Exodus 20 and <a href="http://www.gnpcb.org/esv/search/?q=Job+38">Job 38</a>, both involving the incomprehensible gap between God and his works, and man and his. Exodus 20 is the first delivery of what has come to be called the Ten Commandments; three commandments having to do explicitly with man's relationship to God, sometimes called the First Tablet, and seven commandments addressing man's relationships to other men and their possessions, called the Second Tablet. (This is the Catholic division; the Protestant division finds four commandments in the first tablet, considering the prohibition of the making of images to be separate from the command to not worship images, and six commandments in the second tablet, combining the command not to covet a neighbor's wife with that requiring us not to covet any of his non-personal possessions. I like the Catholic division, as it splits the Ten into two numbers that have ancient meaning, 3 and 7, and it does not prohibit the making of images <i>per se</i>, which amounts to the prohibition of representational art, not to mention photography.) It ends by specifying that altars must be built of earth, or of uncut stone upon which no tool has been used, and have no steps up to them lest our "nakedness" be revealed. This latter struck me as a bit strange.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px;">In the chapter in Job, God demonstrates his sublime difference from Man by asking a series of questions that amount to, "Where were you when I created the cosmos, and what do you know of the deep workings of the world you live in?" The answers: Nowhere, I am but of yesterday, and know nothing. We moderns might think we can answer some of the specific questions God asks; perhaps we could recite our knowledge of the water cycle with regard to rain and snow. But fundamentally, we still don't understand the most basic aspects of the cosmos we live in. What exactly is time? Why is the speed of light unchanged in all frames of reference? How can it be, and what does it mean, that the smallest "particles" we can discover are not really "things" but rather wave functions? Why is mathematics, a type of symbolic mental language, the best tool for describing the world "out there"?</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px;">We can say that we have barely begun to understand the work of God in creation, and as for understanding ourselves, well, having just finished the bloodiest century in the history of man, in which over 110 million people were killed by their governments, quite apart from wars, it is hard to maintain that we know much about ourselves either. Before the majestic mind and work of God we stand as ignorant children who have bloodied each other and trashed our playroom. </span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px;"></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px;">Perhaps the rules about altar-building are to remind us of this. We may build altars, but must make them of the stuff which God has made, without much elaboration on our part. We may build them of earth, much as a child builds in the sand. Or we may pile rocks, as a child makes a fort. Not only may we not build finely carved marble altars, we may not even touch the stones with our tools. Without our flimsy tools we are unable to change that which God made from nothing. We must find them, as He made them, and recognize that they become holy not because we have had anything to do with them, but because they are dedicated to God. To put our own mark upon them with our tools, to shape them according to our liking, is to "profane" them. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px;">The prohibition of steps up to the altar is also a measure to keep us from forgetting how small and dependent we are. God's elevation above us, using the spatial metaphor, is so high that no stairs or tower that we could build could begin to be significant, and the effort only makes us ludicrous. As we build our altars higher, our smallness just becomes more pathetic, and it becomes easier to see up our skirts, so to speak. No, there is no elevation that can bring us closer to God, there is no elaboration of cut stones that can bring us closer to God. If He does not meet us here, at our own level, in the world as we find it, then we have no hope. </span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px;">Do we do this? do we meet God in the midst of our day-to-day earthen lives, living in the awareness of His sublime majesty and our evanescent dependence? "Our Father which art in Heaven" while we are here upon earth. It is the beginning of wisdom. </span></span><br />
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</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10837198581605171542noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608308.post-23795621827152058932010-07-08T20:32:00.000-04:002010-07-08T20:32:44.485-04:00The Dark YearsReading back in my journal recently, I discovered that for four years I have been feeling depressed and rather directionless. Four years. I had not realized it had been that long. Trying to discover a reason, I noted that it was about four years ago that I abandoned the dream of leaving medicine and teaching college "across the curriculum", at St. John's or some situation like St. John's. At some level it was a crazy dream. I am the wrong kind of doctor for that, a master's degree in classical literature is not enough, and when it came down to it I was unwilling to leave my home of thirty years and all the relationships and family ties we have formed here. I could get a job teaching anatomy or physiology, I suppose, but my interest in teaching really lies in demonstrating the interconnectedness of ideas and our understanding of all aspects of life in this world.<br />
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Anyway, I am not even sure that that is the reason. I have also become very much aware of my increasing age and approaching death. In any case, I have been more or less moping about for several years, not very creative, not very engaged. Not praying much at all. Not finishing the reading of a single book. <br />
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Well, it has to stop. I have begun to exercise, to set aside time for prayer. I have thought about antidepressants, but it seems to me that that may be a kind of cheat for me. I know what things have to change in my life, and believe that if I begin to more regularly and faithfully avail myself of the means of grace, I shall find joy again. <br />
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As regards this blog, one of the activities that I enjoy and have some faculty for is writing. I have reservations about putting personal reflections "out there" for public review...even this post seems a bit too personal...but perhaps returning to reflective writing will have a therapeutic effect for me as well as holding some interest for others.<br />
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I do not want to be overly ambitious, so at first I may simply jot down some reflections on my daily reading of the Bible. I am using M'Cheyne's schedule of reading through the Bible, so each day there is a selection from the Old Testament, the Wisdom literature and prophets, the Gospels and the Epistles. We shall see.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10837198581605171542noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608308.post-54880353532275196102009-01-09T13:40:00.008-05:002009-01-09T14:59:05.890-05:00Greater than the angelsIn the first chapter of the letter to the Hebrews, the author makes the argument that the Son is greater than the angels because, unlike them, he made the world and continues to uphold it all; he is the glory of God, the exact imprint of His essence, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. "He has by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they." There is a great deal here, and more that lies beneath this argument in the assumptions that it makes about reality. <div><br /></div><div>The language is strange to us moderns, who have grown unused to philosophical and theological discourse, and who have a cramped and impoverished imagination limited to the material and temporal. The ancients lived in a larger and richer intellectual space than we do today, as they had not limited the world to only what they could perceive with their five senses, as we have largely done. The world was a place full of meaning in its very nature, from its beginning. It contained more than was evident at first glance, and much that was mysterious yet true.</div><div><br /></div><div>Our author's argument presumes a world full of personal beings, including God, the Son, these beings called angels, and us. At least. From the beginning of the Bible to its end we see beings that are neither us nor God, variously called "seraphim" or "cherubim" or "living beings" or simply "angels" (Gk angeloi) which denotes their function as messengers or representatives of God. We are told little about them, which is not surprising if the Bible is concerned primarily with the relationship between humans and God. We see them incidentally, as it were, enough to tell us that we are not the only sentient creations of God. We are told our own story, and not theirs. If they were only ever called "angels" (messengers) we might conclude that they were only manifestations of God, ways that He himself appears to mankind, as in the case of the three "men" who appear to Abram on their way to Sodom. But in many places they are named as regards "type" (cherubim and seraphim) and even as individuals (Gabriel and Michael). They clearly can manifest themselves in the domain of our own experience (matter/spacetime) but somehow transcend it, as they come and go in ways that we cannot. </div><div><br /></div><div>In a world full of personal beings of various kinds, one would want to know how these beings relate to one another, especially in considering the place of this mysterious being, "the Son". Our author makes it clear that the Son is not one of the angels, who are servants of God, but a being far above them, having the "glory" of God, being his "very image" and furthermore being the very creator and sustainer of the world. This sounds a lot like God himself, who, if He is anything, is the Creator. Yet the author does not allow a complete identification of this Son with God, insofar as the Son is somehow a separate person sitting at the right hand of God, ruling with Him. Furthermore, the Son is "begotten" by God, and hence has "inherited a name" from God.</div><div><br /></div><div>Now, one thing that was understood by ancient agrarian civilizations was that like begets like. Cattle beget cattle, sheep beget sheep, humans beget humans. In saying that the Son is "begotten", the author is claiming that the Son is the same type of being as God. This is made clearer in the claim that in being so begotten, the Son has "inherited a name" better than the angels'. We are peculiar today in naming our children according to how well we like the sound of the name. To us, a name is just a sound that "calls" the person. To the ancients, and in the scriptures (which are ancient documents), a Name is much more like the "essence" of a person or thing. This is why God renames certain persons in the scriptures at critical junctures in their lives, when their lives are about to take on additional meaning. Abram becomes Abraham; Sarai becomes Sarah; Jacob becomes Israel. Zacharias is told specifically what to name his son John, and Mary is told what to name Jesus. Adam's naming the animals in Genesis is much more than his thinking up funny sounds to call each one; he is sharing with God in the definition of what kind of things they would be. </div><div><br /></div><div>So, the "Son" in Hebrews inherits his "name" from God himself, as a naturally begotten son would take on the family name. The names of God, which describe His essential being, are inherited by this Son. Whatever else he may be, the Son bears the names of God.</div><div><br /></div><div>So here we have the beginning of a mystery: this being called the Son is somehow not exactly the same person as God, yet is the Creator and Sustainer of the universe and the "exact image" of God. He rules with God in the position (right hand) of highest honor; he is the same type of being as God, and shares His name and hence His essential nature. Angels exist, but they are mere messengers, far below this Son.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10837198581605171542noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608308.post-11595430458176860502008-12-01T11:43:00.007-05:002008-12-01T12:14:30.183-05:00Hebrews 1:1A great number of important ideas are here in the first two verses of the book of Hebrews. God reveals himself by speaking. He does so in various different ways, down through time and history. There is a being called the Son through whom He speaks, and through whom He also created the world. This Son has been appointed an heir. These are the last days. <div><br /></div><div>There is no effort on the part of the writer to prove the existence of God, nor the idea that He speaks and has spoken. He is apparently writing to those who accept these as truth. God exists and speaks to us.</div><div><br /></div><div>Speech is important. We are speaking beings that live in time. Our words are so important that more often than not they are all that remains of us when we die. Millenia after their death, we the living still read the words of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Homer, Moses, and Jesus. The ability to speak and understand speech is hard-wired into our brains, and one of the largest areas of the motor cortex in our brains controls the organs of speech. Speech, or its proxy the written word, is undeniably our chief means of exchanging ideas of any kind. </div><div><br /></div><div>If we posit, for the sake of argument, that there is a God that both created us and remains interested in us, would it not be our expectation that He would use speech and words to communicate with us? Furthermore, since we are the kind of being that exists in a sequential timeframe, and uses words to communicate between generations and pass knowledge down to those who come after, is it surprising that God would likewise reveal himself gradually over time? We may be slow learners when it comes to history, but we do eventually learn. These opening verses in Hebrews assert that God does use speech to reveal himself to us, and does so down through history. In the past, he used those men and women called "prophets", but finally he has used this being called "the Son". </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10837198581605171542noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608308.post-32686845543944449392008-12-01T11:31:00.003-05:002008-12-01T11:42:44.484-05:00ReturnIt has been a long time since I have written here. Writing takes discipline, and I have not been exercising discipline very much lately, I'm afraid. I am also somewhat uncertain what place a blog should have in my life. Is it a type of journal? If so, it is too public for sharing one's deepest thoughts, the ones whose discernment and recording may be most beneficial to me. Is it a type of conversation? Perhaps, but with whom? <div><br /></div><div>There is an effort involved in writing a blog that must have some sort of return, I think. Not simply a return to me, the writer, but some benefit accruing to the readers. One has to believe it is worth the effort. </div><div><br /></div><div>I have been encouraged to write by some who have been my readers in the past. I am full of self-doubt; my life has had many failures recently, and I have felt very much less capable than I once felt. Nevertheless I will attempt to take up the practice of writing again. </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10837198581605171542noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608308.post-59686150254935494772008-03-21T10:22:00.003-04:002008-03-21T12:18:50.682-04:00Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me?It is Good Friday, and today's Daily Office offers Psalm 22, the psalm that begins with the words Jesus spoke from the cross as He was dying, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"<br /><br />The incarnation of God as man is a deep mystery, but Good Friday begins a mystery that seems black and bottomless: the death of God, the sundering of the Trinity. In a sense, this is the center point of all history. The day becomes night, the earth shakes and splits, dead arise out of their graves and walk about. It is as if creation itself convulses, as well it might; its creator, the very hands that formed it, has unaccountably and inconceivably been destroyed by his own creation. Can such a thing be? How could the earth not cease to exist? All eyes, even the unseen eyes of Satan, who perhaps knows best what is happening, are pulled relentlessly to that cross. Can it be? Have I won? The centurions fall down in fear, "Surely this was the son of God!" Unseen forces tear the temple curtain in two. Did the earth splilt beneath as well, foreshadowing the downthrow of the now obsolete center of worship? What is happening? How can God forsake God? <br /><br />I think that we cannot hope to explain these things. A toddler might as easily attempt to explain lightening. We are but of yesterday and know nothing. Our forefathers saw these terrors at midday and have passed them down without explanation. There they are, raw and aweful, assaulting the mind with impossible realities. We do not understand, but could we expect to understand? We do not even understand our own material world; how could we understand events that involve its creator?<br /><br />Because Jesus spoke the opening words of Psalm 22 from the cross, we infer that he was invoking the entire psalm, and hence applying it to himself. In the past, when I have read this psalm, I was troubled that it seemed somehow too "human" to apply to Jesus. It seems to be a psalm of lament and supplication to God for rescue from oppressors, for salvation in fact. It reads very much like a human being in deep trouble, asking God to deliver him just as He had delivered his ancestors in the past. <br /><br />Yet of course, it was especially <em>as</em> a human being, as <em>the</em> Human Being, the second Adam (Adam meaning, in Hebrew, Man as in man-kind) that He was being crucified. Another deep mystery. Jesus so deeply identified with those for whom he was dying that for all intents and purposes (especially divine purposes) he <em>became</em> those he was dying for. He became <em>sin</em>, and it was as such that he was dying. He was not dying because he was God--God had no need to die--but because he was Man. "Behold the Man," says Pilate. He was dying as the second Adam, the innocent Adam dying in place of the sinful Adam. Hence, all his thoughts in Psalm 22 are thoughts from a man's perspective, a human's perspective. He is speaking for us, as we might speak had we been dying there, only guiltless. That is why the Psalm does not speak from God's perspective, though Jesus is also God. These are his dying words, and he is dying as a man, for man.<br /><br />Hence, he speaks of us as brethren, and says he will praise God in the midst of the "assembly" of us, his people. He, as a man, is really beset upon, is really surrounded by enemies, both material and spiritual, is really dying and is really praying for deliverence. In one sense, of course, He is not delivered. His enemies prevail, and He dies under torture. Yet He is indeed delivered, and we through Him. We are delivered from death through his death, and of course He knew this all along. The Father has <em>not</em> despised the affliction, nor Jesus' prayers upon the cross. He delivered Him from death, and hence from the power of death, through death. So Psalm 22 ends with praise coming from all the nations and all the peoples, who have heard and remember. Yet unborn people will hear and remember, and will declare His righteousness because "He has performed it."Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10837198581605171542noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9608308.post-79151173955194441852008-02-08T07:02:00.000-05:002008-02-08T08:07:17.597-05:00Not NegativeMy friends at <a href="http://bibleinyear.blogspot.com/2008/02/ten-commandments.html">Reading Through the Bible </a>are contemplating the Ten Commandments, first presented to Moses on Mt. Sinai, after the people had been delivered from slavery in Egypt. Note that the commandments begin by <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=2&chapter=20&version=31">mentioning </a>this context: "I am the Lord thy God which brought you out of bondage...you shall have no other gods before me." God then goes on to list ten rules, ten commandments mostly having the form, "You shall not..." Does this seem odd? I have heard the complaint that the commandments are "negative", and that it would have been better for God to have used "positive language". Yet here He is, right after reminding his people that they are now free men and women, delivering this set of "negative" rules. Doesn't he get it? <br /><br />Is such a formulation of law really negative? Or perhaps the question can be better formulated, "Which type of law restricts our freedom more, prohibitions (thou shalt not) or prescriptions (thou shalt)?" I propose that prohibitions are the least restrictive form of law, and that is why God casts his commandments in that form right after setting his people free. The Ten Commandments are not only consistent with their new freedom, but are excellent signs and symbols of their new freedom. <br /><br />Consider the Garden of Eden. What could Adam and Eve do? <em>Everything</em>....except one single activity, one simple rule. They could climb trees, cut down trees, make love under the trees, make love <em>in</em> the trees, burn the wood, use the wood, eat the fruit from every single tree, run around, sing... whatever. In short, <em>every conceivable activity under the sun</em> was lawful except one: don't eat fruit from this one tree. "Thou shalt not eat the fruit from this one tree" was the absolutely least restrictive rule one could imagine, <em>because it was negative</em>. By saying, "Don't do this", God is allowing <em>everything else.</em> Imagine He had formulated His commandment in the positive. How would that be stated? "Act in accordance with My will." There's a positive formulation, but what does it mean? At every act, A and E would have to consider, "hmmm...is this according to God's will?" Talk about anxiety! Perhaps God could have said, "Do everything except eat from the tree in the middle of the garden." In the first place, this still contains the negative, but now it contains a daunting positive command: <em>do everything else</em>. So now they <em>have</em> to make love in the trees, and <em>have</em> to run around and sing, have to burn the wood and every other conceivable activity. <br /><br />Most of our own laws work the same way. The laws in a free land generally do not prescribe behavior but simply forbid a small subset of specific behaviors, leaving its citizens free to do anything that is not specifically prohibited. <br /><br />The simplest and least restrictive form of law, which is simply the declaration of God's will as distinct from His creature's, is prohibition. The Ten Commandments leave entire worlds of possible activity open to us. We can relate to God in all sorts of ways, exploring our own individuality in our worship, but we can't worship anything but our creator. We can say anything we want; we can sing, write poetry and plays, and explore all the rich possibilities of language written, spoken and sung; but we cannot dishonor God's name or use it trivially, nor can we malign our neighbor. We can enjoy all the aspects of sexual love, madly, wildly, as often as we want, wherever we want; only with our spouse. We can take all kinds of things for our own use, and create all manner of secondary things with them; only we cannot take for our use what someone else has taken for his, nor can we use these things as gods. <br /><br />The Ten Commandments are simply the boundaries of our design as creatures. We were made a certain way, with certain wonderful strengths, and the commandments are in a sense our "specs". As Israel contemplated their new freedom from slavery, God was showing them that they were now able to make all sorts of choices they could not make as slaves. They could be merchants, or farmers, or herdsman, or craftsmen. They could live in what village they wanted. They could build their homes large or small, east or west, marry whom they willed, move when they wanted. They were free. Only, there were these ten kinds of things they could not do without harming themselves and their community. These commandments, in their simplicity and in their "negative" form, presumed and were emblematic of the people's freedom.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10837198581605171542noreply@blogger.com2