Patience, You Must Have: Jesus in the OT

There are multiple trucks literally filled with people who are laughably more qualified than myself to speak on the subject of Jesus in the OT . . . but I think that was understood long ago. Some I have been most helped by: The Ancient Love Song, The Unfolding Mystery: Discovering Christ in the Old Testament, Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament, The Meaning of the Pentateuch.

Are we supposed to play hide and go seek with Jesus as we read the OT? Is He everywhere and we just have to find Him? After all it is HE who said the Law and prophets spoke of Himself. In thinking about this we will look at some other general OT issues in passing.

Is our sequence of OT books the best? Most have never thought about the question and with good reason, its order has been the way it currently is for quite some time. What if there was a way to read the OT that might benefit us a little more, might give just a smidge more clarity or aide to our understanding. Currently we break the OT into the Law, History, Poetry, Major then Minor Prophets and, for the most part, they are lumped together categorically. This is very minor but in one way the OT is organized (Tanakh) Chronicles does not come right after Samuel and Kings--as we noted last time it was written well after the two; the love story of Ruth, making a more logical and manifested form, follows the intimate love of Song of Songs; Ecclesiastes, the existential, candid look at the sadness and core of life precedes the book of Lamentations which woefully recalls terrifying historical events with little hope, save for chapter 3—what’s the purpose of life; and this way ends with Ezra, Nehemiah, and then Chronicles, the point at which Israel is gathered back together and growing again. The final books build anticipation, desire, longing for a good king who will finally right the Nation. What does this have to do with our topic: the OT, by presenting human failure and incompleteness time after time over hundreds of years builds a groaning for the Messiah, for Christ Jesus to tear on the scene and make all things right. *

A big question when looking at the OT and Jesus must boil down to, what were the intentions of the people writing the OT at the time they were writing it? Thousands of years ago the stories of God’s interaction with people were told orally, by mouth. These were written down at some point. This means that these things are very old and the audience, then, was just as old. When we tell a story to a child we should emphasize certain things because stories convey, stories teach. Just the same with stories way back in days prior to almost everything we would recognize as culture: they told stories to relay history and ideas in a certain way, with intention.
For one, they were not a scientific based society; what I mean by this is that precision was not such a big deal as it is nowadays. So when you read Numbers or stories about how one army came out to fight another and it was like 10,000 million on one side and 1,000,000 on another we should not go, ah, someone was there counting, rather we should think, man, one army had a huge personnel advantage over the other army. It is simply saying there was a definite underdog. So we cannot get hung up on the numbers, take yourself out of the Western Scientific precision mode and throw a bone; different cultures speak in differing ways, they convey ideas differently from how we do and that is okay. It is not dishonesty, just different. (though some numbers obviously have symbolic meaning, we’re not talking about those here)
Secondly, as was mentioned last time, they and we write with certain bents and emphases (remember how Samuel and Chronicles differed?). Galileo is quoted as saying, “The Bible shows the way to get to Heaven, not the way the heavens go.” What he is saying is precisely my point: we should not look at Genesis, the first book in the OT, as some kind of proof or in depth description of what all took place at creation, instead we should draw that God spoke it all into existence and made it good. So we have to be careful in how we read the Bible because it is easy to interject our ideas based on our conclusions and understandings literally thousands of years after things were written. It is arrogant to conclude so and so must have been saying this BECAUSE we now know x and y. We must be careful because we know the OT was inspired by God but it does not mean it has to be neat and nice and always conform nicely to our present way of understanding.
Third, for the most part, the audience of the OT writers were people living at the time it was spoken. Peter Enns makes an intriguing point that in Deuteronomy 5.7 it reads “You shall have no other god’s before me.” He compares this to later writings such as Isaiah 45.5 that says, “I am the LORD, and there are no other, besides me there is no God . . .” Did you catch that? In the first part God seems to be acknowledging there are other gods and in Isaiah He does not. Dr. Enns suggests that in a way of speaking to the people so they understand he changes over time, not the reality of what He is saying to Israel but in the way they’ll best understand. He argues that at the time of Deuteronomy the wandering Israelites were very much poly-theistic—they believed in many gods—so god spoke to them in that way: “there are others but I’m supreme.” But over time, through circumstance God showed them that there were no other gods besides Him and thus He spoke more candidly to Israel in Isaiah about His supremacy: “categorically I am alone, none even comes close!” We see then that we cannot wear, entirely, our same thinking caps when reading the OT, it is very different.
Fourth, the Bible is incarnational, just like Jesus. I often forget that God did not have to do all this. He could have made the world and observed like the Greek gods, interjecting into events on a whim. God did not have to speak to us. Get a good image of a snooty person in your mind, this individual is high-browed, wears only the finest of cloths, is a billionaire who speaks to no one but his butler. Sadly the limo had a flat tire and for some reason this person decided to get out of the car, a smelly, dingy, and maybe dying hobo comes up asking for money. Nothing. Our nose-upper does not even acknowledge our hobo’s existence. In a sense, God could do that and it would be okay. But thankfully He decided to interject and speak to His people and not in some heavenly language but our own, our own full of bad grammar like this blog bountifully contains, language that could and would be twisted, language that is ordinary, not pompous but understandable; God spoke so that we could begin to understand who He is and who we are. This is amazing! So in this way we can compare the OT to Jesus and find the similarities: God interjected into the mess to bring mercy and grace.

Okay, so what about Jesus? Jesus is not playing hide-and-go-seek in the OT. And we should not stretch ideas and similarities and think we have found Him. He is spoken of prophetically—in the Psalms and Isaiah most abundantly but in many other books—or, as many believe, in the form of the Angel of the Lord—Jacob wrestled with him, he stood with the 3 in the furnace, he stood in the way of Balaam’s donkey, etc. So in this way we should not look to find Jesus because He is not there, He will not be until hundreds of years later.
But did Jesus not say that the Law and Prophets spoke of Him? I can tell a story about the attribute of courage without mentioning the word courage; we do not need to see Jesus to long for him. We can think simply but never simplistically about the things Jesus says. What some think of when they say that Jesus is in the OT is that there are people and events push us towards the expected Jesus, the Messiah to come. As Jesus Himself does at numerous points, he takes something from the past and compares it to Himself: Like Jonah descending for three days then being raised up so I will be buried and rise. Also, Jesus is called the second Adam, this compares Jesus to Adam in Genesis and it conveys that humanity, in Jesus Christ, has a second chance for fellowship with God. But even with the comparisons or types—those who have some attribute or action which Jesus will perfect in His existence—we can get too wrapped up in the Jesus part and fast-forward too quickly so that we lose what the point of the passage in the OT is getting at. The OT is doing a lot of things but a big thing it is doing is making us itch more and more for Jesus, it is creating the desire for the perfect One. Charles Drew, author of the helpful book The Ancient Love Song: Finding Jesus in the Old Testament, says, “Jesus Christ has to have context if he is to mean anything . . . Our God has [convinced us that we need His love] for us in the Old Testament. To be ignorant of those Scriptures is to be like the complacent husband, bored with his wife because he has never realized what life would be like without her.”

We want to get what is to be gotten from the OT but nothing more. If we can learn to approach the OT in a humble way in which we want to be informed by God’s word, patiently seeing what it is trying to do we will gain much. Is it hard? Yes. Is it boring at times? Yes. But it is also a gracious gift granted to us and there is a wonderful, joy-filled purpose in it. We see more and more WHAT Jesus’ reign would mean and imply on a sick and decadently destructive people as all humans are. In many parts of the OT it is Jesus’ absence that is to be felt, not His presence.

The Apostle Paul wanting to encourage his fellow believers in the city of Rome told them the following of the OT: “whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.” The Bible, the Christian life is an ongoing wrestling match, it is a struggle; but as the Christian struggles he hopes.





* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Books_of_the_Bible

10-22-08

I.
You bright light
You bright light
Some suns sloth to be seen
But you burst forth like a beam
You joined and joyed
I knew your warmth
Were we not walking together
Did we not help one another?

II.
I cannot afford a smile
my soul is broke
I know what you forgot
You came and ate then left,
You were meant to stay
There was more, much more
But a heart-driven ignorance
. . . O your tears are life-less
Your teas are fools
Your tears are damned!
Come, come return!

III.
The end tells the truth
All was a flux,
The words were echoes,
The difference a temporal gale;
How could we have known
There is nothing to be done.

IV.
Like water in the heat
Like a flame in the wind
You bright light
You bright light have dimmed,
dimmed,
dark.

You're Lazy and a Mystic: Why You Stink at Studying the OT. Part 1

To begin, the first couple of posts will more than likely be more broad and less pointing to a specific book of the Old Testament (OT).

Most would agree that magic is left to J.K Rowling or the once famous game Dungeons and Dragons. When taking the Bible and magic and comparing the two most would prepare their mind for a study of contrast. I mean God doesn’t need magic, supernatural activity sure, but magic is weird and chaotic and learned, God and his ways just . . . are. Okay, fair enough, though not a satisfactory argument by any stretch of the imagination. But what about how you and I interact with the Bible? What about how we approach studying the Bible? A good descriptive for people who ‘study’ the Bible and most assuredly the OT is lazy. Exhale you gaspers. The average Christian in America studies the Bible in a laughable manor and I think the birth that this monstrosity occurs is a sense of magic. I know you are thinking, in the words of Lucille’s husband Ricky in the television show I Love Lucy, ‘You have some splaning to do!!’

Excuse number one: I have the Holy Spirit. The argument goes like this: since I have the Holy Spirit (HS) now I do not have to study the Bible so hard. The HS was given, among other things, to Christians to enlighten and illumine them as they ponder God’s Word. So since I am at a great advantage I do not need to study like those who did not have the HS studied prior. It is almost like a higher level of osmosis, I just have to read over the Bible and application and understanding will flood my inner self. This is ridiculous. Jesus was God and still went to temple, still prayed a lot for wisdom and discernment and pondered deeply and at a young age the Bible, as He had it then of course. While the HS is a great and wonderful gift it is not a crutch but a greater reason to study more in depth the things of God because we now know something that those who did not have the HS knew, namely, we will be guided by Him as we study. In his second letter to Timothy Paul said to his young pastor friend, ‘Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything.’ You see it? Paul says as you use the gift of thinking and pondering, the gift God has given to you, He will give you understanding in everything, He will lead you to what is correct and true and right. In Acts the church would meet together to break bread and to devote themselves to the apostles teaching and pray together. Jesus--have fun arguing with Him--said if you love me you will skim around and kinda know, generally, what the Bible says? NO!! Jesus Christ said if you love me you will abide in my Word—and we know that essentially the whole OT was speaking of Him. Abiding is actively placing yourself in the midst of, not resisting but going towards. There is no flashy Greek to get you out of this one. You love Jesus? You’ll study and know Him and He is found only in the Bible, for our purposes here.

Excuse number two: The OT is confusing and does not make sense. Math does not make sense, until you familiarize yourself with its language, terms and purposes. A sheet of music is confusing until you devote yourself to learning what it is doing, what the symbols mean and the placements convey. When I first started running a specific trail in college I got lost a lot but after a few runs I began to recognize things and I was familiarized with where I was going. I could go on. My point is if you are not actively reading and familiarizing yourself with the books of the Bible how in the world do you expect them not to be confusing? Some people in the past would read the book they wanted to better understand and study 30 times before actually breaking it down. It is best to study as an Eagle—looking broadly and seeing the whole picture—and as a badger—in depth digging. Many people now purposely put themselves on reading plans to get through the OT once and the NT twice in a year. John Sailhamer, who wrote large, helpful volumes of thinking and commentary on the first five books of the OT, said of studying the first five books of the OT that the most essential key to study is reading the text over and over. This takes time but hey, if you want to understand it you need to take the time to do so.

Excuse number three: I’ve read some of the books front to back, mostly the minor prophets because they are short, and they are still confusing. The Bible is a story, all of it. It is a story, a story formed in the same way The Chronicles of Narnia is a series of story culminating into one big story. Books fill in the blanks and have differing viewpoints. Do you ever wonder why there is so much overlap between 1 & 2 Samuel, 1 & 2 Kings and 1 & 2 Chronicles but there are differing and almost contradictory words about the same events and lives? Two were written before both kingdoms were taken in captivity (Samuel and Kings) while one was written after the kingdoms were taken captive and some were brought back to the land of the Israel (Chronicles). Because of this there are different things that they authors of each want to emphasize. For example, David in Samuel—written before the kingdoms were taken from the Land—is seen in a very candid way; his sins are before the audience: coveting, adultery, murder, pride, etc. People were close enough to him to know the sins David committed, people were still alive possibly who could say, yup, he did that. But in the Chronicles version the sins of most of the leaders, including David, are omitted. Some have said that the nation of Israel was remembering their history in a positive and less candid fashion, their history and lineage of great men. Maybe they wanted their audiences to say, ‘Hey, look what God did among us, what leaders he gave, He can do it again!’ My point, each story and book is not to stand-alone, they build upon and fill in for one another.

So, have you been approaching the OT study in a magical or mystical way? Are you waiting for understanding just to come to you without study, contemplation, and prayer? Maybe you have not and you are simply lazy and you know it. You can change the times my friend.

I think that you are getting the picture that study is work. (Nooooooooooo!!) It is true. Paul says we can glorify God by working so working is not an evil thing, remember work was cursed; work was made toilsome as a punishment for sin but it was in existence prior to the sin of Adam and Eve. But think of this, as you study and meditate on the OT you will begin to understand it more, the fog will begin to lift a little more and the glory and character of God and Christ and the HS will be more fierce, more terrifying, more great and something you’ll crave. A great advantage of the OT over the New is that it is filled with exciting and interesting stories which are easier and at times more enjoyable to study. The OT is not something that you might break-down like one of Paul’s letters. It is a big chunk of reading but intriguing and helpful for your soul and others’ souls. Someone told me when I first became a Christian that if you rake you’ll get leaves but if you are patient and dig you’ll get diamonds and gold. ‘I want tha gold.’

Next time I hope to look at the problem OT studiers have of running too quickly to Jesus: is Jesus playing hide-and-go-seek in the OT; is he to be found everywhere?

Baby Boots

Unt Tree

Why I Love The Bible's Old Testament

Do you ever contemplate why the Old Testament exists? Do you find it not only boring at times, but also confusing? Where is the resolve; is what these people do right or wrong, are they models to follow or to steer clear of? Why are all the numbers rounded, can’t they count? Is this God the same one that seems so patient and kind in the New Testament? Do contradictions mean the Old Testament is not trust-worthy? Why is called so many different names? Can’t we just skip to Jesus and the Apostles? Is Ezekiel or Song of Solomon saying what I think it might be? Does God really call the murderer and adulterer and bad-parent and guy who ended is life as a cold, weak man one after His own heart?

I hope to start a small series of blogs on how to study and look at the Old Testament and hopefully it addresses the why as well. But here I want to give a few sweeping, general, and broad reasons why I love and am thankful for the Old Testament.

It is different. The Old Testament is crazy. The Old Testament is wonderful. The Old Testament is exciting. The Old Testament is not the scientific-based Western thought. The Old Testament (OT) is a gathering of books like no other. It’s aim and way of getting at its target is like no other book. It has reasons for all it does but does not always disclose them (‘the secret things belong to the LORD’ and ‘wisdom conceals knowledge’).

It’s genres. There is history: of the Earth’s formation, destruction, and renewal. Of man, his purpose, failures and struggles. Of nations—Israel, Egypt, Persia, Assyria, Babylonia, and a lot of smaller Canaanite peoples. It can look at the life of one man or one nation. It is introspective and, at times, painfully ambiguous. There is poetry: The first being in Genesis from Adam’s lips, to the entire love-struck book of Song of Solomon, to the singing in the Psalms of people being murdered and lands being destroyed, and in myriads of other places. Much of what is written is done in the form of story, oral tradition written down. There are legal documents: of how to treat one another, how to tend flocks, take care of the land, how to treat outsiders, how to perform justice, how to clean, how to celebrate, how to worship, etc.

The way the OT is written is a way of theology—this word simply means the study of God, who, what, how He is. If it is kept in mind that the entire reason the book was written is to inform us about God, and to know God and to discover the human and his nature, then we can understand the Bible as a whole much better.

It’s way of making us think. There are ambiguities, there are unresolved matters, there are deep insights all to make us ponder God and ponder how the world works.

It’s breadth and depth. There are prophesies and prostitutes. There is Ruth the Moabite and Ruben the son of Israel. There are grotesque acts of rape, genocide, envy, pride, and injustice. There are spectacular manifestations of the power of sin and God.

It’s ability to create in us a substantial longing for a good ruler and a right world. In reading the OT we are to grow in our desire for something better, Someone better. We see hope that is often frail and then quickly broken only to be built back and crushed again. The OT is meant to bring us to the point almost of despair crying, ‘who will make things genuinely right?!’

It’s way of displaying God’s desire to have us love Him—He gave us language and His revelation. God decided to speak to us, the creatures who He knew would desert Him, forget Him, try to bring shame and dishonor on Him, continually disobey and rebel against Him. He knew all this yet He still decided to speak graciously to us.

These are only tips of the iceberg of why I love and am thankful for the OT but I hope it serves as a perking of your curiosity to join me in looking at some ways of how to rightly study the OT.

06-24-2010

Out of graves come diamonds
Out of dirt came man
Out of time comes wisdom
Out of grace, God’s hand.
Prudence passions forth
providence’s plan.

But I Don't Want to Read.

So there I was. It was time for bed: my teeth were brushed, my pj’s doin there thing, my thoughts set aside, and though I always read the bible at this time, this time I did not want to. Normally I had no problem picking up the Word of God and reading but I was completely uninspired.

This is me a lot. Do you ever find yourself there: just not really wanting to do it? I do. So what do you do in this time? Should you? Should you not? Is it wrong to do what you do not want to do? Is it bad?

Hopefully the following thoughts are helpful:
1. Your salvation is not dependant upon reading the bible. The reason that sinners are saved from their due demise is because of what Jesus Christ did in his coming to earth, living among man, dying unjustly, paying for sinner’s sins, and rising from the grave. It is easy to think that we are losing salvation by not reading the bible, it simply is not true. Whether you read or not tonight, Jesus has accomplished His work fully and no man can thwart that.

2. The Bible is God’s word to man. As a reminder, this book is nor like ay other book. It is a divinely inspired book whose pages were guided by the Spirit of God, the Maker and Sustainer of all. These words and stories are not from man’s mind, but God’s. These books which we call the Bible are not whimsical, not something that time breaks down and suddenly makes irrelevant. No, the Bible is God revealing Himself to man and teaching man about God.

3. The Bible is alive. The Bible does not squirm and roll like an organism, rather it is alive in the sense that it—the immutable—changes those who come in contact with it. It leaches and latches, it unsettles and comforts, it pierces and heals, it demands and gives hope, it shakes and calms.

4. The Bible is good for all men. Music has a massive influence on me—and I think most of us. I sometimes pass over albums in my iPod simply because I do not want the feeling that I know they will produce. Ion a positive note, I pick certain songs because I know they will remind me of something good or will simply put me in a better mood. The Bible is the album that is always good for you. I cannot tell you how many times I was seconds away from going to sleep, decided to read the bible and my soul was benefited. There is no way around it, if you go to the Word of God in humility and praying for some kind of help from it, you will be helped in some way.

5. It is for our soul. There are times when being shocked it a good thing: it is a violent shake that says, ‘Hey! This is important!’ For me, when I remember that this is good for my soul, it gives that jolt. I am not big on getting pumped up to do things or giving myself a pep talk but reminding myself of the greater benefit 5 minutes of reading the Bible can bring over 5 minutes of sleeping, sometimes I get the picture.

6. We are commanded by God to read. God, all across the canvas of His Word, tells us to think about the contents of the Bible, its message, its purpose, our purpose, God’s purpose. God tells us to meditate over and over and often—day and night and between—on His word. Jesus says, ‘If you love me you will keep my commandments.’ So one of the ways we display that we are followers of Jesus is by the way well know God’s word and live it out. And also remember, God is not like us, He does not command things just because He can, rather He commands things for our good; God’s wisdom sees through all the ‘buts,’ ‘what abouts,’ and all other things we think can get us off the hook. God is good and so His commands are.

7. The Word of God is a gift to us. God did not have to enter humanity at all. God could have, like many Deists believe, made all things, us, and then just stepped back and watch it go like a wind-up doll. But God chose to speak to us. Not only that but throughout the thousands of years He has, through men and occasions, preserved His words for us in 2010 to hear it and know it. Also, God could have spoken in unclear ways to us, but He chose to speak to us clearly about the major things in life--sin, atonement, salvation, justification, redeeming, discipline, wisdom, truth, beauty, holiness, loving, etc. Just because a great gift is constantly there does not mean it is to be neglected and shoved to the side as a lesser treasure.

8. Reading could lead us to help others. A benefit of knowing the word—which comes by reading—is to help others. Sometimes if I think that if I neglect reading the Bible I am, in a sense, neglecting aiding others, I am motivated to read God’s word.

Well, all of these are some simple thoughts. Habits are a good thing to have when they are promoting good things. Make a time of reading and memorizing God’s word a habit—something you do, planned and ready. God’s word never has failed nor will it ever. God does not lie—everything He says will always stand. God delights, according to Psalm 1, in those who are consumed by His words. Let’s read and study for God’s glory and our own good.

Money Talks, Sometimes Too Much

Give it away. All of it? Yes, and follow me.
Jesus was talking to a young guy who had, through inheritance or entrepreneurship, a lot of money. He was living knowing that he was doing good in life. He was comfortable in his golden shoes. He had a good status in society. He had a good status with the religious people too—at that time in the nation of Israel great profits were associated with having the favor of God. But when he came and knelt before Jesus inquiring as to what must be done to inherit eternal life, Jesus gave this shocking response, ‘Sell your possessions, give them to the poor, and follow me.’



Imagine the shock that must have filled the soul of this young man upon hearing Jesus’ response. This was a ‘good’ guy, he was morally upstanding and apparently wanted to know how to gain eternal life—seems like an admirable thing. But Jesus knew he was missing one thing, Jesus. This successful young man was lacking the Messiah, lacking the Savior he needed in order to be saved from his sin.

Money is fun. Money allows us to travel, to read, to eat exciting dishes, to gain entrance into theatres to experience astounding cinematography, music, or stories. Money is also a necessity. You are more than likely not going to eat anything without it, you need it to pay for shelter and clothes, you need it to live. But money can often get in the way. You want to gather a group of friends, you want to have a nicer than usual evening just for fun—maybe go to a nice restaurant and go to a separate place downtown known for their delightful post-entrée pleasures—, but that one friend never can seem to make it to these type of gatherings. You know he has the money, but you also know he likes to keep his money. He would rather save his money than enjoy a rare evening with his close companions. It says a lot about the guy doesn’t it? He values one thing over another.

This is exactly what Jesus was doing with the young stud: he was showing him that there was something in the way of him getting into eternal life, it was the guys love for money. Before you write this post off as ludicrous, narrow-minded, impractical, and too radical let me say that money and having lots of it is not bad or even sinful. That’s right, I said it: you can be the world’s wealthiest individual and still be on your way to heaven, if you love Jesus more than your money.

As the title suggests, money talks. Seriously. It talks about where you have gone, what your favorite items are, what, ultimately, you value. Sorry, but your money is ratting you out and even having an intimate heart-to-heart will not shut it up. But spending money is not bad either, we need to provide for ourselves and others. This area is where the Christian is weird. Christians are to work just as hard at their job and provide just as well for their families, but that hard-earned money is also to be given away. Just like that, no strings, no qualms, just give it away. (though not all of it) And not only give the money away but do it happily and willingly with zero expectation of receiving any of it back or getting the nodding approval of some high ranking official. In fact, Jesus tells his followers to do it secretly so that others do not know you are doing it or how often or how much.

I will say it again: Christians are to give away their hard-earned money with no expectation of approval from others or financial return or compensation for so doing. Why? What is the cause of this nonsense? Gratitude. You see, for the Christian we realize that absolutely nothing good in this world do we deserve. In fact, what we deserve is for the Creator of this earth, the One who gives us breath and makes our heart beat, this powerful Being to kill us; He has the right to obliterate and extinguish our existence. But He has not and more so He has decided to rescue us, to have Jesus pay for our sins which so set alight His just wrath and fury. With that understanding then, one way His followers show appreciation to Him is by sacrificing. Throughout history followers of the One True God have given their money, their live-stock, their land and its fruits to God. IT is an act of worship it is a selfless megaphone to God saying thank you for loving me! And God loves it in return. He does not need it—He owns it all already—but he enjoys the heart of worship that the giver brings to Him.

The rich kid who Jesus talked with went away confounded and sad because he had lots of money. Jesus does not command ever who follows him to immediately give all their money away, but he does say you either serve me entirely or not. It is easy to be quasi-committal but Jesus demands it all. Jesus says you can have all the money in the world has long as you hold it with your hand opened so that if I want to take it all away at some point you are okay with that.

Jesus and his followers always say there is a cost to following Jesus, and this does not avoid your wallet. This is so because money talks.

Hope for Today

I remember nights when I could not sleep, I was racking my brain trying to recall each sin or thing I thought might be sin that I was involved in recently. I would think over words, actions, thoughts until I felt I had gathered them all in and then I would say, “God, please forgive all my sins.” I would always immediately add on “. . . and all the ones I have missed . . . and any sins I will commit in the future too.” As a middle-school child who probably was not a Christian I was aware of the existence of God and terrified of Him. I never fell asleep knowing that I was forgiven. As much as a kid that age can I remember thinking that one day God was going to get me, He was going to grab me up and have His vengeance and there was much to be had.

Fast forward some years later and for the first time I realized, by some means that I would come to understand later, I was completely forgiven if I simply followed Jesus. It was not a matter of my ability to recall each offense I committed against God, rather realizing that my entire nature, not just my actions, was the constant smoke in the eyes of our Maker. And then understanding that the reason Jesus willfully was murdered but defeated death by coming back to life was to change my nature so that I could be obedient to God instead of rebel against Him.

Friend, your life may be fun and not a moment of it tainted with grief or remorse but that does not mean it is the life that is going to extend into eternity. Some call Christians arrogant for stating that the person of Jesus Christ whom they follow is the only avenue into eternal life, and this is just as arrogant as passenger who points out to the unaware driver that there is a child crossing the street up ahead.

As I was back in middle school, awkwardly acknowledging the existence of God, so you may comprehend that some sort of ultimate being exists without even considering that He may have some say in your life and even more, that He may demand it. A life ”lived to the full with no regrets” may not be the best life, and perhaps the unappealing life now may be the one that going to last forever.

There is no hope for tomorrow if you do not wrestle with the One who made all things, and this is because there is no life in the living without a relationship with Him. The good news is that Jesus already died and defeated death and sin. That is the hope for today and for all days: we all sin against a Holy God but His Son stood in our place so we could stand before Him for eternity with exceeding joy.

Poem

Love doesn’t dissipate
when you’ve had too much.
It’s not that extra plate,
the one more episode on a Saturday,
the final unfunny joke.
Love procreates with love
and multiplies loves.
Love is strangled by too little,
the frowning fiddle of love absent.
Conquered by nothing,
nothing always conquers love.

A Response to the Last Post

This is in response to the good comments made about the last post.

The brunt of what I am aiming is the sense that feeling is the rudder of many lives, that to some degree we often live according to how we are feeling: emotion sets the mood and the mood dictates the decision. This, I believe, runs counter to what the bible has to say; biblically, a Christian ought to be guided by truth, that is, the clear truths presented in the bible. Now every life circumstance is not in the bible so at this point we can be guided by GENERAL truths and are given the freedom to make our decisions in light of those general truths. I would have to say objectively and subjectively--in my own experiences--feelings counter to what I know to be absolutely true in many occurrences. So if I acted on the feeling in that moment I know it would be the wrong decision to make. Trepidation may have more to do with how we are wired--why are some instinctively afraid of snakes and others not?--or our wrestling with a situation and THESE feelings ought not to be deemed as God's guidance. Can God use feelings? God can use whatever he desires, but as a standard in the bible I do not see that feelings are how He directs people. But feelings formed within truths are often seen, the gleaming example being God. Love, as Paul speaks of, often COMPELS us to do things that we normally would not, and this is because it is out of love that we feel compelled to help someone as a Christian. Feelings, again, are wonderful gifts of God to be enjoyed as such and they often lace truth; this should not be negative. But when feelings are used to guide the decisions in our lives--great and small--we have cause for questioning and concern. So we should not seek to be void OF emotion, thinking this was of making decisions is best, rather we should make decisions emphatically, making them based on truths that we can entrust ourselves to knowing that we may never have happiness with clear depth on earth but we have a joy that is the base-drum going through our Christian life, something that is truth-oriented but also, to a degree, feeling. As one person said, 'Feelings are not god; God is god.'

So in the end feelings should not win in a debate over truth--this not to say that feelings are not sometimes true themselves, rather they are correct sometimes--they rightly correspond with truth. Admittedly this is a tough subject and is hard sometimes to pin down. I remember one friend saying, 'I can't change how I feel,' and I think to a large degree he is right, however because you feel something does not make that thing or decision right or true, though the feeling itself is genuinely there. Part of maturing as a person is growing the ability to decide, through clouds of emotion, what is best in any particular situation; it is important to be able to curb feelings at some pints, something which is very hard to do. For example, if a wife of 35 with 3 kids has her husband suddenly and unexpectedly die in a car accident, she should not be expected to make all the decisions about the viewing and funeral, much less what she is going to do with her 3 children, the house and cars. In this situation it is most likely best to get council from a trusted source to help make sane the otherwise chaotic world that she is in. Truth is the lake and feelings are the jet ski we sometimes get to use to get the fullest of the situation. I hope this brings some type of clarity.

How Do You Feel?

How do you feel?

Not a question to be answered with ‘great,’ or ‘good,’ or with an ‘I feel a bit under the weather.’ No, in what way, through what filter, in what frame-work do you interpret what you feel?

This may seem an odd question, but have you ever felt a certain way that, looking back on the situation, was not the ‘proper’ feeling? You have heard that someone at work was bad mouthing you and suddenly you recall all the dumb and stupid and mean things they have done and you build an army of anger exploding unknowingly on the accused; then, with emotions ablaze, you interrogate them only to realize they had in fact not said wrong and untruthful things towards you? Oops. Wrong feeling.

How about when you have met someone, gone on some dates, and have completely fallen in love with them but then you accidentally find out that you and four other individuals are ‘the only one’ in this lover’s life? Yikes.

Living by feelings, letting feelings control the direction of your life, is that a positive thing? How can it be bad? Feelings are feelings, they obviously come for some good reason; right? Or is it the feelings are simply feelings? So again, how do you feel? What is a Christian supposed to do with feelings?

A heresy in the Christian world typically occurs when an individual or group of people take one verse—or a part of a verse—or small portion of the bible and isolate it completely from the rest of the bible and then teach to everyone. Obviously, for someone who claims to follow the God of the Christian bible, heresy is generally not a good pool to jump into. On a less severe--but not lesser in danger--scale is misinterpretation. (Misinterpretation is heresy without telling all yours friends, it is what you practice but maybe not preach) Good intentioned people misinterpret what the bible says for many reasons, however the overwhelmingly reason—again this is for good intentioned people—is a lack of wisdom which knows to look at the entire bible and see how a specific verse fits into it.

‘Enough class room time, where are we going?’ Philippians 4.7 (This is in the New Testament portion of the bible) It reads, ‘And the peace of God, which surpasses al understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.’ This is taken, then, by many Christians to mean that after you have prayed about the situation you are in, if you have some mystical peace about you that indicates a divine green-light to move forward with whatever it is.

Taking the rest of the bible into account this, unfortunately, is not the way a Christian should feel, or react with feelings. Serial killers, racists, rapists, thieves, cheaters, liars not everyone who does these things is hindered by how he feels, in many cases it brings a pleasure to the person when they are committing their evil. Using the same peace = it-is-okay formula here is absurd. But why can we forego logic when it comes to my decision? Truthfully we cannot.

‘I use to wear a bracelet asking what Jesus would do, so what would he do? Thankfully, in this situation, we know what Jesus did because he was at a cross-road. We find Jesus agonizing in prayer in the middle of the night. Why is he troubled? He knows that he is about to be betrayed by his friends, that he is going to be beaten and made fun of, and that he is going to be unjustly murdered; more than that he knows that he will have to be without his father’s joyful presence for the first time in literally forever. The bible tells us that Jesus was sweating blood—something that happens with intense emotional stress—as he was praying, he even asked his father that if there was any other way to save people could he do that instead. The answer was no and regardless of the suffering, the pain, the knowledge of the forthcoming soul-shredding, Jesus went obediently with the plan. There was, as Hebrews tells us, future joy, meaning Jesus could see through the tunnel of disaster and see the wonderful outcome, but he was not feeling like getting murdered. Thankfully he went through it all so that for those who follow him do not have to—as far as the judgment of the father being unleashed and the sins paid for. Any argument to say that Jesus had some mystical peace is an argument from silence.

There are other, more trivial and entertaining things to think of such as what if you ate some bad food a few hours before and felt bad while trying to make a big decision, should you go with it? However, that is just for play.

People with ‘peace’ have made terrible decision, and people with no peace have made good decisions. Can you really gauge whether ‘God was honored’ by your decision because you feel a certain way after it? Too often we want signs that what we are doing is best because the bible is not always clear on everything we do, but there in lies the good part of being a Christian and making tough decisions: God is gracious towards us and will work everything for our good in a way that makes Him look wonderfully loving and kind and patient. A Christian understands that though he should look at a situation with wisdom, he is free to fail and he can look back on the bad decision and council others later in life. The book of Romans, in the 8^th chapter states that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus; this means that a Christian is going to sin but there is always forgiveness for him if he but run to Jesus with his sins.

So how should we make decisions—big and small? With care and sincerity. The bible is what God has given us to use as a guide for our lives and decision-making. It does not give detail as to what shirt to wear, but we know we should dress in modesty and have some naked person on it; it does not tell us how to cook dinner, but it tells us that we should not love food more than God and that we should provide it for those who do not have any; it does not tell us who to marry, but it does tell us to marry someone who is on the same life and spiritual track and someone of the opposite gender.

Feelings are a gift from God; feelings can be very good. Feelings are not God and feelings do not guide our life, in fact, the peace Paul talks about in Philippians is used to guard us, for in our moments of weakness and failure instead of doubting whether we really follow Jesus and wallowing in our bad decisions feeling sorry for ourselves and dying with remorse, we can look to Jesus who went against his feelings and did not fail.

A Quote from Gene Weingarten on Writing

'A real writer is someone for whom writing is a terrible ordeal. That is because he knows, deep down, with an awful clarity, that there are limitless ways to fill a page with words, and that he will never, ever, do it perfectly. On some level, that knowledge haunts him all the time. He will always be juggling words in his head, trying to get them closer to a tantalizing, unreachable ideal.'

Gaius and The Whole Church

In the Book of Romans we find a sentence in the last chapter--the big numbers--and the 23 verse: 'Gaius, who is host to me and to the whole church, greets you.'

Not much is known about this individual except that he might be the one mentioned by Paul in 1 Corinthians 1.14, one who was baptized by Paul. This is more than likely not the same Gaius mentioned in Acts 1929 or 20.4.

What do we know about this guy? Well, Gaius is playing host to an individual. It is assumed that the 'me' mentioned in verse 23 is the apostle Paul and not Tertius who is physically writing the letter--Paul is more than likely dictating it. Wither way, Gaius is hosting an individual who is a follower of Jesus Christ. But it is said that Gaius is not only hosting an individual but also the ‘whole church.’ There are 2 ways, in my opinion, to look at the latter: he is literally hosting lots and lots of people--this may cause a spacial and geographical problem as Christians were literally spread across the then known world (feel the sarcasm) or by his hosting one Gaius is, in a sense, hosting the whole church. With references to ‘the whole church’ found in Acts 5.11 and 15.22, it is safe to say that the some represent the whole in certain uses. This is encouraging as we see that when we do simple and ordinary things for one part of the church we are doing it for the whole Church. It is often difficult to think of someone as something other than an individual, after all it is our society that champions individualism. But here, in the Bible, an individual is not only part of a greater group, but an individual represents entirely a group of individuals that crosses centuries and rounds the world. Think about it this way, in the Bible the Church--all followers of Jesus Christ--is described as being a--singular--bride belonging to Christ. A bride is not usually many but what God is doing is laying out each Christians identity: a group with one face. We can think about this concept another way as well, when you burn the hand the whole body is burned.

This is also encouraging because when you are a believer in the God of the Bible you fall under the care of that same God. You are no longer an individual who cannot accomplish the favor of a God who demands perfection and will wield eternal justice on those who fail to do so, rather you are part of God's family, you are part something that cannot be divided.

Gaius probably opened his home for some to live in, maybe he brought them food, maybe he simply visited them in prison, it is not entirely clear. What is clear is that we can serve the collective church--the people who follow Jesus Christ--when we serve one individual who is part of it. Christians are those who live, day in and day out, week after long week, not for recognition and fame, but to serve God in whatever capacity they are called to; sometimes it is going from city to city establishing churches like Paul did, but other times it is by simply hosting the Pauls.

Flannery O'Conner on Christians Who Stink at Writing Fiction But Think It's Okay--It's not

'Ever since there have been such things as novels, the world has been flooded with bad fiction for which the religious impulse has been responsible. The sorry religious novel comes about when the writer supposes that because of his belief, he is somehow dispensed from the obligation to penetrate concrete reality. He will think that the eyes of the Church or of the Bible or of his particular theology have already done the seeing for him, and that his business is to rearrange this essential vision into satisfying patterns, getting himself as little dirty in the process as possible. His feeling about this may have been made more definite by one of those Manichean-type theologies which sees the natural world as unworthy of penetration. But the real novelist, the one with an instinct for what he is about, knows that he cannot approach the infinite directly, that he must penetrate the natural human world as it is.'

from Mystery and Manners, Page 163

Snow Day

In the Big Rock Candy Mountain

‘Rich dreams with we loath to wake from.’

The father in Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road had dreams of how life once was but these things are ‘no longer known in the world.’ Life to him had dissolved and digressed and the things which were not are extinct and gone forever themselves. He has a life that looks backwards for happiness. Though the father’s is a drastic change in life, we ourselves cannot escape the optimistic over the shoulder glances. Time after time I have heard, ‘college were by far the best days of my life.’ There is absolutely nothing wrong with having great times in the past and looking back at them with fondness. But when you’re old will you flip through the pages of your life and long to be back in them? Everyone wishes they had done things differently in life; hadn’t aid those words, hadn’t left that opportunity untried; hadn’t done this or that, but few live life now grasping for what has not yet happened. Are the most pleasant dreams about what has already happened or what will happen in the end?
Friend, the reality is that if you are not a follower of Jesus Christ when you are old and dream your last dreams they will all be rich dreams which you loath to wake from because you know they were already realized or that they can never be realized by you. Life for you is it, earth says goodbye and judgment and destruction say hello. This is not to scare but to make aware: if life is spent ignoring God, it is spent running from God and will end not in a long a senseless sleep but in giving account to our Maker we believe about his Son’s work and sacrifice and what we did with it.
The good news is that now is always the best time to have dreams that are true projects, not because we will our way into them but because they are founded on promises and not-yet fulfilled true events. Life now can be very good and that too is a gift from our Maker but more life, after the one on earth, is to be lived but it will only be done by those who know the love of Christ and those who follow him. Followers of Christ are those who can wake from these pleasant dreams and not say that ‘we loath to wake from them,’ rather we can’t wait until they are realized.