Medicine Hat Joe

Week 14  1 Samuel 16

When Samuel went to designate a replacement for Saul he looked at a number of candidates but the Lord told him: do not look at his appearance or his stature because I have rejected him. Humans do not see what the Lord sees, for humans see what is visible, but the Lord sees the heart.
So the Lord sees differently than people see.
It’s a pretty important concept for me to keep in mind. I See Things Differently Than the Lord Does. Meaning I’m faced with a personal question: do I believe myself or do I believe the Lord? Quite a bit rests on my answer.
Am I going to run with what I see & think? Or do I run with what the Lord says he’s seeing – even if it unbalances or maybe even contradicts what I’m feeling certain about? (It’s very difficult to believe what I don’t.)
When Samuel went to Jesse’s house looking for a king he was impressed by a couple of the brothers because they were actually impressive. But the Lord wasn’t impressed because he wasn’t impressed by the things that impressed Samuel.
There are likely a number of different kinds of being smart. When totaled up there’d be an enormous collection of smartness in the world. No denying the smartness. But it wouldn’t be totally smart.
In fact it’d maybe be something like one one-trillionth as smart as the Lord.

Note: quote from 1 Samuel 16:7 (CSB)

Week 14  1 Samuel 15

Samuel said: the Eternal One of Israel does not lie or change his mind, for he is not man who changes his mind.
It’s a reassuring reminder that the Lord is not like humans. He’s not changeable. Not unstable. Not unreliable.
At the same time the Lord’s character isn’t locked-down into a kind of conscious state of emotional rigor mortis.
Here’s a hypothetical example of the Lord showing some common sense elasticity. Let’s say there’s two guys:
If Guy #1 lives a life of good actions from beginning-to-end the Lord will affirm him.
If Guy #2 lives a life of evil actions from beginning-to-end the Lord won’t affirm him.
But what if Guy #1 lives a life of good actions for a while but then turns around and lives an evil life? Things have changed. So the Lord doesn’t affirm him any more.
And what if Guy #2 lives an evil life for a while but then turns around and lives a life of good? Things have changed. And he goes from not being affirmed to being affirmed.
If the Lord was Totally Inflexible & Rigidly Mechanical then he wouldn’t be responsive to changeable things happening all around. But one thing the bible confirms is that the Lord is responsive to new developments.
The Lord responds intelligently and fittingly to mutating inputs. He changes.

Note: quote from 1 Samuel 15:29 (CSB)

Week 14  1 Samuel 15

Samuel told Saul something about the Lord: the Glory of Israel will not lie or change His mind; for He is not a man that He should change His mind. (Saul might have already known that. But in this chapter he got a reminder.)
I like this verse because it says something specific about what the Lord is like. But the verse is also a bit concerning because a few weeks ago I read another verse that said: so the Lord changed His mind about the harm which He said He would do to His people.
Samuel says that the Lord doesn’t change his mind. Moses says that he does. Who’s right? Maybe both.
The thing is that these are two different scenarios. Samuel is making a comment about the Lord’s basic nature. He doesn’t change. There are no character mutations with the Lord. He has original qualities that don’t metamorphize. In his essentiality the Lord is non-evolutionary. And why would he be? He’s constitutionally flawless so any change he made to himself would be a step down.
The situation in Exodus is different. In Exodus the Lord does change his mind because he’s changing his response to changing circumstances. Personally I think the verse is clearer if it said (something like) the Lord’s reaction is adjusted in response to developing circumstances.
The Lord is consistent within himself. And he responds to the environment.

Note: quotes from 1 Samuel 15:29 & Exodus 32:14 (NASB). End-of-month reading: 34% of the bible read.

Week 9  1 Samuel 15

After Saul made his career-&-life-altering stupid decision (making a sacrifice that he wasn’t supposed to make) Samuel told him this: rebellion is as bad as the sin of divination; arrogance is like the evil of idolatry.
It’s a pretty interesting comment and it seems like Samuel was implying that there was a kind of socially-acknowledged Evilness Scale. I don’t know for sure but I don’t think there actually was such a scale. If there was it would map-out evil actions – sins – and classify them into different families or castes. So for instance there might have been a) Mildly-Evil Actions & b) Middle-of-the-Road-Evil Actions & c) Seriously-Evil Actions. A concrete example would be that killing someone is a heavier & eviler evil than stealing a bag of coleslaw.
But what Samuel said was that rebellion was roughly equivalent to divination. That arrogance was on the same footing as idolatry.
Personally I think I’d want to argue that rebellion & divination are two distinct evils (same with arrogance & idolatry). And I don’t want to put words in Samuel’s mouth but I figure he might agree that evils do have their own unique individualities. But I don’t think that was his point. I think Samuel’s main point was that all evils share a kinship. There’s a family likeness. All thing that are bad – small medium & large – are similar because they can never get to be good.

Note: quote from 1 Samuel 15:23 (CSB). Month-end reading report: I’ve read 26% of the bible in 17% of the year.

 

Week 9  1 Samuel 2-3

Samuel’s folks took him to live with a priest when he still a young boy. It was an exception to normal family practice and the arrangement likely raised-eyebrows. But it was the start of a religious life:
The boy Samuel ministered to the Lord before Eli the priest
He slept where the ark of God was
He opened the doors of the building in the morning.
Simple tasks. Learning-the-ropes. A religious apprentice.
And 0ver time the boy matured and developed:
Samuel grew and the Lord was with him and let none of his words fail
Eventually his reputation spread so that all Israel…knew that Samuel was confirmed as a prophet of the Lord.
I don’t know which bible person has the longest & most complete biography but Samuel would rank pretty high on the list. There’s a fair bit of detail – even the prenatal events (he’s a bit like Samson in that way).
Anyway what I notice is that a) he started small and b) he started young (at the end of his career he could tell Israel that I have walked before you from my youth).
From other life stories in the bible it’s pretty clear that starting young and small isn’t necessary. But in Samuel’s case it seemed like a great fit. And the consequence was an (almost) ideal life.

Note: quotes from 1 Samuel 2:11 3:3 15 19 20 & 12:2 (NASB)

 

Week 9  1 Samuel 2

There’s a line in Hannah’s prayer that says a specific thing about the Lord: the Lord is a God of knowledge, and with Him actions are weighed.
I cross-checked a couple of other versions looking for discrepancies. But they agreed:
The Lord is a God of knowledge, and actions are weighed by him
The Lord is a God of knowledge, and by him actions are weighed.
So actions have weight.
Weight is how heavy something is. In the world of material things the weight of every single thing is determined by the mystery-force of gravity. Gravity says that an apple weighs 100 grams and a truck weighs 2000 kgs. Objects have weight.
Actions are different from objects but they have weight too. I’ve seen lots of pictures of the blindfolded Lady Justice with her scales – weighing people’s actions. Every day the legal departments of the world take a stab at weighing the actions of people. The legal scales of justice have limitations and are only calibrated to give approximate weights. They’re not always too accurate (but they’re better than nothing).
But one of the (many) things that the Lord does is to exert a sort of Behavioural Gravitational Force over all actions. It’s a very precise scale that takes every single factor into consideration. And then every action is weighed to the milligram.
Which seems like a pretty solid argument for good action.

Note: quote from 1 Samuel 2:3 (NASB CSB & ESV)

Week 8  Ruth 2

The writer uses a tantalizing phrase when he describes Ruth going out to find work to support herself & Naomi. The bible I’m reading says that she happened to come to the portion of the field belonging to Boaz.
I’ve read the story before so I know it’s vitally important that Ruth connects with Boaz. She has to. But the story makes it seem like a coincidence. An accident. Like she could have ended up at someone else’s farm.
I don’t know any details about ancient land ownership or about the average size of agricultural holdings so it’s hard to say what the chances were of Ruth meeting Boaz. Let’s say there were ten landowner-farmers in Bethlehem. That left Ruth with a 1:10 chance of meeting Boaz. (Personally I think that ten farmers in the area is a low number. But even a one-in-ten chance isn’t really the best of odds.)
I checked a few other bible versions. They all give a similar it-just-so-happened impression of bumping-into-each-other synchrony.
It seems like pure luck landed Ruth at Boaz’ farm. Nothing about the Lord pulling-strings. If Ruth was the only bible book I ever read then it would sound like a story of the stars-aligning.
But I think the writer knew that a bible reader would figure out quick enough that – as usual – the Lord was behind the scene. Some things can (safely) be taken for granted.

Note: quote from Ruth 2:3 (NASB)

Week 8  Judges 13

At the beginning of the Samson story an angel of the Lord appeared to Samson’s mother.
When she got home she told her husband:
a) a man of God came to me
b) his appearance was like the appearance of the angel of God
c) he was very awesome.
I wonder what exactly she saw. Was he a fairly regular-looking material guy? Maybe. But if so it’s clear he was also more than a regular guy since he was also very awesome.
The reason I noticed this is because I’ve been wondering what angels look like. In January I tracked a few angelic appearances in Genesis:
• an angel guards the entry to Eden
• an angel appears to Hagar
• angels visit Lot in Sodom
• angels are in the “Jacob’s Ladder” vision
• angels meet Jacob at Mahanaim
• Jacob wrestles an angel.
None of those contacts spelled-out what angels actually looked like.
I have the feeling that an angel has more-or-less the features of a human being (if I saw an angel the human similarity might fool me). But there’d be something that would tip the scale. An instinctive sense & feeling of his being awesome. Maybe physically human-dimensional but having extra-human marvelosity. Fabulous. Stupendous. Sublime. Phenomenal. A manageably-seeming resemblance…but mostly an unmanageable difference that makes me automatically realize: this guy is my superior.

Note: quotes from Judges 13:3 6 (ESV). See Genesis stories in 3:24 (Eden) 16:7-14 & 21:17-21 (Hagar) 19 (Lot) 28:12 & 32:1 & 32:24-32 (Jacob)

Week 8  Joshua 21

The tribe of Levi comes to Joshua and asks him for their City & Land Allocations. It’s an important list if you were a Levite then. A plodder of a chapter for me now.
And it’s a reminder: different passages have different values for different people.
Chapter 21 was written to and about the Levites. It was a document that would give them legal ownership – spelled out  city-by-city and region-by-region – of all the municipalities that they’d be getting. Since I’m not a Levite and not living in OT Israel the practical value of chapter 21 tails off pretty quickly for me. It really has almost no practical or concrete or personal claim on my time or interest.
Joshua 21 illustrates a pretty common concern & reality for readers. There are 1189 chapters in the bible and I don’t know anyone who thinks that each of them is equally important. If I had time to create a Chapter Valuation List of the whole bible – one that listed chapters in order of importance – then Joshua 21 would be far down the list (in the Not Too Important section). It would join chapters like Exodus 25 or Leviticus 1.
I pretty well accept that some chapters have a greater buoyancy that elevates them above others – flotational oomph. But even so I’m reluctant to dispense with the chapters that lack effervescence.
I figure I have little enough data to work with and so I’d be foolish to jettison what I’ve got.

Week 8  Psalm 47

I’m interested in finding anything that the bible says about the organizational structure of the world (since it’s useful to know how the world is managed).
I figure that one of two possible things is going one. #1: there’s no macro-organizing taking place. Things just move along under the direction of various micro-managers (politicians or dictators or entrepreneurs or the super-rich) who grab power and rule. #2: there’s a Supra-Governing manager who oversees and directs all events.
Psalm 46 goes with Option #2. It says things like:
• The Lord, the Most High, is to be feared, a great king over all the earth
• God is the King of all the earth
• God reigns over the nations
• The shields of the earth belong to God; he is highly exalted (the margin says shields = leaders)
So psalm 47 is definitive about who’s at the top of the hierarchy. The Lord has the deciding vote when it comes to strategic-planning & decision-making & coordinating-resources-and-personnel. Planning & oversight & performance-assessment are all under his oversight.
Unfortunately the writer doesn’t specify any of the subsidiary managers who are part of the entire power-and-governance hierarchy.
So for now the one solid piece of information I come away with is that the Lord has executive authority over everything – which is maybe the critical and the best piece of the puzzle to have.
But I’m still interested in the bible’s view of the total structure of the system. So I’ll keep looking.

Note: quotes from Psalm 47:2 7 8 9 (ESV)