Month: October 2022

Week 42  John 1

A couple of days ago I was thinking about the person John called The Word. John said that in him was life. It didn’t make any sense to me to think that in The Word was life meant that “The Word was alive”. It more likely meant something like “The Word Embodied Life”. Or “The Word was the Origin and Source of Life”. A different version said: life itself was in him. Which I think sounds about right.
So anyway when John said that life itself was in him (i.e. in The Word) he added and this life gives light to everyone. When I read that it sounded like the light flooded everything and everyone. John the Baptist said that the true light gives light to everyone. It sounded like the light illuminated everyone…like flipping a switch.
But John says not quite: although the world was made through him, the world didn’t recognize him when he came.
The Word’s light was available everywhere to everyone. But it was a bit like ultra-violet light – definitely there on the spectrum but not always easily detectable.
John’s gospel seems interested in that question: the light is shining…but who’s seeing it? Some of the characters do: Nicodemus. The Samaritan Woman. The Nobleman. The Blind Man. Eleven Disciples.
But about the others John says: the light from heaven came into the world, but they loved darkness more than the light.

Note: quotes from John 1:4 9 10 3:19 (NLT)

Week 42  John 1

John has been laying down several pieces of data about the (mysterious) Word…and is leaving it up to the reader to jigsaw them together.
He’d already said that The Word was God. And yesterday he said The Word was Life.
It’d be simpler if he said The Word was alive. That would be normal life. Living. Eating breathing sleeping working recreating exercising talking and like that. A fusion of the different things we do that guarantee we’re not dead.
But with John life isn’t just eating-sleeping-breathing. He makes that pretty clear by using the phrase “eternal life” quite a few times.
And John also quoted the Lord saying things like:
You refuse to come to me to have life and
I am come that they may have life.
The Lord was talking to living people so verses like those are ludicrous if he was referring to normal breathing-and-eating life. But they’re not as ridiculous if the same word is used about two different things. Which is what it seems John’s doing. So reading his gospel I’ve been on the look-out for which ‘life’ he’s referring to: a) eternal life or b) non-eternal life.
My sense is that in John non-eternal life – eating breathing sleeping working recreating exercising talking and like that – is roughly equivalent to a state of living deadness. Dead except for being biologically alive. Which is a different domain altogether from Eternal Life.

Note: quotes from John 5:40 10:10 (NIV)

Week 42  John 1

Yesterday I was looking at how John described The Word.
He said that The Word was in the beginning with God.
He also said that The Word was God.
John doesn’t act as though he just said something that’s basically inconsistent. And my take on John is that in normal conversation he wouldn’t say something like: “I got a chance to visit with Pontius Pilate. And I am Pontius Pilate.” John knew he couldn’t be with someone and also be that person. Things don’t work like that. But in the specific case of The Word how things don’t work is the way they do work.
Anyway John adds a couple of more ideas about The Word.
Through him all things were made. So The Word is the creator of all things. Genesis says that God made everything. Now John says The Word made everything. But John already said that The Word was God. So if God made everything and The Word was God then The Word made everything.
In him was life, and that life was the light of men & women. I check a word book. John used the word “life” about 47 times. One tip-off that he’s sometimes using the word in a more-than-physical-life way is that he adds the word “eternal” to “life” about 17 times. So when John says that in him was life I keep in mind that he might not just mean he-was-alive.

Note: quotes from John 1:3 4 (NIV)

Week 41  John 1

Genesis & John both start with the words “In the beginning”.
They’re good starting points if I need information about way-way-way-back-when. But they’re not necessarily simple starters.
John says in the beginning was the Word…
I have no idea why John decided to use this phrase the Word but the first thing that comes to my mind is the question: what is the Word? The Word doesn’t seem very helpful or descriptive.
Anyway John says several things about the Word:
In the beginning was the Word – so I know the Word was a Primary…Aboriginal (but so far the Word is just a thing…an entity or maybe an object or substance).
The Word was with God – so the Word was alongside God…accompanying God & right there with him.
The Word was God. Okay…at this point I have to retract my previous idea about the Word being just a floating abstraction. John identifies the Word as actually being God. The Word = God. John’s in the beginning was the Word is about equal to Genesis’ in the beginning God.
He was with God in the beginning. Okay…at this point I retract (again) my idea about the Word being an impersonal abstraction. The Word is a he…so not impersonal and not abstract.
I’m still not sure why John used the head-scratcher expression the Word in the first place. But I have to admit that he starts to fill-in some of the blanks right away.

Note: quotes from Genesis 1:1 John 1 2 (NIV)

Week 41  John

I finished reading John’s gospel yesterday.
If I had to rank the four gospels using a Reading Complexity Scale I’d place them – from least to most complex – in this order: Mark Matthew Luke John.
It’s a personal list. There’s probably a couple of dozen possible permutations and if I asked a hundred bible readers I’d likely get every single combination. But complexity-scaling aside all of the gospels end up being collections of both manageables and unmanageables. Running into both is part of a bible reader’s week.
When I read something that’s manageable I feel pretty good and can move ahead to the next thing. If I run into something I can’t handle I have to slow down and think for a bit. Slowing down and thinking doesn’t guarantee that an unmanageable will get metamorphized into a manageable. In the end I’ll maybe have to accept that some things are unmanageable.
Unmanageability isn’t necessarily a permanent situation and I a) prefer things to be more-or-less manageable and b) try to work toward getting them into a manageable state. I tend to think and hope that eventually I’ll corral my unmanagables – even though being in a state of unmanageability has a pretty permanent feel to it.
And I guess that realistically I have to admit that in the end I either a) will end up understanding and resolving a lot of unmanageables or else b) I won’t…and some unmanagables will fossilize into rock-hard solidity.