Author: admin

Week 47  Ephesians 3

A long time ago I sat in an English Composition class learning about Unity-and-Coherence. The teacher would’ve said: when you write a composition it should be a) unified & b) coherent. She might have given an example of a unified-&-coherent essay. So today I’m thinking that a good example of a non-unified-non-coherent essay would be Ephesians 3.
Paul began: for this reason, I Paul, the prisoner of Jesus Christ, for the sake of you Gentiles – . Then he just stopped…and switched tracks!
I figure that the dash means “I’m not going to apply the Unity-and-Coherence rule. I’m going off on a tangent.”
I checked another bible. It used an incomplete sentence and a dash too.
I scanned chapter three looking for a second dash. There wasn’t one. I did see that chapter three ended with “Amen” and chapter four started with: I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, entreat you… (which looks a lot like Paul is picking up where 3:1 left off). I’m thinking that all of chapter three is a tangent.
I already knew that Paul hopped around a lot. And today was a reminder that a) Paul makes un-signaled lane-changes and b) my being miffed by it won’t alter his writing style anytime soon.

Note: quotes from Ephesians 3:1 4:1 (NASB). The NLT version made 3:1 a full sentence and did not use a dash so gave the impression the passage was actually unified-and-coherent. Final thought: Paul might be jumpy but when it comes to Topical Parkouring Proverbs is #1.

 

Week 47  Galatians 6

Paul writes a lot about the conflict between a) ethnic-Jews who believed in the Lord and b) non-Jews who also believed in the Lord. (At some point I’ll try tracking how often Paul does this but for now my estimate is: pretty often.)
One part of the question is: why did ethnic-Jewish-believers harangue non-Jewish believers about becoming like them and adopting a bunch of OT traditions? But the other part of the question is why some guy – let’s say a casually-religious & non-Jewish Cypriot who came to belief in the Lord – would want to add-on a bunch of Hebrew religious practices. What’s attractive about that?
But then today I read this: those who are trying to force you to be circumcised are doing it for just one reason. They don’t want to be persecuted for teaching that the cross of Christ alone can save.
Which is interesting. Did becoming-a-Jewish-recruit exempt you from persecution? I did a quick outside-the-bible search for “Jewish religion in the Roman empire” and sure enough it looks like Judaism had some kind of official status with Rome. Meaning (maybe) that the equation looked like this for a non-Jewish believer: I believe in the Lord + I adopt Judaism + I come under the Jewish umbrella = I survive.
There’s likely more to it than that. But this is a big practical reason for why the Jesus-believer guy from Crete might be tempted by a Jewish recruiter.

Note: quote from Galatians 6:12 (NLT)

Week 46  Galatians

I got a little reminder today about bible-reading.
Actually it was reminder about how I read the bible.
Actually it was reminder about a mistake I slide into when I read the bible.
It’s like this: when I’m reading I almost instinctively focus on what’s simple and I ignore what’s difficult.
I concentrate on what’s interesting and I neglect what’s tedious.
I mentally highlight my preferences and disregard what I can’t make much sense of.
I do it all the time.
I could easily rewrite the bible so that it includes just the things I like (I mean…it’d be a long exercise. But not too difficult.)
So anyway my little reminder of this tendency was this: you have been called to live in freedom – not freedom to satisfy your sinful nature, but freedom to serve one another in love.
In my MHJ Revised Version of the bible I’d obviously want to include the you have been called to live in freedom piece. And since my version would redact what’s difficult or boring or non-sense-making I’d edit out the second clause about not freedom to satisfy your sinful nature, but freedom to serve one another in love.
I want to be free. Freedom is my natural preference. Serving someone else isn’t.
So today was a vexing little reminder about how I process my reading.

Note: quote from Galatians 5:13 (NLT)

Week 46  2 Corinthians

One of the marquee paragraphs in the Corinthian letters says: though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
Paul picks up on this idea near the end of the letter when he’s talking about what he called his thorn-in-the-flesh. The ‘thorn’ was a disability he had and it was one he never got rid of. A long time ago a guy told me he figured Paul’s thorn-in-the-flesh was a problem with his eyesight…and as guesses go I guess that’s as good a guess as the next one. Maybe. Paul said the reason he got his thorn-in-the-flesh was: to keep me from becoming conceited because of (the) surpassingly great revelations he’d received.
Anyway Paul’s permanent disability was a problem. But not unilaterally or exclusively problematic since the Lord utilized it as a problem-resolver. The problem that tormented Paul also functioned as a conceit-prevention mechanism. The problem served double-duty. Had two consequences.
So if Paul filled-out this Pain Questionnaire I think his answers would be:
Q: Is Non-Pain preferable to Pain? A: Yes.
Q: Is Pain preferable to Pride? A: Yes.

Note: quotes from 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 12:7 (NIV)

Week 46  2 Corinthians

Paul compares coming to faith as something like this. It’s like having a cheap container…and then getting something really valuable and storing it in the container. Like me getting the Kohinoor diamond and I put it in a cheap little cardboard box.
The box eventually gets beat-up damaged kicked-around scuffed stepped-on. And whatever I do – glue it or duct tape it or reinforce it or repair it – my little cardboard box only lasts so long. Then it’s done.
But the diamond lasts.
Paul said: though our bodies are dying, our spirits are being renewed every day. The cardboard box is deteriorating. The diamond is getting rejuvenated. Disintegration is happening but there’s also a kind of coordinated magical evolution.
The idea of there being a downside and an upside isn’t so hard to accept. Part of me’s getting beat-up and demolished and eventually destroyed. But another part of me is durable & lasting & developing & expanding.
Paul also points out an interesting & unexpected thing about the downside: through suffering, these bodies of ours constantly share in the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be seen in our bodies. Which seems to be saying that there’s the potential for there being an upside to the downside.
Downsides can be ruinous or degrading or demoralizing or crippling or painful. I might have a downside that’s all-of-the-above. But luckily not just.

Note: quotes from 2 Corinthians 4:16 10 (NLT)

Week 44  Romans 14 15

I don’t know how many different types of ranking systems there were in the NT church but Paul talks about one of them in Romans. It’s a Relative Strength Appraisal Scheme. I doubt that it was an officially mandated assessment tool but even so church people would have had an individual sense of being along a line ranging from very-high-strength to great-weakness. The ticklish thing about it was that it measured spiritual strength – the strength of personal faith.
Anyway I noticed two pieces of advice Paul gave to strong people:
First: accept him whose faith is weak, without passing judgment on disputable matters
Second: we who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves.
I broke the two into four phrases.
a) Accept a person with weak faith
b) Don’t slam the weaker guy’s opinions
c) Be patient with his blunders
d) Don’t please yourself
The natural tendencies of a guy who’s already pretty strong in his faith might be to:
a) Reject a person with weak faith
b) Judge a weak person’s opinions in a critical way
c) Not tolerate a weak person’s failures
d) Please himself
Outside the church it might be fair-game and standard practice to pan a weak person or trivialize his opinions or lose patience with his gaffs & repeated stupidities. Better to just indulge yourself.
But inside the church things are supposed to be a lot different.

Note: quotes from Romans 14:1 15:1 (NIV)

Week 44  Romans 6

I’m not sure why Paul asked the question but there it is: shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? I sit thinking about it. It’s an odd one.
I have my doubts that it’s theoretical…I don’t think it’s a random question Paul just happened to ask out-of-the-blue. I sounds to me like some people in the church had developed a Sin Management Theory that Paul thought was cock-eyed.
I tried to kind of reverse-engineer what Paul said about this skewed theory and it looked like this:
A) The world was a system that contained Amount-X of grace
B) In a steady-state system the quantity of grace would remain Amount-X
C) But if Amount-Y of sin was introduced into the system grace would react to that input and compensate for the imbalance
D) So then grace’s value would jump to (let’s say) Amount-X+Y .
At the practical & personal level the theory said:
Grace is good…
I can boost the amount of grace by sinning…
And since more grace is better then I should sin.
I’m not absolutely sure this is a completely accurate picture of the Sin Management Theory that Paul was talking about. Besides…I think the underlying question he was getting at was: what-do-I-do-about-sin?
In Rome some people figured you could manage sin by balancing it within the system. But Paul’s view was that it was best to just get it out of the system – Management by Extraction.

Note: quote from Romans 6:1 (NIV)

Week 44  Acts 9

This year I was noticing the spectacular events in the church.
On the Day of Pentecost people were beside themselves with wonder. They were amazed and perplexed.
When the apostles performed miracles everyone was filled with awe.
The lame man walked and people were absolutely astounded…and in awe of the wonderful thing that had happened.
Ananias & Sapphira died on-the-spot and people were filled with great fear.
Stephen performed amazing miracles and signs.
In Samaria when Philip performed miracles there was great joy.
Aeneas was healed and the whole population…turned to the Lord.
Tabitha was raised from the dead.
I could easily form the impression that the NT church was a parade of spectacles. But there was quite a bit of low-key normalcy at the same time. I noticed when I read Tabitha’s story there’s only two things said about her life: she was always doing kind things for others and helping the poor (the example given was that she made clothing for widows in Lydda).
It’s one of the great short stories in Acts. All that Tabitha did was to help the poor and do kind things for people. It wasn’t very much…no inexplicable jaw-dropping actions by Tabitha. But there was standing-room only when she died.

Note: quotes from Acts 2:7 12 2:43 3:10-11 5:5 11 6:8 8:6 9:35 40 36 (NLT). End of month report: I’ve read 1587-pages out of 1730. So I’m staying ahead.

Week 43  Acts 9

Paul’s conversion story is told three times. In Acts 9 (by Luke) and then in  chapter 22 & 26 (by Paul).
A couple of years ago I noticed that the words that the Lord said to Paul were reported differently in each telling…mostly in length:
Account #1: the Lord said 30 words
Account #2: 38 words
Account #3: 127 words.
This year I noticed that the length of each account was also different:
Account #1: 16 verses (~360 words)
Account #2: 11 verses (~230 words)
Account #3: 7 verses (~190 words).
So obviously there’s differences:
The first account is told by Luke and is more detailed. Paul is telling his own story in #2 & #3.
A detail in one account might get skipped in another (for example Ananias isn’t even mentioned in Account #3).
Or a detail might be in one account only (for example Ananias tells Paul to get baptized only in #2).
But the differences are in the details. The stories are the same. It’s not like one account says Paul didn’t go blind…or that he put Ananias in prison…or that he heard the Lord tell him he was doing a great job.
It’s like if a kid keeps asking me to tell the story of the wolf and the pigs. I might switch-out some of the details each time I retell it but the wolf is always big and bad and the pigs – three of them – are always little.

Note: The Damascus road story is in Acts 9:3-18 22:6-16 & 26:12-18.

Week 43  Acts 4-5

Along with quite a few admirable developments in the NT church quite a bit of hostility from opponents also got mixed right in – verbal-threats physical-violence imprisonment and like that.
One pretty interesting adversarial development was when the religious leaders put a gag order on the apostles.
They told them: never to speak or teach again about Jesus. (Peter & John replied: do you think God wants us to obey you rather than him?)
Before long the council re-arrested them: didn’t we tell you never again to teach in this man’s name? (The apostles replied: we must obey God rather than human authority.)
Later the leaders: ordered them again never to speak in the name of Jesus . (But: the apostles left the high council…and continued to teach and preach.)
So the disciples flat-out contravened that particular by-law. It’s not like they weren’t law-abiding citizens (but they weren’t law-abiding to the point of being 100% compliant no-matter-what the state decreed).
The sticking point for the church was their idea of a Command Structure (CS).
God was at the top of the CS. What he decided was absolute & final. The state was part of the CS and so it could make rules too. But any rules that violated the Lord’s rules – just based on how the logic of the CS worked – were illegitimate.
One of the early church’s jobs was distinguishing legitimate rules (which they obeyed) from non-legitimate ones (which they legitimately disregarded).

Note: quotes from Acts 4:18-19 5:27 29 5:40-42 (NLT)