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Week 38  Matthew 22

The Lord told the Sadducees straight-up: your problem is that you don’t know the scriptures.
So the implication is pretty clear. There are two possible outcomes to bible reading:
Outcome A: I can read the bible but not know it
Outcome B: I can read it and know it.
(Outcome A is a bit tricky because – for instance – I could be reading the bible for the first time and not really get it. That’s completely possible. But even though I’m not getting it I can still be an Outcome B reader because even if I’m not getting it my basic long-range goal is to get it – eventually. It’s what I’m determined to do.)
Anyway since I want to be an Outcome B reader I’ve adopted a couple of basic rules – one is simple but the other isn’t.
The simple one is that when I’m reading the bible I try to keep in mind that it’s a non-fiction book (which needs a different mentality than if I’m reading fiction or fantasy or mythology).
The second rule is that when I read I try to let the bible tell me what it’s saying – not me tell it. (As simple as it sounds it’s a hard rule to remember and harder to do since it’s way easier for me to tell the bible what it’s allowed to say rather than me just listening to it.)

Note: quote from Matthew 22:29 (NLT)

Week 37  Matthew 21

These two verses caught my attention: if you have faith and don’t doubt you can do things like this (the fig-tree-miracle) and much more…If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.
So there’s Two Guarantees:
Guarantee #1: I can get the ability to do miraculous things
Guarantee #2: I can get everything I ask the Lord for.
Pretty good guarantees…but I notice three things that have to happen first: 1) I have to have faith. 2) I have to not be a doubter. 3) I have to believe.
Looking at the three I figure that ‘faith’ in verse 21 is roughly equal to ‘belief’ in verse 22. So I’ve got Faith / Belief on one side. And on the other side is Doubt.
I visualize two continuums:
First there’s the Faith/Belief Continuum…
Almost No Faith —————————- A Lot of Faith
Second there’s the Doubt Continuum…
Almost Total Doubt ————————- No Doubt At All.
I think the Lord is saying that two (similar) things have to be going on at the same time for the Two Guarantees to happen. I have to be gradually moving along both lines from left-to-right: Boosting my Faith and at the same time Off-loading my Doubt.
This is useful to know. Matthew’s two continuums explain what’s needed so I can achieve the Two Guarantees.
Unfortunately Matthew doesn’t explain the process of how to boost my faith or tamp down my doubt.
So I’ll need to be looking somewhere else for those How-Tos.

Note: quotes from Matthew 21:21-22 (NLT)

Week 37  Matthew 21

The Lord told his disciples: if you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.
Right away I latch onto the phrase you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer. It’s an attention-grabber (subconsciously I do a quick mental paraphrase: ‘I’ll get whatever I ask the Lord for’).
Anyway a couple of questions a bible-reader asks pretty regularly are:
a) what does this verse mean?
b) what does it not mean?
So I ask myself b): what does it not mean? And I see right away it doesn’t mean ‘I’ll get whatever I ask the Lord for’ because the verse doesn’t say that. It says: if you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer. Meaning that I’ll receive whatever I ask for in prayer as long as I believe.
I’ve made a rookie reader’s gaff. I don’t know if there’s an official name for it (let’s call it the Personal Preference Bias). It’s basically that while I’m reading I’m doing two things: 1) I’m latching onto what I like (for instance ‘I’ll get whatever I ask the Lord for’) and 2) I’m skipping over irrelevant-seeming things (for instance ‘if I believe’).
I get a sinking-feeling that the believing part is going to put a serious dent in the asking-and-getting part.
I can ask the Lord for a million things. What I get is what’s caught in the Belief Filter.

Note: quote from Matthew 21:22 (NLT)

Week 37  Matthew 13

Jesus knew some of his stories were hard to understand but he said that: anyone who is willing to hear should listen and understand. So ‘willingness’ was part of the mix. He said ‘openness’ was too (if people are open to my teaching more understanding will be given). Willingness & Openness.
He had already said that the disciples had been permitted to understand the secrets but that other (people) had not.
I wonder about why some people were ‘permitted’ to understand but others were not (it almost makes it look like the Lord is a Big Secret Keeper and he only lets a few select insiders in on the secret). But I figure it’s just as likely (and makes pretty good sense) that the ‘insiders’ were the ones who were Willing & Open. If that’s true then the ‘outsiders’ were likely Unwilling & Closed.
On one side: to people who are open to my teaching, more understanding will be given, and they will have an abundance of knowledge.
On the other: to those who are not listening, even what they have will be taken away from them.
Personally I think it would be nice if everyone was an insider. A kind of inclusive big-tent universal admission to knowing. But what if I was a person who didn’t want to a) hear or b) listen or c) understand? Would I even want to be an insider?

Note: quotes from Matthew 13:9 12 11 (NLT)

Week 37  Matthew 12

Here’s the scenario: first, there’s a guy with a deformed hand. Second: it’s the Sabbath day. Third: the Lord is there. Fourth: Pharisees are watching.
(I checked an outside-the-bible source: the Pharisees were very big on very strictly obeying the laws of Moses. And very big on policing other people to make sure they very strictly obeyed Moses too.)
The Pharisees – with a kind of entrapment question – asked the Lord: is it legal to work by healing on the Sabbath day?
They didn’t ask: ‘is it legal to work on the Sabbath?’
Didn’t ask: ‘is it legal to heal on the Sabbath?’
They asked: ‘is it legal to work-by-healing on the Sabbath?’
But Jesus didn’t answer the question. Not directly at least. Maybe figuring the question was missing the point and an answer would miss it too.
So he didn’t say: ‘yes it’s legal to work on the Sabbath’
Or: ‘yes it’s legal to work-by-healing on the Sabbath’
But he did ask them: it is right to do good on the Sabbath?
Which I think did two things:
1) it hinted that the question the Pharisees should have asked was: is it right to do good on the Sabbath?’
2) it meant that the point was: ‘yes it is right to do good on the Sabbath’ (which I think meant that it was right to do good on the Sabbath even if the good looked like work).

Note: quotes from Matthew 12:10 12 (NLT)

Week 36  Matthew 5

The practical issue of how-do-I-deal with my enemies isn’t simple. In fact it’s a complicated idea muddied-up by real life. It seems unworkable and nonsensical. So I wonder about it.
I tend to operate with a Friend-Enemy continuum in mind. There are Enemies on the left side and Friends on the right.
I have a set of Friend-Actions that apply to Friends and a different set of actions – Enemy-Actions – for my Enemies.
But Matthew makes it sound like the continuum isn’t viable.
I can’t use my Enemy-Actions against Enemies.
Two of the specific Non-Enemy-Action protocols the Lord spells out are that a) I have to love my enemy and b) I have to pray for him.
There’s a couple of tricky questions I’m left with:
Does loving my Enemy mean my Enemy is my Friend now? (I doubt it)
Isn’t treating my Enemy in a Non-Enemy way a bit of a charade? (Maybe. So I wonder if it’s a necessary charade)
Will my love-for-my-enemy-actions be different than my love-for-my-friend-actions? (No doubt).
What it looks like is that Enemy-Love and Friend-Love are two different loves. One is more intentional & deliberate. A kind of necessary-action love. The other is easier & more spontaneous. Love that’s not weighted with requirement.
For now I’m thinking that Enemy-Love looks more like a) doing beneficial things and b) not doing oppositional things. It’s mostly doing what’s the right thing to do – there’s not likely very much feeling involved.

Note: see Matthew 5:44

Week 36 Matthew 5

You have heard that the law of Moses says, Love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say love your enemies. When Jesus said that his audience would have felt a bit unsettled. Who in the world loves their enemies?
But what catches my attention is the example the Lord gives of Enemy-Loving. He says the Father-in-heaven shows love for his enemies by indiscriminately giving life & time & advantageous living conditions to everyone. There’s a kind of Generalized Non-Selectivity Rule in play where everyone gets similar treatment. The days and the rain are equal-opportunity universal benefits. No pre-conditions. No behaviour qualifications necessary.
I don’t think equitable treatment for everyone is an endorsement of bad people
I don’t think it means that good and bad people are roughly equal
Don’t think the Lord is happily affirmative of bad people
Don’t think bad people are getting rewarded for being bad
Don’t think the benefit has much to do with goodness or badness.
I think it means the Father gives everyone default access to the basic elements of life.
Jesus was saying: You have to love your enemies because that’s how the Father acts. It’s how he treats people. He’s constantly benefitting his friends and his enemies. He’s running a kind of Welfare-State World. We all get helped.
That was Jesus’ illustration. His point was that if I want to replicate how the Father acts then loving-my-enemies is a good place to start.

Note: quote from Matthew 5:43 (NLT)

Week 36  Matthew 1

Matthew gives readers a choice: you can read the story using the Rules for the Natural World. Or you can use the Rules for the More-Than-Natural World.
I have to decide asap since Mary’s story is in chapter one and I have to decide if I’m willing to suspend my belief about a basic and (I think) universally held biological fact that a virgin – by definition – can’t be pregnant. But that’s the beginning of the story. Mary: while she was still a virgin…became pregnant by the Holy Spirit.
At this point I’m guessing but I think Matthew would likely agree that Rules for the Natural World were correct as far as the Natural World goes (so for example Matthew did understand that a non-virgin couldn’t be a virgin). But sometimes the Rules for the Natural World don’t work so another set of rules – the Rules for the More-Than-Natural World – applied.
It might have helped if Matthew had made that clear right up-front (for instance he could have added a short Preface: Rules for the More-Than-Natural World Apply in this Gospel).
Anyway every reader reading Matthew has a decision to make:
a) the Rules for the Natural World apply always and without exception or
b) there are exceptions to Rules for the Natural World.
If I decide for a) then a lot of Matthew reads like a fairy-tale. If I choose b) then they don’t.

Note: quote from Matthew 1:18 (NLT)

Week 35  Matthew 1

In the middle section of his Names List Matthew lists the kings of Judah – from Solomon to Jehoiachin. Normally I’d just scan through them but I posted on those kings three months ago. Something isn’t right with Matthew’s list.
There should be 19 kings: Solomon Rehoboam Abijah Asa Jehoshaphat Jehoram Ahaziah Joash Amaziah Uzziah Jotham Ahaz Hezekiah Manasseh Amon Josiah Jehoahaz Jehoiakim Jehoiachin.
Here’s Matthew’s list: Solomon Rehoboam Abijah Asa Jehoshaphat Jehoram Uzziah Jotham Ahaz Hezekiah Manasseh Amon Josiah Jehoiachin. There’s only 14.
I wanted to be sure so I wrote the names in two columns. Matthew did not list: Ahaziah Joash Amaziah Jehoahaz Jehoiakim. I wondered why.
Maybe Matthew made a mistake.
Maybe he intentionally suppressed the names (for some reason I’d have to guess).
Maybe it was important to Matthew to have a fourteen-name list.
Maybe it was okay in the first-century to abbreviate a list. A reader is left to dope it out: ‘I know this is a short list and that it’s standing in for the complete list’.
It’s hard to say for sure.
But it’s such a glaring mistake that anybody who knew any history would know Matthew was wrong (so he wouldn’t be fooling anyone).
Whatever the reason I figure that a) Matthew didn’t just accidentally forget five names (on a nineteen name list) and that b) he wasn’t trying to rewrite history and say that Ahaziah Joash Amaziah Jehoahaz & Jehoiakim were never kings.

Note: see the ‘kings section’ in Matthew 1:7-11

Week 35

Some bible readers only read the NT.
Some read the NT plus selections from the OT.
Some read the OT and the NT.
But no one reading the bible reads anything about what’s going on between the OT & NT because there’s nothing there.
In my bible the OT ends on page-1334. One page later the NT begins on page-1 (in between is one page that says The NEW TESTAMENT). In my bible there’s nothing but that one page – I turn it and I’ve jumped from the OT into the NT. But in reality an awful lot has been happening.
I check three or four sites to see what’s been going on in the roughly 400-years not accounted for. Three pretty important things for a NT-reader to know about are:
1) One Important Political Fact: Rome is now officially in the driver’s seat. Babylon is gone. Persia is gone. Greece has come-and-gone. Now Rome is the New Big Dog.
2) One Important Geographic Fact: the old territorial divisions between the Northern Kingdom and the Southern Kingdom are long gone. Now there are three main regions. Jerusalem/Judaea in the south. Galilee in the north. And in the middle is Samaria.
3) One Important Social Fact: there are two distinctive Jewish groups in the NT that weren’t in the OT – the Pharisees and the Sadducees. They were religious-cultural-social rivals for the most part.
Three big new developments plus a lot of other novelties. So starting Matthew today I’m in a whole new world.