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Week 50  James 4

I made a mistake when I read James 4:5: do you think that the scripture speaks to no purpose:… The mistake was that I stopped right there at the colon (which James didn’t do since he still had half of the verse to write).
The problem with making a mistake is – obviously – that I’m wrong. But in this case I can live with it because my mistake left me asking a pretty good question: do I think that the scripture has no purpose?
It’s a pretty good & timely question to be asking myself during Week 50 because in a couple of weeks I’ll be deciding whether to start back in Genesis 1. Let’s face it…if the bible doesn’t have a goal or purpose then why should I bother?
So does the bible speak to no purpose? There’s two basic answers to the question:
Answer #1: Yes. The bible doesn’t really have any purpose.
Answer #2: No. The bible does have a purpose in mind.
I think it’s a pretty good self-administered bible-reader’s question to ask: if there’s no purpose or value or merit in the bible then why read it? On the other hand if there is something to be discovered then why not? There’s nothing much to lose…and maybe something to gain.

Note: This question is completely different than asking: is the bible difficult to understand? (if I asked 1,000,000 people that question only a couple of outliers would say: no the bible is simple.)

Week 49  James 3

James wrote: not many of you should become teachers in the church, for we who teach will be judged by God with greater strictness.
So if I’m a teacher I’ll be judged at a higher standard…
But if I’m a not teacher I’ll be judged at a lower standard.
This is a pretty interesting verse. Following the Lord is a little bit like being in a job where I’ll be evaluated for my work performance. Maybe not annually. But eventually.
I wondered whether I could map out a more comprehensive Assessment Hierarchy for the church. James says teachers will be assessed more strictly. What about other church positions? I started thinking back… In week 47 Paul listed a few positions: apostles prophets evangelists pastors teachers. He also mentioned bishops and deacons in the church. They’d likely be included. But I’m not sure what to make of people with “spiritual gifts” like healing & miracles & speaking in tongues. Are they ranked too?
I don’t get far before I start thinking that developing a church Assessment Hierarchy tool is likely a waste of time. For one thing the NT isn’t giving me enough info. And for another what difference does it make if an apostle is judged to a 98% degree-of-strictness and a teacher is assessed 12% less strictly?
The point is likely: keep it in mind that my assessment is coming…and act accordingly.

Note: quote from James 3:1 (NLT). See Ephesians 4:11.

Week 49  Hebrews

I’ve never seriously thought about reorganizing the books of the bible according to Degree of Seriousness where I’d put the most serious books at the top…then all the way down to least serious. I guess they’re all pretty serious in their own way. For me Job would likely be #1. Hebrews wouldn’t be far behind.
I think the reason Hebrews is so serious is because it has a lot of serious warnings. The writer seems to be relentlessly concerned about the guy who starts out walking with the Lord but then turns his back on him. He says: if we deliberately continue sinning after we have received a full knowledge of the truth, there is no other sacrifice that will cover these sins. There will be nothing to look forward to but the terrible expectation of God’s judgment. That’s not the only ominous verse. I counted about a dozen others just like it. Dark grave severe sober warnings. With dire consequences.
I think that’s one of the reasons the writer gives quite a few prompts & goads: keep being faithful to the end. Keep pressing on to maturity. Keep on loving others as long as life lasts. Follow the example of people who have faith. Don’t waver…hold onto the faith you have. Remember that we’re not people who turn our backs on God.
The writer senses the tendency to slack-off. To give-up. To turn back. And he’s deadly serious about where that leads.

Note: quote from Hebrews 10:26-27 (NLT). Paraphrases from 3:14 6:1 6:11 6:12 10:23 10:39.

Week 48  Philemon

I don’t know how many of them there are in total. But I know a lot of things in the bible are incomprehensible to modern readers. The main reason? They’re old & behind-the-times & archaic &  well…incomprehensible.
By contrast in the modern-world I understand modern things because I’m modern. I won’t understand a lot of ancient-world things because I’m not ancient.
Anyway there’s an ancient thing in Philemon that’s surprisingly and totally understandable to modern people. Paul says to Philemon: if (Onesimus) has harmed you in any way or stolen anything from you, charge me for it…I will repay it. Then he adds one extra thing: and I won’t mention that you (Philemon) owe me your very soul.
So it looks like in the ancient world – just like in the 21st century – there was a Who Owes The Most Rule in play. Let’s say Guy #1 owes Guy #2 $100,000. Then let’s say Guy #2 borrows $10 from Guy #1. Guy #1 can’t really go demanding that Guy #2 pay back the couple of bucks he owes him. Guy #1 owes the most and that means Guy #2 is in the driver’s seat. That rule is totally understandable to me.
In one way this universal Debtor-Ratio Law is so obvious I wonder why Paul figured he needed to remind Philemon who was in the driver’s seat. It seemed unnecessary. Like piling-on. But who knows…maybe Philemon was a bit thick and needed the blunt reminder.

Note: quotes from Philemon 18-19 (NLT)

Week 48  Titus 1

368 days ago I was reading Paul’s Qualification List for church leaders. I remember wondering: how-in-the-world did anyone qualify?
Since I’m pretty sure that some people did qualify I’m thinking that either a) believers in the 1st century were far far superior to modern-day Alberta church leaders or b) I’m misunderstanding the list.
By ‘misunderstand’ I don’t mean that I can’t understand (there’s about 20 items in the list and most of them are understandable to an elementary school-aged kid). By ‘misunderstand’ I mean that I wonder if I’m understanding the list in a way Paul didn’t intend.
Here’s the thing: I tend to think of the list as (what I’d call) absolute. Take the first qualification as an example: a leader must live a blameless life. To me that means: a leader must live an absolutely blameless life. And if I’m right about that then you only qualify if you’re 100% blameless. So mine is like a light-switch test: you’re either on or off. No in-between.
But here’s the other thing: if it’s a light-switch test then there’ll be very very few candidates (maybe not even one). So because of that I’m tending to come down more on the side of a Qualification List that’s relative. Meaning that leadership candidates had to be showing some evidence of progress in each of the qualifications.
Paul was maybe asking for the stars…knowing he might only get the moon.

Note: quote from Titus 1:7 (NLT)

 

Week 48  1 Timothy 5

In the middle section of chapter three I’m reduced to doing some guess-work. What seems pretty clear is that there was some kind of regular practice in Timothy’s church that related to widows. In the first-century Mediterranean world when widows were widowed they instantly became lonelier and more vulnerable. One of the nice things about the church was that – ideally – it was looking out for it’s weakest loneliest most vulnerable & disadvantaged members. That part I understand.
But one thing – and the main point for me – is that Paul refers a couple of times to what he calls The List. And I think the main question he’s talking about in the paragraph is: which widows qualify for The List?
Paul spells-out some qualifiers:
If a widow had other relatives they should support her (so…she’s not on The List)
If a widow was young & immature she should consider remarriage (so…she’s not on The List)
But if a widow was a) old and b) had an excellent record of service & hospitality & good deeds she could qualify for The List.
Practical criteria like these make sense to me…but I’m left asking a different question: what-all did getting on The List mean? I guess the simplest answer is: widows got some social assistance. But would a mature & capable widow also take on an enhanced position in the congregation? Have more responsibilities? Something like that?
I don’t know. I’m only guessing.

Note: the passage is 1 Timothy 5:3-16. November end-of-month reading report: 96% completed.

Week 48  1 Timothy

The Timothy letters are personal correspondence from Paul to Timothy and I’m almost fifty verses into the first letter before Paul tells Timothy exactly why he’s writing: I am writing these things to you now…so that if I can’t come for a while, you will know how people must conduct themselves in the household of God…the church of the living God.
I had to look back to see what Paul had already said about life in the church. I don’t think chapter one counts…it’s mostly Paul’s introduction. But in chapters 2-3 there’s four topics about church life:
Prayer & women & bishops & deacons.
I’ll read the second-half of 1 Timothy tomorrow but I take a couple of minutes to speed-read ahead. I see a couple of other life-in-the-church things. Paul mentions accurate teaching a couple of times. And he talks about subgroups in the church: old-men & young-men & old-women & young-women & old-widows & young-widows & bishops & slaves.
Some of what Paul says doesn’t exactly line up with my church here in Medicine Hat so I wonder about the differences. One of my bible-reader’s tasks is to figure out how to understand what I’m reading. And at this point the easiest way is to just make straightforward binary decisions about then vs. now. Are those old ideas right-or-wrong? True-or-false? Sensible-or-nonsensible? Acceptable-or-rejectable? Like that.
Which means the first question I need to ask myself before drawing my conclusions is: do I even get to make binary choices about my reading?

Note: quote from 1 Timothy 3:14-15 (NLT)

Week 48  1-2 Thessalonians

If I was a church member in the Roman world in the 1st-century and if I had the choice of getting one of Paul’s letters and if my choices were either Romans Corinthians Galatians Ephesians Philippians Colossians or Thessalonians then I think I’d choose the Thessalonian letters.
What I noticed this year was that the two letters seemed like mostly friendly-reminders to the congregation about things they already knew. I red-underlined the verses:
just as you know (Paul said it twice)
you yourselves know (three times)
as you know (twice)
you know (twice)
each of you know
you yourselves know full well.
It all seemed pretty consistently affirmative to me. Not overbearing or domineering or repressive. More like prompts.
I checked a word book to see how often Paul used the word ‘know’ in the nine letters: about 88 times.
14 of them were in the Thessalonians (but 18 times in Romans & 37 in the Corinthians!) So then I did a quick survey to see how the word was used. In Romans & Corinthians Paul talked more often about a) things he himself knew and b) things the people do not know and c) things that it’d be better not to know.
So by the end of the exercise I figured my hunch was correct and that Paul was being mostly congratulatory with the Thessalonians for the good things they already knew. And I figured I’d like to get the Thessalonian letters most of all.

Note: quotes from 1 Thessalonians 2:1 5 11 3:3 4 4:2 4 5:2 & 2 Thessalonians 2:6 3:7 (NASB)

Week 47  Colossians 1-3

Paul said that when I believed in the Lord I was rescued from the kingdom of darkness and transitioned over to the kingdom of (God’s) son. So…I became a kind of religious émigré. I wondered about what-all exactly this immigration process involved. What happened when a natural-born citizen of Darkness emigrated to the Kingdom?
Unfortunately Paul didn’t seem too interested in saying much more about it. I guess immigration was just one simple example he used to illustrate what happened when I believed – pulling-up stakes…leaving home…moving to a new country.
But I was still curious and wondered if he said more about immigration and so I decided to do a quick read-through focusing on that. (Colossians isn’t a long letter so the exercise was pretty simple.)
What I found was that Paul didn’t say anything more about being an immigrant. But he did add a couple of different but related ideas (once-you-were and now-you-are type of comments):
Once you were far away and now you’re near
Once you were enemies now you’re friends
Once dead now alive
Once preoccupied with earth now interested in heaven
Once with an old nature and now a new one
So the examples are different. But the ideas are similar. Coming into faith means change. Evolution. Development. Process. Metamorphosis.
Static doesn’t seem to be on the agenda.

Note: quote from Colossians 1:13 (NLT). And see 1:21-22 2:13 3:1-2 3:9-10.

 

Week 47  Colossians 2

A pretty practical bible-reader’s question came into my mind today.
It started with Paul talking about specific OT religious things – food laws & celebrations & the Sabbath day. Then he referred to them as being: a mere shadow of what is to come…The substance belongs to Christ
Another version called them: a shadow of the…reality…found in Christ
Another: shadows of the real thing (which is) Christ himself.
So my question was that if those things in the OT were ‘shadowy’ were they the only shadowy things? Or were there others?
I figured it like this…if reality came when Christ appeared then reality appeared in the NT. Which sounds like the OT is in the Pre-Reality Shade. There’s the OT Shadowy Section. And the NT Reality Section.
Which means that if Paul is discriminating between the two big sections of the bible then that has a pretty significant outcome for me reading the bible. It pushes me in the direction of another question: do I even have to read the (shadowy) OT?
Let’s say I asked 1000 people this question: if you were restricted to reading only one of the testaments for the rest of your life which one would it be? Nobody would say the OT. Not even one.
But a bible-reader’s question isn’t just a matter of preference. It’s something more like this: do I think I’ll get enough out of the Great Shadow Section to make reading it worth my while?

Note: quote from Colossians 2:17 (NASB NIV NLT)