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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.

Week 39  Luke 22

Near the very end of his life the Lord was talking to his disciples about his betrayal and he said: for I, the Son of Man, must die since it is part of God’s plan. But how terrible it will be for my betrayer.
Another version says: the Son of Man will go as it is decreed, but woe to that man who betrays him.
Another: the Son of Man is going as it has been determined; but woe to that man by whom he is betrayed.
God’s plan was that the Son of Man would die. That’s pretty clear. The death of the Lord was part of God’s plan. Planned. Decreed. Determined. Sounds pretty solid & decisive & absolute.
But then in the second part of the verse Judas the Betrayer slides into the decision-making recipe. The Lord would die because it was planned and decreed and determined. And the Lord would die because he was betrayed by his friend. You’d think that a divine determination would devalue Judas’ hare-brained personal scheme to the point where it had no value or meaning. But that’s not how it would work.
The Lord died because his death was determined to happen.
And he died because Judas had his own deadly plan and took his own initiative to make it happen.
Both-And.

Note: quotes from Luke 22:21 NLT NIV NASB. End-of-month reading report: the year is 75% finished and reading is 85% complete.

 

Week 39  Luke 21

People were oohing-and-aahing over the beautiful temple in Jerusalem and the Lord surprised them by saying it would be smashed to pieces. So they asked two questions:
a) when will these things happen? and
b) what will be the sign that they are about to take place?
They wanted some kind of rough estimate about the timing of the event and they wondered if there’d be any pre-destruction tip-offs.
The Lord could have at least ball-parked question a) with something like: “within about 60 years”. But he didn’t. His focus was on question b). About things that would happen first.
I reread the chapter and counted 16 pre-event indicators that would occur before the temple fell. (A lot of them don’t seem all that illuminating – although I’ll admit that verse-20 sounds pretty definitive).
But that aside the bigger concern for me is that the Lord seems to move seamlessly from the topic of the destruction of the temple (which is how the conversation started) to his own return to earth (at that time they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory sounds a lot like the Lord’s return).
How these two future events got tied together is a good question. But the bigger question for me (as I hurry to finish Luke by tomorrow) is: ‘how am I supposed to start unknotting them?’

Note: quotes from Luke 21:7 27 (NIV). A quick fact-check: the temple was demolished in 70 AD.

Week 39  Luke 15

Not all parables are as clear & understandable & straightforward as the three in this chapter.
People described as ‘sinners’ came to talk with the Lord. Religious leaders took offence because Jesus was fraternizing with these creeps. The Lord and the religious people agreed that these people were in the Land of the Lost. The big difference was that the leaders figured they weren’t worth finding.
To make his point the Lord told three easy-to-understand parables:
One out of a hundred sheep was lost.
One out of ten coins was lost.
One out of two sons was lost.
In each parable someone was sad about the loss. So the person searched. Eventually the person found. And the person was very happy. That idea is repeated in each story: rejoice with me – the person says – I have found… That’s the reaction when something valuable is recovered.
The one unexpected add-on in the last parable is the piece where the prodigal son’s brother wished his brother stayed prodigal.
In some parables it’s hard to figure out what’s what and who’s who. And at first I wonder why the story of the prodigal son ends with the story of the Un-prodigal But Annoyed Bro. But when I circle back to the first two verses I realize what’s going on. The Lord didn’t bother spelling it out. Neither did Luke. I’m supposed to be able to do that for myself.

Note: quotes in Luke 15:6-7 9-10 and 24 & 32

Week 39  Luke 3

Luke wrote his gospel to a man named Theophilus and he told him that: since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good…to write an orderly account for you.
That orderly approach is what’s likely behind Luke’s details in chapter three about when John the Baptist began his ministry – which he says was: in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar.
I had to do a quick detour outside of the bible to look for Tiberius Caesar. I checked three sources and they all agreed that Tiberius lived from 42 BC to 37 AD (so about 78 years). They also said that Tiberius ruled as emperor from 14 to 37 AD.
That’s a very useful detail to know because Luke says that John began his public preaching and baptizing in Tiberius’ 15th year.
So…14 AD + 15 more years = 29 AD. I don’t know exactly how dates were calculated in Luke’s scheme but I’ll ball-park 29 AD as the year that John began his prophetic work (it could have been 28 AD).
Anyway that confirms the general sense I have that the Lord Jesus began his public ministry in ~30 AD. I’d be stalled if Tiberius’ 15th year was (for instance) 70 AD. 29 AD is close enough.

Note: quotes from Luke 1:3 3:1 (NIV). I could try cross-referencing the other names in Luke’s list: Pontius Pilate (Judea). Herod (Galilee). Philip (Itrurea-Trachonitis). Lysanias (Abilene). But 29 AD is good enough for me.

 

Week 38  Luke 4

Lots of people don’t read the bible. And lots of people do.
People who do read the bible can be divided into two big groups: in Group A are people who read the bible and think it’s legitimate accurate reliable personally-valuable – things like that – and in Group B are people who read the bible for some reason – but not because they believe it or think it has any real & solid usefulness.
Anyway I put myself in Group A. And the main person I’d put in Group B is the devil.
I don’t know for a fact that the devil has read the whole bible (I figure he likely has).
And I don’t know for a fact that the devil has read every psalm (he likely has).
I do know for a fact that the devil read Psalm 92 because when he tempted the Lord he quoted a couple of verses from it.
This is worrisome on two counts.
First it’s a reminder that at least one guy in Group B is seriously-and-maliciously evil.
And secondly it’s a reminder that a sinister Group B guy can manage the meaning of a bible passage so that it takes on a dark & sinister twist.
The equation looks something like this: an illuminating-and-helpful bible verse + a dark-and-devious mind reading it = a potentially damaging-and-corrosive meaning.
It’s a reminder for Group A readers: a good verse is deformable.

Note: the devil quoted Psalm 92:11-12 in Luke 4:10-11

Week 37  Mark 10

Mark quoted Jesus: I tell you the truth. No one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age (and with them persecutions) and in the age to come, eternal life.
One hundred times as much. I’ve seen religious media-stars who – if the source I read is correct – are millionaires. I don’t know what they gave up ‘for the gospel’s sake’ but materially they’ve done pretty well. On the other hand I know a guy who gave-up a lot for the gospel. Unless he has hidden offshore money I don’t think he’s gotten a 100Xs return.
The second part of the verse says that gospel-followers will also get eternal life. That’s a future promise – non-testable – and can’t at present really be shown to be true.
My big concern is doping out what the 100Xs return in this life means. For now my What-Information-I’ve-Got list only includes:
I choose to leave my friends and resources behind for the Lord’s sake
I don’t leave them behind with the aim of recouping a bigger & better return
I do get some sort of return (but what exactly that 100X return is remains a bit of a mystery)
I also definitely get some degree of persecution as part of the transaction
And then in the end I also get eternal life.

Note: quote from Mark 10:29-30 (NIV)