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Week 10  Deuteronomy

I finished reading Deuteronomy yesterday. Which means I’ve finished a law-heavy section of my bible-reading year. There are hundreds of laws in Exodus Leviticus Numbers (and then a pretty thorough review of them in Deuteronomy).
I think it’s easy to come away with the general feeling that the content there is just a bunch of formalized mechanistic going-through-the-motions ritualistic stuffy perfunctorily-necessitarian restrictive glumly-judicious & suffocatingly-legalistic regulations and kosherisms.
So reading through Deuteronomy is a helpful reminder that other things are in play. For example:
if you search for the Lord with all your heart and soul you will find him…
you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength…
the Lord requires you to fear him, to live according to his will, to love and worship him with all you heart and soul…
always love the Lord your God and walk in his ways…
the Lord…will delight in you…if you turn to him…with all your heart and soul…
love the Lord…and keep his commands…
choose to love the Lord…and obey him and commit yourself to him…
take to heart all the words I have given you.
When I think about the laws as abstract requirements that are independent of everything except their own archaic necessity then the law seems like a kind of dinosauric regulatory-irrelevancy. So Deuteronomy’s reminders help with that bit of asymmetry.

Note: quotes from Deuteronomy 4:29, 6:5, 10:12, 19:9, 30:10, 30:16, 30:20, 32:46 (NLT)

Week 9  Psalm 62

The verse was already underlined when I read it today: my soul waits in silence for God only. Probably because when I read it before it sounded implausible…non-achievable.
David was giving circumstance-specific advice…i.e. it was for when an assassination squad was trying to kill him.
I’m relieved there aren’t assassins in the neighbourhood. I’d think the silent wait would be easier without them. Still…it doesn’t seem much easier.
For example on the purely practical & personal level of being a bible-reader the silent wait seems like a poor use of time to me. One of the things about being a bible-reader is focus and concentration and time-management and staying-on-track. So waiting around grinds against my bible-reader’s psyche.
And my hunch is that the natural approach of people here in town would be a discussion-and-action route. The Medicine Hat Way: talking and doing…engaging and consulting…fighting and arguing. They all seem like preferable options to silence and waiting.
So it’s a nagging thing that David has come up with. The silent wait steps right in the path of true progress. It seems retrograde…mystical. My instinct is to suppress it since it feels galling exasperating vexing frustrating. It’s an unnatural & foreign & totally non-conformistic practice. It runs against the grain. I’m really tempted to disregard the silent wait.
So I sit here thinking…wondering if it’s one of the things that’s disposable. Or at least if it’s negotiable.

Note: quote from Psalm 62:1 (NASB)

Week 9  Psalm 59

59 is today’s reminder to me that not every psalm is completely applicable to me personally on every single occasion that I read it.
The subtitle says it was: a psalm of David the time Saul sent soldiers to watch his house in order to kill him. So under those risky circumstances David prayed: rescue me from my enemies, O God. Protect me from those who have come to destroy me…save me from these murderers. David’s prayer was compatible with his current life experience.
So far the mayor of Medicine Hat hasn’t sent the local police to kill me (and I’m pretty sure she won’t). Which means 59 has a different degree of urgency for me. I’ll tend to locate it in the bottom-half of my Psalm Personal Relevancy List…for now at least…under my current circumstances. 59 is in a kind of drowsy hibernation.
But halfway around the world some guy at this very second here-&-now on March 1/22 who is literally & experientially exposed to genuinely murderous life-and-death attack might be thinking 59 fits the bill exactly. That guy’s life might be replicating David’s: my enemies come out at night, snarling like vicious dogs as they prowl the streets.
That guy…wherever he is – let’s say hypothetically in some place like eastern Europe – has a totally different Psalm Personal Relevancy List from me.
Events can relevantize psalms.

Note: quotes from Psalm 59:1, 14 & 6 (NLT). Bible Reading Report: as of February 28/22: 223 out of 1189 chapters read; 18.7% completed in 16.7% of the year; head still above water.

Week 9  Deuteronomy 8

Moses was doing a thinking-out-loud exercise about how things would go for Israel once they had moved into Canaan. He projected two alternatives:
Alternative #1 was that once Israel settled-in and got established they would logically just: praise the Lord…for the good land he had given them.
Alternative #2 had a similar beginning but ended differently. In that scenario:
a) Israel would settle-in
b) over time they’d get more prosperous
c) eventually they’d become very successful
d) they’d chalk up their success to hard work & entrepreneurial skills
e) they’d feel good about their achievement. And then they’d…
f) forget about the Lord.
Points a) b) c) d) & e) look like pretty normal steps along the path to personal wealth-building success. But according to Moses the critical intersection was the Point e) because it was the pause-and-think moment: the time to be careful! Beware that in your plenty you do not forget the Lord.
In normal financial-economic thinking Point f) is where Moses goes off-the-rails because he starts bringing a religious idea into the mix. But for him the religious idea was the fundamental underpinning of the whole scheme: it is the Lord your God who gives you power to become rich. Points a) – e) aren’t detachable from Point f). In fact everything rides on it.
No self-respecting financial-advisor is going to move past Point e).
But Moses’ point is that disregarding the fountainhead of prosperity is a mammoth & crucial & lunatic & first-order omission.

Note: quotes from Deuteronomy 8:10,11, 18 (NLT)

Week 9  Psalm 57

A Sunday prayer for pray-ers in the city on the Dnieper…
Please have mercy on all of us today Lord. And please have mercy on me
We’re surrounded by an army with rifles and tanks…I feel like I’m alone in a boreal forest on a moonless night hearing the howls of a wolf pack getting closer…
Our enemies tricked us…trapped us…isolated us. Now they’re here to take our city…overrun our country…
I’ll do whatever I can under the circumstances…but in the end I know my real refuge and hope is you and I’m going to depend on you until this disaster has passed
Lord…you’re higher than the heavens…you transcend the world
You’re the only sanctuary my soul has
Inside me – in my spirit – I’m confident in you
I’m even going to sing to you…I’m going to get together some instrumentalists and we’ll sing your praises together
I’m certain that your gigantic love is operating
I know your faithfulness outshines everything else
I’m asking you to show us that gigantic love…that excelling faithfulness
Lord…like I said before you’re higher than the heavens…you transcend the world
Please help us. Please rescue us from our adversaries.

Note: this is a reorganized & paraphrased prayer from Psalm 57…put together in this order of verses: 1 4 6 1 5 1 7 7-9 10 3 11 3

Week 8  Deuteronomy 6

Moses explained an important connection between the Lord and the ten commandments: fear the Lord your God as long as you live by keeping all his decrees and commands. So there’s a link between complying with the 10Cs and with fearing the Lord. I checked three different bibles and they all used the word “fear”. Exactly what the Lord-10C linkage is and how it works is something for the back-burner. Right now the single issue about fearing-the-Lord is more important to me.
I used to have a repeater nightmare where I’d wake up petrifyingly afraid. But when Moses talks about fearing-the-Lord I’m pretty sure it’s not nightmare fear. So if that’s not what it is then what is it?
I checked a fourth bible and it said “deep reverence”. It makes pretty good sense to me to classify fear-of-the-Lord in the same family as reverence. Revering someone might be a subspecies of fear… Subtle or finely-pointed fear… Something more like an excited not-quite-trembling nervous uncertain respectful cautious don’t-want-to-mess-up elevated-heartrate expectant awestruck admirative-verging-on-panic psychically-weighted-with-ominosity and just-don’t-say-anything-stupid veneration. Something like that. Which isn’t happiness. But it’s not nightmare fear. It’s a fear that fits the circumstances.
If I meet someone who’s awesomely and spectacularly superior to me then I start naturally behaving like I’m standing with awesome & spectacular superiority. Which seems like a totally suitable and understandable class of afraidness.

Note: quote from Deuteronomy 6:2 (NIV).

Week 8  Deuteronomy 1

After Mount Sinai Moses began adjudicating the Sinai laws single-handedly but eventually he realized it wasn’t a one-man job. So he delegated judges who were responsible for subgroups of people – smaller units of 1000s & 100s & 50s & right down to groups of 10.
I got out a calculator. The military census in Numbers said there were about 600,000 men in camp. That meant 60000 judges for groups of 10 & 12000 for 50s & 6000 for 100s & 600 for 1000s. Total = 78600 judges (minimum) (a lot of judges).
With 78600 assistants to help apply the 700 or 800 laws Moses’ labour shortage was solved.
But then the supplementary question cropped up: can my 78600 helpers do the job properly? Answer: not necessarily. Judges are people too. So Moses also introduced a multi-point Character Assessment Test.
It wasn’t about whether the guy was a team-player or had a good sense of humour. Moses’ judges had to have wisdom & good judgment & life experience & impartiality & resistance to influence & reverence for the Lord & honesty & immunity to graft.
Good laws + good-quality judges = an effective legal system.
Good laws + derelict judges = a degraded legal system.
Moses’ laws were good in the abstract. But how real-life-effective were they? About as effective as the character quality of the 78600 judges that adjudicated them.

Note: see Deuteronomy 1:9-18 & Exodus 18:13-27

Week 8  Psalm 50

Near the end of the psalm the Lord says: you thought that I was just like you. I was thinking today that if I had the ability to make it happen I’d be tempted to make God just like me.
I guess it’s possible I’d make him like someone else. Or maybe a mash-up of several Top Quality People. But I suspect that if it was my choice he’d have a lot of Joe-like qualities.
Because if he was just like me we’d always be on the same page
He’d do things that were consistent with my preferences
Most of the time we’d just naturally agree and when we didn’t we’d be able to reach a consensus pretty readily
I’d probably feel a higher degree of personal liberty if he was like me
He’d be friendly conciliatory affable respectful obliging cooperative altruistic attentive responsive
He’d be a fairly Albertan-style god
There’d have to be some modifications to Bible God – for example his justice couldn’t be so absolute & decisive (in Canada an impartial judiciary is kind of negotiable)
Less demanding & strident. Less certain. Less awesome. Less rigorous. His absolutes would need some paring down. He’d not do objectionable stuff. He’d need to see eye-to-eye with me. There’d have to be an uptick in his flexibility. He’d have to be more like one-of-the-boys.
I’m tempted to think that life would be more manageable if God was just like me.

Note: quote from Psalm 5o:21 (NASB)

Week 8  Deuteronomy 1

Right up front Moses retells the story about the 12 spies. It’s a little different from the Numbers 13 version of the same story.
Deuteronomy says the people approached Moses with the idea of infiltration.
Numbers says it was the Lord’s idea.
I wonder if I’ve sniffed out a contradiction. A genuine contradiction might be where one account says “12 spies were sent out” and the other says “no spies were sent out”. So I wonder how this one stacks up.
I look at all my materials from both stories:
a) the Lord spoke to Moses and told him to send out 12 spies (Numbers)
b) Moses did send out 12 spies (Numbers)
c) the people floated the idea to Moses about sending 12 spies (Deuteronomy)
d) Moses thought that was a good idea (Deuteronomy)
e) Moses did send out 12 spies (Deuteronomy).
I rearrange the pieces…
c) the people floated the idea to Moses
d) Moses thought it was a good plan
a) Moses got confirmation from the Lord – who ok’d the covert operation
b) & e) Moses sent the spies.
Shuffling the pieces like this makes pretty good sense to me (if I’d written Deuteronomy the only thing I’d have added to the reordered list – between d) & a) – was that when the people made the suggestion to Moses he ran it by the Lord).
I’m not saying that “this absolutely solves the question”. But the concern is less of a concern for me now.

Note: the two stories are Deuteronomy 1:19-23 & Numbers 13:1-17

Week 8  Numbers 23

Lots of times things just inexplicably register in my mind and today something registered inexplicably with me: God is not a man that he should lie. That’s only half the verse but that was the key phrase: God is not a man that he should lie.
Bible-readers read for different reasons but it’s probably a pretty common goal to read the bible to find things out. So the idea that God isn’t like a man since he tells the truth is a pretty useful thing to know.
It’s a contrastive comment. Contrast #1 is that God isn’t a human being. God and human beings aren’t the same.
I can flip-flop it: human beings aren’t the same as God.
I can personalize it: I’m not like God.
It’s a pretty clear-cut distinction: God and I aren’t the same.
Contrast #1 is developed a bit in Contrast #2: God is not a human being that he should lie.
So one specified point of difference between God and me is that he doesn’t lie.
I can flip-flop it: one specified distinction between God and me is that I do lie.
I can personalize it: I’m not like God because I don’t tell the truth.
There’s a number of ways that God is different from me (creative capacity…knowing everything…endless existence…like that) and those are things I can’t really relate to.
But God being different because I don’t have the capacity he does to tell the truth? That I can understand.

Note: quote from Numbers 23:19 (NLT).