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Week 47 Ephesians

I usually figure I need to pay attention while I’m reading the bible but in Ephesians I find something I can legitimately disregard. Paul says something directly to – something exclusively for – married women. So I’m exempted. Still…even though it’s not for me I read it: you wives will submit to your husbands as you do to the Lord.
The verse isn’t my worry personally but I recognize it’s a rule that’d be a bit tricky for a wife to manage. We’re here in 21st century Alberta and it’s a cultural law that no woman would ever submit to her husband. I have a hypothetical appreciation of a wife deciding what-do-I-do-with-that?
What’s not so hypothetical for me is when I read a bit farther and Paul follows-up with something for men: you husbands must love your wives with the same love Christ showed the church.
Q: How difficult would it be for a wife to submit to her husband?
A: I’m not sure exactly but I’m guessing its roughly as difficult as it would be for a husband to love his wife the way Christ loved the church.
In the modern world I guess a wife who believes in the Lord would have to decide whether or not to pay any attention to Paul’s submit-to-your-husband idea. And across the gender-divide I figure a guy would be trying to figure if Paul’s love-your-wife-like-Christ-loves-the-church rule is disregardable.

Note: quotes from Ephesians 5:22, 25 (NLT)

Week 47 Corinthians

Paul: three different times I begged the Lord to take [my ailment] away. Each time he said, My gracious favor is all you need. My power works best in your weakness. So now I am glad to boast about my weakness, so that the power of Christ may work through me.
A Weak Man’s Prayer (after reading Paul): Okay. So this is where I’m at… what I’ve got…what I’ve got to deal with. I’ve prayed for relief…multiple times. Now it looks like I’m not getting out of this, not getting rid of my pain. I’m at the very front-edge of starting to understand what’s going on. For one thing you’re here with me. You said your grace was enough for me (and I hope that’s true). And I’m also starting to think that you actually prefer me being where I am right now. Not sure I totally agree but I’m thinking that you’re thinking that it’s better for me this way. You said your power is enhanced by my weakness. That my weakness is a better raw material for you than my strength. Your power is magnified – it shows up better – in my weakness. So my weakness isn’t exactly what I figure it is. I need to keep that in mind: my weakness isn’t so bad; my power maybe isn’t so helpful. My disability is a kind of optimal operating system for your power to run. So…thank you. Amen.

Note: quote from 2 Corinthians 12:8-9 (NLT)

Week 46 Corinthians

Paul: though our bodies are dying, our spirits are being renewed every day. For our present troubles are quite small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us an immeasurably greater glory that will last forever! So we don’t look at the troubles we can see right now; rather we look forward to what we have not yet seen. For the troubles we see will soon be over, but the joys to come will last forever.
On a blank sheet I draw a diagonal line – top-left-to-bottom-right. I call it the Outer Me.
Another diagonal line – bottom-left-to-top-right – I call the Inner Me.
Along the Outer Me line I pencil in a few things Paul said or implied. Decline. Decay. Sensory inputs only. Temporal…temporary. Dead…Death – I write those last two in the bottom corner.
Along the Inner Me line I write renewal. Trans-sensory things…invisibles. Eternals. Lasting…Permanent.
So two different things are progressing or regressing in me. Different starting points. Different trajectories. Different destinations.
Near the end the Inner Me is reminded of two things. First that my present troubles are terminal; they won’t last very long. Short-term troubles vs. eternal joy.
Secondly that my present troubles – strangely enough – have two effects on Inner Me: a) they’re troublesome, obviously…but b) they eventually produce glory for me.
A time contrast: brief vs. permanent.
And a weight contrast: small & light-weight vs. substantial…heavy.
Outer Me & Inner Me. In a contest to determine where I land.

Note: quote from 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 (NLT)

Week 46 Corinthians

Yesterday I was thinking about pain & suffering so I pay some attention when Paul starts talking about one of his own dilemmas: we were crushed and completely overwhelmed, and we thought we would never live through it. In fact, we expected to die.
Paul has things to say about troubles and I jot them down:
When I’m in trouble God can comfort me…
When I’m comforted then I can comfort other people…
If I comfort sufferers then I get back a bit of the Lord’s comfort…
Suffering can be a learning tool to help me rely more on the Lord…
When I’m suffering prayer can help.
Yesterday I was thinking about the question: if there’s a super-powerful god who’s a good-guy wouldn’t he get rid of suffering? But Paul hasn’t even a slight interest in that question. I try sketching out what he just said:
I draw a vertical comfort line coming down from the Lord to me…
Then a horizontal one going out from me to other sufferers…
And then one rebounding back to me from other sufferers…
An internal educational line spins in my head helping me learn reliance on the Lord…
And a dotted analgesic prayer line (or lines – maybe horizontal & vertical) that helps take the edge off.
The thinking and approach Paul takes to pain & suffering is a helpful one to know. But it’s a tough and effortful one to apply.

Note: quote from 2 Corinthians 1:8-9 (NLT). My paraphrased points are from 4-5, 4 & 6, 7, 9, & 11.

Week 46 Corinthians

In his second Corinthians letter Paul talks about pain & suffering.
One of the totally theoretical questions that comes up about suffering is that since suffering is unpleasant wouldn’t it be better if it was eliminated? Let’s say a super-powerful god could remove suffering. Wouldn’t it be great if he did?
The obvious answer seems to be yes. So I wonder. What if suffering’s a constituent part of the whole deal? A non-removable essential in the mechanism? What if it’s such an fundamental structural component that the apparatus collapses if it’s removed? If I subtract suffering what-all else in the equation changes?
What if suffering is as inherent a part of my environment as – let’s say – oxygen. Let’s say a super-powerful god could remove all the oxygen in the world. Would that miraculous removal be a net gain for world ecology or for me? How desirable is something that isn’t?
I wonder what-all other changes occur when suffering is taken away. On the plus side no one suffers for any reason any more. I wonder if by that one act the world is fixed.
What if a super-powerful god could eliminate human suffering but he knows that human suffering is one of the things in human life that’s set in stone and without it life isn’t life and that a super-power-re-set would leave us with something worse or maybe with nothing at all? Would he do it? Maybe if he was a brainless super-powerful god. But not otherwise.

Week 46 Corinthians

For years there’s been a debate in the church about the gift of Speaking-in-Tongues. Since Paul spends quite a bit of time comparing Speaking-in-Tongues and the gift of Prophecy I decide to slow down and list the things Paul actually says (the list is my words but I’m pretty sure each of the items below is what Paul’s actually saying):
Prophecy is an especially desirable gift
Tongues – on the other hand – is an incomprehensible language that no one understands (except the Lord)
Prophecy is understandable language intended to benefit people
Tongues benefits the individual who speaks it but prophecy benefits the church
Tongues is desirable but prophecy is more desirable
A prophecy-speaker’s gift is superior to a tongues-speaker’s
A prophecy-speaker’s gift is superior to a tongues-speaker’s gift unless the tongues-speaker interprets his incomprehensible gibberish to understandable words
Incomprehensible language doesn’t profit anyone except the incomprehensible-language-speaker
A comprehensible message is what benefits people
When you’re speaking publicly it’s essential that people get-it…otherwise it’s just gobbledygook – like talking Hindi to a Cocker Spaniel
The big point of a gift is that it’s supposed to benefit the whole church
If I have a tongues-gift and want to help out the church I have to pray that the Lord helps me convert the tongues-gobbledygook into plain English
Tongues Statistic: Five non-gobbledygook words are better than 10,000 in tongues (a 2000:1 ratio)
I know there’s more to it than what’s in chapter 14. But it’s a good start.

Note: paraphrased from 1 Corinthians 14:1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 12, 13, 19 (NASB & NLT)

Week 46 Corinthians

If I had to compile a list of Spiritual Gifts in the NT I’d get my first nine in 1 Corinthians 12. A handy list. And today I was wondering why Paul wrote it.
I think his point was that different gifts can differentiate. If I highlight differences then eventually things get spread out all over the place. But Paul’s idea – his recommendation so I don’t just end up with a bunch of differences – was that differences should come together under one big oneness: different spiritual gifts but the same Holy Spirit.
A normal tendency with differences is for them to centrifuge off into diversenesses. Differences have trouble locating common ground. It’s easier to differentiate.
Paul compares the church and its members to a body and its body-parts. A physical body needs lots of different parts doing their job to make for Total Body Functionality. That seems pretty obvious but Paul still added that: the hand can’t say to the feet, “I don’t need you”. I guess he was admitting that individual body parts really love their individuality.
Toward the end Paul says: there should be no division in the body… He’d already admitted there were all kinds of differences in the body – so he was tipping us off about divisive differences.
Differences have a natural tendency to divide & separate & distinguish & look-for-preening-space. Differences have egos. So they really work together best when divisive-diversity isn’t king.

Note: quotes / paraphrases from 1 Corinthians 12:4, 21 (NLT), 25 (NASB)

Week 45 Corinthians

Yesterday Paul made it clear that eating meat that had at first been presented to an idol really made no difference since a) idols were lifeless entities & b) there was only one God. You could eat meat that had – in a technical-formal-religious act of devotion – been submitted to an idol since the meat – in reality – had been devoted to nothing.
Today there’s extra input and even though what Paul says sounds different I don’t think he’s changing his tune. I think he’s finessing yesterday’s cut-and-dried rule because today’s not-so-cut-and-dried complication needs finer tuning.
Today Paul asks: what am I trying to say?…That the idols to whom the pagans bring sacrifices are real gods and that these sacrifices are of some value? No, not at all… (Okay…so far so good. Yesterday Paul said pretty much the same: we all know that an idol is not really a god and that there is only one God.) But today he goes on to add: what I am saying is that these sacrifices are offered to demons. And I don’t want any of you to be partners with demons.
Yesterday Paul broke it down in two parts: Lifeless Idols & the Lord God.
Today he adds a third component: Lifeless Idols & Malevolent Demons & the Lord God.
Yesterday it looked like the Non-Meat-Eaters were completely wrong for being concerned about dead statues.
Today it looks like maybe they might have been onto something.

Note: quotes from 1 Corinthians 10:19-20; 8:4 (NLT)

Week 45 Corinthians

Paul took some time to talk about the butcher shops in Corinth. Their practice of ceremonially offering the meat to pagan idols before it went on sale in the market had created a rift among Corinthian believers. The sides were: Meat-Eaters vs. Non-Meat-Eaters…
Meat-Eaters said ‘the idol means nothing. It’s okay to eat this meat’
Non-Meat-Eaters said ‘there’s a big problem. You can’t eat meat devoted to an idol’
Both sides couldn’t be right. And Paul solved that problem: we all know that an idol is not really a god and that there is only one God and no other… So in actual fact it was okay to eat the meat. Dilemma resolved…right?
Wrong. All we know now is who was right.
Solving half a problem doesn’t solve it all. There’s still the other half. There’s still the Non-Meat-Eaters Dilemma. Paul says: when they eat food that has been offered to idols, they think of it as the worship of real gods, and their weak consciences are violated.
Something that’s okay on the material consumption level is wrong on the conscience level.
In the church I go to we don’t care about meat offered to idols. But we have meat-offered-to-idols issues. So where that leaves me – according to Paul – is that I have to love the people in my church who are right and I also have to love people in my church who aren’t right but think they are.

Note: quotes from 1 Corinthians 8:4 & 7 (NLT)

 

Week 45 Corinthians

Paul talks about Life in the Church.
Life in the Church is different from life not in the church.
Church is a kind of halfway house between Life in the Natural World and Life in the Kingdom of God. I map it out and it looks a bit like this:
Life in the Natural World (the Before)
Life in the Church (the Now)
Life in the Kingdom of God (the Eventually)
Paul spells out how I got from the Before to the Now: now your sins have been washed away, and you have been set apart for God. You have been made right with God because of what the Lord Jesus Christ and the Spirit of our God have done for you… So that’s the technical description behind starting my Life in the Church. Things are different now. Technically speaking. At the same time – in terms of actual real-life practices – quite a few things get imported from the Before into the Now (Paul includes a list of ten examples of things that come into the church from the Before. Things that don’t fit there.)
According to Paul Life in the Church is supposed to be different from Life in the Natural World. If Life in the Church isn’t different then Life in the Church is pretty much the same as Life in the Natural World. Meaning it isn’t really Life in the Church anymore.

Note: quotes from 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 (NLT)