Medicine Hat Joe

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.

Week 35  Daniel 4

The meaning of Nebuchadnezzar’s Tree Dream is quite a bit more straightforward than some other dream interpretations. The huge tree is Nebuchadnezzar – plain & simple. The tree getting chopped down is the king falling from his high position.
The Lord gave Daniel that insider information about the dream. But then Daniel’s offered a ‘post-interpretation’ appeal to Nebuchadnezzar: please listen to me. Stop sinning and do what is right. Break from your wicked past by being merciful to the poor. Perhaps then you will continue to prosper. I’m not sure but I kind of think this last piece of advice was Daniel’s idea (not the Lord’s).
It’s hard to figure since Daniel had just told the king that he was destined to be driven out of human society and would end up living with animals. And not just maybe. The message had said: this has been decreed. In other words it was definitely going to happen. But then Daniel added his hopeful However… “However if you repent, then maybe (just maybe) it won’t happen.”
Daniel was totally different from Jonah (who felt very good about a destructive outcome for his audience). But Daniel was scrambling around trying to find a work-around to avoid the (nasty) predicted outcome facing the king.

Note: quotes from Daniel 4:27 17 (NLT). End of August Reading Report: I’m in good shape. I finished Daniel today and with that finished the OT. Tomorrow is the biggest transition point of the reading year – moving from OT to NT.

Week 35  Daniel 3

Shadrach Meshach & Abednego (SM&A) are the only ones still standing. Acres and acres of people all around them are bowing to the statue. So SM&A are very conspicuous.
They could have complied in a theatrical act of conformity (“we’ll physically bow to the statue but in our hearts we’ll still be standing!”) I think that could have worked. But whatever their reason was SM&A decided that this wasn’t the time for secrecy. At this point, under these circumstances, they felt obligated to make a public point.
I remember the story of Hushai – Absalom’s advisor (but in deceptive reality he was David’s secret agent).
Obadiah was one of Evil King Ahab’s assistants (but in secret he was a God-fearing man).
After he is healed Naaman would still publicly support the idolatry of his king (but in his heart he believed in the Lord).
Some people in the bible hide their true loyalty for self-preservation’s sake. And that seems to be okay. But in this story SM&A decided they had to show their true colours.
I’m not sure that a public stand is the default in every circumstance. I’m guessing that there’s some personal decision-making & some ‘soul-searching’ going on before coming to that decision.
But this story shows me that sometimes a public stand is the best decision. That self-interest & self-preservation can’t always be my polestar.

Note: see Hushai in 2 Samuel 16:16-19. Obadiah in 1 Kings 18:2-4. Naaman in 2 Kings 5:17-18.

Week 34  Esther

I read Esther today. If some guy told me he was only going to read one book in the OT and asked me what I thought was the very best story I’d most likely say “read Esther”. Esther is easy to read because it’s pretty short but more importantly It’s a Great Great Story.
If the guy said “okay but what’s the story about?” I’d read him the condensed version from Esther: Haman had plotted to crush and destroy the Jews on the day and month he had determined by casting lots. But Esther begged the king and so he issued a decree causing Haman’s plot to backfire, and Haman was hanged on the gallows.
Esther is also pretty scarily contemporary. I don’t have to go back 2500 years to find another example of where Jewish people were so violently hated as an entire race that official & legalized & cool-headed steps were taken to totally exterminate them.
At the end of the story the Jewish exiles were saved and Mordecai & Esther set up a celebratory annual festival: the people agreed to inaugurate this tradition…and they declared they would never fail to celebrate these two days. I checked to see if they kept that promise and it looks like they did. The Purim festival is still celebrated as a day of joy, marked by merrymaking and feasting. And it’s easy to see why.

Note: quotes from Esther 9:24-25 (paraphrased) 9:27 (NLT) & The Columbia Encyclopedia 5th edition 1993 ‘Purim’

Week 34  Malachi 3

There’s a paragraph on religious allegiance near the end of Malachi that’s interesting because I think a lot of times religious people just kind of go along on auto-pilot and don’t even think about quitting. But Israel had come to a bit of an intersection. They were asking: what’s the use of serving God? (the way the question is asked gives me the impression that they figured ‘there’s no use’).
Anyway it’s a pretty good question since people do walk-away (and it’s pretty interesting to me because I wanted to see the reasons for walking). It turned out to be a practical and personal issue: What’s In Religion For Me? (their actual question was: what have we gained by obeying his commands or by trying to show the Lord that we are sorry for our sins?). What have we gained? So it’s a kind of As Long As I Get a Good Tangible Return I’ll Be Faithful.
And there was a secondary concern: people who do evil get rich, and those who dare God to punish them go free of harm. That wasn’t fair. If bad people succeed what’s the point of following the Lord?
Anyway walking away from faith would need a solid reason. And even though I don’t like to see bad people succeed while good people don’t those aren’t good enough reasons to leave the Lord. Not for me. Not by a long shot.

Note: quotes from Malachi 3:14 15 (NLT)