Extending my plan for Bible reading, I now include the OT in my fast reading (that is, read like its a regular book, in large chunks at a sitting).
After I've finished the NT in Phillips and the NEB, I plan to read the Sexateuch (Pentateuch plus Joshua and Judges) in NEB.
Following that I will do the NT in the NASB, then the NT in the NRSV (my second least favourite contemporary translation).
After that, the OT history books in the NEB, then NASB, to follow in that order the rest of the OT.
Interesting parallel between the OT and the NT: both start with a theological ground-setting of four books: the pentateuch in the OT and the gospels in the NT, capping this off with the establishment of the 'church': Joshua on taking Israel into the Promised Land, and Luke on the first years of the church.
The greatest parallel between the OT and the NT is lost on we English readers, with Yeshua translated Joshua in the OT, and Jesus in the NT following the 'Greek-isation' of the Hebrew. The parallel is 'Joshua/Yeshua' both take their people into the promised land: Joshua into the Promised Land, and Yeshua into the Kingdom of God!
Thursday, August 29, 2019
Sunday, August 18, 2019
The medium is the message
Mcluhan didn't know how right he was. How something is conveyed can be more persuasive than what is sought to be conveyed.
Take the evangelical urge for us to tell others of faith in Christ.
Most evangelical church contact is passive. We sit in an auditorium (jokingly called a 'sanctuary' in parts of the USA) and watch and hear others do things to us. The message of the medium is that the experts are active, we are passive.
Then these same experts tells us the very opposite of that which their behaviour teaches: they say, go and tell; but provide no example, no life-experience, no church enaction of the significance of the ordinary parishionner's ability to tell!
Thus, almost no one goes and tells, because this has not been lived in the closest church contact they have.
Take the evangelical urge for us to tell others of faith in Christ.
Most evangelical church contact is passive. We sit in an auditorium (jokingly called a 'sanctuary' in parts of the USA) and watch and hear others do things to us. The message of the medium is that the experts are active, we are passive.
Then these same experts tells us the very opposite of that which their behaviour teaches: they say, go and tell; but provide no example, no life-experience, no church enaction of the significance of the ordinary parishionner's ability to tell!
Thus, almost no one goes and tells, because this has not been lived in the closest church contact they have.
Friday, August 2, 2019
At a funeral
Part of me likes the Anglican funeral service. Particularly the commital.
I was at a friend's funeral today.
It was related that a couple of his close friends visited him a few days ago, and while he said that he could see Yeshua on the horizon (I wonder if it was metaphorical or a real perception), a friend replied 'I expect you will be in glory before me'.
I think that sort of naff-ness is out of place, and in a way disrespectful of the dying and of our Saviour. Being with him forever is not a holiday destination, but part of God's glorious transition of us into his people by the victory of Christ.
Particularly as I've felt the emotion of the looming shadow of death, in recent times (I mean impending death as a possibility, not just 'theoretically') there is no room for the glib. It is the most gripping and awefilling experience. It is being on the threshold of a great unknown so unkown and so beyond us that Paul tells us we cannot even start to imagine it!
Christ's victory through death and resurrection bought us to this possibility...he paid the biggest price. It is not like a trip to the theme park.
I was at a friend's funeral today.
It was related that a couple of his close friends visited him a few days ago, and while he said that he could see Yeshua on the horizon (I wonder if it was metaphorical or a real perception), a friend replied 'I expect you will be in glory before me'.
I think that sort of naff-ness is out of place, and in a way disrespectful of the dying and of our Saviour. Being with him forever is not a holiday destination, but part of God's glorious transition of us into his people by the victory of Christ.
Particularly as I've felt the emotion of the looming shadow of death, in recent times (I mean impending death as a possibility, not just 'theoretically') there is no room for the glib. It is the most gripping and awefilling experience. It is being on the threshold of a great unknown so unkown and so beyond us that Paul tells us we cannot even start to imagine it!
Christ's victory through death and resurrection bought us to this possibility...he paid the biggest price. It is not like a trip to the theme park.
Wednesday, July 31, 2019
Genesis comment
Comment I left on a website about Genesis 1:
If Genesis 1 is poetry (which it is not), this would not itself bear on its facticity.
For example, the Australian folk song 'Waltzing Matilda' is poetry, but that doesn't mean there were no jumbucks, tucker bags, troopers, or swagmen. Nor does it not mean there was no late 19th century drought. Indeed, in ancient times, poetry was typically the form of conveying stories (including about actual events).
What is inferred by the claim is that Genesis is figurative or symbolic. However, it doesn't use figurative or symbolic language, it uses historical. If it was 'merely' figurative, then it would tell us nothing about the real world, because it uses concrete language it embeds itself in the real world and sure, it is not about the details of creation, but is clear on the 'how' God's word, because this is intimately connected to the why: God creating in love. The other details of Genesis 1 are also essential to its theological significance, but only because they happened in the world which is the setting of its theological significance. It is modern philosophical conceit that pretends to be able to separate the two.
Sunday, July 28, 2019
Hey, I've got spirituality too!
It's like everyone is 'spiritual'. It even gets a mention in the media these days. Spirituality.
But the spirituality of the world, of navel gazers, crystal huggers, tree claspers and pretend Buddhists (and real ones, for that matter) has nothing to do with the creator Spirit of God.
Modern Western 'spirituality' is a sham because it is:
Christian (real) spritiuality, life engaged with and regenerated by the in-dwelling Spirit of God is:
The world's spirituality-sham is merely a deluded, solipsistic, 19th century-romantic manifestation of The Religion of Me, with its rite of gazing solipsistically at a pretty scene.
The spirituality is divorced from the real world; not as in the 'nasty real world' to escape from, but how the real really is: community, love and being in and with. If spirituality is not this, then it is not real.
But the spirituality of the world, of navel gazers, crystal huggers, tree claspers and pretend Buddhists (and real ones, for that matter) has nothing to do with the creator Spirit of God.
Modern Western 'spirituality' is a sham because it is:
- Disembodied
- Individualistic
- Withdrawn, and
- Cerebral
Christian (real) spritiuality, life engaged with and regenerated by the in-dwelling Spirit of God is:
- Bodied: how we act and what motivates us is part of us
- Loving: in and of community, not the individual
- Involved: with, by and for others
- Enacted: with our Lord, his people and his Word.
The world's spirituality-sham is merely a deluded, solipsistic, 19th century-romantic manifestation of The Religion of Me, with its rite of gazing solipsistically at a pretty scene.
The spirituality is divorced from the real world; not as in the 'nasty real world' to escape from, but how the real really is: community, love and being in and with. If spirituality is not this, then it is not real.
Saturday, July 27, 2019
My redeemer
Tomorrow I'm reading at church Job 19:1-29.
This passage is a treasure:
Vss 25, 26.
This passage is a treasure:
I know that my redeemer lives and that in the end he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed yet in my flesh I will see God. I myself will see him with my own eyes--I and not another.
How my heart yearns within me.
Vss 25, 26.
Thursday, July 25, 2019
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