The Wonder of Light

I was hired to cook at a camp during the week.  Over the weekend their was a big group that rented out the camp and left the kitchen full of flies.  The caretaker took out as many flies as he could, but their were still a handful flying around.  Roaming the kitchen, I could not find a fly swatter anywhere.  I looked in the pantry, dining hall, and the other buildings on the grounds.  I finally asked the caretaker where a fly swatter would be.  He told me that they were in the dining hall on one of the counters.  Since i looked everywhere in the dining hall, i asked if their were any other swatters on camp if they were not there.  He told me those were the only ones he knew about.  I walked back to the dining hall and turned on the lights and their were the swatters behind some Tupperware containers.
I was searching for the swatters in the dark.  Their was light coming through the windows but i thought that would have been a sufficient amount to find the swatters.  It was when the room was full of light, I could find what I was looking for.  John 9:5 says, "While I am in the world, I am the light of the world (NIV)."  Because of sin we have darkness in our lives.  When we accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we have the him to light up the darkness in our lives.  Paul writes to the Ephesians, "For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (Ephesians 5:8 NIV)."  When we are living the christian life, we sometimes lose adequate light by not regularly reading the bible, praying, and other disciplines.  This can make us lose focus on what we need to do for the kingdom and puts us at odds with it.  So it is important to always try to live as children of the light.

Give Us Something God

Sometimes I feel trapped. I, as much as the next person, am a product of everything and everyone in my life. I am realizing more and more that who I am has everything to do with my family, friends, enemies, strangers, books I have read, and the society and culture that I have been a part of my entire life. The fact that I am writing a blog on a laptop computer says that I am the product of an over-communicated and wealthy culture where everybody thinks they have something important to say and that people really want to listen. Or so it is that we hope people will listen or be wooed by our [un]conventional wisdom or our witty stories of life. I do not suppose that this is a bad thing. As a matter of fact, I can not imagine a life where anyone truly is an individual. Even those persons who claim to be altogether independent and wholly self-sufficient have had help along the way. They have been nurtured by a community of people and by a culture created by communities of people, past and present, who have and are simply trying to make sense of life. I totally embrace that so many people and communities have influenced who I am. What I have a hard time with sometimes is actually knowing who I am.

As I mentioned above, I feel trapped. Even though I am grateful for people who help to tell me who I am, I am convinced that the construct in which I have come out of is insufficient in defining who I actually am; and I feel trapped in it. I feel trapped in my social status and the expectations of society. I am weary of things that are not worth being weary over. I feel privileged and cursed all at the same time. I feel tamed by it all; and while I may not know what the word natural actually means, I will say that I do not feel natural about this. I have come to a point where I am learning to step outside of my comfort of social graces and peaceful conflict management; and doing so has caused me to realize that being uncomfortable and sometimes appearing to be odd at least feels more natural. That is, it feels right. I have realized for quite some time now that life is about so much more than society has taught me. Life is about more than stuff; it is more than knowledge; there is even more to it than friends, family, and, yes, even church. But I don't know that I have ever been able to live like it is true. I do not believe that I have ever been able to live like my faith in God is real. I am plagued and restricted by the same society that I am so grateful for.

I guess the question that I am wrestling with is how I can break out of this construct that does not simply tell me who I am, but also who I should be. There is a huge tension inside of me and I feel like I am being pulled in two different directions. I need to be freed to be and do what I know is a life worth living. I have desires that I hold back, and I feel compromised because of it. I feel as though I will never begin to know who I am if I continue down the path where I am tamed. I will always be trapped by the restrictions of society, but my hope is that society cannot tame me to be something other than what I was meant to be. To those of you who feel the same way, my prayer is that God provide a way out of our boxes or open our eyes to the way he has already made. My prayer is that we come to a place of unrelinquished following of our desires as placed in us by our Creator. My prayer is that God give us something to work with when we feel trapped by ourselves and the world.

...in doubtful places see thou add no interpretation contrary to them...

"Mark the plain and manifest places of the Scriptures, and in doubtful places see thou add no interpretation contrary to them; but (as Paul saith) let all be conformable and agreeing to the faith." ~ William Tyndale, Preface to the New Testament 1526.


Reading Tydale's prefaces to the New Testament, I thought about our society in regards to Scripture.  I think that for a long time most churches have took different passages of Scripture and have used them as a wedge to divide the church.  Most lay persons, who struggle with a particular scripture, will either a). struggle with the passage and come up with their own interpretation or b). go to a church member, with the struggling passage, and get the members interpretation of the Scripture and hold that as truth.
Before my training in undergrad and seminary, I have fallen victim too the two scenarios.  During my training, I found out that some of my views (mine or others instilled in me) on certain passages were not accurate.  Now, if i encounter a passage that makes me struggle a bit, I do my research to make sure I understand it completely.  I also debate with colleges and friends to get more depth in understanding a passage.
I understand the temptation to take a certain passage and label it irrelevant and/or contradictory to other scriptures in the Bible.  But, as Tyndale wrote, we should interpret them as agreeing to the faith.  Paul wrote in his letter to the Church in Phillipi to "...work out your salvation with fear and trembling..."  I think we also need to work out troubling scripture the same way.

Where is the fear of God?

I recently participated in a small group discussion on the place of prayer in the life of the individual and in corporate worship. The intent of the conversation was to discuss the purpose of prayer, the ways in which people pray, and any other aspect of prayer that surfaced out. As discussion carried on among the group of church-traditional folk, one of the women in the group made a comment that struck meaning in with me. She commented that she longed to hear a fear-filled prayer. While not in a critically negative or in a necessarily vex way, she commented that people no longer pray “in a way that sends a reverent chill down her spine.” She continued, asking where the fear of the LORD has gone. It appears that, in many contexts, the seeker-friendly movement of the church has led corporate worship to be done in a way that tends to fear the worshipper more than it tends to expressively fear God. It appears that the Teacher of Ecclesiastes may have something to say to our overly seeker-friendly mindsets as he speaks of having a certain reverent attitude before God.

In chapter five of Ecclesiastes, the author writes that a worshipper ought to guard one’s steps when entering the house of God. His writing follows that listening in silence and being slow to speak in the presence of God is better than offering sacrifice and being rash with words before God—for many words may lead to the sin of unfulfilled vows and empty promises to God; and this is something that God does not find pleasure in. It is better, then, for the worshipper not to carry on before the LORD as if living out an unreliable dream of vanity; rather, the worshipper is heeded to simply “fear God” (5:7).

The author’s attitude is that of reverence before the ineffable. When he enters into worship, he is not comfortable before the Almighty. He does not enter into worship without first thinking about the sacredness of simply being able to go before the heavenly One who ought to be completely unapproachable by humans, who are on earth, in the first place. This One whom will be worshipped is the only truly holy being. God is regarded by the Teacher as worthy of the kind of worship that acknowledges his oneness and exclusive existence—God is unlike any other. God, by God’s nature, ought to be enough to place awe, wonder, and reverential fear into the bones of the worshipper. Yet, it appears that far too often the worshipper is quick to speak and hesitant to prepare one’s heart for the worship of God.

With the revelation of God in Christ, Christians understand God to be approachable and relational. Certainly God making his dwelling among us in a way that is palpable to us is something to find comfort in; however, there is still something about the eminence and transcendence of God that ought to make us a bit uncomfortable. The worshipper ought to revere God for the very reason that one finds comfort in God. There should be something out of the ordinary about God’s making himself known in Christ that sends a chill down the spine of the reverent worshipper.

The seeker-friendly movement, while it has a positive aspect to it, tends to neglect the fear of God and replaces it with the fear of making a seeking worshipper uncomfortable. I must agree with my friend, however, that such an extreme shift in paradigm misses out on genuine worship that responds to the experience and calling of God in such a way that leaves the worshipper speechless, unable to utter a word before the indescribable. While we understand that Christ has become a friend to his disciples, this does not mean that Christ is to be treated simply as we would treat any other friend. We ought to be discomforted when God chooses to make his dwelling among us. The holy presence of God ought to find the worshipper uncomfortably sinful before it finds that one is comforted because of the undeserved mercy and grace of this God. Perhaps, if the church of this generation became more aware of the otherness of God, my friend would find that prayer that she so desires—one that speaks volumes without saying much at all; still, it is the choiceness of those few words that expresses the fear of God in the one who prays. This is the kind of prayer, I might say, that simply acknowledges God in a way that gives him praise where praise is due and worships him before ever acknowledging wants or needs of one’s own. I suppose that this is the kind of prayer that might send “a reverent chill down her spine.”

My Stupid Truck

The beginning of February, I got into a car accident due to bad winter road conditions.  I also had a slow leak in my power steering which made my driving my vehicle a workout than a luxury.  I got my truck back from the body shop and the damage from the accident was fixed.  However, my power steering part was back ordered so i had to wait until the body shop called me so they can fix it.  Driving my truck without power steering is a chore.  My arms hurt, my chest hurts, and my joints are in agony.  When I put some fluid in, my truck will maneuver great for a few minutes until it all drains out.  As I was driving down from Ashland today, I had a allegorical thought on my life and my truck.


I have developed some bad habits over the years.  These habits have tripped me up in my spiritual life and as a result, left me confused on where God wants me to go.  Driving my truck I thought I am God and the truck is me.  I wanted God to guide my life but I have some faulty pieces in me.  When God does need me to take a turn in my life, it is hard to tun the wheel, and in some cases has to stop, and go back and forth until He can get it on the right road.  I knew of the faulty piece in my life, and i continue to ignore it, do a quick fix, and/or find a temporary solution that would work for a week or two.  But God, want the faulty piece to be replaced in me so he can continue to guide me in a smooth fashion. 


I still have not got a call from the body shop telling me the part is in, so i continue to have aches and pain driving that stupid truck.  In the mean time, I have taken steps to remove the faultiness in me, and allow God to replace those parts.  Doing so, I think I have gain more clarity in where God is taking me. 

Um…Why is there bloody foreskin on me? A look at the mystery of Exodus 4:24-26

Hello friends, today we will be looking at a mystery that still is debated to this very day.  Turn to Exodus Chapter 4 verses 24-26.

“At a lodging place on the way, the LORD met {Moses} and was about to kill him. ²⁵ But Zipporah took a flint knife, cut off her son's foreskin and touched {Moses'} feet with it. "Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me," she said. ²⁶ So the LORD let him alone. (At that time she said "bridegroom of blood," referring to circumcision.)”

            This is strange because just moments before this scene, the LORD told Moses that he must go to Egypt and tell Pharaoh to let the Israelites go.  If God called Moses to carry out this deed then why does he want to kill him?  Was God going to kill Moses or his son?  Was Zipporah an obedient or angry wife?  With different debates and scholarly articles written about this passage, I think we can view this passage in two ways and how it reflect on our lives as persons in ministry.

            First, we must look at Moses’ life socially.  In the beginning of Exodus, we get a look at the Israelites bound in slavery.  A wealthy nation now made poor.  Moses, born an Israelite, was sent down the river in a basket and picked-up by an Egyptian princess.  From this point until the moment when he killed a slave master, Moses is living in the Pharaoh’s palace.  After he killed the slave master he runs to Midian.  While there, he marries into the family of a Midianite priest.  Unlike today, priests were a high social position in biblical times.  Although he knows that he was an Israelite, he was raised Egyptian with the attitudes and privileges of his class and in Midian he is assimilated with the status of son-in-law of the priest.[1]

            Secondly, we must look at the spiritual side of things.  In Egypt, he was introduced to Egyptian gods until he was an adult and introduced to Midianites gods until he was old.  Fred Blumenthal says, “The culture and polytheistic religion(s) became influential to him until the age of 80.[2]”  Even if Moses was not actually 80 when he left Midian, he had years of being influenced by different gods.

            Up to this point we have looked at Moses’ life from a spiritual/social perspective.  Then comes the moment when he meets the Israelite’s God, “I AM.”  Blumenthal brings up an interesting point that Moses, who has been conditioned (with other gods), and yet to see, hear and accept the revelation at the burning bush was an accomplishment probably unequaled in the history of mankind.[3]”  You see, back then the idea of one universal God was foreign and here Moses, is encountering a God who calls himself, “I AM,” who is the one and only God of the world.  Reis mentions that at this moment, Moses can no longer be who he thinks he is or who he wishes he were; he has to recognize and become who he truly is, an Israelite.[4]  After a lengthy conversation, he accepts the call, gathers his family, and heads back to Egypt.

            After looking at some back story, we now get to our key verse.  Moses is walking towards Egypt with a staff, which he received during his conversation with God, in one hand and on the other hand he has his family.  The staff represents his calling to free the Israelites and, unknown to him, to be one of the greatest Old Testament prophets.  His family represents his high social status and his other gods he worships.  Now Moses approaches the lodging place, where God is going to kill him.  I agree with Shankman when he says,

“Moses has clung to his old self in the face of the Lord’s summons; such stubbornness can bring death.  On the other hand, to answer the call, Moses must die to his old self; only death will prepare him spiritually for his God-sanctioned mission.[5]”

            Moses has a choice to make, he can give up his old-self and serve God, or he can continue to live in his former life and have his ministry be killed by God. 

            Now how does all this tie in to the circumcision by Zipporah?  The act of circumcision is an act of being tied into a covenant with God.  From this perspective, Moses (or his son) needs to be circumcised in order to proceed with his ministry.  Also the Israelites would probably not follow a man, who talked to their God, who is uncircumcised.  The best way to make sense of this in a modern setting would be if a porn star came up to someone addicted to porn and told them that porn is bad and they should not be watching it, even though this porn star continues to practice his/her profession.  In order, to continue with this ministry Moses, must embrace his original identity and make a covenant with God to be an effective minister.  But it was not Moses who did the circumcising, but his wife Zipporah.  Going down the path we are going, Zipporah is considered a hero.  I have heard the saying that behind a good man is a good woman.  That woman is Zipporah.  Moses is struggling with the two choices he needs to make and he cannot decide on which one to chose.  Zipporah, seeing her husband’s struggle, did the circumcision for her husband as an act of obedience.  She knew what was going to be good for her husband, to be identified with his own people, and to be a servant of the one and only God.

            Some of us are at a lodging place in our lives, and we need to make a choice.  Some of us may be called to serve the true God, but we also are serving other gods (money, social status, etc.)  If you are at that place, I encourage you to talk to someone.  Talk to a Zipporah in your life, weather it is your parents, church friend, pastor, wife, or others.  Looking at the rest of Moses story in the Bible, it is safe to say that he made the right choice.  If Moses was here today, he would tell us to chose, “I AM.”

---

[1] Reis, Pamela Tamarkin. 1991. "The bridegroom of blood : a new reading." Judaism 40, no. 3: 325.

[2] Blumenthal, Fred. 2007. "The circumcision performed by Zipporah." Jewish Bible Quarterly 35, no. 4: 256.

[3] Ibid, 256.

[4] Reis, Pamela Tamarkin. 1991. "The bridegroom of blood : a new reading." Judaism 40, no. 3: 325.

[5] Shankman, Ray. 1991. "The cut that unites : word as covenant in Exodus 4:24-26." Cross Currents 41, no. 2: 172.

Is the God of Peace a God of War?: Reconciling the Older and Newer Testaments

I recently wrote an exegetical paper on the Ten Teachings, which can be found in both Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5. For those unsure, an exegesis is a fancy way of saying I wrote an extensive interpretation paper of a passage of Scripture. What I found was that the 6th teaching, which is commonly translated "do not murder" or "do not kill" (the former commonly accepted as being the more accurate translation), is an all-encompassing kind of act against another human being. Under this category, exists the act of intentional killing out of hatred or force and the act of unintentional killing of another human being. It is, yet, that God allows and seemingly ordains conquest of war and siege warfare, which entails an array of violent and murderous acts against other people groups. We often gloss over passages that say that Israel "utterly destroyed" another nation. What we do not realize is that this language implies barbaric killing of both, soldiers and innocent civilians (men, women, and children alike), the destruction, including flooding and burning, of crops and livestock, and enslaving the enemy. It often was even the cause for famines that led people to eating bird droppings and their own children in order to survive (2 Kings 6; Lamentations 2). Now, on this occasion, it is quite difficult for me to reconcile not just the Hebrew Scriptures with the Newer Testament, but also the Hebrew Scriptures with themselves. God lays out one rule and seems to have broken it all at the same time. What are we to make of this? I will submit a suggestion.

In order to reconcile these seemingly contradictory passages, I will make three important points to consider: firstly, we must agree that our human minds are finite, and what might not seem right to us is seen very differently by an infinite being, who has perfect judgment and encompasses everything that is. This is to say that what God does and allows may very well be beyond our comprehension--God is just to do whatever he sees as right (this may seem like a generic cop-out, but it remains and must remain regardless. Our humble state is that which recognizes One infinitely greater than ourselves); Secondly, while God allows and seemingly ordains violence, he never desires it; and thirdly, God has chosen to reveal himself throughout time in a progressive manner ultimately leading up to his manifestation in Christ.

The first point stands alone. We recognize that if we can understand everything about God, including what he does, says, and allows, then we cannot rightfully call him God because he would then be no greater than us whom he created. The second point is that which suggests God never wanted and still does not want violence against his creation to happen. He always desires peace. When we consider the story of Noah's ark, the first thing that we recognize is that God has done something horrible. He has destroyed nearly all of creation. We ought to recognize, however, that this story stands out in the time it was written amongst other religious stories like it. God seems to be grieved by humanity. Why is he grieved? Because "every inclination of humanity's heart was all evil all of the time..." and there were all kinds of violence in the land. God could not take it when humanity, whom he created in his very image to be like him, became hateful and anti-creation. And when he restores the created order through Noah, he makes sure that Noah knows how valuable and even sacred human life really is (Gen 9:6). And not only that, but God also puts a bow in the sky. We understand this to be a rainbow, which it is. But what the rainbow is symbolic of is peace; it is to say that God himself is hanging up his weapon (a bow) because he does not want to fight with his creation anymore. He set the example for creation by hanging up his own weapon and hoping that they would also hang up theirs and stop fighting with him and all that he created. The world that God desires according to this passage is one of an all-encompassing peace. The Hebrew word for peace is shalom and the Greek word is eirene (pronounced ay-ray-nay), which constitutes wholeness or completeness that brings order in the midst of chaos and an inner state of tranquility that pervades every area of our lives. This is how God desired for the world to be: whole, complete, and in a state of perfect peace.

Another passage where we can see this theme is in Zechariah 9. In verse 6, God speaks of taking away and destroying the chariots and horses and the bows that were used in battles and wars--all because he desires for peace to be proclaimed to all the nations. While God desires peace, he is working with a people who do not. And this is what leads me to the final point. What God does has everything to do with what humans desire and what humans do. This is not to say that God is controlled by our actions; but it is to say that he takes us seriously enough to allow us to be free to do as we so desire. And accordingly, God chooses to participate in the ongoing drama of life. The way, then, that God chooses to reveal himself to humanity, given these conditions, is according to humanity's desire to know God. It is that God revealed the fullness of who he is in relationship to humanity in a progressive way throughout time. While he told humanity that war and violence is unacceptable, he had to work with a people who accepted it not only as a part of life, but as a way of life. God eventually not only desires this to be restored but he also acts in a way that causes humans to actually make love and peace a way of life rather than war and violence.

So, as I mentioned above, God gave the Israelites a teaching that they obviously did not live by--do not murder. We understand that God gave this law because he desired them to be a peaceful people made in his image. However, God also promised Abraham that he would have many descendants and that they would have a particular land. Well, the only way that anybody in the ancient Near East understood the blessing of land was that you gain land by conquering it. This teaching and this promise are opposing each other in the minds of the ancient culture. All of the ancient Near East cultures believed that divine conquest was the way to gain land. It was understood that if a nation went to battle and won, then it was because the gods wanted them to have the land. The idea of conquest was nearly always linked to not only a battle between people, but also a battle between the gods of the people. Furthermore, when the Israelites heard that God had promised them land, they thought that it was their responsibility to go to war in the name of their God. It was the only way that they knew. They even assumed that it was the only way to act faithfully upon the promise that God gave them. God could have given them the land in another way, but the Israelites would not take the land in another way.

Remember that the entire Bible is the story of God restoring a fallen humanity. And part of being a fallen humanity is that we don't always get it. The Israelites didn’t quite get this concept of all-encompassing peace. It was so foreign to them and their culture. Perhaps they understood that the peace of God was an inner state of the heart; and certainly, they understood that times of peace in the land were better times than those of war in the land. But they also were influenced by the cultures around them that said, “the gods will fight our battles for us if we have made them happy to do so.” Israel likely believed that if they hadn’t gone to battle, then their God would never be known amongst the nations of the world. When Israel won a battle, their enemies might have believed that Israel’s God won that battle for them. Somehow, God took something that he didn’t approve of and made something good out of it. The people defeated in the battle didn’t say, “why would Israel’s God do this to us?” Rather, they would have asked, “if Israel’s God is powerful enough, then why wouldn’t he have done this to us?”

Again, God was working within a very fallen culture created by humanity. He chose to work within the realm of human fallen-ness as a testimony to the freedom he has given us to co-rule over creation. He constantly reminded them that he desired peace and a non-violent created order even if they did not completely understand this concept. God worked with the Israelites little by little to bring them to the place of knowing what he desired for human life to be called sacred and not expendable; ultimately God chose to express this in a very tangible way—the person of Christ. As Christians, we understand Jesus to be the bodily manifestation of all that is God. Jesus, in many ways, is the remedy for a fallen humanity. We must understand that when it comes to difficulties reconciling war and peace in the Bible, Christ was God’s ultimate means of expressing his love for all of humanity, paving a way that brought an all-encompassing peace to those who truly follow him and his ways. When we act violently, we are acting anti-kingdom of God as revealed by Christ. When we go to war, we are failing to follow the Prince of Peace who was God’s ultimate reminder of the reality he so desired. I am not hoping to offend anybody by this post; I am hoping, however, to stir the minds and hearts of those who truly desire to heed the words and the way of Christ. Please consider this, rebuttal my thoughts, and ask the tough questions. This is a safe place to dialogue about these kinds of things.