1) I apologize for half heartedly doing last night's entry. I was extremely tired and didn't put much effort into it.
2) I apologize for the content of the new ad pane down on the right there. Sometimes it comes up as regular car ads, but others it seems like exploitative Christian scams. If it looks like something that's scamming people, please avoid it.
OK - Bible time.
Reading for March 1
Leviticus 24:1-25:46
I find this one section incredibly hypocritical: Some dude blasphemed against God. The Bible doesn't clarify what exactly that means in this case, but usually it means saying something or doing something that shames God. So this fellow was apparently doing just that, and was eventually stoned to death for what he did. However, right before he is stoned to death, God goes into this big speech about how the punishment must fit the crime - the eye for an eye mentality. Unless someone is insulting God. Then it's a life for a harsh word. Doesn't seem fair, does it? I am really starting to get a bad taste in my mouth about "this God". Boo.
Mark 10:13-31
This text is all stuff that was in Matthew. However, there is an interesting point here: Jesus puts a special emphasis on children in a few passages in the gospels. The line in this section is his most famous regarding children:
15I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it."I spoke about this last time in Matthew, how I thought this might mean you should look forward to praising God the same way you looked forward to catching a glimpse of Santa as a kid. But Jesus was a great proponent of the children, and the way the people around him reacted when kids were around (trying to get the kids away from him) indicates that children had never been given this special nod before, the seen and not heard mentality. Or, in some cases, neither seen nor heard. Jesus saw and listened and stopped what he was doing to give this special message about children. So this must be extremely important based on the amount of times it has already appeared in the gospels.
Psalm 44:9-26
God doesn't help you all the time. Sometimes you need to sort stuff out on your own. I honestly believe that sometimes it's better for us to work things out on our own rather than God providing some miraculous solution, but this text does show the pain people go through when they aren't getting an answer:
17 All this happened to us,
though we had not forgotten you
or been false to your covenant.
18 Our hearts had not turned back;
our feet had not strayed from your path.
19 But you crushed us and made us a haunt for jackals
and covered us over with deep darkness.
It can be extremely frustrating to devote your life to following the rules, only to feel abandoned by God. But then again, people who are getting into a relationship with God so they can benefit from and take advantage of God's limitless power are entering the relationship for the wrong reason. I think God desires a relationsip with us that is honest and real and personal, not someone who's a moochy room mate.
With that being said though, it's hard to think about a relationship like that, especially one this cosmic. In normal human understanding, if you devote time to something, you expect to see a reward. And when you devote your time to a set of strict, sometimes-arbitrary set of rules, denying yourself day after day of all the carnal pleasures of life, you expect God to reward you in other ways. Or at least help out when you are in trouble. He doesn't help out David here, and I'll be he hasn't helped you out of a tough jam at one point or another in the past. I think we were meant to go through that particular trial on our own, so we would become a better person and Christian.
Proverbs 10:20-21
It's so true...
20 The tongue of the righteous is choice silver,
but the heart of the wicked is of little value.
21 The lips of the righteous nourish many,
but fools die for lack of judgment.
OK, once again I'm exhausted, but I did put a little more effort into this one over last night's entry. Thanks for reading.
Question from previous post:
ReplyDeleteMark 9:1-29
My new question is this: "When Jesus speaks about 'this generation' and 'you people', is he referring to only the people standing in front of him, or to everyone who would read his words in the future?" The reason I ask is this line:
1And he said to them, "I tell you the truth, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God come with power."
From my amateur understanding that mainly comes from awesome New Testament scholar N.T. Wright, a lot of the verses, especially in above and in the epic Matthew 24, 25 Jesus dissertation where he talks about the "coming of the Son of Man," that seem to be about the Day of Judgement are first and foremost about his death and Resurrection and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.
Jesus dying and rising from the dead is the beginning of New Creation, of the implementation of the Kingdom of God coming to earth. And in those scary passages in Matthew 24, 25, he is just as much talking about the judgment on Jerusalem that culminated in the temple being destroyed at 70 AD.
That is not to say that they aren't also, in a sense, about being prepared for the Day of Judgement. When Jesus talks about the bridesmaids being prepared for the groom, that is definitely ALSO a message for us to be prepared. And when you get to Paul's letters and he talks about "this generation," those are all things definitely meant for us.
But in the context of Matthew 24,25 and some of the other stuff he says about the 'coming of the Son of Man,' he is first and foremost talking about his death and resurrection, the destruction of the Temple, and the implications it had for that world.
Jesus had to preach first and foremost to God's elected people, Israel. Thus the strange-in-todays-context verse about the Gentile woman and the crumbs for the dogs. When you get to Acts, it'll be depicted how God opens up salvation to the Gentiles, where he acts in history through Peter to declare God's love for the entire world.
I can't explain it as well as Mr. Wright. If you want, as you read the gospels, you can also read with it a series of books called the "everyone" series where NT Wright explains each passage's historical context in a way that's easy to understand. I can lend you "Mark for Everyone" if you want as a start.
And as for a logical follow up question, "if Jesus is mainly talking to people at that time about something that already happened, why should I care?:
ReplyDelete1) It's good to remember just how revolutionary, controversial, offensive, and important what Jesus did on the cross was, and what it meant for (ancient) Israel. Which is that Jesus was bringing the old covenant to completion, and extending his salvation to the whole world and forgiving our sins.
2) In order to understand how to apply the Bible to today, we have to first understand what they were saying in the context of that time. I think it's way to easy to just pick verses out of context and apply it to what you want. This is obviously harmful when you give Pat Robertson a microphone. But even for those with more innocent intentions -- I think we all see a verse, have it resonate, and forget to look for what God is saying rather than what we want it to say.
It's also good cuz otherwise super confusing verses that seem random and out of nowhere make sense when given the historical and Biblical context.
3) Jesus' warnings about his death and resurrection and then coming destruction of the temple are, like you've figured, parallel to what we have to be prepared for. We have to have enough oil, do something with our talents, take care of our responsibilities, etc.
But do that while recognizing the original context: Jesus was criticizing religious leaders in Israel at that time for not doing the same - shepherding God's people, caring for the poor and the broken, doing something with THEIR talents. And so the Pharisees were not prepared when the son of man came down, took on God's wrath, and rose from the dead.