Reading from Saturday, November 27

Sup sup?

Reading for November 27
Daniel 4:1-37
Nebby's dreamin again.

This is kinda neat - this section of the book is told from Nebuchadnezzar's perspective. He tells the reader about a dream he has and how Daniel interprets that dream. In his latest dream, Nebby sees a huge tree which reaches up so tall that it "touched the sky" and it was visible from anywhere on Earth.  The tree had beautiful leaves and gave life and shelter to countless animals. As the dream continued, Nebby saw this:

 ¹³ [...]there before me was a holy one, a messenger, coming down from heaven. ¹⁴ He called in a loud voice: ‘Cut down the tree and trim off its branches; strip off its leaves and scatter its fruit. Let the animals flee from under it and the birds from its branches. ¹⁵ But let the stump and its roots, bound with iron and bronze, remain in the ground, in the grass of the field.

Daniel is summoned to interpret this startling and frightening image for his old pal, Nebby. Basically, the tree represented Nebuchadnezzar. His huge, sprawling kingdom supported thousands upon thousands of people and it was prosperous and healthy. The image of the tree being cut down was a prophecy that Nebby would be rousted from his position as King and be forced to live in the wild until he "acknowledge[d] that Heaven rules." The remaining stump means that once he does humble himself, he will be restored to power and rule over the kingdom under God's authority. Daniel suggests he avoid this whole fiasco by acknowledging Heaven's sweetness right there. Nebby refuses and all of the events played out exactly as Daniel had predicted.

So again, we see a nation, represented by a King that had become too prosperous, and too self reliant, who had to be humbled by God. It's somewhat infuriating to see the punishment for the very same sin of lacking humility was so harsh on the Israelites and so lenient on King Nebuchadnezzar. What is God's point in that disparity? Love your enemies?

2 Peter 1:1-21
This is the most profoundly "Christianese" chunk of verses I've ever read:

³ His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. ⁴ Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.

Allow me to attempt to translate

God's ultimate power is really all we need for a good life. Remember, he chose us out of the goodness of his heart. He has promised us some petty sweet things and those promises should give you the strength to strive for God-like perfection, separating yourself from the corruption of man's heart which is caused by evil desires.

It's weird that you have such a complex piece of text to start this book, only to be immediately followed by one of the most straightforward and beautifully simple callings in the Bible:

[...]Make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; ⁶ and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; ⁷ and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. ⁸ For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

So at the very base level of a Christian, you have faith. In the book of James the author says "You believe that there is one God. Good! But the devil also believes in one God." So faith in God really doesn't have to effect a person in a good way, which is why we have this encouragement here. Adding goodness to your faith is the next step. Now you're a good believer. Next, seek out knowledge to learn the lessons from the ancestral Jews. From there you should develop self control, which will lead you to perseverance from overcoming temptation. Then it gets interesting.

The very next thing after self control is godliness. Godliness! So once you overcome a few sins, you are expected to be god-like. But after god-like there are two more things! Mutual affection and finally, love. I would like to believe that mutual affection means striving to get along with everyone, regardless of beliefs. Then you have love. The single most important and seemingly hardest to obtain trait of a person.

I'm a big gamer, so I tend to think of things in video game terms. I picture these eight traits as power-ups. You start the game with faith and then look around and find goodness which makes your sword stronger. Then up and up until you get to the last boss and you find love, and then you get all glowy and huge and destroy everything. Maybe that's not the best analogy...

Anyway, I think this is something everyone should strive for, regardless of belief system. Athiests feel free to remove faith and godliness and you're good to go as well. These are all things that would make a person simply better. I feel like I'm still in step 3 - knowledge. I will try to make it my life goal to earn all of these power-ups.



Psalm 119:97-112
Inspiration. It always amazes me how much this dude loves God's law.

¹¹¹ Your statutes are my heritage forever;
   they are the joy of my heart.
¹¹² My heart is set on keeping your decrees
   to the very end.

Proverbs 28:17-18
 ¹⁷ Anyone tormented by the guilt of murder
   will seek refuge in the grave;
   let no one hold them back.
 ¹⁸ The one whose walk is blameless is kept safe,
   but the one whose ways are perverse will fall into the pit.