Open Blogging

Reuben says:

That’s a rough one. I was always taught that it had to be within Biblical reason, understanding that Gods ways are not ours.

Reuben says:

My problem was how we are told our heart is deceitful and desperately wicked, so anything I asked for was corrupted. Nobody is righteous, no, not one. Even asking was assuming I had some right to ask, which I didn’t because I was a stench in God’s nostrils.

Alan says:

Well

It means we live with faith hope and love. I know my crowd gets happy about this text. I get humbled by it.

The New Victor says:

I watched the movie Noah this week as it dropped on Netflix. It’s not a Christian movie, but I felt that Ken Hamm’s criticism was of the mark. It’s an interpretation that is only as far afield as one would take it.

The Watchers were a nod to the book of Enoch, perhaps, not biblical. They were punished by The Creator for being stand ins for Prometheus, educating humanity. The descendants of Cain turn on them, but they help Noah for the years it takes them to build the ark. They defend Noah and family against Tubal-Cain and his army of depraved humanity who attack as the flood starts. The devil makes a few cameo appearances in their depravity of violence. The watchers are redeemed to heaven (again, not biblical) as they are defeated in their earth bound forms by the cainnanites.

There’s an element of faith here. Movie Noah never speaks to God, but is given visions by The Creator (the reference to God by all including Tubal-Cain). The overarching theme is that The Creator gave humanity free will and choices. Tubal Cain chooses that to become a king, god on earth, master of his own destiny since the Creator abandoned them to do that. He was never presented as a good guy or sympathetic at all.

Again breaking with the biblical story, Noah is sure that The Creator chose his family to shepherd the animals to replenish the earth and that he and his family were to die out and leave the earth to the animals, free from wicked mankind. To avoid more spoilers, he is shown that he is still given a choice, and he chooses love to keep the human race going, up to the point he is sure on his own mind that The Creator wishes it the other way, despite heaven sent events that indicate the opposite, accepted by his wife and kids. Again, The Creator doesn’t explicitly speak to Noah in this interpretation, but he gets it in the end, happy ending with reconciliation. No sex, violence was light such that this would have been PG in the 80s. Interesting movie, as well as the theme that The Creator gave humans choices (and that the descendants of Cain chose evil, despite knowledge of the Creator). I’m not recommending it, but not not recommending it.

Xenia says:

I do not believe you will find what you are seeking by reading more learned books. I believe you will find it through the very thing that is causing you despair- prayer.

Xenia says:

Of course, I am Orthodox and believe five impossible things before breakfast….

WenatcheeTheHatchet says:

The back and forth reminds me of a quote Jim West brings out from Emil Brunner now and then:

“The questions that worry the layman are both more interesting and more difficult than those which are the favored subjects of discussion by theologians. “

WenatcheeTheHatchet says:

I’ve read dozens of books on things like powers and principalities and changing ideas about spirit possession and spiritual warfare. I’ve also kept modestly up to speed on debates about how white supremacist American music theory education is or isn’t. It hit me this year that while scholastic theology and biblical scholars may debate how relevant it is to talk about Pauline language about powers and principalities it will only seem abstract if they refuse to cross reference Paul instructing about the principalities and powers with stuff like the question of how white the default in music education is, for instance. I read Philip Ewell’s book On Music Theory and it struck me that atheist though he is what he was describing was what a Christian could call the influence of powers and principalities of white supremacism in the legacy of music education. I don’t say that to impugn Ewell’s book, which I actually liked.

How could the often very theoretical discussion of what Paul may have meant about the powers and principalities be applied to, say, how contemporary Christian musicians think about what is and isn’t musically possible? Brunner’s zinger reminds me of how theologial aesthetics has tended to ossify into discussions about liturgical music without venturing out into questions of how we could apply ideas from Wolterstorff or van der Leeuw or Burch Brown to music outside the walls of the local church. If we accept by and in faith that Christ has overcome all the powers and principalities and through Himself is reconciling us to Him and each other how can this inform the ways in which we approach debates about music? How can reflections on the nature of intra-Trinitarian being and personhood influence the ways we conceive of musiscal time and space?

This is the kind of stuff I have been thinking about and, by comparison, the Christian Nationalist stuff or progressive variations of the same (Jed Esty nailed it saying Aaron Sorkin was and has been MAGA for decades before Trump showed up) seems stale.

I had a relative who prayed constantly that my vision would get better. It never has … but thinking about how the eye and brain connect and disconnect has been one of the ways I have thought about problems of how we hear and perceive musical time and space. I can’t say I understand God’s providence in letting me be stuck with the fairly literal handicap that I have, but I have had plenty of time to think about the contrast between what I think/thought I’ve seen and what’s actually out there.

Daniel Kahneman died recently and his book Thinking Fast & Slow was a helpful exploration/demonstration of how we trust in shortcuts our brain take to jump to conclusions. 98% of the time, so to speak, we jump to the right conclusion. The 2% we don’t jump to the right conclusion we’re disastrously wrong. Kahneman had an observation that reliablly we humans, when we’re confronted with a really intractable question that we can’t answer right away we settle for answering the easier question instead of struggling with the actually hard question.

I have not always commented much and I differ with Michael on a couple of points but I think that what Michael has consistently tried to do is ask the harder question and keep asking it rather than answer the easier question that is, if I may say so, the preference of the cottage industries of much of the Christian media juggernauts.

Josh says:

Can we ban this guy already?

Captain Kevin says:

How did the teaching go, Michael?

Linn says:

Michael,

1 John 5:14-15 counter balances John 14:12-14. The latter verses aren’t just a blank check (“God give me a color TV…” as the old song goes), but need to be balanced with God’s will and infinite wisdom for what we really need. Just my thoughts!

Captain Kevin says:

Michael, perhaps crying more than teaching is what is needed. Bless you, my friend.

Xenia says:

Hi Jean, friendly Lutheran,

Well, sometimes it is difficult to nail down What or Who the word “word” refers to. Sometimes it’s clearly the Logos, Jesus Christ but sometimes it does refer to the written word, that is, the Scriptures, and there are some different Greek words that specify written Scripture. Look how many times I wrote the word “word” in this post already and not always meaning the same thing. English, you have let us down!

So when someone says they spent the afternoon in or with the Word I don’t know, without clarification, if they spent the time in prayer (direct contact with Christ) or if they spent the time reading their Bible, which at times rises to the level of direct contact with God. Time well-spent in either case but still not always the same.

So how are the Scriptures connected with Communion… Christians were celebrating the Eucharist before the books of the New Testament were even written, so there was a short spell there when the Bible and the Eucharist were not connected ALTHOUGH the words of Christ at the Last Supper were passed down orally and can certainly be called the Word of God. But I don’t think you are talking about a mechanical reading of a text; I think you are talking about calling down the Holy Spirit upon the bread and wine, as was taught by the Apostles, written down yet or not.

But you are right; I do see the endless Bible studies of the old days as reading about God rather than interacting directly with God but it does seem that many of my former co-religionists felt they were directly interacting with God when they read their Bibles and I think that is good and right.

I think what I want to say is Jesus is not the Bible, even if both are called “the Word.”

Reuben says:

“I think what I want to say is Jesus is not the Bible, even if both are called “the Word.””

Interesting.