"It's tough to understand and balance the fact that our faith is through grace alone by faith alone and we are called to pursue good works to the glory of our Father" (33).
"God's grace is sufficient. Pain is hard, and he knows it. Enduring suffering is at times akin to torture, and he doesn't ask us to deny that. Sometimes we want to give up. He doesn't expect us to grin and bear it, and he doesn't leave us alone. 'His grace is sufficient' means he is with you. He will sustain you with his righteous right hand" (47). True, but the use of that word torture. The suffering of the children of a sovereign God is akin to torture, and yet somehow he is good. Oof.
The choice of Randy Alcorn as an example of endurance irked me. He had to learn humility with a diagnosis of type 1 diabetes (the difficulty of which I have to right to demean, but in this age with treatments and his access to medical care, and his obvious good support network just make it difficult for me to find that very compelling), and he "was arrested for blocking the doors of abortion clinics," for which he had to pay a large settlement and could only make minimum wage or his wages would be garnished, and he still has the royalties of all of his books go to his ministry so that he won't have to pay the settlement against his conscience. Am I the only one who has a nasty taste left in my mouth after hearing that example? Anyway...
"Lift your weak knees, unless they are bowed down in prayer to the One who saves. God isn't asleep; he's awake and active in our midst. If every person leaves the church and we divide in every way possible, we still have a great mission to go and make disciples of all nations. If every social issue that seems to smack Christian ethics in the face becomes law, we continue to preach the truth in love and serve our neighbors" (86).
"Of course, God isn't physically present. We can't touch him or hold his hand. But he is there just the same, guiding our steps and counseling our hearts according to truth, if we'll only listen" (88).
Saturday, May 30, 2020
Sunday, May 24, 2020
05.24.2020 🎧 Eat This Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading by Eugene Peterson
I think I heard about this one from Lisa Hensley and the blurb + Lore Wilbert's praise for Eugene Peterson in general were enough for me to pick it up. And I'm so glad I did. So many wise insights and reflections on Scripture.
What we need is "reading formatively, reading to live."
"If you're after devotionally cozy Bible reading, you have to pick and choose a good bit. There are such huge chunks of it that either put you to sleep or keep you awake nights, but there are little crib sheets available at most Bible bookstores that tell you what parts of the Bible to read when you want to be comforted or consoled, or whatever your present disposition requires. I don't want to be too hard on any one of these groups of Bible readers, especially since I've spent considerable time in each group myself, but I do want to call attention to the conspicuous fact that in whatever group you find yourself, you will be using the Bible for your purposes, and those purposes will not necessarily require anything of you relationally. It is entirely possible to come to the Bible in total sincerity, responding to the intellectual challenge it gives, or for the moral guidance it offers, or for the spiritual uplift it provides, and not in any way have to deal with a personally revealing God who has personal designs on you. Or to put it in the terms in which we started out, it is possible to read the Bible form a number of different angles and for various purposes without dealing with God as God has revealed himself, without setting ourselves under the authority of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, who is alive and present in everything we are and do. To put it bluntly, not everyone who gets interested in the Bible and even gets excited about the Bible wants to get involved with God. But God is what the book is about."
"The form in which language comes to us is as important as its content. If we mistake the form we will almost surely respond wrongly to its content. If we mistake a recipe for vegetable stew for a set of clues for finding buried treasure, no matter how carefully we read it, we will end up as poor as ever and hungry besides."
"Exegesis is foundational to Christian spirituality. Foundations disappear from view as the building is constructed, but if builders don't build a solid foundation, their building doesn't last long. Because we speak our language so casually, it is easy to fall into the habit of treating it casually. But language is persistently difficult to understand. We spend our early lives learning the language, and just when we think we have it mastered, our spouse says, 'You don't understand a thing I'm saying, do you?' WE teach our children to talk, and just about the time we think they might be getting it, they stop talking to us, and when we overhear them talking to their friends we find we can't understand more than one our of every 8 or 9 words they say. A close relationship doesn't guarantee understanding. A long affection doesn't guarantee understanding. In fact, the closer we are to another and the closer the more intimate our relations, the more care we must exercise to hear accurately, to understand thoroughly, to answer appropriately. Which is to say, the more spiritual we become, the more care we must give to exegesis. The more mature we become in the Christian faith, the more exegetically rigorous we must become. This is not a task from which we graduate. These words given to us in our Scripture are constantly getting overlaid with personal preferences, cultural assumptions, sin distortions, and ignorant guesses that pollute the text."
"Exegesis is nothing more than a careful and loving reading in our mother tongue. Greek and Hebrew are well worth learning, but if you haven't had the privilege, settle for English. Once we learn to love this text and bring a disciplined intelligence to it, we won't be too far behind the best Greek and Hebrew scholars...Exegesis is the furthest thing from pedantry. Exegesis is an act of love. It loves the one who speaks the words enough to want to get the words right. It respects the words enough to use every means we have to get the words right. Exegesis is loving God enough to stop and listen carefully to what he says."
"I'm not the only one to notice that we are in the odd and embarrassing position of being a church in which many among us believe ardently in the authority of the Bible, but instead of submitting to it, use it to ply it, take charge of it endlessly, using our own experience as the authority for how, and where, and when we will use it. One of the most urgent tasks facing the Christian community today is to counter this self-sovereignty by re-asserting what it means to live these holy Scriptures from the inside-out instead of using them for our sever and devout, but still self-sovereign, purposes."
"Every expectation that we bring to this book is inadequate. This is a unique book, this text that reveals the sovereign God in being and action. It does not seek to please us. We enter this text to meet God as he reveals himself. Not to look for truth or history or morals that we can use for ourselves. What he insists on supremely is that we do not read the Bible in order to get God into our lives, get him to participate in our lives. WE open this book and find that page after page it takes us off our guard, surprises, draws us into its reality, draw us into participating with God on His terms."
"I don't want to master the text, I want to submit to it."
From the Q&A portion of the audio, responding to the question of how to get unbelievers or new believers to see themselves in God's story: "I'm teaching people to see themselves in God's story by first listening to their story, and showing them that they have a story!"
"Words are inherently ambiguous. They are never exact. The character of the person speaking influences how we interpret them. The attentiveness or intelligence of the listener affects how they are understood. Place and weather and circumstances all play a part in both the speaking and the hearing. The more we are in context when language is used, the more likely we are to get it."
"Contemplation is not another thing added onto our reading and meditating and praying, but the coming together of God's revelation and our response."
Taking God's word seriously doesn't equal taking it literally. There is so much metaphor in the Bible! "A metaphor is literally a lie... for example, 'God is a rock.'"
What we need is "reading formatively, reading to live."
"If you're after devotionally cozy Bible reading, you have to pick and choose a good bit. There are such huge chunks of it that either put you to sleep or keep you awake nights, but there are little crib sheets available at most Bible bookstores that tell you what parts of the Bible to read when you want to be comforted or consoled, or whatever your present disposition requires. I don't want to be too hard on any one of these groups of Bible readers, especially since I've spent considerable time in each group myself, but I do want to call attention to the conspicuous fact that in whatever group you find yourself, you will be using the Bible for your purposes, and those purposes will not necessarily require anything of you relationally. It is entirely possible to come to the Bible in total sincerity, responding to the intellectual challenge it gives, or for the moral guidance it offers, or for the spiritual uplift it provides, and not in any way have to deal with a personally revealing God who has personal designs on you. Or to put it in the terms in which we started out, it is possible to read the Bible form a number of different angles and for various purposes without dealing with God as God has revealed himself, without setting ourselves under the authority of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, who is alive and present in everything we are and do. To put it bluntly, not everyone who gets interested in the Bible and even gets excited about the Bible wants to get involved with God. But God is what the book is about."
"The form in which language comes to us is as important as its content. If we mistake the form we will almost surely respond wrongly to its content. If we mistake a recipe for vegetable stew for a set of clues for finding buried treasure, no matter how carefully we read it, we will end up as poor as ever and hungry besides."
"Exegesis is foundational to Christian spirituality. Foundations disappear from view as the building is constructed, but if builders don't build a solid foundation, their building doesn't last long. Because we speak our language so casually, it is easy to fall into the habit of treating it casually. But language is persistently difficult to understand. We spend our early lives learning the language, and just when we think we have it mastered, our spouse says, 'You don't understand a thing I'm saying, do you?' WE teach our children to talk, and just about the time we think they might be getting it, they stop talking to us, and when we overhear them talking to their friends we find we can't understand more than one our of every 8 or 9 words they say. A close relationship doesn't guarantee understanding. A long affection doesn't guarantee understanding. In fact, the closer we are to another and the closer the more intimate our relations, the more care we must exercise to hear accurately, to understand thoroughly, to answer appropriately. Which is to say, the more spiritual we become, the more care we must give to exegesis. The more mature we become in the Christian faith, the more exegetically rigorous we must become. This is not a task from which we graduate. These words given to us in our Scripture are constantly getting overlaid with personal preferences, cultural assumptions, sin distortions, and ignorant guesses that pollute the text."
"Exegesis is nothing more than a careful and loving reading in our mother tongue. Greek and Hebrew are well worth learning, but if you haven't had the privilege, settle for English. Once we learn to love this text and bring a disciplined intelligence to it, we won't be too far behind the best Greek and Hebrew scholars...Exegesis is the furthest thing from pedantry. Exegesis is an act of love. It loves the one who speaks the words enough to want to get the words right. It respects the words enough to use every means we have to get the words right. Exegesis is loving God enough to stop and listen carefully to what he says."
"I'm not the only one to notice that we are in the odd and embarrassing position of being a church in which many among us believe ardently in the authority of the Bible, but instead of submitting to it, use it to ply it, take charge of it endlessly, using our own experience as the authority for how, and where, and when we will use it. One of the most urgent tasks facing the Christian community today is to counter this self-sovereignty by re-asserting what it means to live these holy Scriptures from the inside-out instead of using them for our sever and devout, but still self-sovereign, purposes."
"Every expectation that we bring to this book is inadequate. This is a unique book, this text that reveals the sovereign God in being and action. It does not seek to please us. We enter this text to meet God as he reveals himself. Not to look for truth or history or morals that we can use for ourselves. What he insists on supremely is that we do not read the Bible in order to get God into our lives, get him to participate in our lives. WE open this book and find that page after page it takes us off our guard, surprises, draws us into its reality, draw us into participating with God on His terms."
"I don't want to master the text, I want to submit to it."
From the Q&A portion of the audio, responding to the question of how to get unbelievers or new believers to see themselves in God's story: "I'm teaching people to see themselves in God's story by first listening to their story, and showing them that they have a story!"
"Words are inherently ambiguous. They are never exact. The character of the person speaking influences how we interpret them. The attentiveness or intelligence of the listener affects how they are understood. Place and weather and circumstances all play a part in both the speaking and the hearing. The more we are in context when language is used, the more likely we are to get it."
"Contemplation is not another thing added onto our reading and meditating and praying, but the coming together of God's revelation and our response."
Taking God's word seriously doesn't equal taking it literally. There is so much metaphor in the Bible! "A metaphor is literally a lie... for example, 'God is a rock.'"
Friday, May 8, 2020
04.25.2020 🎧 The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning
Not sure how to sum this up. I benefited from the reminder of the greatness of God's love, and the utterly staggering truth that his love is never, ever dependent on what I do. God does invite us to change, but by the gift of his Spirit, not by shame.
I loved the examples he gave of an AA member who "fell off the wagon" and showed that responses of compassion, empathy, and presence were so much more likely to actually help a person get back to the good, desired behavior than responses of disbelief, unacceptance, and shame.
There were points where I thought I either wasn't sure where he stood and wanted to, or was fairly certain he was venturing into theological territory where I didn't want to follow. It probably won't be the one that I recommend very highly. Obviously, there were some praiseworthy quotes (below). But on the whole, for this topic, I far prefer writings by Tim Keller, or better yet,Alan Kraft's Good News for Those Trying Harder. the entire work that includes and puts flesh on Tim Keller's quote:
"Jesus spent a disproportionate amount of time with people described in the Gospels as the poor, the blind, the lame, the lepers, the hungry, sinners, prostitutes, tax collectors, the persecuted, the downtrodden, the captives, those possessed by unclean spirits, all who labor and are heavy burdened, the rabble who know nothing of the law, the crowds, the little ones, the least, the last, and the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
"In short, Jesus hung out with ragamuffins.
"Obviously, his love for failures and nobodies was not an exclusive love. That would merely substitute one class prejudice for another. He related with warmth and compassion to the middle and upper classes not because of their family connections, financial clout, intelligence, or Social Register status, but because they too were God's children."
"The gospel of grace is brutally devalued when Christians maintain that the transcendent God can only be properly honored and respected by denying the goodness and the truth and the beauty of the things of this world."
"Yahweh is first perceived by the Jewish community as a personal, relating Being. Their concept of God was vastly superior to that of the pagans whose gods were quite human, fickle, capricious, erotic, as unpredictable as the forces with which they were identified--wind, storm, fertility, the nation, and so forth.
"But Israel knew a holy God, transcending everything visible and tangible, yet personal. He was somehow reflected in things but was not to be identified with things. Exodus depicts God as stable, interested, a Rock of dependability among so many dependents."
"The noonday devil of the Christian life is the temptation to lose the inner self while preserving the shell of edifying behavior."
"Perhaps the supreme achievement of the Holy Spirit in the life of ragamuffins is the miraculous movement from self-rejection to self-acceptance. It is not based on therapy or the power of positive thinking; it is anchored in their personal experience of the acceptance of Jesus Christ."
I loved the examples he gave of an AA member who "fell off the wagon" and showed that responses of compassion, empathy, and presence were so much more likely to actually help a person get back to the good, desired behavior than responses of disbelief, unacceptance, and shame.
There were points where I thought I either wasn't sure where he stood and wanted to, or was fairly certain he was venturing into theological territory where I didn't want to follow. It probably won't be the one that I recommend very highly. Obviously, there were some praiseworthy quotes (below). But on the whole, for this topic, I far prefer writings by Tim Keller, or better yet,Alan Kraft's Good News for Those Trying Harder. the entire work that includes and puts flesh on Tim Keller's quote:
The gospel is this: We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope.Quotes from The Ragamuffin Gospel:
"Jesus spent a disproportionate amount of time with people described in the Gospels as the poor, the blind, the lame, the lepers, the hungry, sinners, prostitutes, tax collectors, the persecuted, the downtrodden, the captives, those possessed by unclean spirits, all who labor and are heavy burdened, the rabble who know nothing of the law, the crowds, the little ones, the least, the last, and the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
"In short, Jesus hung out with ragamuffins.
"Obviously, his love for failures and nobodies was not an exclusive love. That would merely substitute one class prejudice for another. He related with warmth and compassion to the middle and upper classes not because of their family connections, financial clout, intelligence, or Social Register status, but because they too were God's children."
"The gospel of grace is brutally devalued when Christians maintain that the transcendent God can only be properly honored and respected by denying the goodness and the truth and the beauty of the things of this world."
"Yahweh is first perceived by the Jewish community as a personal, relating Being. Their concept of God was vastly superior to that of the pagans whose gods were quite human, fickle, capricious, erotic, as unpredictable as the forces with which they were identified--wind, storm, fertility, the nation, and so forth.
"But Israel knew a holy God, transcending everything visible and tangible, yet personal. He was somehow reflected in things but was not to be identified with things. Exodus depicts God as stable, interested, a Rock of dependability among so many dependents."
"The noonday devil of the Christian life is the temptation to lose the inner self while preserving the shell of edifying behavior."
"Perhaps the supreme achievement of the Holy Spirit in the life of ragamuffins is the miraculous movement from self-rejection to self-acceptance. It is not based on therapy or the power of positive thinking; it is anchored in their personal experience of the acceptance of Jesus Christ."
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