Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

Look to Jesus (Hebrews 12:2)

The other day I was just waking up and realizing that I faced a challenging day. I decided to do a little scripture reading before even getting up. I chose to read a language I read only very slowly and with difficulty (Syriac), because that usually gives me more time to meditate. I have a tendency to rush.

I started in Hebrews 12, and got to verse two, which begins: “Look to Jesus.”

This seemed to me to be good advice. I stopped there for a bit and marked those two words. (Yes, two words in Syriac.)

If I had chosen to read it in Greek, the impact would have been a bit different, as the word order goes approximately thus: “Looking to the author and finisher (perfecter) of our faith Jesus.” Not a difference in meaning overall, but it was those first two words that stopped me for a moment, and that was helpful that morning. Good advice, as I said.

Then I went on to “the head (or beginning) and finisher (perfecter) of our faith.”

Now that’s a profound statement. This passage (Hebrews 12:1-3) is frequently used a works and behavior modification passage. “You have all these great, holy, and faithful witnesses watching you, so get on with the work of being a Christian. Jesus has saved you, and he expects you to act like it.”

But that’s not what the passage says. Yes, there is a call to follow, but that call is put in its context right here. It’s Jesus all the way. He begins, he finishes.

What about all those faithful witnesses?

Here’s where I get into Bible contradictions. People ask me whether there are contradictions in the Bible and I say, “Yes! They are the best part!”

Hebrews 11:27 tells us that Moses left Egypt by faith, “not fearing the wrath of the king.” Exodus 2:14 tells us that Moses was afraid and fled. If that isn’t enough, we’re told that Israel passed through the red sea “by faith.” Have you read the story? Not all that much faith was on display!

Day after day there is not that much faith on display in my life. I worry about everything. I shouldn’t do that, but I do.

But Jesus is the author and the perfecter of my faith.

Jesus rewrites the stories of those witnesses’ lives from a grace view. He is doing the same thing for you. It may be very slow, but it’s happening.

That crowd of witnesses? They’re not people who lived perfect lives and are looking down on you to criticize your every mistake. They know you’re going to make mistakes. They did. They know your faith can be pretty weak at the most difficult moments. Theirs was.

They’re there to remind you that God saw them through and God will see you through. The grace filtered view of your life is going to make your story heroic.

Look to Jesus, beginning to end.

February 20, 2024
Why I Still Like the Wesleyan Quadrilateral

Yes, I’ve heard the complaints, and those who say it isn’t actually Wesleyan or has deteriorated through the years, but I met it in the United Methodist Discipline before I first joined a Methodist church (though without the name) and I still like it.

For those who may not be aware of the quadrilateral, it states simply that doctrine is formed not from scripture alone, but from scripture, tradition, experience, and reason. (I discussed the importance of experience in a 2015 blog post.)

On this blog, I have discussed this several times before. Today I want to add a metaphor and expand a bit on the hermeneutic that I use as a result. As I have noted before, many intractable arguments result from discussing conclusions from scripture without discussing hermeneutics, the way in which we come to those conclusions. The other person may seem obtuse to you, but if you understood how they are coming to their interpretation, you might understand their point of view. You also might still abhor it, but you’d understand it!

The metaphor I want to introduce here is the confluence of four streams. This metaphor uses “confluence” to suggest the way sources interact to help form doctrine.

To help clarify this and its purpose, let’s start with its opposite. For many, scripture is a fixed source of data. You go to it, mine the data, and then directly apply it to your life or the life of your community here and now. We should have learned from the experience of the Christian community that it doesn’t work that way. Thousands of denominations and various church splits, carried out by people who thought they were (and generally think they are) faithfully following the Bible should have given us a clue.

The nature of scripture itself should give us a clue. It is not organized as a compendium of knowledge. It is not organized like an encyclopedia, or like the Boy Scouts Handbook (a metaphor I’ve heard frequently), nor like the more modern FAQ page. It’s a collection of a variety of material produced in a variety of ways, organized and presented differently, and then collected and placed in one volume. Out around the edges, various of those denominations disagree on the details of what should be considered part of the Bible.

I have this feeling that God accomplishes what God sets out to do, thus when I see a Bible that looks almost entirely unlike what so many people want it to be, I come to suspect that God didn’t want what they want. If God had wanted that, it would be what we have. We don’t, so God didn’t.

I recognized the problem back in 1993 when I was considering a return to church after about a dozen years, but I didn’t have the vocabulary to express it. For a number of reasons that seem to me providential, I visited what was then Pine Forest United Methodist Church (now Wilde Lake Church), and generally liked what I heard, but I’m an idea-driven person and I wanted to know what these Methodists believed. On being asked, the pastor thought and finally handed me a copy of the United Methodist Discipline.

As I read that document (the first 100 pages or so, not the organizational stuff in the back!) I encountered the description of what is often called the Wesleyan Quadrilateral. I loved it. Not because I thought it was a good prescription for how to do Bible study, but because I thought it described how people study the Bible.

We bring to our study what is in ourselves, such as our observation of the world, our thinking about various things, our experiences with others, our knowledge of past events, things we know work for us, things we know do not work, and our relationships or community, in whatever shape that community bears.

The simple explanation for why our interpretations differ is that we differ. Those differences are not just in us, but in the way in which we are connected to others both in space and in time. These are not things we can escape; they are part of us.

The Bible looks a great deal like it was produced by people much like us.

Do I mean by this that there is nothing special about the Bible or that there is no divine inspiration involved? Not even a little bit! What I mean is that I see Divine action in a community of people that stretches not only through space around the world but also that stretches through time. It is a diverse book delivered through diverse people who lived in diverse communities to a wide diversity of other people and communities across the span of time.

Does this mean that I can learn nothing from the Bible? Not at all! What it does mean is that I can’t reach into the Bible and grab a rock to throw at you or at anyone else, and truthfully call the rock “divine.” And I think that’s a good thing. Possibly even a Divine thing.

As I was thinking about all of this, I was also looking at some pictures of river confluences (if anyone cares, along the Essequibo River in Guyana and its tributaries), and I thought, “A confluence of four streams comes closer than anything else I’ve thought of to the way the quadrilateral actually works!”

Of course, there’s nothing quadrilateral about this metaphor. Well, except the “4” part.

Let me note what I see as the problems of the previous metaphors, especially my own. The whole “quadrilateral” metaphor tended to make four elements equally authoritative in forming authoritative doctrine. In many ways, we’re still looking for that rock to throw, but we want its authority to be derived in a different way.

My own response with the four-layer filter, in which I suggested that a doctrine should be tested by all four elements, suffers a similar problem. I don’t find it entirely unuseful, but as with many metaphors, it needs a “don’t stretch” warning label. My metaphor of the four-lane highway, a critique metaphor, similarly starts with our hoped-for conclusion and then tests it against the four, in this case looking for a lane that will work.

The four streams metaphor suggests several things, including that the streams keep flowing. They are not actually static. The water in the stream that results is a mixture of all four, which may vary by season, situation, and geography.

Is any of this safe? No, but nothing is safe. Doctrine is not a static object that exists outside our community. It is formed in community, practiced and taught in community, and it belongs to the universal church, not to you or me personally.

This does not make me take the Bible lightly. In fact, it suggests to me that I need to immerse myself in scripture and also in my community of faith in order to be guided by the God who guided the community over time and continues to guide it and me. No superficial glance intended to prove myself right and someone else wrong will do for this.

We embrace a diversity of interpretations that fit within the streams that meet at the confluence to produce doctrine. It is a continuing journey, along with that “great cloud of witnesses” led by Jesus, the “author and finisher.” (See Hebrews 12:1-3 with reference to Hebrews 11.)

February 19, 2024
Christmas Is 12 Days

I should have posted something earlier, but stuff happens.

Let me recommend some books for continued meditations, these from Energion Publications (and several other publishers!) Bruce Epperly. Links are to Amazon.com.

I recommend Bruce as an author and teacher because he challenges me with unexpected views on so many subjects, always presented in a positive fashion. He teaches theology and living as an adventure.

You can find some of his books from my company here.

December 27, 2023
YouVersion Verse of the Year

I received an email from YouVersion (I use their app occasionally) with their 2023 “verse of the year.” This is the verse that has been shared, bookmarked, and highlighted most often through their community.

It is Isaiah 41:10 (note that my links go to BibleGateway):

[D]o not fear, for I am with you;
    do not be afraid, for I am your God;
I will strengthen you; I will help you;
    I will uphold you with my victorious right hand.
Isaiah 41:10 (NRSV)

I find this interesting as this is a verse that might be considered by some to be taken out of context. I don’t know if you’ve seen any examples, but there’s even a coffee cup that reads “I can do all things through a verse taken out of context.” This lampoons the frequent use of Philippians 4:13 as a promise that God will help you do anything, from winning in sports to success in your business, to successful family life, and beyond. More on this verse a few paragraphs down.

In the case of Isaiah 41:10, the specific reference is to the return of the Jewish exiles from Babylon, who are promised strength for the return and rebuilding. Isaiah 40 and onward, especially through 55, deals with these circumstances and is tremendously encouraging. So if you’re using it as encouragement in trying to get through your work week, you might well be taking it out of context.

If you take the Bible as a series of data points, this is fairly accurate. This is not, in its context, a promise for all times and places. You will still get tired. Bad things may happen to you, as they happened to Job and as they have happened to many of God’s servants through time.

So maybe it shouldn’t be used in the way that it is, likely the very usage that got it “verse of the year” from YouVersion.

I’d say, not so fast.

First, let me note, that many of those same servants of God who have grown weary and suffered through history have been sustained by verses like this. We might ask ourselves why that is. I haven’t run into that many Christians who really believe a Christian will never get tired. I don’t. Yet I appreciate this verse. I appreciate it even more when I’m bone weary and wondering whether I can take the next step.

Crazy man, eh? (Well, yes, I am crazy, but that’s not relevant!)

I recall C. S. Lewis’s image in The Magician’s Nephew, which I will always see as book 6 in the series however much publishers change it!) of a “deep magic from before the dawn of time” that overrides the rules that are known generally. Similarly, there’s context, and then there’s context.

If my intent is to answer the question, “What is Isaiah saying about God?” Then I’m going to answer in terms of the return from exile, and also note that the audience is Israel. On this basis, I could find ways to remove the majority of scripture from relevance to me today. God isn’t talking to me here. That promise doesn’t apply to me.

Scholars, and those who aim to appear scholarly, tend to wander about the landscape of scripture, informing the poor mortals who have been getting comfort from various passages that they are wrong, and that the scripture doesn’t mean what they think it means.

Very often, that is quite correct. Sometimes people can be dangerously wrong in what they’re getting from scripture.

But the problem is this: As scholars pull up the markers people have used to guide their lives, what do they hand out instead? With what do they replace these markers that have guided Bible readers’ relationship with God for decades, centuries, even millennia?

Oh, did I say the problem? There’s a second one. Are those who criticize sure they’re right when they say a passage does not apply?

I think very often they’re wrong, and I think many non-scholarly Christians living day-by-day relatively ordinary Christian lives instinctively get it more right. This is based on both a deeper and a broader context.

In the case of Isaiah 40, the exiles are promised strength. Now remember that these exiles were in no danger of thinking God was promising that no matter what happened, they would never get tired. They weren’t in danger of thinking that everything was going to be easy. No, they were headed out on a hard task, and they and their immediate ancestors had lived through the exile.

What was important was that God was with them and was now rescuing them and would be with them through all that came. In the broadest (and I think deepest) context of scripture, this is the story of the God who saves, built on the original story of the Exodus from Egypt. What do you suppose those Israelites thought about the idea that those who worship God would never suffer harm? They had even experienced some of the plagues right along with the Egyptians! They wandered through the wilderness. That experience was reinforced by the exile and restoration and became a foundation for the ultimate core story of Christianity, the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

As such, Christians should be very willing to take up the promises of these events just as they are taken up in the story of redemption. We serve a God who redeems. We serve a God who is with us through all our suffering, who is there when we are weary. We know these things happen to us. But we also know they happened to people in the past because we’ve read their stories (testimonies) and we know that God’s promises to them, always tempered by understanding the broad and deep context, and even the immediate literary context, do, in fact, apply to us.

I recall when a relative ripped one such verse from my mother, surely with good scholarly intent to maintain the accuracy of biblical interpretation. She had a favorite verse, Isaiah 49:25:

But thus says the Lord:
Even the captives of the mighty will be taken,
    and the prey of the tyrant will be rescued,
for I will contend with those who contend with you,
    and I will save your children.
Isaiah 49:25 (NRSV)

This relative pointed out to her the context, very much like the one in Isaiah 41, and part of the same sequence of materials (Isaiah 40-55 form a coherent block) did not involve making sure everyone’s children were saved, but simply that the children of those who had gone into exile would be saved and brought back to their land. She used this as encouragement about her children, which, he told her, was to use the passage out of context.

In the immediate context, that’s absolutely true. But in the broader and deeper context, this becomes part of the underlying story of redemption and of God’s intention for God’s people in all times and places. Readers should be encouraged by this, not because it was somehow specifically directed at them, but because it formed a formidable piece of the foundation of the story of a saving God, one who was and is with us in trouble, one who knows the pain, and yet one who takes us through to triumph.

I had an opportunity to discuss this with my mother many years ago, and when I had given my explanation, she simply said, “Then I’m taking my verse back!” And she did!

Philippians 4:13 can be used in many questionable ways, but it is not questionable to think that God will help you get through whatever situation you’re in. Many point out how this is about being able to carry out one’s mission despite hardships. And it is precisely that. But as a Christian, your life should be mission. I don’t think God is promising you that you’ll win all your games. Bluntly, most people, even those I’ve heard mocked about taking this out of context, don’t think it means that either.

But if you’re reading it that God is with you as you carry out whatever call God has put on your life, if you believe from this that God will be with you and strengthen you for God’s own purposes, then I think you’re reading the verse in the deeper context.

I want to end with one warning. Seeing this deeper context can help us connect with God through the story of scripture. We learn about relationship to God through reading about those who have been in such relationships over the centuries and millennia. When we read such a passage as giving us permission and power to carry out our own will wherever and whenever we want, we’re missing both the immediate context of scripture and also the broader and deeper context.

Suggestion: When you want to apply one of these promises, read the immediate context. Then ask yourself how those who first heard it might have experienced it. Try to join the story as you see it in their lives and find your courage there.

December 7, 2023
Limited by Expectations

Yesterday I was looking for some material a friend had asked me to print on 11×17 paper. How boring, eh?

Well, I couldn’t find it. I searched through my email and various folders, and the material to be printed was nowhere to be found.

Finally, I called my friend to ask him about it. He had sent the material by mail. Physically, not virtually. Actual stuff!

Moments after I returned to my work table, there was the material, waiting to be scanned and copied.

This is a simple, though irritating example of how our expectations can control what we do. If we are expecting a certain type of stuff, we might miss all the other stuff that is taking place. Our expectations can control us.

Now I want to add that I’m not a positivity person. I do not assume whatever stuff I expect, will actually happen. In fact, I think more frequently we miss the real stuff by expecting something else.

Practice flexibility. Be ready for the unexpected. Don’t let your expectations limit your exploration.

November 30, 2023
Agendas, Conversation, and Bible Reading

It’s not really a new thing, but in a number of conversations recently, both in person and online, I’ve been noticing agendas. Someone will make a comment or say something in a conversation that really doesn’t seem to make sense in context, but then if you consider a different context, you’ll suddenly see that the comment makes its own kind of sense.

I know I can do this. If there’s something on my mind that I feel is important, I will tend to tie it into a conversation whether it really fits or not. Other people in the conversation may wonder what’s going on. In real conversations, often the subject just wanders.

This is a natural process. If you’re trying to discuss something in particular, it can be disconcerting. I find it hard to lead in a meeting because my tendency is to try to figure out what the side comment is about and follow it right off the map! I have often asked my wife to lead meetings because she is good at bringing things back to the planned subject, thus letting us complete our agenda.

I often comment that God comes to us in Scripture for conversation while we tend to be looking for information. Now there’s nothing wrong with looking for information. There certainly is information in the Bible. But one can come out of the study of Scripture with a great deal of information and no transformation.

In particular, we tend to come to a book looking for information we believe we need. We come with an agenda. How shall I conduct my life? How should I do business? Is it permissible to do certain things?

Or there’s the more negative agenda of finding things I can use to condemn my neighbor. Where is the text that tells me that so-and-so is wrong?

When we come to Scripture in this way, we are likely to be led astray. Just like we edge conversations with other people right off the edge of the map due to our primary agenda, we can get a message from Scripture that is much more formed by our agenda than by the actual message and story presented in the Scripture passage(s) we consult.

An interesting example of this is the many centuries long search for a precise roadmap to the end of time or the end times. Date setters have repeatedly “found” dates in Scripture. How do they do that? They come to the Word with their own determination of what the Word must tell them. As a result, we have repeated examples of failed predictions, and still we have people looking for more.

For a Christian, the study of Scripture should be an encounter with God. That means coming ready to listen and coming ready to have your agenda adjusted. That will result in conversation and potentially transformation through the Spirit and God’s creative and powerful Word.

November 29, 2023
Signs That You Won’t Know!

It is critical to note that the signs Jesus’ gives his disciples are general and vague and always contemporary. War and suffering, famine and earthquakes, persecutions and false Messiahs have not only been prevalent throughout history; they are the also to be witnessed and experienced in the present, and they will be encountered in the future. Thus, the posture that Jesus is encouraging his disciples to take is not one where such signs signal the imminent end of history, but rather that such events remind them of the necessity to be ready for the end because they cannot know from these signs when it will take place.
Allan R. Bevere, Keeping Up WIth Jesus, p. 52 (forthcoming)

This was too good not tomention. I’m doing a final editorial read on this book which will be available shortly. Allan calls it a “narrative devotional commentary” which is a good description of what it accomplishes. I’ll post more here when the book is available.

November 27, 2023
What Is the Bible For?

No, this is not a long dissertation on scripture and its various uses, though I love to talk about that.

For many, the purpose of scripture is to keep us on a doctrinally correct path. It tells us the things we are supposed to believe. Simply believing correctly is what’s important.

For me, however, a frequent value in scripture is the encounter with God guided by the Spirit, from which I get needed power for the moment. I’m not talking about obviously supernatural extra energy to do extraordinary things. I’m talking about the simple encouragement to help me move forward.

Today I was looking at this blog, and I noticed the theme text I placed on the sidebar. It has been there for three or four years, I think, but I saw it again today. It’s in Greek on the sidebar, but I’ll be nice and post it in English.

¹⁶So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. ¹⁷For our slight, momentary affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, ¹⁸because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen, for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.
2 Corinthians 4:16-18 (NRSVue, via BibleGateway).

Now I’ve been struggling a bit with the state of my work and my efforts to get things caught up, something it seems I’m never going to do. No, I don’t find a promise there to tell me I’ll get things done by a certain time or that it’s all OK. I just got a lift. Keep going. Don’t let the temporary stop you.

It’s what I needed this morning.

November 24, 2023
Theodicy Interview with Rev. Steve Kindle

I posted the video from my interview with Steve Kindle in my theodicy video interview series. The video is embedded below, and you can find out information on this series at Theodicy Interview Series.

The next interview to be posted is by Steve with me, asking me to answer the questions I’ve set up for this series. Following that, I’ve added an additional author, Dr. Terrell Carter, author now of three books from Energion Publications, and several from others.

July 22, 2023
On Teaching from Ezekiel 24
I’ve been working my way through Ezekiel with my Sunday School class, at their request, since I have frequently said that Leviticus, Ezekiel, and Hebrews are the books most formative of my own theology. When this is done, I will have been through all three books with this group.

One major difficulty in teaching through Ezekiel is that it is a rather dismal book. There are long passages promising and explaining judgment. There are various passages about the hardships Ezekiel endures as a prophet. At the same time, there are brief looks ahead toward a time of redemption, that the judgment is not intended to destroy and put an end to God’s people, but rather to restore and rebuild after a cleanup.

One temptation in interpreting Ezekiel and many other books of Hebrew Scripture (which I refer to as the Old Testament when understood as part of Christian scripture) is to see the failures of Israel as theological and ritual. Theological in the sense that they are believing wrong stuff. Ritual in the sense that worship is going astray. This meets a frequent Christian assumption that the Israelite religion was largely about ritual.

This is a mischaracterization of Israelite religion. Ritual was intended to teach. What is condemned by the prophets is not ritual as such, but rather the performance of ritual while failing to learn from the moral, ethical, and indeed spiritual lessons of such ritual. In modern terms, this is much like the Christian who goes to church and carries out whatever rituals are expected, but then heads out to be something quite different from what those rituals represent.

As an example, we can participate in the ritual of the Eucharist, or communion as many protestants prefer to call it, and then fail completely to put the unity that this illustrates into practice. “The body of Christ broken for you and for many” is shared because we are all in Christ, and Christ is in all of us. To go out and be denominationally competitive after receiving the body of Christ is to miss the point of the “one body.” To go out and abuse those less fortunate than we are, no matter what our reason is for looking down on them, is to miss the lesson of that broken body. Just before his body was broken, Jesus said to “love one another as I have loved you.” Then he went and died for us. Skip all the arguments about the reason for this. He died. For us.

The problem that Ezekiel is busy proclaiming is often expressed as idolatry, but then is brought home in the failure to care for those in need. In fact, when accusing Judah of sharing in the sins of Sodom, the lead point is: “She and her daughters had the pride that goes with food in plenty, comfort, and ease, yet she never helped the poor in their need” (Ezekiel 16:49 REB).

The problem with idolatry is not that you walk the wrong way or go to the wrong place, or that the ritual is performed incorrectly. Rather, it is a matter of lowered standards. I like to use a definition of idolatry cribbed from Paul Tillich: “Making something ultimate that is not ultimate.” As soon as you start worshiping something less than God, you start looking lower. When the potential goal is lowered, less is done.

This is the problem with using grace to deny law. The standard still needs to be there. I am a publisher. I am quite certain I have never produced the perfect book. But as soon as I dismiss the idea of a perfect book from my mind, knowing that I will not attain it, I will start working toward a lesser standard, and will, in turn, fail to meet that. Having failed, I lower the standard again, and fail to meet that.

One of the key points in Ezekiel 24 is blood guilt. If we go back to Deuteronomy 21:1-9, we’ll see the extreme importance the Torah places on life, and on the unlawful and unjustified taking of life. There the people are given a ritual for dealing with someone who is killed, but without witnesses, there is no way to assign guilt. The nearest community takes on the task of atoning. Ezekiel is addressing this blood guilt. The people are not dealing simply with erroneous theology. They are killing one another. They have not just worshiped other gods. They have destroyed other people.

Let me add a side-note here. I really, really don’t like the line “good in theory but bad in practice.” It is not that all theories work, but rather that a theory that cannot be put into practice is not a good theory. Similarly, I dislike having theology and doctrine lined up in opposition to how we treat people. “If you’re putting your doctrine above people, forget doctrine.” Rather, if your doctrine is one that justifies you in mistreating other people, reexamine your doctrine, because it has problems. Jesus says that all the law and the prophets hangs on the two laws, loving God and loving your neighbor. If it won’t hang there, it’s not a good doctrine.

But it is not the idea of “doctrine” that is bad. The idea that loving one’s neighbor is central is itself doctrine, and I believe good doctrine. Replace your bad doctrine with a good doctrine, one that fits with what Jesus made central.

Again, back to Ezekiel 24. I tend to jump around a bit. We don’t always go straight from the passage we’re studying to the way in which we will live for the following week.

Here are some key points:
1. The reason the passage is dismal is that the situation is dismal. On the bright side, Judah returned from exile. Many cultures effectively disappeared after the sort of events that had happened to Judah. Failing to recognize what it is that one needs to be rescued from likely means failure to rescue at all.
2. Ezekiel loses his wife and is instructed not to mourn, illustrating in his own actions what was happening to people back in Jerusalem, which was under siege at the time. We like to think of prophetic voices speaking from on high and informing the dismally flawed lesser mortals below of the error of their ways. The true prophetic voice operates differently. It lives in a community. It shares with the community. It is God’s voice inside, not outside.
3. The prophet, when called by God doesn’t get to have an easy life. So many today think that if God has called them to some activity or another, they must have an easy, obstruction-free journey. We look for leaders whose lives are better than ours. As Christians, we should recognize that we serve a leader who was not recognized as such by the society in which he lived. Ezekiel exemplified this with the people. He suffered among them and with them. Silently.
4. Finally, we should be tremendously encouraged by these facts. Easy, positive, glowing platitudes don’t provide comfort to the person who is suffering deeply. Such things may actually instead suggest that the sufferer is despised by God and make things even more difficult. That was the message of Job’s friends, whose speeches God refers to as “darkening wisdom by words without knowledge” (Job 38:2). One who can suffer with, who knows what the bad side of life is like, is also one who can rescue. God made “the pioneer of their salvation perfect through sufferings” (Hebrews 2:10).
I’ll close with a short quote from Bruce Epperly’s book, Walking with Whitehead, in which he builds on a well-known quote from Whitehead:

God is the fellow sufferer who understands and the intimate companion who celebrates.
Bruce G. Epperly, Walking with Whitehead, p. 39

Featured picture credit: Image by Stefan Keller from Pixabay
July 17, 2023