Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • Free Speech, Gay Rights, and the Bible

    I want to call attention to this post and to the story behind it. An evangelical Christian was arrested in south Wales and charged with using “threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour.”

    Ed Brayton said:

    I am obviously a staunch advocate of gay rights, but some of the people who claim to be on the same side need to get something through their skulls: you do not have a right to never encounter the opposition of disapproval of others.

    Very frequently I have to point to problems like this on the other side, i.e. as a Christian I’m busily telling my fellow-Christians that we need to support free speech for everyone, and freedom of religion for everyone. Christians should, for example, be at the forefront of the battle for freedom of religion for Wiccans in the military. We know from both sides the danger of persecution. We’ve been and still are persecuted in parts of the world. We have been, and still are persecutors. We have every reason to know it’s bad.

    I was glad to see several non-Christian posters who support the freedom of speech of this evangelical Christian. My question is will this story simply make evangelical Christians angry about a “homosexual agenda” or will it alert all of us, whatever our persuasion, to the problems of restricting freedom of speech and of expression? I hope it is the latter. We need to keep speech free, or we may be the next target.

  • Hebrews 12:1-12: The Lord’s Discipline

    (Note: I’m going to introduce this passage as a whole, but when I do a verse by verse study, I’m going to divide it in two–12:1-4 and 12:5-12 simply for convenience.)

    If you follow the participatory study method, then you may notice that I’m presenting the last step first. You’ll find that this happens quite often, as you share insights that you get from a passage with someone who has not yet studied it. It doesn’t hurt to hear someone else’s interpretation before you have done your study, but you should try to go back to the passage with an open mind, and not let someone else determine the meaning for you. You may well come back to the same result, but you need to come to your own understanding. A great deal of the value in Bible study does not come from the resulting information; it comes from struggling with God as you study.

    Hebrews 5:14 refers to those “who through practice have exercised their understanding to distinguish good and evil.” You are exercising your understanding when you do Bible study. You are also exercising your understanding when you use the knowledge gained in real life. The key here is being active. A pew-sitting understanding of the Bible is not of much use.

    Let me recommend that you come to chapter 12 after re-reading the book of Hebrews for yourself. “The whole book?” you ask. Yes, the whole book. It’s not that long. Use an easy reading version such as the CEV or the TNIV and just roll through it. Then narrow your focus and start reading word by word.

    And here we come around to the topic of chapter 12, and of these 12 verses in particular. Hebrews is an active book, and it’s also a book that challenges one to action. That doesn’t mean it contains no theology in the theoretical sense. It is, in fact, one of the most packed books in the Bible. But the focus and the goal is always on what you’re going to do about it. “How then shall we escape after neglecting such a tremendous deliverance” (Hebrews 2:3)?

    As we approach chapter 12, we have just completed chapter 11, the Honor Roll of Faith. We were presented with a group of people there who had great faith, and that great faith helped them to remain faithful through great difficulties and persecution. There’s was a faith in action.

    Thus our author starts with the challenge of this crowd of witnesses. We need to get rid of the stuff that is holding us back and move on forward. But the example he ultimately holds up is Jesus. Jesus saw the cross ahead of him. He even prayed that he could avoid it if possible. But he knew where he was going, he knew the reward, and he endured it faithfully until he came out to the final goal. His faith and trust in God brought kept him faithful in the time of trial. You should keep in mind what has already been said about Jesus as our brother in chapter 2.

    Then our author continues by telling us, in effect, that the experiences of this life are discipline from the Lord for his children. If you aren’t being disciplined, you aren’t growing, and you’re being treated not as a child, but as a stranger. The Greek word here allows a translation of either illegitimate or low born, such as a slave. Since the person clearly considers himself a son, but is not, probably illegitimate, or “not real sons/children” as many translations use, is a good translation. (I’ll discuss this a bit further when I go verse by verse.)

    The clear message is that if your life is going hard, you should not assume that there is something wrong with your spiritual life. God may be disciplining you to prepare you for greater service and for the kingdom of heaven. If things are going well, on the other hand, don’t make the assumption that all is right with your spiritual life. If you’re not tired and your muscles don’t ache, you may not even be running the race at all!

    There are Christians today who believe that faith will make your life easy and help you get rich. God does own the cattle on a thousand hills, and he does care for you. But his purpose is not for you to live comfortably. His purpose is to discipline you and make you a better person than you are. Faith doesn’t make life easy; it helps us be faithful through the difficult times. Don’t get depressed when things are hard. Keep running the race. God is preparing you.

  • Participatory Study Series on Basic Bible Study

    Since most of the existing pamphlets in the Participatory Study Series were released before I started this blog, I’d like to go back through previous releases and let you know what is available.

    For those who are not aware, these pamphlets are available free on the web. I provide a PDF, and HTML and either an Open Document Text (see OpenOffice.org) or Microsoft Word format file. While I hold the copyright to these pamphlets, the purpose is to prevent others from modifying them and using them without attribution. You may freely print as many copies as you wish. There is space provided to add your own contact information, so you can take the Word file, for example, add in your church’s name, phone number, and web site, and use these pamphlets in your outreach program. They will print on almost any inkjet printer, or if you are willing to work grayscale, on any laser printer.

    Today I want to feature two pamphlets:

    The first of these two pamphlets outlines very briefly an approach to Bible study, what I call the participatory study method. The basic definition of participatory Bible study is a form of study that gets people involved and does not depend on a teacher to dispense all of the information. I intend to go much further. Participatory Bible study, as I use it, means that we get involved in, participate in, the story of God’s saving activity in the world. The story is not just about Abraham, Elijah, Jesus, or Paul. The story is about us. It’s about how we continue to add to the story of salvation through God’s actions in our lives, but only if we share them.

    That’s why the final item, last but not least, is sharing. As we learn and apply the Bible we will gain much by sharing. Sharing makes us formulate our ideas in such a way that we someone else can understand them, it provides accountability as someone else can point out serious errors, it provides a balance, as we see how others have understood the same passage, and it provides us with an impetus to new study as others ask us questions or present us with situations we may not have considered.

    The method presented in this pamphlet, and expanded online at Participatory Study Method is designed to get you involved in the story.

    The other featured pamphlet, The Authority of the Bible is a simple, basic statement about why we should put any form of trust in the Bible. This will not teach advanced views of Biblical inspiration, but it does provide a starting point.

    You can use these two pamphlets to help get a good Bible study group started. Combined with a good, basic study edition, such as The Learning Bible (CEV), and you can run a basic Bible study that is constructive and will help in your spiritual growth and that of your group.

  • Nitpicking Translations

    Centuri0n responded, in a way to my post Conscience of a Christian Publisher. I posted a response once, and unfortunately that response was eaten by the server. I was able to restore everything else, but this I have to rewrite. I’m not trying to repeat the other post precisely, so if you read it, don’t look at this as a duplicate, though I am trying to cover the same ground.

    There are a number of things I could respond to, such as his comments on my use of “conscience,” but I think I’ll skip to what I see as the major problem of logic, and it’s one that is not unique to centuri0n. It’s quite prevalent amongst advocates of literal translations. Consider the following quote:

    My complaint about the TNIV, as you can read for yourself, is that it whitewashes the controversial nature of its methodology. Now, if the Bible is just a “signpost”, my complaint is, of course, nit-picking. What the Bible says isn’t actually of first importance but of far secondary importance

  • Excellent Health Article

    Those of you who read this blog regularly know that I pretty regularly lash out at the news media. It’s not that I think they’re biassed to one end or the other of the political spectrum. I just think they’re biassed stupid.

    Well, I just want to point out an article today in Newsweek that I think exemplifies how information should be presented, especially on the internet. There should be this type of research behind every news story, and even if you present a short, idiot friendly version on the front page, it would be nice to get a well written, extended article such as this column.

    I refer to Drugs Aren’t the Only Option, a column by Dean Ornish, M.D. This article is well-written, it doesn’t prescribe what I’m supposed to want in my life, it doesn’t run anybody down, but it does provide useful information on diet and lifestyle, particularly with reference to cholesterol.

    I happen to be interested in that subject, but the only reason I’m bringing my personal interest to the blog is simply to point out the excellent style and balance of this article. I wish we would see more articles of about that length printed in the online news media. We may be subject to excessive time and space constraints on television, but the internet provides opportunities for more solid, informational content.

  • Server Problem

    Update: Everything seems to be working. If you made a comment and it’s missing, let me know. Also, the post that used to be at this URL, Nitpicking Translations, can be found by following the link.

    *****

    A server glitch resulted in the temporary loss of some posts and several comments. I’m working to restore all comments. One post will need to be rewritten, but that is a minor problem. I’ll get everyone’s comments back in place by this evening.

    I apologize for any convenience. Contrary to the allegation of one commenter I do not censor comments except for spam and posts that cross some legal barrier. Apparently my server wasn’t aware of this! 🙂

  • The Age of the Earth

    Through the Christian Blog Carnival I found this post by Amanda from Imago Dei blog. She has been working through videos by Kent Hovind, and came to the conclusion that the age of the earth was not that important, and that Kent Hovind’s tactics were not going to accomplish all that much.

    Though all know that I do not accept a young earth, as Amanda does, I agree that it is hardly an essential of the Christian faith. I’m not all that sensitive to accusations of ignorance from either side. Ignorance can be corrected, and bluntly if one takes a completely opposite view on a topic like the age of the earth, one has to find some explanation for the huge difference. I would be content if we could just keep the spiritual judgment out of it. It would be nice if those of us who are Christians could debate the when and how of God’s creation as details, not essentials, and thus do so without accusing one another of being outside the faith.

    It doesn’t disturb me to be called ignorant. It does disturb me to have a fellow Christian say that I’m “just like an atheist” because I’m a theistic evolutionist. I congratulate Amanda on the tone and quality of her post on this divisive topic.

    While I’m at it, let me again recommend Kurt Wise’s book Faith, Form, and Time to those who are looking for a more reasoned defense of the young earth position. I don’t agree with Wise, almost from the start, but he makes an excellent presentation.

  • Other Blogging

    I divided up my blogging between three blogs, other than the group of official blogs where I am a contributor, because I thought that I would be burdening people with excessive extraneous (say that 5 times fast) material. In particular, I comment here mostly on religion and its impact on society as well as on some theological controversies, so I felt that lengthy expositions of passages of scripture would be inappropriate. Thus, I created the Participatory Bible Study Blog for that purpose. I also tinker with lots of different reading and even a bit of fun with fiction and poetry, for which I created the Jevlir Caravansary. As it turns out, I quite frequently have posts I’m not really sure where to place.

    There are a couple readers of Threads might first interesting. First is The War on Fun and Imagination about moral or ethical outrage over people having fun. Then I have Translation and Knowing God, in response to another post suggesting we should have to work to know God. Finally, let me mention my post that was featured in the Christian Blog Carnival this time, Goals in Bible Study.

    We now return you to your regular programming. I’m having fun going through the Christian Carnival looking for posts I can respond to. If you tell me I must say “to which I can respond” I will say, “Never!” Grammar is what I want it to be! Words and their syntax are my servants, not my masters!

  • Prescriptive vs. Descriptive Grammar

    Peter Kirk has a post at the Better Bibles blog discussing what type of language the Bible should be translated into. (Note that I decline to respond to prescriptive grammarians by continuing to use a preposition to end my sentence with.)

    Peter says:

    It seems to me that the only people who have the right to prescribe the form of English are the speakers of the language taken as a whole, exercising their democratic right in the way that they actually speak and write. That implies that the only prescriptive grammar for English is in fact a descriptive one. For if there is any way in which we ought to speak or write, it is the way that the language is actually spoken or written.

    I’m not sure that the language of “rights” is quite appropriate here, though history certainly indicates that whatever the grammarians try to do the people will prescribe the form of the language, and perhaps that is the best form of right!

    Now if any writer or translator wants to communicate with an audience, they (singular they, eh?) must use language that the audience can understand. Thus it seems pretty obvious that a translation should be made into the form of language that people actually speak and understand, assuming that communication is the purpose. I’ve found an interesting phenomenon in classes I’ve taught on Bible translations. People don’t always hold communication to be the primary purpose of a Bible translation. In several classes, substantial minorities, though never a majority, have indicated they would prefer majesty of language. In general, I can get a lively debate going on the question of whether the Bible version used in scripture readings should be targeted at the church members or at whatever group they believe it is their mission to reach.

    One may gather from my ramblings that I think communication is the primary purpose, and that mission tends to define who we are to communicate with. I personally feel very comfortable reading the Revised English Bible, but I tend most commonly to recommend the Contemporary English Version, simply because it is an easier read for my audience.

    But this “prescriptive” vs “descriptive” grammar issue has another dimension, and here I have some appreciation for the prescriptivists. I would suggest that your elementary through high school grammar teachers should be very prescriptivist. In fact, there is a continuing role for prescriptive grammarians in society in trying to keep change in the language to a reasonable minimum. The prescriptive grammarians, represented especially by teachers, also have their democratic vote. All the speakers of a language are equal, one might say, but some are more equal than others.

    None of which changes the final answer to Peter’s question about translating the Bible. For that endeavor, grammar must be strictly descriptive. How does the target audience speak, and what do they understand?

  • Hebrews 2:10-18: Like His Brothers and Sisters

    While chapter 2 is not the core or torso of the argument of the book of Hebrews, it is at least one of the legs on which it stands. To prepare yourself to look at these last few verses, re-read the entire chapter, and then consider looking again at my posts:

    I believe that many of us have trouble with the humanity of Jesus. It’s easier to present Jesus as totally divine; that doesn’t risk his holiness, his sinlessness, and his otherness. And all of those elements are important, as I have discussed before. In the atonement, Jesus brought infinite, holy, omniscient, omnipotent God into contact with a humanity that was anything but those things. It’s really hard to imagine. I believe seeing Jesus as truly human is much harder than it is to see him as the divine coming king.

    There are three key reasons for this, I believe. First, we have convinced ourselves that despite much scripture to the contrary, human beings are truly wretched creatures without a shred of value. The atonement should, at a minimum, make one think about that proposition. Value is determined by what buyers are willing to pay, and look just what our buyer was willing to pay. (Note that I’m not saying, “self-sufficient” or “capable of saving ourselves.”) Second, we have become afraid that the human side of Jesus will defame his majesty. Third, however, I think that the human Jesus challenges us more directly in a moral and ethical sense, as exemplified by the words of verses 1-4 or chapter 2. If Jesus was less that truly human, then we have a ready-made excuse for our own failures.

    Hebrews is a book that is not strong in the excuse department; it’s strong in the challenge department, and that’s where we’re getting here in chapter 2. Jesus is like us. He suffered (v. 10), he’s our brother (v. 11), he shares flesch and blood (v. 14), he even shared death with us (v.15), all this was not for angels, but was rather for human beings (v. 16). Because he is one of us, he can sympathize with us (v. 17). He has suffered like us, and so he can sympathize with those who are being tested (v. 18). All this relates closely to Hebrews 4:14-16 as well, which we will study more later.

    Comments

    10For it was appropriate for him {God}, because of whom everything exists and by means of whom everything exists, in bringing many sons into glory, to perfect the pioneer of their deliverance through suffering.

    Note that this does not refer exclusively to the suffering of the cross, but rather to the suffering that is involved in being human. Jesus was made perfect or complete as a priest and as a sacrifice by sharing suffering with us as human beings. Thus he became the pioneer of our deliverance.

    11Indeed, the one who is making holy and those being made holy are of one essence. For this reason he {Jesus} is not ashamed to call them brethren. 12For he says:

    “I will proclaim your fame among your brethren,
    In the midst of the assembly I will sing praise songs to you.”
    [Psalm 22:22]

    13
    “I will continue to put my trust in him.”
    [Isaiah 8:17 LXX]

    Again, the humanity of Jesus is affirmed. In the next few verses we will see a little bit more about this. We can truly use the pronoun “we” when we refer to Jesus and the rest of us.

    . . . and again 14Since then the children share blood and flesh, he himself likewise shares the same things. In this way, by means of death he can do away with the one who has the power of death, namely the devil.

    It’s interesting that we usually talk about the lies the Devil has told about God, and indeed he has lied about God, but we don’t always see the lies that he has told about human beings. One of those unsuccessful lies was telling us that we would not die. But the first parents, and every one of us know that we will die, and for us that is a frightening prospect. No matter how much intellectual evidence a person has, there seems to still be some fear of death. That’s because this body, this person cannot experience what is beyond. As Christians we have a great hope.

    Jesus is the pioneer. How does Satan hold us down here? It’s largely through fear. Before my son had cancer, from which he eventually died, I did not really understand this aspect of fear. In the oncologist’s office, on the hospital ward, amongst our friends, even in church, the essence of being ill with cancer was fear. That was really the greatest enemy. James conquered that fear. No, I don’t mean that he was no longer afraid at all, but he didn’t let it stop him. He was able to live those last months of his life. Why? Because Jesus gave him that power. The pioneer had gone before. When he died there was sorrow, but there was also peace.

    15So he can release those who were subject to servitude all their lives by fear of death.

    The problem here is that the fear of death prevents us from living. Our lives are stolen away from us not by death, though that terminates this life, but by the constant fear of death along the way. The resurrection gives us another option.

    16For clearly he is not concerned with angels, but rather with the seed of Abraham.

    We are further reminded that all of this discussion is truly of human beings and not of angels. There are twin dangers. On the one hand we can decide we’re good enough on our own, and not seek salvation. On the other we can decide we’re not good enough even for God to rescue.

    17For this reason it was necessary for him to be like his brethren in all ways, so that he could become a merciful and faithful high priest concerning divine matters {matters dealing with God} in order to cleanse the sins of the people. 18Because he was tested by the things he suffered, he is able to sympathize with those who are tested.

    Notice this “like his brethren in all ways.” I think that Jesus left behind the powers of divinity, but not the character of God. He lived as human beings must live. He grew (Luke 2:52) and he agonized in prayer even in Gethsemane. I think he had to learn of God’s plan as we do, listening to the Holy Spirit. This was not because he was, in fact, less than God, but rather because, though he was God, he chose not to exercise those extra powers of divinity and to depend on the Father for that guidance and that power.

    Thus he becomes not only capable of being our pioneer, he becomes a challenge to everyone. Can we depend on the Father in the way that Jesus did? Can we submit so totally to God’s will that nothing will take us aside? That’s the challenge of this chapter.