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Category: Bible Passages

Wisdom Has Questions

Wisdom cries aloud in the open air,
and raises her voice in public places.
²¹ She calls at the top of the bustling streets;
at the approaches to the city gates she says:
²² ‘How long will you simple fools be content with your simplicity?
The Revised English Bible (Cambridge; New York; Melbourne; Madrid; Cape Town; Singapore; São Paulo; Delhi; Dubai; Tokyo: Cambridge University Press, 1996), Pr 1:20–22.

Last week I discussed starting a study of Proverbs and noted a different way of receiving the text. This does not result from a prophetic vision, or from a prophet hearing a voice, but rather from collective (and collected) wisdom from a culture. This is life-time learning, rather than special, instant revelation.

We like instant revelation. We like answers. We especially like answers that come quickly and fit in with our existing lifestyle and our prejudices.

The “wisdom” we can gain in this way has another advantage. It can be formed into “ammunition sentences,” sentences that we can fling at other people to shut them up. Often such sentences begin with “the Bible clearly teaches.” We fill in with things we clearly see, largely because we failed to see the whole of scripture.

I saw a sign in front of a church the other day. The first line read: “God has the answers!” And the second read “Are you listening?”

That’s good. God does have answers. But sometimes God’s answers don’t match our questions, and the reason is that we’re not asking the right questions, or more specifically, we’re asking questions that limit the range of God’s answers. Sometimes we’re even asking questions in order to avoid God’s answers.

Over the years I’ve prayed with many people who were seeking God’s guidance. Many of these people were genuinely uncertain, and were trying to seek God’s will. But more of them already knew what God wanted them to do, often because it was clear in terms of ethics, simple right and wrong, but who were hoping they could get a word from the Lord that would set them on a different path, one they preferred to what they already knew. Maybe God’s voice will allow me to take a different turn.

When you approach things that way, it’s easy to end up believing you’re following God’s path, or the path of wisdom, just because you want so vigorously for that to be the right answer.

I remember once having a conversation with a couple of friends about a business decision. Business decisions are hard for me. In this case I was discussing two options and trying to decide which was the next step. I had struggled with the decision for days. I don’t even recall now what the issue was, but suddenly in the midst of the conversation I held up my hand and said, “I’ve just realized I’m doing this wrong. Option A would result in behaving unethically.” My advisors hadn’t seen that, because they didn’t understand all the processes involved. As soon as I explained what would happen, they recognized what would likely happen, and so the decision was made.

What slowed me down? I knew the process and should have recognized the problem immediately. But I didn’t. I wasn’t responding to the right questions. I was missing them because I wanted something to be true, but it wasn’t. No amount of wanting would make it true.

“Wisdom is calling out in the street.”

And wisdom is often providing questions. Ant Greenham, in his book The Questioning God, says:

Our foundational identity as human beings, female and male, is inextricably linked to questioning, to inquiry. The fall of humanity notwithstanding, people are repeatedly called to respond to God in the context of mental and spiritual engagement. And the centrality of a questioning approach is reflected throughout the Bible.
Ant Greenham, The Questioning God, (Pensacola, Florida: Energion Publications, 2012), 4.

Greenham goes on to point out the numerous ways in which God’s interactions with us consist of God questioning us. We may have questions of God, but God has even more questions to ask us. I’d suggest as a quick example that you check Job 38. After much discussion and complaint, God becomes active and what does God start with? Lots of questions!

This approach suggests that God wants us to use our mental capacity. Here’s a famous verse, but let’s think about it again:

The fear of the LORD is the foundation* of knowledge; it is fools who scorn wisdom and instruction
The Revised English Bible (Cambridge; New York; Melbourne; Madrid; Cape Town; Singapore; São Paulo; Delhi; Dubai; Tokyo: Cambridge University Press, 1996), Pr 1:7.

Too often this verse is used to contrast the supposed wisdom of the speaker, which the speaker supposes came from God, verses the use of human intellect. “Don’t trust in your education, your degrees, or your own experience. Do what God says instead!” That’s the common advice.

I’ve received this advice from some as an admonition not to trust my study of Greek and Hebrew in interpreting the Bible, but just to let the Holy Spirit tell me what the text means. But the second half of the verse challenges that. “It is fools who scorn wisdom and instruction.” I can be listening for God’s voice in so many ways, while ignoring what I have already learned. Often when I’m searching for an answer, I’m directed (in various ways) to look at the scriptures and the wisdom of the community of faith over the centuries for an answer. I’m directed to, not away from, the sources involving intellect.

I’ve written a few times before on the Wesleyan Quadrilateral. There’s lots of history and debate around that. But I like it a great deal. Today, I’m focused on one element: Reason. We like to put reason down in favor of more spiritual sounding approaches. But in the end, it is with your reason that you will comprehend the messages sent to you by God. That’s why God so frequently asks questions. God wants to awaken your reason.

I want to note one final thing. Intellectual activity and engagement is not exclusively the product of academic instruction. In fact, a great deal of foolishness takes place in academic settings. Any group of people can become so inward looking that they lose site of the whole of creation. They can no longer hear wisdom calling in the street because they are in a room with the windows closed and their select set of sources.

Intellectual activity is also the farmer learning to manage crops, run farm equipment, and take care of animals. God can and will speak wisdom in that setting. The Greek classroom is not more about wisdom and instruction than is the farm, or the corner grocery store. Wisdom is calling out in all these places and through all these processes.

God is asking you questions about everything. Are you listening?

August 9, 2025
Starting a Study of Proverbs

The Sunday School class I co-teach is beginning a study of Proverbs. I’m not leading this one. I’m relaxing a bit, I hope. But I have indicated I’ll do a bit of blogging on the material.

The assignment before the beginning of the study tomorrow was to read introductions to the book, both from the resource text we’re using (The Daily Study Bible volume on Proverbs) and from various Bible editions. I’m not going to try to provide my own introduction, except to note that I read multiple introductions that seemed to me to provide an excellent launching point for a new reader.

My interest is the place of Proverbs in the biblical canon. Why is it that we have a collection of proverbs in the canon of scripture?

While we work with the canon of scripture all the time, we don’t often think about it as much. The “canon” refers to those books which are canonical, which means they’ve been accepted by church law as authoritative in the church. This is a fairly strict legal definition in the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions. In Protestantism, it’s a bit less fixed. The general concept remains.

People often start talking about scripture with the concepts of inspiration and truth, and if a book is determined to be “inspired,” it is then scripture. That’s not precisely how this happened. There was a long process of history, tradition, discussion, and finally definitive determination. The determination can be better termed a determination that a particular set of books was and is authoritative rather than that these books were inspired.

Now that may catch you a bit off-guard. Surely these books are inspired! In fact, I believe just that. But being inspired is not sufficient to make them scripture. I personally hold that God has inspired other writings which are not scripture, but I do not advocate that such writings become part of scripture. The key difference is that the selected writings were seen as authoritative.

“Authoritative” involves the value of the material over time and space. For example, an ancient prophet might have sent a message to a particular individual that was specific to that individual. That message might have been from God, inspired by God, and sent by God’s authority, but if we discovered it today, as interesting as it might be, it would not be authoritative.

In my view, accepting the value and authority of scripture today involves accepting the validity of the choices made over time, and the belief that we have the inspired scriptures that God intended as authoritative scripture. God can and does act through the events of history and the actions of groups in order to bring the message.

So in Scripture we have the central authority. The question then becomes why does this particular passage, or in this case this particular book belong in the canon, and as part of the canon what is it supposed to accomplish.

It’s almost cliché to talk about different types of literature and how we interpret those. But it is almost equally cliché that we expect the end point of this interpretation to be some specific doctrinal conclusion. In other words, we expect all of scripture to end up providing us with data.

I would suggest (and have suggested) that while scripture is valuable for forming doctrine and guiding practice, this isn’t the main thing. In my book When People Speak for God, I suggest that we come to the Bible for information, but God comes to us in scripture for conversation. And eventually this conversation is to result in transformation.

Wisdom literature as a whole, and Proverbs in particular challenges a couple of assumptions often held about how we get scripture, and I think in turn about what scripture is to do for us. Wisdom literature comes from living. It’s collected wisdom of a culture. It leads us to ways of thinking, rather than to provide set conclusions. It’s not just about the wisdom it passes on, but it’s about how that wisdom is collected. It doesn’t come in visions, dreams, or direct divine speech. It comes through the process of living.

As an example, take Proverbs 26:4 & 5.

Don’t answer a fool according to his folly,
lest you become like him.
Answer a fool according to his folly,
or he’ll become wise in his own eyes.
Proverbs 26:4-5, my translation

So which verse do I follow?

(Hint: James 1:5)

(Featured image generated by Jetpack AI.)

When People Speak for God

From Inspiration to Understanding

Inspiration

August 2, 2025
God as Father
I intended to schedule this post for Sunday morning, but life intervened. Jody suggested that as my final post for Father’s Day Week, I should look at divine fatherhood overall through scripture.

She had some difficulty with the concept of God as father, because while she and her father were able to reconcile before his death, she had difficulty thinking of her relationship to Father-God in a positive way. Many people have that very problem due to the way they related to their own fathers in this life.

And we can expect that any human representative is going to present an imperfect and challenging representation of God. This is an inevitable result of the human condition. When Jesus told people that they knew how to give good gifts to their children, he doubtless knew that there were people in the crowd who truly did not know how to give good gifts. There were likely people who didn’t know how to give at all because they were so self centered.

But that parental relationship is still a valuable analogy. This works two ways. First, parental love and commitment to children provides one of our better examples of a loving, self-sacrificing commitment. When I talk about good and bad parents, readers have no problem thinking of examples. We may differ on were the boundaries lie, but we do have an image of good parents.

Second, this works in reverse. We are told in this way that as parents, we are to be the sort of parents who can point the way to God. Being “godly” as a parent doesn’t mean adhering to a set of doctrinal standards. It means having a particular attitude.

My own observation over the years is that children do well with quite a variety of parents. One critical common characteristics of parents I believe would be called “good” by their children later in life is simply that those parents cared. They were committed to doing right. They may have failed. No, they almost certainly did from time to time. They weren’t perfect, but they tried.

And so Jesus could point to the idea of a good father as a way to point to God, and people can get an idea of what God’s love means.

The best way to discover some depth in this view of God is to look at the experience of people with God. I frequently refer to the Bible not as a compendium of doctrine, but as a book of experience. That experience is primarily the experience of people with God.

Jody spent a year looking at texts about God the Father. I’d suggest just such a project if you want to build your relationship with God. Here are a few key points.
- God as creator is God as Father. At creation God not only produces human beings, God then goes on to care for them by providing a garden, animals, and companionship.
- God is not eternally indulgent. God is patient, but there comes a time for trouble. Witness repeated failures of the people, and events such as the flood, slavery in Egypt, the exile, and so forth.
- God’s parental love is not determined by our being the cutest or best behaved children. Hosea, particularly the first few verses of Hosea 11 or all of Ezekiel 16 (which is some rather rough reading!) emphasize.
- God’s love is not limited, as seen in John 16 & 17 and many other passages. God keeps loving right up through death on the cross.
- God’s love is relentless. See Romans 8:31-39.
- God’s love will win in the end. See Revelation 21 & 22.
We spend our time worrying about the little things. God’s love is the big thing.

God is Love!

(Featured image generated by Jetpack AI.)
June 17, 2025
Joseph Husband of Mary

I’ve been using texts or subjects that Jody suggests to me this week, all dealing in some way with fathers. Today, again, I’m not going to provide the text here, as it’s a bit long. My suggested reading is Matthew 1:16-24 & Luke 3:21-23.

“[T]he son, as people thought, of Joseph.” That’s the relationship note in Luke for Joseph as the earthly father of Jesus. We’re not told a great deal about Joseph, and we might take something negative from this lack of mention. But I think the clearest thing we hear is quite critical. “When he woke Joseph did as the angel of the Lord had directed him” (Matthew 1:24a). There’s your testimony about Joseph.

Some years ago there was a big flurry of publications and teaching about a simple prayer, just one verse, in 1 Chronicles 4:10. It’s called the prayer of Jabez. It deals with widening our territory, and having God’s hand with us. It has been extremely popular.

Now other than being promoted well out of context and out of proportion, I have nothing against the prayer of Jabez. It’s a good one for certain occasions. I don’t think this particular prayer is the solution to nearly as many things as people claimed, but it’s good. On the other hand, for many people it became the prayer of prosperity, the request for God to make the one praying important and successful. As such, one can get out of balance with it.

But here’s another line. Joseph receives instructions in a dream, and when he wakes up, he does what he was told to do. It might be nice for that to become true of all of us. When God speaks, we listen.

You see, this is the opposite of what we usually do. “Oh Lord,” we say, “hear our prayer.” That’s good. We want the Lord to hear our prayers, but it’s much more important for us to hear God’s message, God’s call, to us. That’s when things can really happen.

I don’t mean that we’ll suddenly get God to love us more. God loves us. But when we can take any steps in God’s will, the results will be good. We’re regularly asking God to be with us. It would be better for us to ask God to help us be with Him! That’s the good place.

Want to learn more?

After Jesus is born, Joseph has another dream telling him to go to Egypt. And what is the response? “So Joseph got up, took mother and child by night, and sought refuge with them in Egypt” (Matthew 2:14). Again, here goes Joseph, following God’s directions.

There’s a power in this approach to life. It’s not about demanding that God make us successful, but rather about listening and doing what God tells us to do. Not so that God will accept us or love us, but because God has accepted us and already loves us. And because of that acceptance and love, God has the best plans for us.

I wonder what would happen if we took that one line about Joseph to heart as much as, or even more than, the prayer of Jabez. Joseph did as the angel of the Lord had directed him.

Will you?

June 13, 2025
Luke 15:11-32 – The Prodigal

I’m not going to provide my own translation or paste the text from another one here today, as the passage is long, but I’d strongly suggest re-reading the story before you continue. Read it carefully.

This parable is often called the parable of the prodigal son. Many commentators, however, have considered it much more about the prodigal father, in the sense of a father who was lavish and extravagant about his love and generosity. This latter view is not bad as the meaning of the parable.

I’d like to suggest, however, that we can look at this parable in more than one way, and the meaning shifts as we do so.

The first view is one that I heard many times before. The prodigal son has done many horrible things in his life, and finds himself at rock bottom. From that final landing place he manages to grasp just a little bit of hope. Maybe, he thinks, I can persuade my father to take me back as an employee. The lesson of the story seen from this point of view is that you should be willing to repent and come home, and the Lord will accept you.

Not bad. Even true.

But the next view is that this is the story of the father, a father who always loved his son, who gave him early access to his inheritance, and waited for his return as long as he was away from home. We can gather that he lived with this hope because he sees that son returning from a long way off and comes to welcome him. From this point of view, this is the story of the father’s grace, love, and willingness to accept the returning wanderer.

Even better. Also true.

But the third point of view is the other brother, the good brother, the one who stayed home and worked hard and thought he was pleasing his father. He’s satisfied with is goodness and believes his father owes him respect for his diligence in keeping the family business going and providing support for his father in his old age.

Not very nice. But very true.

Contrary to the way many read this story, I actually think the older son is the target. You see, I am the older son. Yes, I’ve done some wandering, but not as much as other people I know. In fact, I lived a quite respectable and productive life while I was out of the church. When I came back, I was ready to start teaching the Bible and diligently doing God’s work.

I had to return, but not from a far country. Just from a little ways down the road. And yes, the father was there waiting for me. I was a respectable wanderer who returned in good time and was able to put what I learned in the meantime into God’s work. Many said it was part of God’s plan, that God had been preparing me to work.

So now I can look at people who have wandered far from God. They’ve gone off and become addicts, criminals, God-haters. They’ve really hurt my heavenly Father. They’re the bad people who need real redemption and not just a little adjustment to their lives.

But you know what happens? When they show up, the angel choirs break into hallelujahs. God welcomes them into his arms. There is great rejoicing over this one sinner who repents. Even, no, especially, the ones who fell the farthest, who behaved most despicably, who were the least respectable in human terms.

And yet … there’s the father waiting, watching, jumping up joyfully, welcoming, feasting.

And I’m left to keep on trying to do everything the father wants me to do. Why don’t I get the reward that I think I ought to get?

It’s actually very simple. Even when I make the story about me, the older brother, it’s still God’s story. It’s still about the Father whose grace reaches everyone and who’s holiness is so far above that if I were to concentrate on it, I wouldn’t be so incredibly foolish as to try to compare my accomplishments to those of my wandering brethren. We all need to come into the Father’s care and receive the Father’s grace. None of us have anything of our own to bring.

The story becomes also an invitation to let God take us to the place where we don’t feel superior to the returning prodigal, no matter how long he has wallowed with the pigs, or how much money and life he has squandered.

In fact, the pig sty is closer to the Father than the management office on the Father’s farm.

If you are living in that place of service, and waiting for your reward, and wondering why others you think are less worthy than you seem to cause all the rejoicing, consider saying this: “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you, and am no longer worthy to be called your son.” He’ll interrupt you. You won’t get any further. Because he has been calling you his son all along.

He’ll rejoice that you finally realized it.

June 12, 2025
Luke 11:9-13 – Giving

⁹ And I say to you, “Ask, and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock, and the door will be opened to you. ¹⁰ For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and the the door is opened to the one who knocks. ¹¹ Which father among you would give a snake to his son when asked for a fish? ¹² Or if he asks for an egg, would give him a scorpion? ¹³ So if you, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?
Luke 11:9-13 (my translation)

One question that regularly arises out of this story is simply this: Will God just give us anything we ask for? We should find an answer to this by simply reversing the question. Which father, if his son asked for a serpent, would actually give that son a serpent? There is an assumption behind the story that the son is seeking good things and the father is giving those good things. The question arises more with the passage in Matthew 7:7-11, where, instead of the Holy Spirit, our Father in Heaven is said to give “good things” to those who ask.

Luke’s focus is specifically on the Spirit and spiritual things, but the principles remains the same. A good father would not only provide good and appropriate gifts, he would also avoid dangerous gifts. A good father cares for the child who is asking and is not just a slot machine in the sky, prepared to rain whatever is asked on those asking.

Now this might be seen as narrowing or tightening the passage. I would say rather that it’s putting passage into it’s own logical context, or rather recognizing what type of a story it is. It’s a story about desire on the one hand and care on the other. And within that care is also a story of respect, of seeing the person.

This passage could say, “Don’t bother asking, because God already knows what you need and will surely take care of you.” But it doesn’t. It says ask, seek, knock.

If God is on the other side of the door, why do I have to knock. Why doesn’t God show me the door and encourage me to go through it?

God treats us as persons. God made us as persons. God recognizes our own being.

“Behold I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens te door, I will go in to him and will eat with him and he with me” (Revelation 3:20). Wow! Courteous God! But it’s not courtesy. It’s actual caring. I’d like to be your friend, companion. I’d like you to be part of my community, represented by sharing a meal. But I’m going to wait until you open the door.

Think of the power on either side of that door. God the creator on the outside. Created being, totally dependent on that power on the other, and the one with all the power is waiting on the one without for permission. It’s our Luke 11 story turned inside out. But it tells the same story about the nature of our heavenly parent who is raising us up as his children.

Many fathers hope for their children to be what they, the parents, planned those children to be. They have a plan for their children’s lives and they’ll manipulate them with all their power to become just what their parents would like them to be.

Then there are those fathers–it is the week leading to Fathers’ Day!–who simply want their children to be whatever they choose to be and do that well.

There are those who think that free choice diminishes God’s sovereignty. I don’t agree. I see the ultimate real power in a God who could force everything, but instead says, “If you want it ask.” “If you want in, knock.” I’m powerful enough to be unthreatened by treating you as a real person, one with desires, joys and sorrows, strengths and weaknesses.

“I’m not threatened because I also choose to be the person who responds. You can’t make me, but I will.” So speaks the creator of everything from subatomic particles to galaxies.

“I’m your good Father.”

June 11, 2025
Matthew 6:9b – Father

Our Father in heaven.
Matthew 6:9b

Jody provided me with texts about fatherhood this week and quoted just this line specifically. It amused me when I read The Five Gospels, a product of the Jesus Seminar (Robert Funk, specifically), that the word “Father” was the one thing the seminar agreed was definitely something Jesus said.

But what exactly does this mean? Why does Jesus invoke the image of fatherhood in telling us how to speak to the Father in heaven?

I’m going to quote four authors that I publish and then make my own comments.

First is Bruce Epperly, in his book One World:

At the heart of the Lord’s Prayer is Jesus’ invocation of God as Abba, a term used to describe the intimacy between father and child. The God Jesus prayed to is not distant and demanding,
preoccupied with rules and regulations, and ready to pounce on our slightest mistake. The God Jesus prayed to is like the best of parents – loving, patient, listening, and guiding, willing even to die for the well-being of the child.
In calling God “Abba,” Jesus raised the bar for our images of God and our images of parenting. A good parent aspires to be godlike in her or his loving and protective care for vulnerable and impressionable children because this is the way the God of the Universe behaves. The Infinite is the intimate, and loves us more than we love ourselves.
Bruce Epperly, One World: The Lord’s Prayer from a Process Perspective, p. 8

There has been some controversy on just what the connotation of “Abba” is, but I think that Jesus’ own relationship to the Father gives us plenty of ground to hold that there is intimacy involved.

The second book is Ultimate Allegiance: The Subversive Nature of the Lord’s Prayer. I like the title of this book, because we so often take passages like Romans 13 in such a way as to put temporal authority above divine authority. The Lord’s prayer subverts human authorities in any way in which they push us away from God. Our duty as Christians is to follow Christ’s example, not to glorify the temporal authorities, no matter how much they demand it.

We see this sense of adoption present in Paul’s letter to the Romans, where he suggests that having been freed from the spirit of slavery we can now cry out ”Abba Father,” because the Spirit is speaking through us giving witness to our adoption as children of God. Yes, it would appear that Paul emphasizes this relationship by combining the Aramaic abba with the Greek pater, to emphasize this change in status. Therefore, when we address God as our Father – recognizing the gender related problems inherent in that confession – we give thanks that God has adopted us into the family, making us “heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ” (Rom. 8:15-18). Whatever promises are made to Jesus, our elder brother, are made to us, and we can receive them in trust, knowing that God’s love for us is infinite in character and breadth. Therefore, we need not be anxious about anything (Phil. 4:6).
Robert D. Cornwall, Ultimate Allegiance, p. 12

The third source is the forthcoming book Bold to Say, from New Fire Press, an independent imprint produced by Energion Publications the author is Rev. Geoffrey Lentz, a long-time friend.

Praying to “our” father means that we are a part of a family. This concept is a helpful corrective to a modern world that focuses so heavily on the individual and his or her rights. The rabid individualism of the enlightenment often finds its way into church, but there is no place for it in God’s family. When we cannot pray, our sisters and brothers pray for us. When we do not have the words, those gifted with words use them on our behalf. When we lack faith, our friends lend us theirs, much like the paralyzed man’s friends did when they lowered him through the ceiling to Jesus. It was because of their faith that Jesus healed him (Luke 5:20). Our community—not only the church here on earth but all the company of heaven, the community of saints—carries us when we cannot manage on our own. When we pray, the saints are praying with us; the great cloud of witnesses cheer us on as we run our race (Hebrews 12). To pray as a Christian means to never pray alone. And the most exciting thing about this blessed community called church is that the primary member is Jesus, our older brother. To say, “Our Father,” is to be a part of Jesus’ family, to call his father ours, and know that when we pray, he prays with us and for us (Hebrews 7:25, Romans 8:34, 1 John 2:1).
Geoffrey Lentz, Bold to Say, forthcoming

And finally, again emphasizing intimacy and community, we have Dr. David Moffett-Moore, in The Jesus Manifesto:

“Our Father.” “Father.” All religions understand a transcendent God, a God who is the Holy Other, above and beyond. The mystics of all religions experience a God who is immanent, a God with whom we may be intimate, though most would hesitate to be too familiar with the holy. The Hebrew Scriptures do speak of God as the Father of Israel. But this is not what Jesus describes; he would not call God “father” as I call my dad “father” or as my children might refer to me. Jesus spoke of “Abba,” like an infant’s babbling sound for this big, strong, awesome, gentle, loving presence. “Dada” or “Papa.”
It is one month old Declan or four month old Evan or 2 ½ year old Ryker. Even Alex at 6 has outgrown the magical mystical intimate wonder of the unconditional trust and abiding confidence of this relationship. Our God is our Abba, our Amma, our strong, gentle, abiding Presence.
David Moffett-Moore, The Jesus Manifesto, p. 36

One of the problems people have with this prayer is that our concepts of “Father” may significantly impact the way we read the verse. How did our fathers treat us? Did we have a relationship that could be called “intimate”? Were our fathers trustworthy?

As with many short, succinct statements in scripture, this one draws a great deal of other material in. We cannot really understand God properly as father, without some idea of how God has acted. How does God function as father?

I believe this is one of the most important reasons that the Bible is largely presented as story or in the context of story. We don’t have a generic theological treatise telling us in bullet points what God’s character is like. Rather, we have a story of God interacting with humans with all the ambiguities that introduces. This is a tremendous blessing because our lives are filled with various kinds of experiences and we learn to understand others by means of experience–by living a story with them, if you please.

I recall a friend who had several children telling me how it was truly impossible to treat all children equally. Different levels of consequences and different boundaries are necessary simply because children are different. I think that’s an important point about fatherhood and childraising. Fathers recognize the different experiences of their children. God, in presenting scripture, recognized those different experiences and thus presented the rules and theology in the form of stories or embedded in the context of stories.

This is a crucial element of recognizing God as Father. God sees you as a unique child. God values you as a unique person. This connection, as multiple authors I quoted point out, is emphasized by the word “our” in the prayer. We pray together with Jesus. We, like him, are God’s children. We are siblings, and he’s not ashamed to admit it (Hebrews 2:11).

At the same time, we recognize in addressing our heavenly parent that we are also siblings of all humanity. We do not stand on higher ground, addressing the poor masses who don’t have our wonderful father in their inferiority. Rather, in praying this prayer, we are taking our example from the one who was indeed not ashamed to call us brethren. And face it, if Jesus can call us brethren/siblings, we can surely do so to others.

One of the greatest misunderstandings of being Christians is the idea that it makes us better than or more important than other people. In the light of eternity, in the light of eternal wisdom and eternal righteousness, all of our good character isn’t even a dot on the paper. In recognizing our heavenly parent, we give up the right to look down on others.

We’ll look at some characteristics in further posts this week, but we’re going to end up looking at a range of verses about fatherhood that go from creation to new creation.

In the meantime, how can you better imitate your heavenly parent?

June 10, 2025
Psalm 78:5-7 – Generations

⁵ He established a decree in Jacob,
and appointed a law in Israel,
which he commanded our ancestors
to teach their children;
⁶ that the next generation might know them,
the children yet unborn,
and rise up and tell them to their children,
⁷ so that they should set their hope in God,
and not forget the works of God,
but keep his commandments.
Psalm 78:5-7 (NRSV)

Jody has given me verses this week that relate to fatherhood. I’m not sure I’m up to the task of presenting a picture of good fatherhood, but I’m going to try.

I’m not starting with one of the verses she provided, however. I won’t tell you what the final “verse,” better described as a task is, but I’m going to schedule that one to publish on Sunday morning. Today I want to introduce this series with a thought from my Sunday School class yesterday.

We’re looking at what I call landmarks for Bible study, and the landmark today is the call of Abraham. The call of Abraham provides some interesting thoughts. In working with these landmarks, I point back to the one before, in this case the flood, and forward to the next, the exodus from Egypt. This provides us with parallels, similarities and differences, that help us understand the overall story.

We sometimes take Bible stories in isolation. This come naturally, because we have an hour for Sunday School (or less), and each story can take up that much time and more. But there are patterns in the broader layout of scripture. In fact, it’s good to look at Bible books in the context in the canon, because the Bible as a collection is what we hold as the standard.

Now here’s the pattern we observed. We have a perfect creation, and then the fall. Genesis 5 presents 10 generations, and then Genesis 6 tells us that everyone’s thoughts were only evil continually. Noah was found righteous, and chosen for salvation on the ark.

Following this story we have 10 generations again in Genesis 11, and then in Genesis 12 we have Abram called. God doesn’t make any claims about how righteous Abram is. He just calls him, and Abram goes. But Joshua, in his farewell speech (Joshua 24:2) tells the Israelites that their ancestors, including Abram (or Abraham–Joshua uses the new name God gave him) “worshiped other gods.”

What does this show us?

First, please don’t spend time on debating the chronology. Let the story speak. Ten generations lead to a point where knowledge of the true God has almost disappeared.

It’s worthwhile to consider the difference in God’s response in these two cases, Genesis 6 and Genesis 12. But what interests me here is the way the two genealogies emphasize the loss of the knowledge. This should have been transferred through the patriarchal line, father to son. This was the plan to maintain knowledge of God.

It didn’t work.

We observe this throughout the Bible story. The High Priest Eli’s sons were not like him, but were evil, and their father failed to change this (1 Samuel 2). Following this, even though Samuel himself had received a word from God (1 Samuel 3) regarding the situation, Samuel’s own sons did not follow in their father’s steps, but “took bribes and perverted justice” (1 Samuel 8:3).

The pattern continues in the Kings of Judah. Israel has a fairly steady decline morally. Judah, on the other hand has good kings followed by bad kings. Manasseh, possibly the worst king of Judah, was the son of Hezekiah, possibly the best (2 Kings 21).

Why doesn’t this work?

We’re often told that all this was the result of a failure to discipline these children, to make them behave properly. If they had just trained them to strict enough standards, surely they wouldn’t have turned away later. If the patriarchs had just spent enough time making their heirs memorize the full history of their family line, they would surely not have failed.

History is filled with “disciplined” children turning away from the ways their parents intended to teach them. Passing along ethics and good behavior can be a very difficult task. Indoctrination can fail very quickly when the child is presented with other ways of thinking. Many parents think that secular colleges rip away the faith they have so carefully inculcated in their children.

In most cases, indoctrination will fall to the opportunity to think freely. More importantly, indoctrination won’t provide a framework for that thinking.

My parents, when they were in their seventies, came to me and apologized. What for? They said that they had failed to present God’s grace to me in word and action. They regretted this aspect. They did not regret missed opportunities to indoctrinate me more. They regretted to presenting God’s grace to me.

At the same time, I can testify that they got a number of things right. Most importantly, they lived and publicly testified to their faith.

Now when I say “lived and publicly testified” I don’t mean that they read me Bible stories and expressed their belief in these stories, though the did that. What I mean is that they not only said they believed in prayer, but they prayed regularly. When I couldn’t find them after lunch, I knew they would be in their room, praying together, as they did three times per day.

They told their own stories, often interesting stories of their lives, but they testified in these stories to God’s action. I knew that faith was important in their lives because that was how they lived.

Now please don’t create a checklist of things you need to do to show by your life that your faith is important. That’s where God’s grace comes in. (Well, also before that and after that!) Look to your own experience with God, not to a set of checklist items that will convince others. If God is guiding you, it will be obvious, even in your imperfections.

And if God is guiding you, if God is important to you, if you’re looking to God’s grace for yourself, it will be obvious to those who observe. Let others observe in you the continued story of God’s grace in action. Most importantly let the next generation observe it.

And let this not just be about physical generations. Think spiritual generations. We need to be passing on our life’s experience to those younger in the faith or needing spiritual guidance. Too often experienced believers gather with others of similar history and inclination and don’t spend time with the less experienced.

“Tell your children,” is the call.

Who will you tell?

(Featured image generated by Jetpack AI.)

June 9, 2025
1 Peter 2:1-2 – Pure Milk

1 So putting aside all evil and every kind of deceit and hypocrisy and jealousy and all slander, 2 like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, so that you might grow into salvation.
1 Peter 2:1-2 (my translation)

This verse is sometimes contrasted with Hebrews 5:13 where the recipients of the letter are chided for not being mature, for needing milk rather than solid food. The two verses are talking about rather different things, however, and thus one should take each metaphor on its own terms, even though “milk” is involved in both.

After seeing each separately, however, I think there are some lessons to be learned from bringing the two points together. So I’m going to look at that.

First, the term translated “spiritual” is not usually translated that way, though in this particular verse a wide variety of translations render it as such. I wanted to find a different word, but after looking at it for a while, I couldn’t find a good alternative, and thus bowed to the majority. Perhaps translation committees have made similar searches.

The word translated here as “spiritual” is also used in Romans 12:1, where it is rendered in a variety of other ways, generally centered around the idea of “acceptable” or “appropriate.” I would like to combine the ideas of “thoughtful,” “logically appropriate,” and “spiritual” into one word in order to translate it well for this context, but I don’t know any word that does that.

The point of the verse, however, is clear if you look carefully at the context. The meaning of words is determined by the context. This should be a warning against the process of looking in a Greek lexicon or in Strong’s or another concordance keyed to Greek words, and then trying to force one of the definitions into the verse you’re reading.

In this case, this “spiritual” milk is longed for and taken as nourishment when we put aside all the evil and deceit.

This reminds me of a military aphorism: In war, most things are simple, but never easy.

In our spiritual life, the answer can be rather simple, but it never easy.

Let’s read that into this verse. If we could put away evil, deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander, we’d be able to get to that appropriate, acceptable, logical, and spiritual milk. And not only all those things, but pure!

Now go ahead. Get rid of all of those things from your life.

Unless you keep deceit–self-deceit–you’ll realize that may be simple, but definitely not easy. Or even possible.

Yes, if we could just stop deceiving ourselves, we’d be able to get to that pure, nourishing milk. It’s a simple, and hard, as that.

But Peter isn’t leaving us there. How are we going to get there? Peter, pretty good at messing things up himself, isn’t leaving you there. “If you have tasted that Christ is good” (v3), and if you’ve done that, Christ is going to the the cornerstone.

There it is. The one and only way to get to this is through Christ. And this is why we have to go back to the basic and simple. One of my authors wrote that there was one way, and only one way to tell if a doctrine is a Christian doctrine, and that was whether it was centered in Christ.

And that’s where we are right now. People often, with some validity, relate this to the study of scripture. When I identify errors in biblical interpretation, particularly my own, they usually come down to my desire for the text to say something other than what it does. Scripture is not that easy to understand, and the more we look at the big picture, the more difficult it gets. How do all these things fit together?

It’s so easy to take my agenda, my desires, and put the pieces of the puzzle together in such a way that it pleases me. The deceit involves is most often self-deceit. Self-deceit will corrupt everything you try to understand.

And that’s where we have to go back to the foundation, in Peter’s words, the cornerstone. Living cornerstone. The question is whether the interpretation you’re creating fits with that living cornerstone.

Now a short note: I’m speaking hear ultimately about application. A historical understanding of a passage as it would have been heard by those who heard it first is important, and is generally achieved by good historical methodology. But how that applies to my life and the life of the church today requires greater discernment, and this passage provides the basis for this.

Now let’s relate this to Hebrews 5:13, and the need for solid food. I think it’s a good idea to put the two things together. Getting the pure milk of the word, which results from keeping our eyes on The Living Cornerstone, is a critical foundation. It is also a foundation you can’t cover up as you go on to higher things. If you forget the basics, you’re not going anywhere good.

At the same time, we are challenged to grow, to get to the solid food, to build up. One of my concerns with Christian education is that we tend to cycle and recycle the same material over and over again. We don’t behave as though we expect anyone to grow and to go on to more advanced material. We’re stuck on the basics.

Often, we’re stuck on the basics because we aren’t getting the basics. Putting our eyes on Christ is basic, and if we aren’t getting that, more advanced things will tend to get scattered across the landscape. We get into vain arguments when we forget the basics.

So rather than being contradictory to Hebrews 5:13, the concepts of 1 Peter 2:1-2 are foundational to it. They provide the only path there is to more solid food that doesn’t involve falling back into self-deceit.

As you read, or meditate, or talk with your Lord today, keep this question in mind: Am I building on the Cornerstone? Is this a fit living stone to put into my structure?

Let Christ be the center of every thought and act.

June 6, 2025
Romans 12:12 & 15:13 – Hope

Rejoice in hope, stand your ground in the face of trouble, be devoted to prayer (Romans 12:12).
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you might have abundant hope through the power of the Holy Spirit (Romans 15:13).

Jody listed these two verses as a starting point for discussing hope. I’m tempted to wander for some time in the immediate context of these verses, but these posts are not supposed to be complete homilies.

But my mind does wander a bit through various passages, and these reminded me of the end of 1 Corinthians 13, where we have the trio “faith, hope, and love” with the greatest being love. This greatest is not directly mentioned in either of the verses cited above, but you won’t have to look far in the context to find it.

Now let me tell you that hope isn’t my greatest subject. I’m a realist. I like to know how things really are. I move forward by putting one foot ahead of another, and generally looking most closely at that next step. I’m good with what Jesus had to say, “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof!” (Matthew 6:34b). (Note that if you look at the context there, Jesus isn’t talking about hope or lack of hope, but rather about worrying, which he declares useless.)

I, on the other hand, am very much convinced that every day has its full quota of annoyance. I’m much more likely to preach about duty than about hope. Why get up in the morning? Is it because things are going to be great and I’m going to enjoy them? No, it’s because that’s what I do. That’s what I should do.

There’s a call here to realists, well, at least my version of realist. And that is to live in the light of hope. This hope comes in two different parts, at least.

The first is simply the hope of eternity. This life, no matter what it brings, is temporary, and my life is eternal in Christ. That is great news. It is a hope that draws me forward from within the fog of my natural pessimism.

But that hope seems very far away most of the time. There are mountaintop experiences when I can feel the grass of heaven’s feels under my feet and hands, and I can sense that glory, limited by my feeble vision. Those moments are good. But they are moments only.

The other kind of hope is that God is with you now. You sense that in Romans 15:13, which speaks of a hope that brings joy as we believe. That this hope is present and not just future is emphasized in Romans 12:12, with three commands together. “Rejoice in hope, stand your ground in trouble, and be devoted to prayer.” Those are all present activities, not things we await in the kingdom.

And the fact that we are to stand firm in trouble or tribulation suggests that rejoicing in hope is not limited to those times when we are on the mountaintop or otherwise feeling good. Rejoicing in hope is a daily activity that goes right along with the annoyances of daily life. We rejoice, we struggle, we pray, we stand firm. Hope is part of all of these things.

Paul, we should remember, was no stranger to trouble. He was afflicted on a pretty regular basis. And yet he said to rejoice in hope. Now and in the future.

Put some prayer and hope into the troubles of your day today!

(Featured image generated by Jetpack AI.)

June 5, 2025