Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Christianity

  • Congratulations to Houston Baptist University

    … on their new Master of Arts in Biblical Languages.

    In growing up in the Seventh-day Adventist Church I got used to the idea that in order to teach Bible or become a pastor one started studying theology/religion at the undergraduate level and then continued at the graduate level with the fundamentals out of the way. While I am no longer SDA, I do appreciate my SDA education. I took my BA with a major in Biblical Languages and then was able to take greater advantage of my graduate professors.

    My MA was in religion with a concentration in Biblical and Cognate languages, so didn’t look much like the one that HBU is offering, but it looks like a good program.

    So all in all, this is the kind of thing I like to see happening at Christian schools.

  • On Evangelizing Atheists

    Caraleisa has reposted her essay
    Repost: Sick and Tired of God-stuff; an open letter to theists    . This is something she first wrote several years ago and has reposted unchanged. I think every Christian should read it.

    Just as Caraleisa stuck with her original post, I’m just going to link to my previous response: Witness Without Being a Pest. I don’t think I’ll change anything either!

  • Why Not Study the Bible?

    You may think that a strange title for a post on  Bible study blog.  Obviously if you read this blog you must in some sense be interested in studying the Bible.  But I want to direct this question specifically to Christian education leaders in churches.  This is the time of year when curriculum is chosen.  Often new Sunday School classes or small groups are set up.

    In many churches most of these groups will study some topic relevant to daily living.  If you’re doing well, you will use materials that are written from a Christian perspective or at least in conversation with Christianity.  Some of you will find a book on the Bible or a study guide that leads you step by step through a passage or Bible book, and you’ll study that.

    Now I have nothing against all these ideas for study.  There is a place for all of those things.  I can hardly complain, considering that I publish some study curriculum, both for Bible study (Luke, Hebrews, and Revelation) and for specific topics such as spiritual gifts, prayer, and discipleship.

    But at some point, Christian believers need to get to work and study the Biblical text directly for themselves.  A church based small group is a great place to get started on this.

    I have a number of suggestions related to Bible study at this blog’s sister site, Participatory Bible Study.  There are many other resources online, and there are also resources in many places on the internet.

    Here are some suggestions:

    1. Have someone in the group who has previously been involved in serious Bible study.  The idea is not to have this person dominate, but to provide a check on group activities and to suggest resources.
    2. Use a variety of Bible versions in your group.  Some people try to settle on a single translation so that everyone can follow along with any reading, but if you have nobody in the group who can consult the original languages (certainly a rarity these days!), comparing multiple versions will help you get a feel for different ways the source text might be understood.
    3. Charge different members of the group with following all using different resources.  Commentaries, study Bibles, Bible dictionaries, and Bible handbooks are all useful if employed properly.  Don’t follow a single resource and simply accept what it says.
    4. If you’re using study Bibles, again try to get different members of the group to consistently use different ones.  I am distressed when students resort to “the lower half of the page” when asked what a passage means.  You may need ideas from experts, but try to get more than one.
    5. Don’t make your Bible study group into a prayer group, but don’t neglect prayer.
    6. Challenge all members of the group to engage in Bible study daily and not just try to wing it during the hour or two that the group meets.
    7. Be contagious.  Share what you learn around the church and in your community.  This is not only to provide them with the blessing of what you have learned, but to hear from them and potentially be corrected by them.
    8. Don’t start with the hard books.  I am very anxious to get Christians to study the Pentateuch, for example, because it provides so much background for how we understand the message and ministry of Jesus.  But as much as I love Leviticus, I don’t recommend it as a starting point.  I recommend starting with a gospel such as Mark.  (Many recommend John, but I think you will get more out of John if you read Mark first.)
    9. Be faithful.  It’s better to have a smaller group and commit to be there.  Showing up when you can may be necessary for some people’s work schedule, but make as strong a commitment as your life allows and then live up to it.

    I believe that if you study the Bible directly, you will quickly find that it is very relevant as the answer to those other questions about life.  The folks who wrote books and study guides on specific topics generally started by studying the Bible and then applying the principles they found to a particular issue.  It’s valuable to share the results of their study, but as you can, go deeper!

    So, why not study the Bible this fall in your church?

  • Christian Carnival CCLXXXVI Posted

    … Thoughts and Confessions of a Girl Who Loves Jesus.  Enjoy!

  • Somewhat of a Calvinist?

    Having located a Peter Kirk approved quiz, Testing Your C-Factor, I decided I really must take it. The results?

    I’m “somewhat of a Calvinist.” Really? I do like the part about being “slightly hedonistic.”

    Test your C-Factor: 53%
    You are somewhat of a Calvinist.

    Some of your points of view make you look like a Calvinist. However, you live your life in a lighter way than Calvinists do, which allows you to enjoy it more.

    ID Category Score Comment
    52 Work 71% You sure have a Calvinistic working ethos. You never work hard enough; work for you is your bounden duty. You are the type of employee any company desires, but the balance between your work and private life may get disturbed.
    55 Strictness 20% You know how to enjoy life. You don't always spend your time in a useful way. Mind the balance!
    57 Sobriety 50% You were not born to be a Calvinist. Catholicism suits you better – slightly hedonistic, loose and emotional.
    56 Relationships 33% In your relationships you are not very reserved. One might say: uncalvinistic. You let yourself go too easily to be a Calvinist.
    53 Beliefs 40% You are an unconcerned believer, who doesn't worry too much.

    It seems to me, however, that often Calvinists would object to the way in which they are described in this quiz. Further, while including “digital” (perhaps better “binary”) thinking as a trait of Calvinists, the quiz authors write a binary quiz. But that is the nature of quizzes such as this. They are either so complex that nobody wants to complete them, or so simplistic that the results are of little value.

    In my opinion, of course …

  • Do We Live What We Believe

    When one edits a book, one has an extraordinary opportunity to think multiple times about some of the statements. In the case of a revolutionary book such as The Jesus Paradigm, which is in the final stages before release, there are quite a number of such sentences.

    One of these impressed me enough that I quoted it on Twitter, and also used it in an ad for another book on discipleship. It reads:

    The key to church renewal is very simple: every follower of Jesus is to live what is believed.

    Now on the face of it, it’s a fairly straightforward statement. I have very often said myself that the one tool of evangelism I would prefer above all others is a church congregation living the message of Jesus. Now please don’t bother with comments about legalism and about how we are not perfect. Certainly none of us are perfect. I’m not even close to a candidate for that adjective.

    But “I’m not perfect” quickly becomes an excuse for any level of inaction. Jesus does give commands, such as “love one another as I have loved you” (John 15:12). One suspects that Jesus anticipated some sort of response to this command.

    So I think this little sentence expresses a critical principle of renewal in the church.

    But then I started thinking of it the other way around. This reminded me of a conversation I had with a friend who is an atheist. Somehow the misbehavior of a televangelist came up in conversation and after we discussed a particular incident, she said, “You know, Henry, if I believed in God I would be terrified to do something like that.”

    I carried that sentence in my head, and even used it in a sermon that I titled “Practical Atheism.” (It was on a Sunday night, and was one of the best attended services, if I remember correctly! Perhaps many Christians would like to know how to be atheists.) I told this story and then quoted Psalm 14:1 “The fool says in his heart: ‘There is no God.’” I suggested that in the modern world, an atheist observing our church services–and our reactions to them–might not be a fool to say “There is no God.” He might simply be observant.

    This keeps coming back to me as I study through Leviticus again. It isn’t a popular book, to a great extent because very few people understand it. It takes lots of work to understand, and even then there is much that is very difficult.

    But there are a few themes that are very clear. First, approaching the holy is both desirable, even essential. Second, approaching the holy is dangerous. Third, God’s presence is powerful and active. Things change when God gets involved. I’m not going to develop or support these themes; I’ll leave that for another time. Suffice it to say that they seem quite clear to me.

    These days, however, I hear frequently about the presence of God. “Wow! God was really present in our worship service this morning. I could feel it!” Now don’t take me as deriding the idea that one can feel the presence of God, though I prefer to say that God is present everywhere and everywhen, and we should discuss how aware we are of his presence.

    What I do question is how God can be especially present at so many worship services with so little impact. People go back again and again to experience the presence of God and then leave and go on living in the same way.

    Either we are not experiencing the presence of God as much as we say we are, or that presence is having much less impact on us than it should.

    I’m afraid it may come back to belief. We need to practice what we believe. That’s true. But is there another dirty secret in many of our churches–that we don’t actually believe the stuff we claim. I’m not talking here about doctrinal statements or theological propositions. I’m talking about belief that there is a God and that he does have expectations, that he might get involved in our lives in some way.

    Perhaps if we become certain that this is important we can get on with discussing those particular beliefs more effectively. I don’t know, but I’d like to try.

    So let me ask one question, of myself as well as of my readers:

    Do we really believe what we say we believe?

    I think that if we do, we’re going to live it, or to express it better, let Jesus live it through us.

  • A Bowdlerized Lectionary Passage

    There are a number of lectionary selections that skip part of a passage. Sometimes this is for time. Sometimes it relates to topic, but sometimes it is simply used to remove material that might offend.

    I like lectionary preaching and teaching. I think it forces pastors to get out of their comfort zones and expound on passages they might otherwise not read. I don’t think it’s the only way to go. I think preaching through the Bible has a place, as does topical preaching. But topical preaching is especially subject to the limitations of a pastor’s particular interests.

    Further, I like a worship service that includes all four passages of the lectionary. As Christians we have remarkably little patience for hearing the scripture. I sometimes get the feeling that people prefer the sermon because it has less Bible in it. I have encountered very few services that do include all the passages, but I have truly been blessed by those that do.

    But having said all of that, the Revised Common Lectionary can get no my nerves, and this week was a case in point. The Old Testament passage is from 2 Samuel 6. The story, as told in 2 Samuel, brings out many aspects of worship as seen then in Israel.

    We start with the ark of the covenant in exile, away from the center of Israelite life. David wants to bring the ark to Jerusalem, so he proceeds to do so joyfully. But joy is turned to sorrow when Uzzah tries to steady the ark and is struck dead.

    Now I know that’s a difficult passage in the Old Testament, but you might as well not try to understand the Old Testament/Hebrew Scriptures at all if you don’t want to recognize that the writers viewed contact with the holy as a very dangerous thing. (This is one of the difficult passages that my friend Alden Thompson discusses in his book Who’s Afraid of the Old Testament God?.

    After the ark is kept in a home for a time, David again comes to move it to Jerusalem with better preparation. The story ends with David dancing before the Lord, and his wife Michal despises him for it.

    Besides the inherent danger of approaching that which is holy, this story also illustrates the combination of fear and joy. We want to separate the fear of the Lord from the joy of the Lord these days. We don’t understand how these things can co-exist. But the Bible writers had no such problem.

    Now what about the lectionary passage? Proper 10B gives us 2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19. This splits the story as all the people are making merry and before Uzzah touches the ark in 6:6, then resumes it when David starts taking the ark on from the house of Obed-Edom. It skips 6:12a which tells us how David is motivated to do so when he sees that Obed-Edom is blessed while the ark is present.

    We now continue the joyful procession, with our scripture reading skipping a funeral and three months of time, heading on into Jerusalem. Presumably, the congregation is not supposed to ask just why the ark is in Obed-Edom’s house.

    Finally, the story ends with verse 19 as everyone goes home happy, and skips Michal’s story, which provides the other counterpoint. Worship can be destroyed by disobedience to God, but it can also be destroyed by those who despise the joy.

    You may tell me that people can read these additional passages for themselves, and that the extra reading will not contribute to the service. I don’t think one can be certain of these things. For many church people these days, the scripture reading is pretty much all the scripture they get.

    In this case, I think the story is made to say something completely different than it does in its full context. It’s like a different story all together.

  • N. T. Wright on Women in Ministry

    It’s no surprise that I like this, considering it’s N. T. Wright.  I like reading or listening to him even when I disagree.  (HT:  Allan Bevere)

    While I like his comments in general, I’m particularly interested in his approach to deriving his point from scripture.

    He goes first to the story.  What was it that Paul did.  That leads him to Romans 16:7, certainly a controversial story, though I agree with Wright’s take on it.  Then he goes to the overarching story by rooting his idea in the resurrection and the persons who proclaimed it.  Finally, he looks at 1 Timothy 2 and sees it in the context of these two larger stories.

    This process leaves us more subject to theological reflection than would a direct text->doctrine approach, but it helps us resolve the question of what constitutes advice for a particular time and place and what is a broader principle.

  • Christian Carnival CCLXXXIII Posted

    … at The Limitless.  Check it out!

  • Abundance of English Translations but …

    … others not so much.

    On his blog today, Eddie Arthur laments the lack of comment in the blogosphere about the need for Bible translation for language groups that do not have any portion of scripture translated. While many of us discuss with some vigor the merits of various approaches to translation and of renderings of specific verses, some people have no translation at all.

    Since I am certainly guilty of extensive work comparing one English translation to another, I feel a bit like I’m in the bullseye of Eddie’s rant, as he calls it. So first let me tell you why I talk a lot about English Bibles, and why I will probably continue to do so, despite the fact that I think Eddie is mostly right. Then I’ll make a suggestion to help adjust our priorities a bit.

    In spite of the number of Bibles that we have in the English speaking world, knowledge of the Bible amongst the general population and even church membership seems to be diminishing. I’m not going to spend time backing that up right now; numerous studies and my own personal experience suggest it. If you disagree, I’d be interested in hearing from you.

    My personal mission is not the production of Bible translations. I believe I’m called to get Christians more and more involved in Bible study. The abundance of Bible translations is one area in which our blessing can also be a curse. We have so much material, so many options, yet we don’t actually make use of what we have.

    For many people, the many Bible versions is an impediment rather than a help. They wonder how to choose a translation, and whether they can trust the text of the one they choose. I have often told classes that they can go to a Christian book store, enter the Bible section, and select a Bible blindfolded, and it will be usable.

    Now I don’t prefer that they do that. Given the number of English Bibles available, I prefer that they find a Bible translation that makes it most likely that they will read and understand. This is one reason I’m turned off by detailed theological criticism of various translations. I like the CEV, for example, yet in reading it for my own use, I’ve found plenty of places where I think the translation is less than the best. But there are two things to note here—this is my personal opinion. It doesn’t mean that the translators were wrong; it simply means I disagree with them. But even more importantly, I’m generally arguing minor points of theology that can be settled effectively by reading in context, while there are millions of Christians who would be uncertain how to find that particular book of the Bible, were they called upon to do so in a Bible study.

    Given this, I’m going to continue to try to provide information that helps people choose a Bible that works for them. I’ve found that to be helpful in getting people to go deeper into Bible study.

    But that plays right back into Eddie’s point. While I feel my mission is to my fellow mainline Christians here in America, his mission is translating the Bible into these other languages. While the American reader has a problem because he sees so many Bibles and doesn’t know which one to follow, there are millions of people who will have to use a Bible in some other language if they want one at all.

    I think that if even a small portion of the money used to produce new Bible translations in English were instead donated to groups working in other languages, it would be a tremendous blessing both to those who give and to those who receive.

    I’ve noticed that one of the best ways to get American Christians involved in Bible study and in various spiritual disciplines is to get them involved in service to folks who are less well off, whether those people are overseas or just down the street. So I’m going to combine this with Eddie’s suggestion that we add a note about those with no translation at all to our comparison’s of English translations.

    How about this? Whether we like it or not, economics is a powerful motivator. When you go out to buy that new English Bible, try donating an amount equal to what you paid for it to an organization like Wycliffe Bible Translators. The extra expense might make you value your new purchase even more!