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Sorrow Like My Sorrow – Lamentations 1:12
Can we really understand the suffering of another person or they ours?
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What Is Biblical Literacy?
We complain about it, write about it, claim it’s important or even critical, design programs to create it, but what is it? I don’t mean that none of us know what we mean when we say “biblically literate” or “biblically illiterate,” but do we all mean the same thing? I don’t think we do, and…
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Fences: Mending or Rending
The following is a sermon I presented at the Unitarian-Universalist Church of Pensacola on September 11,2005 and originally posted here on September 13, 2005. I’m reposting it because when I went to look for it, I found that the original post had somehow been truncated, and also because there is a one word at a…
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Experiencing the (Baptism of the) Holy Spirit
This is a topic where I tend to make just about everyone uncomfortable. Long time readers may recall a previous discussion of speaking in tongues, and my own experience of it. Those who expect me to be intellectually oriented and rational are uncomfortable with mystical experiences, and many who are comfortable with the mystical experiences…
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Real Guy Interpretation – A Homily
David Ker has challenged me, amongst others, to say precisely how we would handle 2 Kings 2:23-24. I actually didn’t notice the challenge at first, though I’ve been following the series. I’m going to respond to the challenge by writing a homily. Most commonly I do not speak from a written text except when I’m…
Jim Wallis Wishes Sarah Palin Ill
Shane Raynor reports on a blog post by Rev. Jim Wallis on Sarah Palin in which he says: Please dont invoke your Christian faith anymore and embarrass the people of God even further. May your efforts to scare Americans during this important debate fail. May your political future also fail, and may your star fall…
Grace and Wisdom (Lectionary Proper 15B)
References: 1 Kings 2:10-12, 3:3-15; Psalm 111; Ephesians 5:15-20; John 6:51-58 For three of these passages it is quite easy to find a common theme – wisdom. If you go a step further, all of those passages talk about wisdom in action. For the remaining passage, the gospel, one may be tempted to preach a…
Exceptional, Must-Read Article – Be Farmers, not Recruiters
If you’ve been on a church nominating committee and experienced the task of persuading someone to take a job that just has to be filled, or if you’ve been on the other end of that phone call when you’re begged to take a job for which you know you are not gifted or called, or…
Christian Carnival CCLXXXIX Posted
… at Parableman. An exceptionally good selection of reading, and I’d say that even if I didn’t have a post in there!
Right to Protest – Not to Drown Out
Ed Brayton has some good comments on the protests at town hall meetings: On the subject of these protests, I say the same thing I’ve said many times before when the shoe was on the other foot, when the protesters were left wing and the speakers were right wing: You have a right to protest…
Letting Wisdom Define Fear of the Lord
Ref: Psalm 111:10 – Proper 15B The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord. Those who practice it have good inteligence. We’ve all heard that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, as stated in this passage and many others. It’s a pretty basic Christian concept. A few days ago,…
Added RefTagger
I have just added the RefTagger module to this site. It seems like a valuable adjunct to a site that has as many Bible references as this one. I have set the default version to TNIV. I may change that from time to time just to keep people thinking!
Why did God give Solomon Riches?
See 1 Kings 3:3-14 (Proper 15B) Why does God choose to give Solomon riches and make him great after Solomon asks for wisdom? God is pleased with Solomon’s request and grants it, yet he also grants him everything else he might desire. The result, as we read further into the story, is that Solomon turns…
On my Seventh-Day Adventist Education
[Rambling, personal post alert.] Periodically I talk a bit about growing up as a Seventh-day Adventist and my education in church related schools. I do this for two reasons. The first is to explain why I am no longer a member of the church I grew up in, and the second is to explain to…
Jesus Responds to Offense and Resistance
For Proper 15B the gospel reading is John 6:51-58, which continues from the previous reading. In that reading, Jesus barely got started with the gritty physical metaphors, and the people were offended and resistant. This theme of offense will surface many times in portion of John in which Jesus is addressing the crowd in general….
The Homeschool Advantage
Because of many of my political positions, not to mention my theological ones, many people suppose that I would think public education was the be-all and end-all of education. And I do believe that making education available to everyone is an essential of civilized society. The problem is that writing a health care bill titled…
The Trouble with our Alternatives
Allan Bevere has preempted by writing about something I was intending to discuss and doing it better. He does this by discussing current protests and reactions to them in his post Town Hall Meetings Protests and Tone-Deaf Politicians. I have been repeatedly amazed by the extent to which both sides of many debates are completely…
What Would YOU Ask God to Do?
I want to focus on just one line of text. In 1 Kings 3:5, God tells Solomon to ask God what God should give Solomon. It’s a simple enough question. Most of us remember the answer. Solomon wants wisdom. God decides to give him wisdom and lots of riches as well. As I reflect on…
Military Action – Limits of Moderation
I’m pretty fond of moderation, even calling myself a passionate moderate, but in that very phrase, you might get the idea that I’m even moderate about being moderate. My moderation is not centrist, in the sense of trying to find middle ground on each issue. Rather, I believe in trying to examine all the options…
Truth and Neighbors (Ephesians 4:25-5:2)
Ephesians is such a great epistle, but I want to just mention one verse: So then put aside what is false and let each one speak the truth to his neighbor, because we are members of one another. — Ephesians 4:25 The polite lie is a common means of keeping tempers cool. We do it…
Those Gritty Physical Metaphors
The gospel for Proper 14B is John 6:35, 41-51. This isn’t an exposition of that passage, but something that passage brought back to my mind. Jesus starts with the bread metaphor. Now for many of us, comparing spiritual food to bread comes quite naturally. We’ve read this in the gospel many times, and we’ve heard…
Yes! Spend Less on Buildings
… or use them more effectively. From The Assembling of the Church: … Instead, the church decided that they wanted to spend more money serving people and less money of a meeting place. Go read Alan’s post for the full context. Messiah Baptist Church is to be congratulated, and hopefully their example will be followed…
Out of the Depths (Psalm 130)
Out of the Depths is the title of a book on the Psalms by Bernhard W. Anderson, and an excellent little book it is! it’s title comes from this Psalm. There are just two major points I’d like to make about this Psalm. There is much excellent commentary about it, and the notes are worth…
Syriac Resources
What I do with Syriac would only be called “reading” by those who are generous to a serious fault, but I found the resource links James McGrath provided today quite useful.
Anothe Mangled Passage – 2 Samuel 18
I must be sounding like a broken record, but I really dislike mangled passages. It is sometimes possible to quote part of a passage and just hit the highlights. That may be required by time limitations. But when the changes made to the passage change the intent of the story, or make nonsense of it,…
Theme Change
Some readers may not know that I do my blogging in three main locations. Here at Threads, Participatory Bible Study Blog, and The Jevlir Caravansary. I like the three to have a generally similar theme with some graphic differences, and so I have just changed them all to the Atahualpa theme. This is a theme…
On Inerrancy – a Request for Short Definitions
Darrell Pursiful at Dr. Platypus is requesting short definitions from those who accept or use the language of inerrancy in describing the Bible. Shorter, definitely, than the Chicago statement. Though I don’t qualify, even though my definition of inspiration has been called inerrancy, I thought I’d pass this on.
Word Study Reprise
It’s very easy to go astray with word studies when one doesn’t know the languages in question. Since I had a recent request for this material, I want to provide the links to my previous series (from early 2007) on word studies, dangers, and methods. Word Study Dangers: Overview Word Study Dangers: The Process Word…