Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: Christian Living

  • Hebrews: Going On Toward Perfection

    The first time I taught a class on Hebrews following publication of my study guide, we were studying lesson #7, Falling Away. The primary reading for the lesson is Hebrews 5:11-6:12, and thus includes the passage, “going on toward perfection” which is very famous in Methodist and Wesleyan circles. In discussing the passage we noted that some translations used the word “maturity” while others used “perfection.” I explained why one might use either term properly as a translation of the Greek “teleiotes” but added that I felt that “maturity” was a little bit weak for the message.

    On my way home after the class I got this nagging feeling, and so I went to the translation I had written for the study guide and checked my own translation. There large as life and twice as annoying was the word “maturity.” I had managed to contradict myself within days of publication. The next week I pointed it out to the class, which resulted in another discussion. Of course, the inevitable question was, “What do you really think?”

    That’s a fair one, and I’d like to answer it in an overview fashion here. I do feel that “maturity” is a little bit weak of a translation on this occasion, but “perfection” goes a bit astray of the author’s intent. Either English word overlaps the Greek word in the source. Which is best must be determined from the immediate context. To get a broad view of how I understand the structure of Hebrews, check my outline and translation. (I do not recommend my own translation as a clear, accurate, and natural one. Use a good modern version for reading. The reason I created a translation was so that I could have one in modern language without copyright restrictions to use to hang my notes on. All modern versions with copyrights do restrict one from including the entire text of a Biblical book in a published work.)

    So what is the broad view here? First, in the text leading up to Hebrews 5:11, our author has brought us to the brink of discussing the priesthood of Jesus. He has hinted at the topic and started to lay out the requirements for that role and the importance of it. He has established the importance of Jesus as one who reveals God to us.

    Now he pauses for a moment, in what I believe is the key to his central point. The readers are not mature enough to really get into the meat. They want milk. So first he talks about their immaturity. But then in a turn that has been noted by many commentators, he says he is going on anyhow. He presents the grave dangers of not going on (Hebrews 6:4-8). Why does he say they are not ready and then go on anyhow?

    I believe our author sees the addressees standing at precisely this point of danger. They are ready to be weaned and start on the meat of the word, but they are looking back and asking if this is worth it. Is it worth all the trouble? Is there really something to look forward to? Can we do it? So having told them where they are, he suits actions and words and charges forward with them. As I have noted previously, I believe that all Christians are in danger of the situation depicted in Hebrews 6:4-6. While it describes the extreme case, falling away under extreme hardship, it also points us to the danger that we are in every time we say no to something God has called us to do.

    So in 5:11-14, maturity is the thing that the addressees have failed to obtain. In 6:1-3 it is that which the author is calling them toward. In 6:4-8, he warns them against its opposite, and in 6:9ff he expresses his certainty that despite the dangers they will not fail. They will attain “it.” So what is “it”?

    I would suggest that it is that final, unshakable kingdom (Hebrews 12:26) in which everything that can be shaken has been and is gone. In the meantime, the call is always to move in that direction, and not to fall back or change course, no matter what comes up. We have Jesus, the high priest, who has gone this way before and proven that it can be done.

    In the Wesleyan tradition we use Hebrews 6:1 in connection with the doctrine of Christian perfection. In context, I don’t see that it has that exact intent. The perfection to which we are called is a maturity, or “rightness” at each point in our journey with the final, true perfection coming on that day when everything shakable has been shaken out.

    Note: I say some more about this “going on” in my podcast presentation on Seven Kingdom Principles of Choice (also part 2), which is based on the pamphlet by the same name.

  • Devotionals from 1 Corinthians 13

    I’m writing a series of devotionals from 1 Corinthians 13 for my wife’s devotional list.

    The first three entries have been posted. Entries on the devotional list are posted each weekday morning.

    Understanding Love
    The Priority of Love
    Characteristics of Love I
    Characteristics of Love II
    Love is Eternal (Update)
    Love is Boring (Update)
    Love and Childishness (Update)
    The Greatest of These (Update)

    (That completes the series.)

    In case you can’t guess, tomorrow morning Characteristics of Love II will appear!

  • You are a Bible Translator

    Some readers here may be interested in a devotional I wrote for my wife Jody’s devotional list, titled You are a Bible Translator. Not the normal exegesis, but a thought! 🙂 Enjoy!

  • Exceptionally Good Testimony on Women in Ministry

    Scot McKnight has posted the testimony of Stan Gundry and his journey from complementarianism to egalitarianism and some of the thinking that marked it. I think this is one of the best pieces of writing on the topic I have read.

    I note that he also faced the challenge of the difference between the testimony of the story of scripture–the things women actually did–and the interpretation given to certain passages.

    It’s great stuff, not only for the issue of women in ministry, but also as an example of a scriptural approach to understanding an issue.

  • Baseball Rules and Bible Study

    Over the last few years I’ve tried to learn a great deal about baseball, because I have a stepson who is a professional pitcher. It has taken me some time to learn, because I didn’t grow up with baseball, and there are quite a number of subtleties. When I first started watching, for example, I thought that the one big thing about pitching was strikeouts, and I assumed that all pitches would be aimed for the strike zone. Over time I’ve learned about many other options. The rules seem simple, but they give rise to a huge number of options.

    A while back I found a quiz on difficult calls an umpire might face. I recall being quite pleased with myself as a relative nephyte, to be able to get 50% of those calls right. You see there are the basic rules, then there are more detailed rules, and then you have to deal with all of the various options that players have while playing within the rules. The rules tell me that if a ball passes over any part of the plate at the appropriate height range, it’s a strike. It’s also a strike if the batter swings and misses, or for the first two strikes if it’s a foul ball. That doesn’t tell the pitcher what kind of a pitch to throw on a full count, however. For that one needs to know one’s own abilities, the batter, the abilities of the catcher, and the current state of the game.

    What does all of this have to do with the Bible?

    (more…)

  • Junia in Romans 16:7

    Suzanne McCarthy has a series of posts on the Better Bibles Blog about the name “Junia” in Romans 16:7. I’ve discuss this before on the Compuserve Religion Forum, but Suzanne covers all the major points. Here posts are, in order:

    List updated to include parts 7-10, written after I posted this.

    I’m writing this for two reasons: First, I want to commend the entire series to you for your reading pleasure and its educational value. This is some good blogging. Second, I want to comment indirectly on this verse and the way we make theology and practice out of Bible passages. I really have nothing to add directly.

    The handling of this text illustrates to me two elements of the way in which we make theology from scripture that are problematic. (Yes, I guess I’m on a 2’s kick today!) I believe that we tend to take the propositional statements of scripture over its narrative, and secondly, we tend to avoid the implications of the cultural context. (For further notes on context, see my essay Understanding Context.)

    Dealing first with the issue of narrative and propositional statements, I do not mean simply that we take passages that present propositions over those that are narrative in nature, for example, taking Galatians over Acts. I mean to say that we take the theological propositions over the narrative background. There is considerable narrative background even in non-narrative passages. For example, in Galatians we have both the theological heart, of the book, and we have some application toward the end. In the first part, Paul is presenting theology, in the last, he is talking behavior. In my seminary class in Galatians, a quarter long study, we never got out of chapter 4. Now I understand that when doing in-depth study, you can’t always cover all the ground you’d like, but is one’s view of the book balanced when you read the heart of the argument but not the conclusion?

    Similarly, you might compare the heart of Galatians to 1 Corinthians. In 1 Corinthians you can get a good deal of narrative by looking just below the surface. What is actually happening in the church in Corinth. Gordon Fee uses the narrative in chapter 11 to note that obviously women were prophesying and praying in church, otherwise why comment on their headgear? He follows this up with his textual arguments that chapter 14:34-35 is an interpolation. (See The First Epistle to the Corinthians in the New International Commentary on the New Testament, pages 699-708. I regard Fee’s comments here as definitive.)

    Romans 16:7 falls into the narrative. It tells us what the church was actually doing, and here we have that exception to the rule that intrudes on one’s comfortable assumptions. The easy thing is to explain this quick reference away so that we can keep our interpretation of other passages about women intact. I must note here that I do see as the only strong reason for rejecting the idea that Junia was an apostle is a preconceived notion that a woman cannot possibly be an apostle. The most probable reading of the text, in my opinion, is that she was.

    And that’s were the other element comes into play–cultural context. We come to the text of scripture, not hearing the text speaking directly to us, but rather listening in on the divine conversation with someone else, in this case God to Paul to the church in Rome. This is true of all of these passages. In the background we have to realize there is a patriarchal society. Now certain people want to make that patriarchal society normative.

    But think of it this way. Supposing that today I write that we need more women active in church leadership. I believe that to be the case. I feel no need of qualifying my statement. Supposing that someone reads my statement 2,000 years from now. Women’s liberation has succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest dreams and extended itself into nightmare. We have a matriarchal society, and men are not permitted in positions of leadership. How will my statement be understood then? It should be understood as irrelevant to the existing situation. Women are in all the positions of leadership, but it could be understood as advocacy of an all female leadership.

    In a patriarchal society, I think we need to look for the exceptions to discover the answer to the question of whether other indications of all male leadership are simply an artefact of the particular culture, or whether they are a moral imperative. In fact, by looking at those exceptions, such as Romans 16:7, I believe we see the church willing to accept female leadership, but not yet ready to push for equality in the church when the church lived in a very unequal society.

    I believe a combination of observing the narrative of scripture and the cultural background will lead us to a more balanced view of church leadership roles.

  • Christian Carnival CXLV

    Theme park

    I’ve chosen a theme ride at an amusement park as the metaphor with which to present the posts. Please don’t take it too seriously–I chose where to place some of the posts based more on numbers than on content, though I tried to keep it reasonable. After reading all these posts, I was reminded of the text:

    “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven” — Ecclesiastes 3:1

    Getting Going

    We start at the entrance to our ride, which has a historical theme. We’ll be moving through various rooms and displays in small boats on the water, with the displays interpersed with various water slides, bumps, dark rooms, and so forth.

    At the entrance we have to wait. There are people trying to sell us drinks, snacks, candy, imprinted hats and shirts, and even tickets to other rides. We have to keep focused!

    Polly at Life is a Buffet gets sidetracked by life.

    Fish and Cans offers Am I like Jeremiah?, noting: I find that like Jeremiah, there are times when I am beseiged by distrust. I don’t trust that God will take care of me, that he will bring me relief from the various things that trouble me. And like he did with Jeremiah, God calls me out of that.

    Christian Living / Church Life

    After a dark tunnel with bumps and groans, we come to a room that looks like it might be an arena. People are running back and forth. There are landslides of loose papers, and scattered books. Our boat tips back and forth as the water surges and carries us through.

    all kinds of time… provides some thoughts on the need for true accountability in the corporate body of the church in
    real accountability

    John is continuing to journal the study questions in the book The Life You’ve Always Wanted, by John Ortberg, at Brain Cramps for God. This week he’s in the process of answering the questions for Chapter 2, Surprised by Change and Chapter 3, Training vs. Trying.

    Tim Schmoyer at Life in student ministry asks “What does it take to have an explosive and dynamic prayer life? Sometimes I feel that my prayers are pointless and ineffective and then scripture points out that I pray like a wuss. Recently God’s been teaching me a lot about how to change that.” and replies in his article, Learning how to have a dynamic prayer life

    Andre of Every Square Inch asks “What does a well lived life look like?” and finds that it’s about living a quiet life of humility, faithfulness and a love for others. He offers a brief profile of the late Katherine Hubner as an example of how to run the race and finish strong in his post Katherine Hubner – A Life Well Lived.

    Weekend Fisher at Heart, Mind, Soul, and Strength asks “How many people go through the motions of life without feeling, without loving, without caring, without resting?” and then challenges a post-modern Apathetic with the question whether they are alive, or simply undead, in Halloween Special: Night of the Living Dead.

    Have you ever went through a tough time? It’s an inevitable part of life. So this week at Light Along the Journey John offers up Ten Steps for Walking Through the Tough Times with God.

    Chasing the Wind offered Living in Hope. Just like the Hebrews wanted to fall back on the rules of the Levitical priesthood, we say we rely on Jesus, we say we understand that God will provide all our needs, but we want to hold a little something back, just in case. Is that truly placing our hope in Jesus, or are we secretly placing our hope in something worldly, just in case?

    Dave Taylor, from Every Thought Captive offered Seeing and not seeing. What happens when old wineskins are being exchanged for new?

    . . . that one took awhile, but did you learn how to deal with the rocking boat as you passed through?

    3 The Lord gives perfect peace
    to those whose faith is firm.
    4 So always trust the Lord
    because he is forever
    our mighty rock. — Isaiah 26:3-4 (CEV)

    Living in the World

    We ride down a long water slide and come upon a room depicting life in a small town. But the buildings have been cut out so that we can see the people inside and look at how they live. We see pictures of phone lines, satellites, cell phone towers, and broadcasting towers, showing how the people are connected to the rest of the world.

    We are reminded of Paul’s statement in 1 Corinthians 4:9: “. . . we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels and to mortals” (NRSV).

    Laura at Pursuing Holiness (a conservative) and Henry Neufeld from Threads from Henry’s Web (a liberal) have a challenge for Christian bloggers who blog about politics – philophronos blogging.”

    NerdMom presents America founded on Secularism?? posted at Nerd Family.

    Romans 15:4 Project presents Left Wing Liberal Republican for Governor? No, we have a choice!, a wake up call to Christian values voters in Illinois. The Republican candidate for Governor does not hold our values, but we have a choice!

    Jeremy Pierce presents Dawkins Prefers Pedophiles to Christians posted at Parableman. Richard Dawkins thinks teaching children to traditional Christian doctrine is more harmful than sexual molestation.

    The Evangelical Ecologist has been following the greening of the Church, including covering the recent Grist/PBS series “Is God Green,” with their interview of long-time Christian environmentalist Cal DeWitt. We also have a review up of “A Spiritual Field Guide: Meditations for the Outdoors.”

    Jack Yoest presents Looking For A Job…With Tattoos? posted at Reasoned Audacity. Our US Army is getting more recruits with tattoos. And so are you. A third of the population 18 to 29 has a tattoo. Your Business Blogger is a bit outside this age range and our five-kid penta-posse has not yet demanded needles with ink. But this is an exploding fad that will affect business hiring….Sometime ago I questioned my Rabbi, Daniel Lapin, on the issue of tattoos. Yes, I’m Presbyterian who sits at the feet of the JollyBogger. But everyone also needs a Rabbi . . .

    Patricia at A Better You Blog tells us How To Know Who You Are In 20 Minutes. But she doesn’t stop there. She continues by suggesting ways to make that better.

    Theology

    The next room is a maze, and it’s dark as we work our way through in the water. But over in the maze are some folks with bright flashlights, and it looks like they know where they’re going. Perhaps we can find our way out of this after all!

    A Penitent Blogger reflects on faith, division, and the power of Christ in Tear down this wall.

    Thom at Everyday Liturgy offers Behave or Believe?, a discussion on the return to Biblical principles in Discipleship, Evangelism, and Spiritual Theology so that belief is emphasized over behavior in the modern church.

    In the field of medicine and ethics, from Ales Rarus, we have Plan B: Literature Review (Part II). This is the second post in a series. Last time I looked at a couple literature reviews about the methods of action of Plan B emergency contraception (levonorgestrel, LNG). This time I’m presenting On the the mechanisms of action of short-term levonorgestrel administration in emergency contraception (Durand, et al., 2001).

    However difficult it may have appeared when we entered the room, we depart safely.

    18 I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. — Ephesians 3:18-19 (NRSV)

    The Interlude

    Between major scenes we have some more peaceful times, but with tastes of various things offered by our ride . . .

    Sun and Shield offers Sunspots 78. Each week, after the Christian Carnival, I publish a few links to things I have found of interest, including the Christian Carnival, and, often, posts from that Carnival. This week’s Sunspots includes links to New York Times Book Review reviews of Andrew Sullivan’s The Conservative Soul, by David Brooks, and of Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, and a few other interesting items. You may need a free log-in to the NY Times to access these links.

    And getting started early on Christmas, Noneya weighs in with some reviews of Christimas music. Perhaps we’ll listen to some through the rest of our ride!

    Bible Study

    Here’s your map and equipment room. Whatever you wanted to do, you’ll find the instructions and the tools. But what is that I see over in the corner? Shovels? You mean we’re going to have to dig?

    4 If you seek her as silver
    And search for her as for bhidden treasures;
    5 Then you will discern the afear of the Lord
    And discover the knowledge of God. — Proverbs 2:4-5

    Rey (from the Bible Archive) looks at the Genesis 6 – 9 story from the perspective of Noah to imagine how this man relied on God’s word.

    Richard of dokeo kago grapho soi kratistos theophilos introduces a new series on the Parables in Luke designed to demonstrate the radical nature of the works of Christ in his post
    Slave Parables in the Gospel of Luke    .

    Steve, from An Accidental Blog, looks at the parable of the pounds (minas) from Luke ch 19. He concludes:

    The parable was not told, then, to show that if we have gifts and talents we should use them wisely or lose them. Rather, it is a warning that if we try to win power in the way that ‘the world’ does, all that will result is that the oppressed will experience only greater oppression. Instead, we are to follow the example of the man on a donkey, who gave up all to attain all.

    The Scriptorium

    Once we’ve helped dig a new route for our ride (can you do that???), we find ourselves passing through a room full of low tables we see wax images of monks painstakingly copying manuscripts by hand. It doesn’t look like fun . . .

    Barbara of Tidbits And Treasures tells of a New Bible publication literally cuts out unused parts–a Dutch organization has published a Bible for contemporary Christians and cut out all the scripture which might put stress in their lives.

    David Ker presents Martin Luther on Bible Translation posted at Lingamish. If Martin Luther were alive today, what would he say about the frequent debates over literal and idiomatic Bible translations? This post looks at some of his colorful quotes about this subject.

    William Meisheid presents The Problem With Bible Translations posted at Beyond The Rim… . A look at the growing Tower of Babel of biblical translations.

    Thanks for all the submissions, and for reading to this point! If you found any errors or omissions, please e-mail me, or add a comment. I’ll be happy to make corrections. I sent trackbacks to those who provided trackback URLs.

  • My Dad’s Bible

    You’ve probably heard the saying, “A Bible that’s falling apart usually belongs to someone who isn’t.” Little proverbs like this can be misleading. I know some folks who are not believers in any sense of the word, and whose main purpose in studying is to find new ways to attack the faith of those who do believe, and who wear out Bibles quite regularly.

    But in general, I think this one is quite accurate, and that fact concerns me. The problem is that folks that I encounter in various churches are much more likely to have Bibles that are weighted with dust, than ones that are falling apart. I have learned that I cannot assume that individuals in my classes know the outlines of such stories as Ruth, Esther, Elijah, or King David. That applies even to churchgoers who are active enough to show up for a weekend with a visiting teacher, and thus to be meeting me on a Friday night! It’s hard to teach about more difficult topics when one can’t refer to basic stories without actually tellling the whole story right then.

    Our words indicate that the Bible is important to us. I don’t encounter many Christians of any flavor or tradition stream who will say that studying the Bible is unimportant. But if I ask just what they do about that, it’s a different matter. One common request I get is for a quick way to study the Bible, perhaps “How to Know your Bible in 5 Minutes Per Day.” I haven’t invented such a plan, and I think it will always fail, because to study and know the Bible is in many ways also to study and know the God of the Bible, and we will never actually finish doing that (Ephesians 3:18-19).

    I have a Bible that I inherited from my father. He was no longer using it for the simple reason that it’s very hard to use. Pages will fall out as you try to turn them. It’s also a pocket Bible, and the print was a bit small at the time he gave it to me. The margins were filled with notes, and there was marking from cover to cover. He obviously needed a new one. But I wanted to keep this one.

    Last week, my father finished his race. I was there, and then I preached the funeral. As we were talking about him, my mother commented on how often I talk about that little pocket Bible. She offered me his current Bible, since I was most likely, amongst my generation, to appreciate it. There turned out to be a problem, however, because there were actually two Bibles. One had a replacement cover my sister had made, and was really the last Bible he used. The other was also marked up, with no space left on the flyleafs, and marginal notes throughout. I was paging through it before I wrote this, thinking I might comment on some of what he had marked, but that would largely be a futile exercise. There are markings everywhere, including Leviticus and Numbers. (I’ve heard people claim to have read the Bible through, but admit to skipping those books.)

    Now I have a new Bible to treasure in memory of my father. But the question is this: Is this just a book and a memorial, or does it have meaning?

    My father was never very demonstrative. He was a physician who served as a missionary. He rarely preached, only occasionally gave Bible studies, but regularly witnessed. His witness remained simple and straightforward. His strength was in Jesus, his Lord.

    I recall my parents praying regularly, at least morning and evening, but if possible three times a day, as did Daniel the prophet. (If you don’t know, go find the reference for that. It’s in the midst of some very worthwhile reading!)

    My father made it a habit to pray with each patient that he saw, before every surgery, and on his rounds. Sometimes he and my mother, an RN, would even sing for patients when they made rounds.

    After emergency surgery in Guyana in 1971, my father was told he would never work again, and that he would not live more than 10 more years. It was suggested that he return to the states. He and my mother responded, “God sent us here to do a mission, and we haven’t done it yet.” They called for the elders of the church, anointed my father with oil and prayed for his healing. Two weeks later he became the sole physician for a 54 bed hospital and worked at that task for a year before he had any relief. He lived until about 1 1/2 weeks ago, and went home at the age of 86.

    When he was being taken into the operating room for his last surgery, my mother asked him how he felt. He said, “My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness. It doesn’t matter how I feel!” Before he was given the anesthetic, he called the surgeons and asked to pray with them. He did this when he was so weak he could not walk.

    It sounds to me like these “falling apart” Bibles belonged to someone who wasn’t!

    My question for myself, and for all of you is this: Are you so sure of your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ that you can say, “It doesn’t matter how I feel?” Dad didn’t get the ability to say that all of a sudden. It was a lifetime of wearing out Bibles, wearing out the knees, and exercising the faith that God had given him (and he would not accept credit for any of this–“It is the gift of God,” he would say) that let him face the end of this life and the prospect of eternity with simple confidence.

  • Finding Good Role Models for Girls in the Bible

    A post by Peter Kirk over on Speaker of Truth, titled Deborah and a woman from Bethlehem, and some interesting comments made there suggests to me some more writing about my favorite topic: the SHARING stage of Bible study. (For an outline of my method, see The Participatory Study Method. Some of the foundation for this is contained in my essay Interpreting Stories.)

    The difficulty I address in my main essay on interpreting stories is the fact that the Bible writers do not present only heroes, and do not gloss over the weakness of their characters. In modern storytelling we tend to prefer clear villains and heroes, and I find that most of the time when Christians recommend a book or a movie, that is one of the characteristics. We like to have people in our stories that fit in well with either “I’d like to be just like him/her” or “I hope he/she gets it in the end!”

    But that’s precisely what the Bible doesn’t give us. Often we take our lead in retelling Bible stories from Hebrews 11, and make them all into heroes in retelling their stories. But we should consider the goal of the author of Hebrews before we decide that this is the one and only, or even the best, way of retelling these stories. His point here is to focus totally on faithfulness. No matter what has happend, no matter what the weaknesses, the one key is to remain faithful to God throughout. And in that characteristic, all of the heroes mentioned in Hebrews 11 are truly heroes. But if you look at their broader stories as told in scripture, they come out as very human, with weaknesses and failings. In fact, they make very suitable examples.

    This leads me to a key point: Heroes can be destructive as well as challenging. The Proverbs 31 woman is a good example. There are some women out there who are encouraged by the way in which their role is honored in that passage. Others live in misery because they can’t live up to what they see as the Biblical standard on a daily basis. Jesus is an excellent and challenging example to us, but I find myself relating to Peter a lot better sometimes. Jesus may have been tested in all ways as I have been, but it was “without sin.” Jesus walked on the water; Peter took a plunge; I’m more like Peter! Now don’t get me wrong here. I believe in asking “what would Jesus do?” on a regular basis. But I also believe that there’s a reason Peter is in the Bible. When I try to walk on water and find myself in an unplanned deep sea dive instead, I can look back and say, “Peter was a leader amongst the disciples, and he had bad days too!”

    So role models don’t always have to be heroes in the sense that we use that term in modern times. As far as I can see, the Bible never whitewashes its lead characters. We can learn both from their good decisions and from their bad. The most important thing to note is that just because a Bible character does something, even if that character is a good person, does not mean that we should do likewise.

    Now let’s connect this to the simple issue of role models for girls. Anyone who can count can tell that there are less overt examples of female role models in the Bible than there are male. Because of that we tend to look carefully for the few really good role models that there are, and this can lead us to whitewash certain people even more. Some would say that the scarcity of female role models in scripture simply indicates that women are to be less active. But I would simply ask if everything that was common behavior in Bible times should be regarded as normative. There are many things we do not follow as norms today, including the fairly common occurrence of plural marriage, arranged marriages, forbidding marriage between Jews and gentiles, absolute monarchy, and on and on. Just because it happened doesn’t mean it’s a model for now.

    In addition, there are hints that more may be going on behind the scenes. For example, we have Huldah the prophetess who suddenly pops up in 2 Kings 22:14. Why would a group of leaders go to her with a question if she hadn’t already been exercising the prophetic office? So here we have an indication that women may have a public role, though in the patriarchal society their role was limited in scope.

    “But,” says some reader, “You still leave us with few role models for women!” And you are right. Now, I’m going to get to my point. The scriptural basis for this is found in Psalm 78, which I regard as an excellent charter document for religious education:

    1(A Wisdom Song by Asaph)
    Open your ears to my instruction
    Turn your ears toward the the words I speak.
    2I will open my mouth in a teaching song.
    I will speak hard sayings from ancient times.
    3Words which we have heard and known,
    and our ancestors have told us.
    4We will not hide them from their children,
    speaking YHWH’s praises to a later generation,
    His strength, and the wonderful things he has done.
    5And he raised a testimony in Jacob,
    and set instruction in Israel,
    Which he commanded our ancestors
    to teach to their children.
    6So that the later generation might know,
    The children to be born would rise up,
    and teach them to their children.
    7That they might set their hope in God,
    And might not forget his mighty deeds,
    But might observe his commands. — Psalm 78:1-7 (TFBV)

    Grab your favorite “easy reading” Bible version and read the whole chapter. The story of God’s activities has not stopped. We are responsible to pass that story from generation to generation and in turn, “put our trust in God” which itself will add to the story, just as the Psalmist is adding to the story through some of the incidents he relates.

    So my suggestion is to start your search for role models in the Biblical stories, but don’t stop there. My first set of sources is actually in the apocrypha. How about Susanna or Judith? Again, you need to read all stories with due consideration for the weaknesses of any human example. But even more than this, you need to continue through Christian history and into the present, telling the stories of faith.

    When I first returned to the church after my 12 years of “wilderness wandering” after graduate school, and started teaching, I was looking for this type of story. I found that the idea of telling our own stories about how God has worked in our lives was a bit foreign to the congregation of which I was a member. Stories of faith were about people in the Bible, and maybe on good days about people a few generations back, but never about today.

    So I got on the phone with my mother. Why? Because my mother told us stories of faith in her own life. Lots of stories of faith. When I wondered whether God could or would work in our lives, I wasn’t merely, pointed to the red sea or Elijah on Mt. Carmel or the resurrection, though my parents believed and taught those stories. I was referred to things in our own present life. So I asked my mother to write them down so I could use some as examples. She did, and the result was the booklet Directed Paths, stories of her life as a missionary nurse along with my father, who was a missionary doctor. As I write this my father is in intensive care after surgery, though the prognosis is good. He’s 85 years old, and as my mother and I talked before the surgery, all we could say was that if this was God’s time to take him, we knew that he had run a good race. I can say the same thing of my mother. But the key thing here is that she told me about God’s work in her life. Because she testified, she can serve as a role-model of faith.

    Now I publish the booklet I mentioned above, and I won’t deny that I’d love for you to buy and read it, but that isn’t the point of bringing it up. What you need to do is look at your own life, and the lives of your parents and other family members, discover those stories of God’s working, and tell them. Do what my mother did and make yourself a part of the ongoing story of God, in a sense part of the Bible story. You can find sources in the Bible, in the history of the church and communities of faith, and finally in the history of your own family. This is sharing and becoming a part of the story. If you don’t share it, you can’t be part of it. You’ll find that there are more and more stories of people that girls can use as role models as time moves forward.

    Of course, then there’s the hard part:

    11But they conquered him by means of the blood of the lamb,
    and by means of the testimony they spoke,
    And they did not love their lives even up to death. Revelation 12:11 (TFBV)

    We commonly quote the first two lines, but the last one is a bit harder. Getting to be a part of the story can involve hardship and can even involve death. My mother’s story includes a time of running for our lives in the middle of the night, and a time when I nearly died as a child due to circumstances involved in her ministry. I know of missionaries overseas and here at home who have lost more. But there are plenty of stories to work with.

    Become a part of the story!

  • 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.