Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: testimony

  • Psalm 78:5-7 – Generations

    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.)

  • Psalm 119:111 – Inherited Testimony

    Psalm 119:111 – Inherited Testimony

    I have inherited your testimonies forever,
    for they are my heart’s joy.

    This is a very rich text, getting a great deal into a few words. But my meditations took a path that would have surprised me when I first took a look at this today.

    When I read this, my focus was on forever, and then I thought of the history of God’s testimonies and how I, as a Christian can claim them. One critical element, I believe, is claiming God’s heritage without denying it to those who first received it. This is a matter of attitude. It is also a matter of reading scripture. The theme of “blessed to be a blessing,” not to mention numerous texts in 2nd Isaiah (chapters 40-55) tell me that God’s blessing is not intended as a possession in the exclusive sense. At the same time, if I receive a blessing because of someone else’s efforts, it is rude of me not to acknowledge those who received it and transmitted it.

    That is, after all, how “testimony” works. One tells another, and the testimony is passed on. Psalm 78:1-8 (and the rest of the Psalm) is a powerful example of this, citing four generations of passing on the wonderful works of the LORD.

    I was in a study group the other night, and mentioned some of the things I remembered my parents doing that had formed my own faith. One of the members commented that it was frightening to think that 40 years from now someone might be mentioning the impact his parenting had on his children. It’s worth considering.

    But there’s another point. What if you fail to acknowledge those who have passed on faith, good habits, knowledge, and experience, and pretend that you did it all yourself? My parents made sacrifices so that I could be the person I became. They gave me that opportunity.

    I can read the Psalms because people in Israel recorded and preserved the text. But beyond that, I can enjoy the Psalms because Israelites, and then Jews, experienced life, often difficult life, and recorded their thoughts and their walk. They left something for their children, but also for the entire world. I need to acknowledge that.

    This heritage of knowledge, faith, and life experience is not a limited commodity. It’s not an economic good. It’s not in short supply. Unless. Critical unless. Unless we fail to acknowledge it and pass it on.

    So tonight I’m thankful to many in Israel and Judah, and Jews dispersed through the world, for the preservation of the history of faith from which so many can benefit. Often in the face of death, they held on, they kept the record, and provided an example to all.

    It’s your heritage forever. Thank you for telling me about it.

    (Featured image generated by Jetpack AI.)

  • Psalm 119:65

    Psalm 119:65

    You have treated your servant well,
    according to your word, LORD.

    I pause to note a milestone. This is the first verse in the new section of Psalm 119. We’re in the section in which each verse starts with the ninth letter of the Hebrew alphabet, Teth. That is the first letter of “TOV” which is in turn the first word in the verse in Hebrew.

    In the previous verse we were talking about God’s grace filling the entire world, and I think, by extension, the entire universe. Our universe has grown from the time it was conceived of as “the heavens and the earth.” Our concept of God needs to come up against the vastness of the known universe and realize how much more there is as we expand our ability to observe.

    God is good. Just what do we mean by that? We really don’t have a measure of the goodness of God. I assume that God is better than I can actually conceive. But that is a statement that is by nature not subject to demonstration. I don’t have a range of gods to compare and say, “This one is the greatest. By nature, I can do nothing about it if I decide that God is not good, because God will still be God, the creator of that inconceivable universe.

    Here is where I rely on experience. Experience that happened a long time ago and is still remembered is called tradition, and the Bible is very old tradition indeed. My own experience parallels that of the psalmist. It parallels that of many friends. But it is fundamentally mine. My faith in God is informed and in some cases directed by external data, but is not fundamentally a rational conclusion because it very simply can’t be.

    So I say that God is good, more an act of acceptance and praise than a rational assessment to be laid alongside other rational assessments.

    It is this experience that should be the content of our testimonies. It is something we should be willing to talk about. We spend a great deal of time trying to prove miraculous events in previous millenia, while frequently forgetting to talk about what has happened yesterday.

    I like Psalm 78:

    1 Give ear, O my people, to my teaching;
        incline your ears to the words of my mouth.
    2 I will open my mouth in a parable;
        I will utter dark sayings from of old,
    3 things that we have heard and known,
        that our ancestors have told us.
    4 We will not hide them from their children;
        we will tell to the coming generation
    the glorious deeds of the Lord and his might
        and the wonders that he has done.

    5 He established a decree in Jacob
        and appointed a law in Israel,
    which he commanded our ancestors
        to teach to 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;
    8 and that they should not be like their ancestors,
        a stubborn and rebellious generation,
    a generation whose heart was not steadfast,
        whose spirit was not faithful to God.

    Psalm 78:1-8 (NRSVue)

    Notice the passing on of God’s deeds to the next generation. This is how we teach God’s goodness. It’s not just a catalog of data. It’s much more. It’s the collected experience of the community.

    How will you add to the story of faith today?

    (Featured image generated by Jetpack AI.)

    Books of Testimony from Energion Publications

  • The Importance of Experience

    I was thinking of titling this “In Which I Annoy My Evangelical United Methodist Friends,” since so many of them are talking about the Wesleyan Quadrilateral and trying to privilege scripture within it in some way. I am not entirely in sympathy with many of these approaches.

    You see, the moment I decided to take a closer look at the United Methodist Church was when I read in the United Methodist Discipline (1992, I think), about the sources of our faith. It’s not that I thought this statement was unique. Neither was it because I thought that Methodists had discovered the way to understand scripture correctly. Rather, I thought it honestly described what we actually do. And by “we” I do not mean just Methodists, but all Christians who use the Bible. We do not understand the Bible without our experience and our tradition, which is just experience collected across space/people and time. Reason ties these things together. Without our reason, we don’t come up with any interpretation of scripture at all.

    What privileges scripture, to the extent that it is privileged, is that it is the most universal, most tested, and most accepted source. My personal experience may be very important to me. In fact, it is. My personal encounters with God have an enormous impact on how I understand my faith. But the fact that I believe that God has told me a certain thing doesn’t make that determinative for someone else.

    Each congregation has a tradition, built on the collected experiences of that group. There will be similarities within a denomination, but there are local traditions. There are family traditions as well, collections of the experiences of members of that family over time. Denominations have traditions of their own and stand within broader tradition streams. For Methodists we have the Church of England as a source of tradition. Yes, we do carry things from that background. Then we have many who have broken off based on various elements of our own tradition.

    All of these experiences have an impact, conscious or otherwise, on how we understand and apply scripture. It cannot be any other way.

    This is one reason why I dislike the inerrancy debates, even though I’ve participated. I do not affirm the doctrine of inerrancy. The usual response to that is for someone who does affirm it to ask me for my list of errors with the intention of providing his or her list of resolutions for those errors. I don’t have a list of errors in scripture. I believe the Bible is what God wanted it to be. But that’s a belief that derives from my doctrine of God and not from any observations about the Bible and history or the Bible and science.

    Each item on such a list of biblical errors can be translated as “My errant understanding of subject X says that my errant understanding of scripture passage Y is in error.” Where’s the inerrant standard, inerrantly understood, that lets me determine whether the Bible is actually inerrant?

    So I make a different affirmation: When you’ve heard the message God has for you in scripture, that message is true. I follow it with an additional note: To the extent you need to, you can discover God’s message for you in scripture. Or anywhere else, for that matter.

    I have absolute confidence that God is speaking. I have similar confidence that my hearing is defective. That goes whether I’m feeling God’s presence as I listen to Mahalia Jackson singing “Just a Closer Walk with Thee,” hearing God’s voice in my head as I pray and spend silent time listening for it, or interpreting a passage of scripture.

    So what advantage does scripture have over my general impressions? To paraphrase Paul, much in every way. I’m tremendously thankful to folks like Abraham who had to listen to God’s voice without having that huge body, the “great cloud of witnesses” (Heb. 12:1) whose testimony has been tested over and over again. It’s the church’s testimony and it’s of paramount importance as I work my way through my own experiences.

    Here’s a discussion of this very issue. Thomas Hudgins and I don’t agree on all the details, but we do agree that these things work together to give us confidence in God.

    But it’s also a training ground. Read about maturity in Hebrews 5:11-14. The Bible fails if we treat it as systematic theology, as a science text, or even as a history text. That failure is not because of some list of theological, scientific, or historical errors. Rather, it’s because God has chose to speak through the testimony (witness to experience?) of many different people at different times and places. He requires us to use discernment and to see what is right and wrong as the decisions are placed before us.

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    So back to the quadrilateral. I treat it both as quadrilateral and as equilateral. We can enter by any door. Any one of these elements may provide the right question and might contain the right answer. It will not always end at scripture.

    But … and it’s an important but … there is a problem with the way United Methodists use the quadrilateral all too often. We tend to use it as a four lane highway. Which of the lanes can I get my idea through? If I get my idea through one, that’s enough. Instead, we need to use this as a four layer filter. Every answer we get to a question needs to interact with all elements. How does it relate to scripture? How does it fit with experience? What can we learn about this sort of thing through tradition? All of those questions will, of course, be processed by our reason. But that’s what the Spirit of Truth is for, after all, to guide us into all truth (John 16:13)! I illustrated this process with the diagram to the left in my book When People Speak for God.

    I believe that the nature of scripture is absolutely intentional on God’s part. Rather than giving us easy answers to easy questions he has given us a combination of testimony to God’s action in the world and principles (embedded in the testimony) by which we can make such decisions. When Jesus says, “On these two hang all the law and the prophets” (Matthew 22:40), he provides us with such a principle of interpretation. This is not a principle that helps you discover what the historical intent of a writer was. We have quite useful techniques of exegesis for that. But it provides us a principle for how we, as Christians living in the 21st century should apply it. Sometimes it says that the people who were doing their best to follow God didn’t live up to it. We should take those stories and try to hang the lessons we think we learn from them from the two commands as Jesus said.

    It’s interesting to compare the stories of Patriarchs in Hebrews 11 to their sources in Hebrew scripture. Moses left Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king (Hebrews 11:27), but he was afraid (Exodus 2:14). A biblical error? A contradiction? No! A testimony to what is seen by the eyes of faith.

    We need to struggle with these stories if we’re to see where we are and where we need to be brought to greater maturity. How many of us need to learn not to fear the wrath of the king? But if we look earlier in that same passage, how many of us need to learn not to take God’s work into our own hands through violence?

    Testimony, the telling of our own stories and experience, doesn’t give us the sort of systematic set of answers we might prefer. But it does train us to think, to discern, and to decide.

    My guess is that’s what God was after in allowing scripture to come into being as it did.

    Oh, and one more thing …

    Tonight I’ll be talking with author Doris Horton Murdoch about testimonies in a Google Hangout on Air titled Lent: Season of Testimonies.