Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: Walla Walla University

  • Credit to One of My Teachers

    Credit to One of My Teachers

    Today in Sunday School class the teacher referred back to challenge I had presented to the calls some time ago. I had suggested reading the prophecies of Isaiah, particularly 2nd Isaiah (40-55) without our “Jesus colored glasses.” I don’t suggest this not because I think Christian readings are inappropriate, but rather because it helps give you a sense of history. Place yourself as best as you can into the place and time from which the prophecies were spoken.

    Professor J. Paul Grove
    J. Paul Grove

    Our Sunday School teacher today, Melinda Henry, brought this challenge back to the class, after she had taken it herself. In her experience an teaching it led to placing ourselves into these prophecies, particularly the servant passages, and seeing there the call to be a servant in just that way.

    When she did this I was reminded of when I was first challenged to read this passages in a different way. My undergraduate major in Biblical Languages was offered by the School of Theology at Walla Walla College (now a university). Thus most of my classes were taken with students who were preparing for pastoral ministry.

    I took a class in Hebrew prophets from J. Paul Grove, and I confess that I didn’t really like it that much. He was the one to first challenge me to read Isaiah in that fashion. In addition, he had the requirement that we produce three sermon outlines per week derived from the texts we were studying. I hated that requirement and even tried to get out of it by pointing out that I wasn’t going to be a preacher. But the professor insisted.

    It was a great experience and has stuck with me ever since. Paul Grove has gone on to his rest (as they would say in his SDA tradition), but I wanted to express my gratitude for pointing me toward some ideas I have used repeatedly in the years since, even though I thought it was wasted effort at the time.

  • Trouble at My Alma Mater – Walla Walla University

    Over the last few weeks I’ve been following events at my undergraduate alma mater, Walla Walla University, largely via the Spectrum Magazine blog, starting with the news that Pastor Alex Bryan of the Walla Walla University Church had been recommended as president by a search committee. Now it has been a number of years since I was a student at WWU and I don’t know the players personally. But as the story developed (you can follow it by using the search box at the link shown above and searching for either Bryan or McVay), various groups got together to campaign against Dr. Bryan, and the board, while considering him sound enough theologically to pastor the university church, decided they didn’t want him as president of the university.

    If I had been leaving the SDA church for personal reasons, this would have been one of them, “this” being the tendency of various small groups to get together to guarantee the total orthodoxy of all selections. My lifelong missionary parents even saw their membership blocked at a local SDA church.

    But wait a minute … I said “if”.

    The reason I bring this story up is as the backdrop for saying quite clearly: If you’re thinking of leaving your church for personal reasons (solely or even primarily), don’t!

    If I had left the SDA church for personal reasons, I would long since have found an equal number of reasons for leaving every church in which I have held membership since. The specific issues are different, but human nature remains the same. It is so easy to start a rumor campaign. One doesn’t even have to plan it. But when you add a little fear, such as people thinking “maybe our church won’t be the same as it always was,” and you can have a full campaign going before you know it. Fight it where you are, because it may well happen elsewhere.

    Perhaps this is why gossip is considered such a serious sin in Scripture. Paul often includes it with his “sin lists.” It’s right there in Romans 1:28-32, but for some reason I’ve never heard a sermon preached from that passage that concentrated on gossip as a sin. If we have any sin in the church that we refuse to give up and that we tolerate openly in contradiction to Scripture, I’d suggest gossip for the title. And just because gossip is spread through Facebook groups or on Twitter doesn’t make it any less gossip.

    But this is the other side of the coin. I said don’t leave your church if your reasons are personal, including this one. I’d suggest that one’s choice of a church home should be based on where you can carry out your call to ministry as a member of the body of Christ. All of us are called to ministry, and our faith community should be helping us carry out that call. You may have to leave a more gossipy church for a less gossipy one, assuming you can find one. But consider that God may be calling you to stay where you are and try to make things better.

    I have doctrinal disagreements with the SDA church that make it impossible for me to be a member. But I continue to be a member of a very imperfect church, just an imperfect church where God is working through the efforts of many imperfect people–like me.

    If we’d think more about service and less about our own comfort and safety, I think things would go much better.

  • Who’s Afraid of the Old Testament God?

    When I teach people about how to study the Bible, and especially when I talk to them about handling difficult passages, there is one category of passage that dominates:  Violent and sometimes difficult to understand passages from the Old Testament.  How can a God of love command the slaughter of thousands, even women and children?

    Christians have many different ways of handling these passages.  Some will say that we live in the New Testament era, and that things are different now, which both tends to dismiss the Jewish scriptures as a poorer set of writings, and also to leave open the question of why God would have behaved so poorly then.  It’s comforting to think he doesn’t do it now, but does that really answer the question?
    Others positively revel in the violence, joyful that not only is God a powerful God, but he’s willing to exercise that power and wipe out the bad guys.  Fortunately for the world, most of these people are far less violent in reality than they sound when preaching.  Doubtless most would be horrified to see some of these stories actually take place.
    There was one book that was critical when I was developing my view  of scripture, and especially of the difficult passages:   Who’s Afraid of the Old Testament God? by Dr. Alden Thompson.   I generally find that Alden’s views are a bit more conservative than mine, and also that he is usually a bit more gentle in presenting them, which is not a bad thing.

    I was Alden’s student at Walla Walla University, then just a college,  in the years before he first published the book, but we dealt with a number of the same issues in his classes. The book is now in its 4th edition, and I’m now the publisher as the sole owner of  Energion Publications.  There have been few changes through the editions, except for some adjustments of style and language. I find that new readers find it as relevant today as its first readers did in the early 1980s. Christians have struggled with these types of issues for a long time, and many have either been told not to question or have been given pat answers. Sometimes these answers are given as “offers you can’t refuse.” The attitude is “who are you to question God?” and thus if you don’t accept the explanation your faith is weak, or you may even be an infidel.

    Alden takes these issues head on, and finds grace in the Old Testament where others find anger. He doesn’t tell you that you shouldn’t ask such impious questions.

    He starts by suggesting that we need to see the Old Testament for itself (Don’t let your New Testament get in the way of your Old Testament), then puts the entire discussion in a Biblical context through discussion of creation and the fall. This is a fairly traditional chapter, and evangelical Christians should find themselves quite comfortable with this outline. He points to the “very good” of Genesis 1 and the “totally evil” of Genesis 6 showing the deterioration of humanity, and then asking how God is to deal with this state of rebellion. He uses the “great controversy” or “cosmic conflict” theme as a background. Some will want to get right to chapter 3, “Whatever happened to Satan in the Old Testament?” and here there is a unique view of the role of Satan in scripture.

    Then he gets down to the meat of the problem, successively dealing with the apparently strange laws (Strange people need strange laws), relationships between Israel and the Canaanites (Could you invite a Canaanite home to lunch?), and then the worst story in the Old Testament, Judges 19-21. I’m not sure this is the worst story, but it is certainly an excellent example. Alden applies his approach to questions of why such a story is included in the Bible, why God would allow such things to take place among His people, and what it is that we are to learn from the story. If you haven’t read it, do so now, possibly even starting with Judges 17 (Micah’s Images). If you find it difficult to see God’s grace in action in those chapters, you might find it valuable to read Alden’s discussion–it might transform your view of Old Testament history.

    From there Alden turns to “The best story in the Old Testament: The Messiah.” Here he discusses the Messianic prophecies and their application to the ministry of Jesus. Both conservatives and liberals will find some things to question here, because he neither affirms every Old Testament prophecy in the way that many conservative Christians would prefer, nor does he discard the notion of fulfilled prophecy. This chapter in itself is a worthwhile study for anyone who plans to discuss these Old Testament prophecies and their application.

    Finally, he deals with the prayers in the Psalms. We tend to read the Psalms a bit selectively, sticking with thoroughly comforting passages. But what about Psalm 137:8-9? How comforting is that? Is such vengefulness Christian? He titles the chapter, “What kind of prayers would you publish if you were God?”

    A common theme throughout the book, though it is not addressed head-on, is Biblical inspiration. Why are there things that are this difficult in the Bible if God is trying to communicate with us? How can we be sure of getting truth from the Bible. Alden doesn’t address Biblical inerrancy by that title, but he does look at the process of inspiration and how it works, and helps us find an anchor in the two laws (love God, love neighbor) as presented by Jesus to help us work our way through passages that are difficult to interpret.

    I have thoroughly appreciated this book from the time I first read it. I have taught a number of classes using it. I have found that it consistenly is a faith building book. At the same time it is honest, and allows the reader to question and feel confident in doing so. I would especially recommend this to Christians who have never been able to enjoy reading the Hebrew scriptures. It will help you get comfortable reading those passages and letting them speak for themselves.

    [I am editing and adapting this review from a post on my personal blog, reviewing the same book.]