Exploring the Well

Wandering the savage garden...

The Role of Forward Momentum

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This morning, I caught myself thinking that if you traced the motion of a leaf on the wind, you’d end up with something approximating the face of God.

More rationally, you’d end up with a bunch of squiggly lines, but then again, who are we to say that’s not a valid representation of the Most High?

It’s not a traditional representation, after all, of anything that relates to God. We think of God in the abstract. Most Jews don’t think of God as a concrete image at all, because of the injunction against graven images, so even the squiggly line might be out of bounds, if it’s considered an image of the Holy One.

But tradition is a huge thing in today’s Christianity, more than it should be.

There’s a huge movement in the church today to “revert,” to do what the original Christian church did; meeting in houses, fellowshipping in small groups. Less formal services, more direct communication among believers; it’s a model that you follow when your church has no money and no space.

Now that churches do have money and space, it’s not as necessary; we also have a professional leadership (seminaries train pastors, and we see “lay pastors” as different than, well, “actual pastors.”) Pastors no longer always know everyone in their congregation; the congregations are too large for “successful churches.” Productions are elaborate; services are more like performances.

This is our forward momentum now, this is our tradition.

The move towards small groups in today’s church is an oddity – a welcome one, but an oddity. Small groups enable believers (or, well, anyone) to minister directly to others, to connect with them directly, in ways the larger church cannot.

For example, in my small group (“life group,” or “study group,” or – in our case – “Truth Project group,” which deserves to be mentioned on its own in another post), one member recently found that his employment situation was unstable, and I had a death in my family – but neither of these things have a place in the larger church environment.

But in the small group, it’s natural and proper for those things to be shared and prayed over, commiserated with and understood. The result is that everyone feels closer and connected, and the Spirit of God is closer to each of us.

Yet this is something that’s both very old (in that it’s how the church existed in its second phase) and very new (in that churches are just now starting to encourage this kind of connection again.)

(Why “second phase?” Because the really early church was a collection of Jews, who met in the synagogue, who happened to think that the Messiah had come. The more traditional, non-Messianic Jews kicked them out, and they ended up meeting in homes. Thus, “second phase.”)

Forward momentum has a huge role in our lives, not only cultural but religious momentum informs everything. It creates our assumptions and it informs everything we think and do; much of how you believe and what you believe has to do with a sort of “belief trajectory” that incorporates everything you’ve experienced.

Thus, for me I carry the cultural mores and traditions that say who Moses was, and who Elijah was, and who Jesus was, even though the histories and descriptions we have from the Bible draw much less information than we have. These traditions and mores affect very much what and how I believe.

You, also, do the same thing; chances are very strong that there is some common ground in the traditions (because the same seed cultures created all of our modern cultures) but the differences inform everything we do.

The main thing for me to remember in all this is that momentum is good because it exists; the willingness to revert or try new things is also good, but the measure of propriety is how much any change glorifies God.

Shalom.

Originally posted on December 27, 2011.

I’m Thankful for My Church

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My family and I attended church services on Christmas Eve, at 5:00 p.m., the first of three services our church put together. The next service was at 9:00 p.m., and the last service was Sunday morning, on Christmas day.

The services were fairly normal services for the church, although they did have some special features – a family played some instrumental Christmas music, and we had interpretive dance (rhythmic gymnastics, with ribbons, which is one of my favorite gymnastics sports for some reason. I really don’t know why. I like watching the ribbons hang in midair while the gymnast is off doing something different.)

The thing that struck me about the services, beyond the unusual aspect of the special features, was how normal it was. It was Christmas-themed, of course, and centered on Luke 2, but it was a normal service, with an invitation (a very unobtrusive one, like always), the standard format of the service, everything.

If you’d visited on Christmas Eve, and then showed up again in February, you’d see the same services. (Well, content would differ, of course…)

My church – at which I’m blessed to be – is very focused on the Christian mission, to be witnesses for Christ to all, without an overbearing approach.

Everything we do is Jesus-focused.

Our music is chosen to glorify God and not man – so some Christian music isn’t used, even though it might be good. A song that’s derived from Biblical sources might be excellent, but if it doesn’t point the listener to Jesus, it’s just not right for the church. There’s nothing the church has against something like that, but the church’s music itself is always focused on the One for whom the church exists.

Our messages, the sermons, are likewise focused. Our pastor is gifted in exhortation, but he doesn’t preach morals or social awareness without, again, focusing on Jesus. He does exhort us to act morally, but he does so in context of what the Holy Spirit wants us to do. At no point does he say we are to try to “be good,” a task which in Christianity is impossible without Christ anyway, but he tells us to follow Christ, which will lead us to do good things through Him.

Our church does things for the community, too; we put on a festival in late October, free to all, without burden of being forced into church – but many things at the festival were inviting nonetheless. Free food, of course, and the church band was playing for any and all to hear; the church invited attendees to take tours of the building to show them how geared we are for their benefit.

I know it sounds like it wasn’t all that low-key, but it was, from everything I’d heard. (I was on a business trip. I’d signed up to help, but the festival was delayed for rain and I had to fly out of town.)

That low-key yet consistent approach builds an undertone of service for the church that’s very effective for Christ, and effective for members as well. It makes me happy that God put us here, in this region, and in this church, that we could grow in Him and help others through that growth.

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas.

Shalom.

Originally published on December 26, 2011.

Lost in Translation?

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Last week, our Sunday School teacher had a couple of really interesting points while talking about Philippians 4:4. This is the one that reads something like this:

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice.

Our teacher, who works at a HVAC company, was pointing out the difference between a thermometer and a thermostat.

A thermometer is something that measures temperature; a thermostat is something that controls temperature, assuming your AC is working properly, of course.

So how does that apply to Philippians 4:4? Well, the command (“rejoice!”) is a thermostat-type command, not a measurement.

It means that we are not to find joy, passively, but to see joy in our being in God’s will.

It means that our circumstances are able to control our happiness, but not our joy. Our happiness comes and goes; that’s normal. I could have been happy if my team had won on Thursday; I can be unhappy that it lost. That said, whether I’m happy in my external circumstances or not does not affect my joy.

My joy is a decision, a state enabled by God. It is a constant, regardless of my circumstances. It’s not always easy; I certainly fail at it.

But my choice is to find joy in all things, in that:

  1. God is in control. (“And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose”, Romans 8:8)
  2. The trials God places upon us have a purpose. (“Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance,” James 1:2-3)

The other thing that stood out was the actual text used for the verse. The translation I like for the verse is slightly different than the NASV I used above:

Rejoice in union with the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice.

I find this clearer, because it focuses on the reason for the joy, rather than an unspecific “have joy.”

I run into this a lot, because the translations are trying to be readable, more than connotatively accurate.

Readable is “Thou shalt not kill.”

Better is “Thou shalt not murder.”

Accurate is “Thou shalt not lie in wait (to murder.)”

The latter is far more reaching than a simple “thou shalt not kill” rendering, because the Bible definitely has examples of people being put to death through law. (Your mileage may vary as to how you feel about this.)

If capital punishment is legal through the Law – and it is – then “thou shalt not kill” isn’t enough. The formation of the capital errors looks something like this:

If a man does the peppermint twist backwards while singing “heaven to stairway a buying she’s,” then he shall surely be put to death, and their blood shall not be upon them.

It’s fairly formulaic: if one performs a given act, this is the punishment, and their blood shall not be upon them. The “their” here is “the one being put to death.” The “them” is “the ones performing the punishment.”

Therefore, if the unfortunate soul caught doing the peppermint twist backwards (while reciting, etc. etc.) is put to death, the blood of the criminal is not upon the hands of those who punished him.

So “thou shalt not kill” has clear-cut exceptions, even in its simple rendering, which is all right, I suppose…

But I still prefer “thou shalt not lie in wait,” because of the more broad implications. It’s not just that you kill someone, you see, it’s that you intended to kill a specific person.

But is it really “kill?” Could it be more?

Well, the Decalogue already has injunctions against covetousness, lies, theft, and more, so would they be necessary if this commandment applied to those as well? I say yes, because of the purpose of the Ten Commandments.

The Ten Commandments were not for God. They were for us. (“The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath,” Mark 2:27, can be considered a template for this concept.) God doesn’t need the Commandments, but we do, because we are wayward.

So to me, it makes perfect sense that God would be specific in areas to cover types of behavior; the “lie in wait” to do harm is appropriate to govern what we should do.

This doesn’t address the role of the Law for Christians. One of the things that burns me up is when Christians use the Law as a club with which to beat others. It’s not that way! The Law, for Christians, is a guide, certainly, but the Law does not cover us nor govern us.

The Law is meant to serve us. Paul and Simon Peter had a conflict over the application of the Law to Christians; Paul’s point was convincing, therefore Christians don’t do a lot of things that the Torah requires.

Nor should they do those things. It would not be bad if they did, but those things are not altogether meaningful for Christians, and some are things Christians should not do, if they’ve accepted Jesus – the blood sacrifice, for example, is something that the death of Christ on the cross completed. A blood sacrifice ignores the propitiation of sin that Christ gave us.

Paul said that the Holy Spirit guides us, not the Law. (See Hebrews 6.) We act as God wills, not by the will of a codex whose purpose it was to point us to a time when we would be acceptable in God through the blood of Jesus.

Accepting the full rule of Law would be difficult for Christians anyway – look at how few Jews even try. (The Orthodox certainly do, but they’re not the majority by any means.) If you’re going to apply the law, well, you should apply all of it, not just the parts that please you – and applying the parts that please us is usually exactly what happens.

Shalom.

Originally published on December 24, 2011.

Alcohol

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In another conversation with one of my kids – the typical way for me to think of things to write – alcohol came up somehow.

I’m trying to remember the course of conversation that led to that, but I don’t. When I’m taking them to school, I tend to just riff on about any subject that we happen to come across, and sometimes I actually say stuff that’s worth hearing.

So the subject of that particular conversation was, like I said, alcohol, and naturally I was putting it in context of the Christian life.

The short form is that I don’t think alcohol is a bad thing (although too much is), and the church has a tendency to say any alcohol is a bad thing. The Bible doesn’t quite back the church up on that.

I don’t drink alcohol, myself. It’s a taste I think you have to acquire, and living in the United States I am blessed to have clean water available at any time. (The poorest person in the United States has access to things that some other countries would consider unimaginable riches. James 4 has stuff that applies to every American, yet we handily assume that we’re poor and it doesn’t apply to us.)

That said, I don’t have a biblical reason to avoid alcohol. Nor does anyone else.

Consider: for one thing, the Bible never says not to drink. It says not to overconsume (“Be not drunk with wine,” Ephesians 5:18) but not to avoid, although there are some situations in which it was to be avoided.

What are those situations?

One was in the Tabernacle (Leviticus 10:9); pagan worship was ecstatic through the use of many things (sex, art, strong drink) and Hebrew worship was deliberate and solemn. You were supposed to approach God with a clear head, not one filled with… something else.

Another was if you were a Nazirite. The Nazirim (“Nazirians?” “Nazirish?”) were consecrated to God in everything; they were supposed to not cut their hair or touch anything ritually unclean, and they weren’t supposed to touch alcohol. Samson (“Shimshon” in Hebrew) was a Nazirite, although he clearly didn’t pay attention to a whole lot of the code, as I understand it.

I don’t know of any living Nazirim, and the Tabernacle and Temple no longer exist. There are other situations, I’d imagine, but I don’t know of any that wouldn’t be very limited in scope – and the ones I know of are cultural and not biblical.

Also consider: they didn’t have clean water. It was unhealthy to drink unpurified liquid, and purification wasn’t easy; fermentation was. Drinking only unfermented liquids would have been very odd, and unhealthy for the most part.

This is circumstantial, of course; there’s nothing saying that they could not get by with only nonalcoholic drinks. It just seems like a stretch to me.

Also consider: Jesus’ first recorded miracle was at a wedding – converting water to wine (John 2:10, and many others). If alcohol was to be avoided in all things, I doubt Jesus would have done this.

There’s some assertion that Jesus, too, was supposed to be a Nazirite (not just a Nazarene, one who was from the town of Natzaret). However, the reference in Isaiah (Is. 11:1) doesn’t necessarily use Nazirite – it uses “neser,” which means “branch,” not “nasir,” which means “consecrated.”

Of course, the text doesn’t actually say “neser” or “nazir” – it didn’t have any vowels, so you had a phonetic word written down. (וְנֵ֖צֶר is translated “branch,” where הַנָּזִיר֮ is “nazir” – and these have the vowels where the original did not.) Plus, the rest of Isaiah 11:1 uses context of a growing thing, a plant, which would make the Nazirite reference a little odd.

In any event, we have no assertion that I know of that says that Jesus abstained from wine – and considering that He provided it to others, it’d be highly unlikely that such an assertion would hold.

So as I understand it, the admonition should not be for the laity to avoid all wine. The admonition would be to be moderate in all such things; if you drink, you are to be wise about it and avoid drunkenness.

That seems simple; it’s unfortunate that so many see an opportunity for overzealousness and use it as a club to beat others with.

Shalom.

Originally published on Dec 23, 2011.