June 15 2006

I am not sure what this will be about, but I felt like adding to the blog. That "church shopping" entry is getting old. I am taking it pretty easy these days, probably more than I should be. I have some work to do this summer, reading five books and writing a paper on my philosophy of education. I have no clue. I wanted to take a class this summer, but I could not afford it. Maybe I should not have bought that television and ordered digital cable, but I probably won't be saying that when the Tour de France is on every day next month. I also need to prepare curriculum for next school year, and I have not started on that yet. I will be teaching Genesis through Ruth and the life of Paul, which I am hoping to turn into Acts-Revelation. I need so much time to prepare for these things.

Today I was planning to do some editing on Justin Griffin's paper/book, but I ran out of time. I went and played disc golf with Thomas at Winthrop Lake. I shot 66 last time, but 75 or 76 this time. We played with a guy named Kenneth, who was better than us, with a full bag of discs.
What I was really looking forward to was riding bike with the group led by Carl from a church on the road to York. It was a good ride, but there was more traffic and more dogs than are fun to deal with. But I guess that keeps it interesting. One dog almost ran right into my front wheel. After the halfway point, three of us rode off the front, and were cruising right along, kind of trading turns at the front. The other guys' names were Rick and Hans. They were both a little faster than me, when it came down to a hill after 5 or so miles, and the hard part to take is that they were both at least 20 years older than I, Hans probably 40 years older than I am. But he is Dutch, so I guess being good at riding a bike is in his blood, right? I rode out to the meeting place, and back, so the ride wound up as 67 kilometers for me, in 2 hours, 18 minutes. Not bad, considering all the stop signs and regroupings, and considering my legs were sore from playing soccer Tuesday night in my too small cleats.

I am listening to John Piper's biographical message on Adoniram Judson, and he is throwing it down! I wish I had the spiritual and theological balls that he has. Yes, I said that. He is talking about the invincible purpose of God to spread the gospel of the glory of Christ among all nations and result in churches that bring cultures to obedience to King Jesus. And God's plan to bring this about through the sufferings of his ministers, like Adoniram Judson, like Paul, and like Jesus for that matter.

I am often thinking about whether the Christian faith is so doctrinal, authoritative, and absolute truth-based, when I read the growing testimony and thinking of post-modern minded believers. I definitely lean toward thinking it is absolute and unchanging, the "faith that was once for all delivered to the saints," which Jude tells us "contend for" (1:3). The thing that makes me second guess it is the often persuasive arguments and perspectives of those who claim that Christ and the faith are opposed to much of the dogmatizing in the history of Christianity. The latest thing that has me thinking this is a comment in the blog http://polyesterpixiesundertheprayerrug.blogspot.com/, about literalism, from May 30. I met d. in the Orchard, the fan community of Over the Rhine. Another source that has me thinking along such lines is the book The Last Word: Beyond the Bible Wars to a New Understanding of the Authority of Scripture, by N.T. Wright, Bishop of Durham, and former professor of New Testament at Oxford or Cambridge. His basic point is that Scripture has historically, when understood correctly, functioned authoritatively in the church not as a sourcebook for prooftexts for doctrinal disputes, but as the story that orders our lives and mission in the church. That means for today that we are to be about God's work in the world of proclaiming redemption in Christ that will ultimately result in the renewal of all things, which is about what he says in the book. I agree with that for the most part, but I think it can result in vagueness, and that the Bible gives us more details than that, frankly. I think we need to believe those things too.

Piper just told the story about Judson's conversion and encounters with Jacob Eames(sp?). INCREDIBLE stuff. Wow!

I have been pondering the relationship of the teaching and examples in the later parts of the canon of the Hebrew Scriptures and the religious situation of Judaism at the time of Christ. I started thinking about this, I guess, when I questioned the practice of the "See you at the pole" prayer event at our school (and many schools across the nation) that happens every fall. It is an event that encourages students to pray around the flagpoles in front of their schools. The reason I questioned the practice is because it seems that prayer is performed in front of the flagpole in order for people passing by to see it. I asked whether this was a reason we are told to pray in the Bible, and I read to my students what Jesus said in Matthew 6:5-6, "And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. 6But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you." I know the flagpole event does not (hopefully) encourage public prayer for self-righteous attention-getting, but rather example-setting. But I wonder whether prayer is supposed to be for setting an example and making a statement. One of my students protested, "But Daniel prayed in front of his open window where people could see him." She and the other members of the student government had just heard teaching on this from one of the other Bible teachers on a weekend retreat. I am so glad she said that, and that one of my other students (when I continually questioned the practice), said I was only looking at the negative side of things, ignoring the good that could come from such public prayer.

When I thought of the example of Daniel (Daniel 6), I considered that maybe the practice of pious Jews praying in public started when the Jewish exiles, or returnees, heard the story about Daniel standing up for what was right publicly, and in an effort to follow that righteous example, the practice slowly degenerated into self-righteous spiritual swagger. Perhaps it ended up with Pharisees in the time of Christ doing things like this:

10"Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed (or "standing, prayed to himself") thus: 'God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.'"

I have been thinking this especially since I read through Chronicles, which was traditionally believed to have been written by Ezra, I think. I have been using the book The Literary Structure of the Old Testament by David Dorsey, to help me understand how the books fit together. His analysis highlights sections that talk about the central role of the Priests and Levites in the history of Israel and Judah, particularly, as an encouragement (supposedly) to the Jews returning from exile to support the work of rebuilding the temple and establishing the worship led by the Priests and Levites. Did that lead to the exaltation of Jewish religious leaders so that by the time of Jesus, they wielded excessive authority over the Jewish people? More on that later.