In outstanding contrast

eejoseph, , ,

Bible study comes in various forms and they are supposed to all end with glorious edification, but leave it to me to affirm that they also end with catastrophic confusion, regret,  and at least a good feeling. 

A scholarly Bible study 🎯

A Bible study attended by scholars is bound to be a furious rollercoaster ride with no apologies.  The theologians’ Bible study will have that Columbo effect; always “one more thing”.  This means that conclusions are likely to be multilayered, appear unnecessarily complex, and will be off the beaten path.  While the proverbial forest waits for discovery the scholars are paying attention to every little tree.  One last thing; the study is not guaranteed to end with the dart to bullseye.

A speculative inspection Bible study

A group of friends enter a wooded area, and the sound of birdsong immediately fills their ears. The blind one points over to the left, saying “House Finch”, and one lady raises her binoculars and says “There he is”, and everyone in the group turns to see a splash of red. The person who had never seen a House Finch had learned what sounds one makes. Bird watching, or more precisely, birding, can be satisfying without eyes. Bible study without eyes, or ears or lips intersecting with the Sacred Text is just not happening.

Photo by Chris F on Pexels.com

Reading repeatedly

Reading the Bible is a priority we should never overlook, as some do, opting to elevate commentaries and unhinged visions.  We should be especially wary of narratives of  Yeshua’s life coming from people who have no respect for the integrity of the four Gospels and who have no idea that plain sayings in the Bible cannot be better explained by anything beside the Bible, even when one reads over and over again.

People in New Testament times were sure of what they were reading or hearing quoted from the Bible.  The  Bible was in their language!  Explanations serve to bring the Messiah into the picture, not to clarify what the authors intended their readers.  The only way to thoroughly understand the Bible is to read it, but please do not keep making  the mistake of imposing English, French, or Spanish grammar on its sentences. When they repeated the reading it was for the purpose of emphasizing something that stood out, and in Hebrew and greek, every word stands out.

The authority of Scripture is locked up in the Scripture in languages that are foreign to most.    The impressions that come when the reader seeks understanding should never be mistaken for interpretation, because interpretation is going to be confirmed by what is written.  A person can foam at the mouth, fall down in a trance, become stuff as a plank and say God showed them x, y, and z but the proof that such manifestations are unreliable is extent in the embarrassing doctrines and practices that distinguish many faith groups of the twenty-first century.  The discovery of genuine Messianic doctrine will continue to elude us as long as people  try to pass each other off as teachers.

as also [Paul]  in all his letters, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction. (2 Peter 3:16, NASB)

The doctrine of Christ will always stand in stark contrast to the distortions of law and Levitical processes, because Christ and Moses (and the prophets) are not gospel partners.  The contrast could not be clearer.

The history of religious movements in the United States of America

eejoseph,

Which topics would you like to be more informed about?

The silence from the large faith communities on the corruption of secular and sacred standards would be better understood if the histories of American denominations could be found in easily accessible media.  Religious interests are too deeply entrenched in the turmoil of the twenty-first century to be kept under wraps.

Other interests of mine are the role of religious authorities in secular affairs, the actual progress of cancer research, and the  formulas used by regional governments to fund public projects.

As if they do not know

eejoseph

“Angry, superior, sick” (ASS) defines a lot of politics and religion.  Even the mild mannered evangelical Protestant is seething with rage, perpetually on the brink of violent defense of God and country.  Years ago it might seem that the rage in the public domain was a laughing matter, and the beginning of the campaign of the 45th president of the United States marked that point where  laughter was clearly the dominant response to the slogans of unrepentant Imperial and colonial rapists.  The walls of the theological evaluation of the current dilemma can hardly be more precise. People want to have (1) quality of life without (2) equality and (3)  uniformity without acknowledging (4) diversity.  It is as if they truly thought, and keep thinking, that laws are adequate for creating the kind of society that will endure and facilitate the thriving of all of the people.

Time spent avoiding versus time spent actively engaging

You cannot read The Ten Commandments and not realize that the focus of the morality that we say we derive from them can be achieved by sitting at home and doing absolutely nothing.  Talk about cheap morality!  Furthermore, loving one’s mother and father and honoring them are not a spiritual value; parental ties are known to be common to humanity.  Still, not even that seems to have made a sufficiently deep impression on the contemporaries of Yeshua of Nazareth.  If you have been looking for evidence that the law, regulation, ordinance and statute do not make a people stable or righteous,  look no further than the Jewish people and the United Nations, where language that is clear, crafted to be unambiguous, seems to go in one ear and out the next, because laws don’t change people.

What we know for sure

People flock to displays of the gift of prophecy, get excited about speaking in tongues, and assert that they have (first-rate) knowledge, but these are temporary values that will fail or vanish (See 1 Corinthians 13:8, NASB).  I think Paul means that they become irrelevant or ineffective for divine purposes and verifiably so when love is what everyone needs all the time.  Since the Way is personified in love’s suffering credibility is out of reach when we fail to see that loveless sins (the most popular and documented) are the epitome of injustice.

If you are angry, superior and sick, you’re an ass.  I am not trying to be generous, because some people have been evaluated as bested by the donkey and the ox. see how Isaiah’s prophecy begins.  What we know is what we consider.

Love cannot fail to exorcise fear

An unresolved status as children of God is disturbing and acting as if we do not know insults God because it is clear that the elect (saved people, not some 144,000 elite or small flock) are secure from indictment (Romans 8:33), beyond condemnation (John 5:24) and death (1 John 3:14). Salvation and the life as saints are not loans.  We are most certainly not on some kind of probation, which is one sure way to speculate about people’s eternal destiny and stop loving them.  How many times can God cleanse a person of injustice and not pull the plug?

Who will bring a charge against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies; (Romans 8:33, NASB)

We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love abides in death. (1 John 3:14, NASB)

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9, NASB).

We can approach one way and whatever may be our current need truth still prevails.  The truth about the way that makes us God’s children is the same truth that leads us to the dimensions of his generosity – to the throne of grace. 

We are watching how easily corrupt, shallow and hitherto unthinkables can take the spotlight and motivate malice and violence. The rulings of high courts, genocidal campaigns in Gaza, the perfidious slogans of partisan politics, and disredited religions are coalescing into a portrait of desolation. When people opt for segregation, racism, and fascism it is not because they do not know the truth; it is because they know, but are so saturated with self-interest, misogny, xenophobia, violent insurrection, stoking racial tension, that they choose to satisfy their depraved egos.