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heroic love: 1 Corinthians 16

September 6, 2008 by David Baer

For partisans of language practice that erases the gendered aspects of the way people speak and write, the apostle Paul’s vocabulary as he wraps up his first letter to the Corinthians could be embarrassing.

Be courageous, he tells them. His word is andrizesthe, a verb associated with the noun aner, for ‘man/male’. A less circumspect translation in times before such matters had become part of our consciousness might have rendered this ‘Be men!’, or ‘Play the man!’. Readers female and male would have known what he meant and felt themselves called to a common response. Continue Reading »

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not quite a (black) pearl: Bryan Adams, ’18 til I Die’

September 5, 2008 by David Baer

Bryan Adams’ 1996 compilation of greatest hits is all about cheap thrills. With lyrics like `The only thing that looks good on me … is you’, `I just wanna’ be … your underwear’, you don’t buy this album after a hard think about whether to spend your nine bucks on this or on, say, that new translation of Homer’s Odyssey. You plunk down your cash for good, old-fashioned, hedonistic, irreverent rock & roll. The second most overused line in assessments of Bryan’s music—after `the Canadian rocker’—seems to be `feel-good rocker’.

With good reason. Continue Reading »

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bound for glory: 1 Corinthians 15

September 5, 2008 by David Baer

Biblical realism is not given to flights of fancy. The biblical understanding of the human creature is tenaciously realistic about both his frailty and his enormous capacity for evil. The first chapters of the biblical anthology tell us that man and woman are glorious creatures, saturated with qualities that affiliate them more with the Creator than with the creation of which they are undeniably a part. It is this very grandeur that frames the fracturing of the divine image in humankind as tragedy rather than a merely regrettable accident.

If, as the old table prayer puts it, ‘God is great … God is good …’, the biblical witness might be paraphrased as claiming that ‘Humans are great … but humans are not good …’ Continue Reading »

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D.Min. or PhD.: that is the question …

September 4, 2008 by David Baer

In the last two decades, the wily old PhD has been challenged by a feisty upstart, the Doctor of Ministry. High-achieving individuals dedicated to some field of theology, biblical studies, or pastoral ministry often hop back and forth between the two, wondering which better fits their needs and life situation.

First, some terminology. Let’s begin with the Doctor of Philosophy. In North America, this research degree is usually abbreviated Ph.D, while in Great Britain PhD is more common. There are variants, of course. Harvard University and Harvard Divinity School, for example, offer both a Ph.D. and a Th.D. The latter abbreviates Doctor of Theology. Although there are fierce debates inside Harvard regarding the equivalence (or not) of the two degrees, people on the outside generally regard them as two variants of the same course of study. On the other side of the Atlantic, Oxford University offers the DPhil. Continue Reading »

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Learn to fly fish in Seattle: Emerald Water Anglers

September 3, 2008 by David Baer

Seattle-based Emerald Water Anglers can fit a one- or two-day fly fishing school into your business trip to Seattle. Better yet, they’ll tailor the pace and content to your level. They can do this because their classes max out at four students and usually only enroll one or two at a time.

I capped a recent week of meetings in that gorgeous Pacific Northwest city by joining Ted McDermott and another student I’d never met for a day of bumping up the fly-fishing skills. I found Ted an engaged and knowledgeable teacher who was able to work with my fellow student and me to craft a class on the hoof that moved us both forward. Ted was particularly helpful on reading the water and understanding hatches, two areas where my own adventures in fly fishing needed some shoring up. Continue Reading »

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all for building up: 1 Corinthians 14

September 3, 2008 by David Baer

It is common to imagine that Paul’s discussion with the Corinthians in this place is about spiritual gifts or even about glossolalia, the phenomenon of speaking in an unknown language.

It is not.

Paul’s intense concern to help the Corinthian church get the thing right is about selfishness over against a concern for the integrity and maturation of the community. ‘Speaking in tongues’ is merely the occasion. Continue Reading »

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Sammy takes one for the team: the story of a rescued Rhodesian Ridgeback

September 3, 2008 by David Baer

When we agreed to foster Sammy, we were making a Faustian bargain with our own inclination toward loving dogs. We knew deep inside, though the unspoken pact required that the agreement never be mentioned in conversation, that we could never ‘give him back’. It was a clandestine adoption, an under-the-table bargain by which Sammy would instantly become a member of the family while we politely lied to ourselves that any such thing was happening. It was a rescue disguised as a holding pattern. He would be ours, but under the fiction that he was not. From time to time, the language of ‘returning him’ surfaced in a hypothetical way, though we both knew that there was not a them out there to whose company Sammy could be restored if things didn’t work out.

It was a most amenable fiction. It was the whitest of lies. Continue Reading »

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straight ahead: Proverbs 4

September 2, 2008 by David Baer

The conventional biblical wisdom found in the book of Proverbs entwines the thread of proximity with that of exertion. That is to say, one of the collection’s principal burdens is to persuade the young man or woman that wisdom is available. Indeed, personified as Lady Wisdom, she stands in the street and calls out to passersby. One need not sail over the horizon to find wisdom. It is right here, right now.

On the other hand, wisdom becomes the province of those who exert heroically constant efforts to acquire it. If it is near, it is not easy. If it is on offer, it is not cheap. To acquire wisdom—this indeed is the noblest of ambitions in the book’s purview—is to commit oneself to the a lifelong pursuit that takes its shape against formidable odds.

It is easy to be foolish. The law of moral entropy, though the Proverbs nowhere use this language, assures us that those who do not battle for wisdom will necessarily end up fools. Wisdom is sweet, but it is not humankind’s destiny. To get wisdom is to swim against the current every day, for a lifetime. There is no end to the effort. Indeed, one of the book’s energizing convictions is that the wise are set up not so much to remain in that status but to get still further wisdom. The book does not worry itself overmuch about the destination. It is far more concerned with wisdom’s path, with the listening, submitting, humbly aggressive practice that brings the prize within reach. Continue Reading »

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to sing again: Psalm 149

September 1, 2008 by David Baer

** a wedding gift for J.R. and Molly Friesen, married yesterday in Billings, Montana, USA

The rhythm of life with YHWH includes periods of silence and still others when the only audible sound is a groan. It is the good fortune of those whom YHWH accompanies that this unmelodious moment is, if not short-lived, then at least bound to its season. Despair’s silence and pain’s sigh are conceded their space on the enigmatic score, yet they are not intended to dominate the course from one movement to another nor to usurp the final one.

Rather, the biblical poets alert us to the ambitious, spontaneous eruption of a new song. The thrusting forth of this dance-able melody comes often when least expected and casts all subdominant grief in a new harmonic frame. What a moment ago sounded forth with tyrannical self-confidence is understood now to have been a foil, a prelude, the musical antechamber to ejaculative joy of the kind that no prior musical experience has quite prepared one to encounter. Continue Reading »

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a song fits: Psalm 147

August 31, 2008 by David Baer

* Dedicated to my friend Rev. Robert Eyman, Spokane, Washington, USA

One of the finest of the so-called ‘Hallelujah Psalms’, the one hundred forty-seventh speaks an encouraging word to the broken-hearted among us. The poet angles in on the appropriateness of praise, recognizing that a universe governed in the way this one is ruled has become a venue where gratitude is the fitting response.

How good it is to sing praises to our God;
for he is gracious, and a song of praise is fitting. (Psalm 147:1 NRSV)

One does not arrive at such a response unreflectively. From every corner evidence presents itself that might well seem to render praise anything but the proper sound in a broken world where blood flows too freely and sorrow gathers in silent, menacing clumps. Yet the psalmist has fought his way to a hermeneutical angle from which his gaze takes in reasons for gratitude rather than resentment. He is convinced his angle is the proper one, not a cheap analgesic, no psychological trick crafted merely to dull the pain. Continue Reading »

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