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Posts Tagged ‘biblical reflection’

justification’s internal alignment: Romans 6

Posted in textures, tagged , , on July 20, 2010| Leave a Comment »

The justification of the unrighteous produces passivity only among those who have recklessly misunderstood the thing.

The more closely the apostle Paul’s argument approaches the unmerited favor of God to his rebellious children, the more energetic becomes his summons to align our understanding with that which God has pronounced to be true about us.

In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.

The rhetorical questions, the imperatival tone, and the use of the verb λογίζομαι (to consider or reckon) that abound in Paul’s letter to the Romans conspire to urge the believer to an almost athletic feat of mental recalibration.

To be declared just in the light of the redemption that Jesus has won for us on the cross, we see in Paul’s prolonged and intense discussion, does not automatically lead to a changed self-awareness nor to the righteous life that ought to ensue.

Rather, we are called to align our thinking and our conduct with the new reality of sinners-cum-righteous.

Perhaps in no other context is freedom at once so free and so demanding.

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naming names: 1 Chronicles 4

Posted in textures, tagged , , on July 12, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Though we toss off phrases like ‘the sanctity of life’ as though we all knew what we mean by that, the biblical literature traces the shape of such things in more narrative form.

Biblical narrative tends to insist on a couple of foundational dynamics that modern life obscures with a vengeance. For one, the narratives suggest that no life is so small or marginalized that it becomes no candidate for YHWH’s extraordinary attention. So does a poor woman’s dilemma become the centerpiece of several chapters of Israel’s epic history while the Omride Dynasty under which she lived—a period of rule which we know from archaeology to have been among the most impressive that ancient Israel produced—is spared just a few words. (more…)

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Answering God: The Prayers of our Fathers (Job 40, 42); Central Peninsula Church, Foster City, California

Posted in textures, tagged , , on July 4, 2010| Leave a Comment »

I will never forget the first time I heard the satanic voice that sounds again in the book of Job.

The year after I graduated from high school I took a summer job in a factory owned by a company called AMP in Middletown, Pennsylvania, a town more famous for hosting the Three Mile Island nuclear plant that taught us the word ‘melt-down’ just a few years later.

It was a mind-numbing introduction to the real world. My friend Scott Dunzik and I spent eight hours a day fitting one little piece of metal into another little piece of plastic. I have no idea what the gizmo we assembled in this way was for. All we knew was that it was to a little component inside a larger component inside a car.

What kind of larger component? We didn’t know

Ford? Chevy? Cadillac? Nobody was saying.

What would it do for the car? It was none of our business.

We were joined in that little bubble of madness by two grizzled old men—they probably looked a lot like me—who were our gurus. They were cynical, bored, and small-minded. Their task in life seemed to be to make sure that Scott and I ended up just like them. (more…)

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chaos, tactics, sovereignty: Acts 21

Posted in textures, tagged , , on July 3, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Great historical moments, when one knows the outcome, seem almost destined to have turned out the way they did. The participants in such critical junctures in the flow of human events, however, seldom or never have the luxury of such confidence. For them, there are many ways that things might turn out. Some might be dire. Some might cost them their lives.

Often wisdom takes a granular, tactical form that in the moment looks merely opportunistic. Seldom does one glimpse a guiding hand in history as one makes snap decisions while time’s a-wastin’ and the mob is getting itself up into full howl. Adrenaline plays at least as large a role as strategy. Tactics become the order of the day, even when there has been no time for these to descend in orderly fashion from a neat and overarching strategy.

Take Paul’s return to Jerusalem, pockets stuffed with news of Gentiles worshiping Israel’s messiah. It was, by and large, an unforeseen event. That is why it is worthy of such comment. Such massive movement of the morally unwashed in the direction of Torah and the God of Jacob who stood behind it was not in the playbook. (more…)

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everything that breathes: Psalm 150

Posted in textures, tagged , , on July 3, 2010| Leave a Comment »

In these post-modern days, in which every word and deed is supposed to veil a bare act of power, the Bible and those who express themselves in its pages are often accused of totalitarian urges. The accusation, upon careful review, nearly always rings hollow.

Yet the spirit of our age is familiar with power and at the same time too distracted for nuance, layers, and textures. Sucking that spirit into one’s lungs sets a person up for simplistic explanations and nicely posed theories that, in their own way, are attempts to corral all others into the pen that one knows best. Totalism, though it will not admit to such, is rich with irony.

The final line of the biblical psalter, viewed with glib self-confidence, stands out as a poster child of totalitarian urges. (more…)

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justice for sale: Proverbs 17

Posted in textures, tagged , , on June 23, 2010| 2 Comments »

Sometimes one’s own naivete—or, more precisely, the turtle-like pace of one’s learning—are enough to make teeth ache.

I remember as though it were yesterday the moment in the late 1980s when I realized for the first time the calamitous cost to a society that is incurred when justice is for sale.

My illumination came via a throw-away comment on the part of Dr. John Kessler, a Netherlands-born colleague in Costa Rica, who no doubt did not fully anticipate the ignorance of his conversation partner.

‘When bribes come into play’, John said without a hint of mirth or enjoyment, ‘then only those who can pay get justice. Those who cannot pay are ruled out ahead of time’.

A light came on. On this late afternoon, a hemisphere removed, the Proverb blows oxygen upon the lamp’s feeble flame:

The wicked accept a concealed bribe
to pervert the ways of justice.

Biblical prescription employs an uncanny knack for anticipating dysfunction.

It as though the Tradition’s accumulated voice articulates for all who will listen: ‘You do not yet understand this, but trust me: this leads to that‘.

Wisdom glimpses before time the inexorable path of destruction upon which certain behaviors fix a community. Biblical wisdom does not flinch in calling out the inevitable result.

A bribe is such a small thing. For those who can pay, its convenience is entirely persuasive.

Therein lies the tragedy: For those who can pay …

YHWH, we are told on repeated occasions, hears the groans of those who cannot pay. It is not a good thing to encounter YHWH, bribes paid up, in a dark alley when his little ones have been crushed.

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consternation and courage: Acts 4

Posted in textures, tagged , , on June 6, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Jerusalem must have throbbed with the potentialities of conflict as the city fathers struggled to cope with the relatively unlettered but highly motivated followers of yet another dead messianic pretender.

Put simply and in words easily understandable to those tasked with administering the status quo, these men could not be stopped.

It was not so much that they were assertively dismissive of the authorities. One senses that they were not.

Rather they were so convinced that YHWH had restored the crucified Jesus to life and was even now pulling off similarly unconventional stunts like making a man who hadn’t walked for decades stroll around the city’s streets like you or I would do. The crowds are stirred in the direction of sympathy and enthusiasm. The text has even the religious and civic authorities recognizing that no one can plausibly deny the miracle. (more…)

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seeking immediate mercy: 2 Samuel 24

Posted in textures, tagged , , on June 5, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Near the end of his legendary life, Israel’s King David stumbles into the folly of subjecting united and victorious Israel to a census.

David’s commander in chief and his counseling prophets immediately sense the outrage of the thing. Alas, it is more clear to them than to us just why this should have been such a bad idea. Likely it represented a lurch in the direction of conventional models of monarchy, with their inflated royal egos, bulging palace pantries, and rapacious demand for enough young women and men to keep them in well-protected luxury even when this denuded farms and villages of needed muscles and fertile home-makers. (more…)

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We are not what we own: Proverbs 16

Posted in textures, tagged , , on June 2, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Lived carelessly, life can persuade us that it consists of what we own. Our adornments, our possessions, our accompanying burden of stuff designs to meld itself to our soul-ish identity and become us.

Living carelessly is a dangerous feat. Few survive its calamitous statistics.

When what we have told ourselves that we possess is taken away, we stumble upon the rare opportunity to live carefully. We rediscover that we are not what we own. We are much less than that, and much more. We are much lighter. Yet we also bear the weight of greater solidity.

How much better to get wisdom than gold!
To get understanding is to be chosen rather than silver.

Proverbial wisdom tells us that the most portable property is wisdom and understanding. It can go wherever we do. It cannot be stripped away, is rarely lost, usually increases its value as a normal part of its accompanying grace.

Wisdom becomes us in a way that a house or a car never can. The pockets do not bulge with it, for it resides within. Banks, the needy and the estranged, professional opportunists, these can lay no claim to it. One pays no taxes on wisdom.

Though it is not free, understanding does not drag the one who possesses it into financial slavery.

The wise woman, though a deeply serious human being, walks with a lilt in her step. The sagacious man knows he is rich beyond measure, vulnerable to no unwelcome assault.

Such people manage one of life’s uncommon achievements. They are wealthy yet they are free.

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self-inflicted Midianites: Judges 6

Posted in textures, tagged , , on April 27, 2010| Leave a Comment »

The biblical book of Judges skimps neither in its attribution of blame nor its assessment of the consequences.

The book’s famous historiographical circle elevates both the agency of the ‘judge’ and the responsiveness of YHWH to genuine remorse. In this uncommon biblical moment of history-as-cycle, the Israelites gradually forget the blessed stringency urged upon them by a judge whose oversight brought them peace and some measure or prosperity; they veer into rebellion against YHWH’s exclusive demands; YHWH visits upon them the affliction that is seen to be deserved; the Israelites wake up and call to YHWH out of their affliction; YHWH responds in mercy by sending a new ‘judge’, who sets the nation and its environs to right. (more…)

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