Letter Writing and the Bible

Our Sermon Series has included Prayer, Theology, Contemplation, and Missions; is going to include Worship and Evangelism; all drawing on lectionary readings from the first letter of John.  1 John, with its associated 'books',  2 John and 3 John make up his trio.  It is written by the author of the Gospel of John and the book of Revelation.  What's a lectionary?  That's another post.  Today, the focus is on the single largest type of literature (by number of books) in the First Testament.  It is the 'epistle', the letter written by an apostle.  

 Paul is our big letter writer in the New Testament.  Romans to Philemon (and Hebrews?...fodder for another post, or maybe an old one...) are his, or attributed to him (again, another post).  They are different from the other letters, like John, because Paul's are named for their addressees, whether congregations or individuals.  

James, Peter, John, and Jude are the other letter writers, named for the authors.  It seems they are listed in that book order not because of importance as Apostles but on the lengths of their respective works.  Of John's three letters, the second is addressed to an unnamed lady and the third to Gaius, both with John calling himself 'the elder'. 

The first letter just gets into it.  "We declare to you what was from the beginning..."  He gives us a broad base of his beliefs, a powerful witness.  Best clues as to who the audience is come in the last chapter.  John says, "I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life."  Then he closes with "Little children, keep yourself from idols."

It is one thing to have a gospel, a gathered narrative that has a purpose around our Lord Jesus Christ.  Every gospel has its own focus and personality, but it is all about Jesus.  What do we do with letters?

Reverse engineering maybe.  I take this term mostly from military applications.  A piece of enemy tech is obtained and then deconstructed, engineered in reverse, to figure out how it works.  That works with letters too.

We have half the correspondance.  But these are not letters that discuss the weather or how the family is faring.  This is 'religio-business' correspondance, which required an investment is time, but also in writing materials, papyrus (maybe) and ink-all hand made, luxury items.  Then, it needed to be sent.  There was no general postal service, just an Imperial system based in the military.  So every word was valuable.  So, I am saying these letters were pricey enterprises, so their authors got to the point.

And they were a response.  So, when John  says 'keep yourself from idols' and it closes the letter, the last line, I believe we can assume there is an issue with idols.  When he writes 'to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know you have eternal life', that the question of eternal life is a 'thing'.  

Which is why, I believe, 1 John has lent itself to exploring the thoughts, words, and actions of the faith as we express our Love for God and our Love for Neighbor.  That is what John is exploring in his letter.  Maybe not in an explicit manner like this series of sermons, but definitely in how the faith is expressed and lived.

The story of Jesus, the story of His death and resurrection, the story of our salvation, it is all implicit to the entire text.  John does not need to tell it again (he can refer folks to his gospel for more information).  

Will we be able to construct the full backstory behind the letter?  No.  But that is okay.  The Bible was written at specific times in the past, to their present circumstances, with an eternal message.  The message does not change, but the circumstances do.  Understanding that is why the Bible continues to be relevant today.  It also mitigates against unloving interpretation that seeks to impose previous circumstances on the present day.

How can it do that?  Well, as we like to say, it is 'the Word as inspired by God.'  That's a 'church-ish' way of saying "God did it."  To read these letters to best effect means we need to understand what they are as literary pieces and why they were written.  I hope this helps make reading these books in the bible more accessible.  

As always, I am delighted to try and answer questions, and still learning when I get them wrong.

Peace,

Pastor Peter

Danger Will Robinson...

 There is a wonderful little book called "The Presbyterian Handbook".  As I read that, I realize it might be straining people's credulity.  But John Calvin is looking out on the cover, sliding down a pair of shades.  There is some 'tongue in cheek' about this book, but it also condenses a lot of good information into a palatable form.  

Usually when you look at the pages of a closed book, they are all one color-usually white.  So it is with the Handbook except for a few pages just past center.  This is the part that talks about Predestination.  The pages are bordered in a gray-scale tone with the following: "Warning-It May Take Multiple Readings-And Time-To Understand This Concept".

Makes me think of the robot in "Lost in Space", Danger Will Robinson...with the flopping arms...  No, I am talking about the Lost in Space: The Original Series, from the last century...

I realized that in my 'after action' post yesterday, I allowed myself to get mixed up.  I too am from the last century...  The Warning concept for this sermon series is not Worship, but Evangelism.  And it was not until I was reviewing 1 John 5: 1-6 that I realized I had the weeks reversed.  Next Sunday is Worship.  Mother's Day will be Evangelism.  Both will be drawn from 1 John 5.

But here is the majority bit of that passage, verses 1-5, Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the parent loves the child. ²By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. ³For the love of God is this, that we obey his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome, ⁴for whatever is born of God conquers the world. And this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith. ⁵Who is it that conquers the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?

Let me carve out a logical progression within these verses.

1. We who believe that Jesus is the Christ have been born of God.

2. Whatever is born of God conquers the world.

3. Who is it that conquers the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?

In the Divine Backstory of our faith, Jesus, the Son of God is the Ruler of Creation.  But here, in God, we are put alongside Jesus as conquerers, in His love.  

The reaction of "Oh My God" is not inappropriate here.  In "Legally Blond, the Musical", there is a number, "Omigod You Guys".  I would love to take the emotionally enthusiastic expression of that song and pair it to the story provided us by these verses to begin to craft a reaction to what God has done for us.  The only lyric I would probably keep from the Musical is "You're a perfect match".  

Standing on its own, a case might be made that, despite its catchiness, the song runs afoul of the Commandment on not taking the Lord's Name in vain.  

But the blessing of the song is how it catches the listener up in its enthusiasm.  That is the enthusiasm Christians could have for what God has done for us.  The song sets up a mood that would provide for meaningful, powerful, and wonderful Worship.

Peace,
Pastor Peter

Sunday's Sermon: After Action Report

So I have come to realize that I may have just issued my most political sermon of recent memory, cushioned in the 'excuse' of theology.  In an attempt to demonstrate our need to think about our God, about our faith, in consideration of our love of neighbor, I read back and realize I took a 'stand' on transphobia, child-rearing, white privilege, capitalism (our basic economic principles), and poverty.  

It probably won't be difficult to discern how I would tend to vote.

But up until this week, our topics have been pretty straight forward.

Prayer?  Talking to God, there is nothing that is off limits.  It is easy to drop that kind of a comment and then stay well back from the borders of what we, as humans, may feel to be off limits in communicating with the Almighty.  And that works in both directions, staying away from the hard subjects we may bring to God and the hard subjects God may bring to us in return.

Contemplation?  Thinking about God?  It is a beautiful thing, an aesthetic thing.  It is 'mystic', therefore separated from reality?  Maybe?  That God created absolutely everything and called it good?  Are there a few things in 'everything' that is 'good' possibly taking our contemplation into some...interesting places?

And Missions?  Doing for our neighbor.  I came to that with a consideration of 'what is' in our church, not what could be.  How do we reach out to help our neighbors?  We do some pretty amazing things.  It is to be celebrated, it is to be strengthened.  That was not the place to ask the tougher question, is it nearly enough?

But now it gets hard.  Theology, thinking about God, coming back around to prayer, there is nothing off limits in our thinking about God.  But unlike prayer, this is applied faith, about how it affects our neighbors.  There is an intersection between our congregational existence and our 'rest of life' existence there.  Yes, God is love.  There is no sweeter starting point.  But now let us intersect what we believe with what we do...  

I thought Evangelism, talking to our neighbors in the love of God, was going to be the one that really clogged my pores.  Do not misunderstand, it is a hard subject, one that has some precedents in the popular culture that are, quite frankly, rather cringe-worthy.  But if God is love is the beginning of our thoughts on the Divine, it certainly provides a starting point to where we speak of our faith.  But like theology, do we speak for ourselves or let others (even me) speak for us?  In theology, the question is whether we think for ourselves or let others think for us in Christ.

The conclusion to this sermon series is on Mother's Day, where we will consider what we do for God.  Where we will consider Worship.  If nothing is off limits in our Prayers or our Theology, how might that play out for Worship?

These are the 'activities and actions' of faith, how we 'do' our Christianity.  The Church has a mission, the church has values.  These are ways and means to live into them.  

Peace,

Pastor Peter 

Sunday's Sermon: Apr. 28, 2024 At the intersection of our Thoughts and Loving our Neighbors, Theology.

 

April 28, 2024 “Who is Going to Think?  We? Or Someone else, FOR US?”  1 John 4: 7-21

Rev. Peter Hofstra

            If you want theology brothers and sisters, our Response of Faith is full of it this morning.  How do we think about our faith?  How do we think about our Jesus?  The Westminster Confession of Faith is a classical expression of the theology of the Presbyterian Church.  So is it going to have all the staying power of an upper level textbook from any particular scientific discipline and effectively glaze over our eyes and tuck our hearts back into bed for a nap?  Chemistry and physics had that effect on me in an earlier time in my life.

            So we believe that it is God’s pleasure, in God’s eternal purpose not only to choose Jesus but also to ordain him.  Hey Mary, you are following in Jesus’ footsteps this morning, pretty cool eh?  All you who are elders and deacons, can I have a show of hands please?  Again, in the footsteps of Jesus.  It pleased God to ordain Jesus into eight different jobs, as mediator, prophet, priest, king, head, Savior, heir, and judge.  Mary, you get only one.  And, this is a big And, God has given Jesus a chosen people (which we hope/believe/know includes the likes of us).  And we shall, in the fullness of time, have 5 things happen to us, we will be redeemed, called, justified, sanctified, and glorified. 

            Can I get an amen? 

            If we go to our Bible passage today, I think it is verse 10 that ties most profoundly back to what the Westminster Divines (yes, that is what history calls them, they did not come up with this name for themselves), the diverse bunch of theologians who wrote the Westminster Confession of Faith, the Westminster Shorter Catechism, which not only implies but compliments the Westminster Longer Catechism, all of which was actually passed as law by the English Parliament, at least until the Restoration of the monarchy, when everything done by the Parliament was summarily undone.

            Oh, verse 10, in this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.  Atoning sacrifice, that is the big throw back theological idea.

            Westminster is a big name in the Presbyterian fandom.  Last church I served had a Westminster Auditorium.  Our sister church down in Berkely Heights is the Westminster Presbyterian Church.  Before I went to Princeton to be ordained, I studied at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia.  If I were to ask you to consider where that name comes from, the most obvious connection might be Westminster Abbey, over in London.  What I only came to understand later in life is that the entire Parliament building in London is the Palace of Westminster. 

            Being steeped in this stuff like a tea bag left to soak for too long, I always had a picture in my mind of the Westminster parts of our Book of Confession being written in a place like this, guys in the wigs hunkered down in pews, scattered in small groups across the Sanctuary.  It is a bit mind blowing, at least to me, that the foundational theological documents of the Presbyterian Church were written in the halls of power of one of the greatest nations on earth, at that time, to become the law o the land.  A vague comparison might be to think about our Denomination’s constitutional document, the Book of Order, being written in the capital building and being passed by the House of Representatives and the Senate. 

            That is what theology can grow into.  We see it today.  God thought penetrates the American political system.  It can be implicit, members of the government who believe in Jesus and use the values of their faith to make decisions about the nation.  It can be almost obscenely explicit, “God says do this, or we are going to be punished!!”  Remember Hurricane Katrina wiping out New Orleans?  Remember Superstorm Sandy smacking New York City?  Leaders declared, in Jesus name’, that was punishment.    

            And there are voices out there right now telling us what we should do and believe because of what those voices claim in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, waving their Bibles and scaring me.  Christian Nationalism, a blending of American patriotism with a patina of faith.  A Gospel of Prosperity, a means of thinking that God blesses those who are faithful by how much stuff they get. 

            It is so big and so pervasive and so overwhelming, there is no escaping it.  No escaping theology.  So how often do we push it away in frustration, shut it off like we are shutting off the news that has nothing but bad things to report, maybe desiring to curl up in a ball and shut out the world, just so we can get a little alone time with our Lord.  That is, if we haven’t been so disgruntled or jaded or jaundiced that we’ve pressed out our Lord Jesus out to the margins as well.

            So this is where we are today.  At the junction of our thoughts and our love for our neighbors.  That makes our passage in John ideal for theology.  I count the word ‘love’ 26 times in verses 7 through 21.  Bible-philes?  I would love-pun intended-to be proven wrong in that count. 

            Theology begins with one simple premise, biblical in origin (which is good) in our passage this morning.  John tells us at the end of verse eight.  This is the bumper sticker we need.  “God is love”.  Everything else, all our theology, must derive from that one truth.  When John tells us God is love, it develops a theological statement. 

            Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.  Not to know love is not to know God.  So everything not done in love is NOT done in God.  How about that as a first level test of somebody’s motivations? 

            If you read the blog posts this week, you will have seen that in the High Middle Ages, when knowledge was being organized into the first round of ‘sciences’, branches of knowledge, theology was the queen of the sciences.  If theology derives from the truth that God is love, all the other sciences derived from theology. 

            In our faith rubric, theology occurs in the human capacity for thinking, where it crosses with Jesus’ command to love neighbor.  It is an applied science, applying the love of God to neighbor.  Maybe this will help, at the risk of betraying yet another layer of geekiness in your pastor.  Consider physics.

            “Pure” physics will establish the scientific basis for the capacity to warp time and space and effectively travel faster than light.  Applied physics will be building the warp engine to go where no one has gone before.

            Theology is how we think about God, who is love, ipso facto…sorry, trying to sound sciency…it is how we think about love, so how love is shared and applied to a world in need.  Our contemplative verse is a theological statement, a statement based on thinking about our God.  Let’s love one another because love is from God.  We are born of God and we know God if we love.

            What else do we know from John?  God is love ipso facto, sorry, therefore God sent Jesus as our Savior.  God loves us so that God abides in us and we in him, by the gift of the Holy Spirit.  We can be bold on the day of Judgement because God’s love has brought forgiveness to us.  Love casts out fear, because what did we fear?  Punishment.  But that does not exist any longer, because of, right, love. 

            Now comes application.  Cannot love God if we hate our brother and sister.  Because how can we love the God we cannot see if we do not love the siblings we do see?  These are the thoughts that John shares with us, the structures of how to be Christian, of understanding what we believe.  They lead to how we apply our faith, in what we say to our neighbors, our…evangelism, and what we do for our neighbors.  As a congregation, that is our missions.

            So that’s where we are.  God is love.  God loved us so much that God gave us God’s only begotten son.  He died for us and rose for us.  How are we supposed to think about that?  That’s verse 10, the one the Westminster divines would love.  Jesus is an atoning sacrifice.  A what now?  This is how forgiveness was structured in the First Testament.  A person sinned, they confessed, and they atoned, they paid reparations for breaking God’s law.  It was done in the form of an animal sacrifice.  A life for a life, since the wages of sin is death.  Think of it as one of Jesus’ parables, it was tailored to the thinking of the first generation of Jewish believers in Christ Jesus. 

            This is thinking about God, trying to place the actions of the divine into a human context.  God does things in a way to try and penetrate the fog that is human perception.  Why were there two trees of note in the Garden of Eden?  The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, which the first couple messed up on…don’t eat this.  And the Tree of Life, which, if they ate of it, would give eternal life.  So tree number 1 is sin and tree number 2 is life, is love, is…Jesus!  And what Jesus did!  Ohhhh.

            Or one of my favorites, the Trinity.  God is one and God is Three, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Islam has one God, just Allah, and a prophet.  This tripling down is nonsense to them.  Judaism has God, at best, Jesus and the Spirit are the biggest retcon’s in history.  We Christians just rewrote the history back to Genesis.  Or, or, God was giving creation a predestined bit of side eye.  How do I get through to these people?  Trinitarian formula (because theology likes to talk sciency sometimes).

            So God is love, cool.  All powerful, that’s pretty straight forward.  Creator deity, pretty common across all religious experiences.  Creation is Good, product of a loving God.  But so big and distant.  Kind of abstract.  So lets get up and personal.  Step across the divide from being the Creator into the Creation, come as a guy.  Call him Jesus.  Celebrate with gifts, so, Christmas.  But we humans have this huge ego capacity to recreate God in our own image, check out the art work around Jesus.  He’s very white in a lot of the publicity pieces.  Wanda Sykes dropped a comment about this being Malibu Jesus, I will never be able to look at those pieces the same way again.  Probably for the best.  But I digress.  Jesus, human, and God, so in a one to one relationship with me, and, because of the divine part, with everybody else.  It’s the God-part that allows him to answer all our prayers and know all our hearts.

            But then the Holy Spirit…well, John gives us a leg up on that.  God is not just out there, God is not just a guy whose here, God is in here.  God abides in us and we abide in God.  So, back to our first truth, God is love.  Love is over all and through all, love is up close and relational, love is in my heart.  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Time for the human to go, huh.

            So you know those eight jobs that Jesus was given and those five things that happen to us as laid out by the Westminster theologians?  All of those are derived from, work to help us understand, are Scripturally provided divine wonder put in human terms. 

            Here is why I believe it is so important that we are well-versed in the bible and what we think about our God.  Because of the people of faith who will skip past the ‘God is love’ part when they speak in the name of Jesus.  Let’s beat down on homosexuals and all “those” people who claim the LGBTQ alphabet legally, morally, socially, emotionally, and physically because the Bible condemns them.  NO.  They are God’s children and there is nothing they can do that will make them NOT God’s children.  And love does not beat down, in any shape or form.  I happen to believe that when my mom took the wooden spoon to my backside, because “The Bible says so”, she was turned into an abuser in the name of Jesus.  I love my child so much that I need to hit them?  What? 

            Or this gospel of prosperity, God will bless me with material goods because that is how I interpret the Bible.  NO.  That means the poorer you are, the farther you are from God?  You know the secondary homeless crisis in this country?  The primary crisis is that there are people in the richest nation in the world who do not have home.  The secondary crisis is everything done to sideline them, push them out of sight and out of mind.  There is a direct correlation to policies pushing on that abuse to the theological understanding that they are poor and therefore unblessed.

            Do I want to start on race relations?  An entire theological history based on the privileged theological interpretation that makes skin pigment into the defining characteristic of who and how God loves us?  Our thinking about God, about God who is love, based on melanin?

            In all of this, we are doing theology, thinking about God.  And it affects how we treat our neighbors.  Even ignoring God, showing up on Sunday but leaving Jesus behind the rest of the week?  That is as reflective on our intentions about God’s love as everything else we do.

            Why did God’s love manifest as Jesus dying for our sins?  Why did God manifest as a victim, for us?  I would suggest that, in part, it is so that every person who has been victimized by ‘Good Christian theology’ can still find the love of God and a Savior in Christ Jesus, who was victimized with them.  Theology is complicated?  Yes, it can be.  But its foundation is so simple.  God is love.  The bible is built upon that foundation to explain it to us sinful humans.  Two thousand years of Christian theology, a whole book of Confessions, our Westminster divines, our mission statement, our core values, all of that is our heartfelt, ongoing, ever-failing but ever-forgiven process of living into that truth.  To put in another, far more succinct way,  Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.

Amen

Sunday's Scripture: Focus on Theology 1 John 4: 7-21

To avoid creating overlong posts, which the sermon very well might, here is Sunday's text, courtesy of the Oremus Bible Browser:

1 John 4: 7-21

God Is Love

7 Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. ⁸Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. ⁹God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. ¹⁰In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. ¹¹Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. ¹²No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.

13 By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. ¹⁴And we have seen and do testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Saviour of the world. ¹⁵God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God. ¹⁶So we have known and believe the love that God has for us.

God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. ¹⁷Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgement, because as he is, so are we in this world. ¹⁸There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. ¹⁹We love because he first loved us. ²⁰Those who say, ‘I love God’, and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. ²¹The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.

Rules for Thinking About God: For Theology: Like, the Bible?

   Some of this of this Blog Post, while drawn from the Holy Bible, may be disturbing to some readers due to violent and graphic and exploitative content.  Yes, in the Bible.  There are reaons why it made the 'cut' when libraries were censoring their collections.

     So, how do we use the Bible as the basis of how we think about God?  Because the Bible is the Special Witness to our God.  We have creation, and we can see the beauty of God in creation, a more General Witness, but the Bible is the handbook.  

    Now we know that the Bible was not written in a day, or a year, or even a generation.  It's history extends over a thousand years (at least) writing process.  And there is progress in the Bible.  Progress?  Yes, there is the first and the second covenant, what we divide the bible into as the Old and New Testaments, and Jesus emerged from the First and gave us the Second.  So, if we want a rule of thumb in thinking about God and the use of the Bible, it is that Jesus is the pivotal authority on all things 'old' and all things 'new'.

    But I could be abstract to the point of putting my readers to sleep, so, HOW ABOUT AN EXAMPLE OF THE COMMAND OF JESUS AND WHY IT IS SUPERIOR TO WHAT COMES IN THE OLD TESTAMENT?  That is a vain attempt to attract interest if the introduction to this post is losing folks.

    So, Bible part 1, the Sermon on the Mount, a rather significant sermon collected by Matthew in chapters 5 and following in his gospel.  Here are verses 33-37:

³³“Again, you have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but carry out the vows you have made to the Lord.’ ³⁴But I say to you, Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, ³⁵or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. ³⁶And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. ³⁷Let your word be ‘Yes, Yes’ or ‘No, No’; anything more than this comes from the evil one.

    Now why would Jesus say this?  Because the people in the time of the First Testament considered breaking an oath to God as a capital offense.  Or, to use some outdated language from several "Westerns", a hangin' offense-but the law of Moses usually mandated rocks.

    In the last three chapters of the book of Judges, the people of Israel mount a war of what is almost extermination against one of their own tribes.  There is a rape and murder that is so heinous that the victim's body is hacked to pieces and sent throughout the land to rally support to punish the tribe of Benjamin, from whose midst the murderers exist and who are NOT being handed over for trial and punishment.

    Oaths are made to the Lord in this War.  The first is that EVERYONE is going to show up, because everyone promised to and anyone who does not (to fight against the Benjamites) is subject to death.

    The second is that the tribe has done such evil in the land that EVERYONE has vowed not to allow their daughters to marry into that tribe anymore, ever.  They are cut off.  

    The War is then carried out until every man, woman, and child in that tribe is slaughtered (with great losses on the side of Israel as well) except for 600 men making a last stand (out of a fighting force that the Bible says began at 26,000). 

    At this last stand, the people of Israel realize what they are about to do.  Israel was about to wipe out one of their own, one of the Tribes of God's people.  

    So what do we do?  Exterminating 26,000 down to 600, not counting women and children, how do they come back from that?

    The people of Israel could offer their daughters in marriage except they promised that they would not.  So the Benjamites are out of luck on that score.

    HOWEVER, another promise was made that EVERYBODY was to come out and fight.  Did they?  A census is taken and it is found out that the people of Jabesh-Gilead were not there for the War.  They broke their oath so they must be punished.  This solves the bigger Oath problem.  No one can give their daughters to the Benjamites, BUT the whole army can march up, destroy Jabesh-Gilead and slaughter everyone except the virgin daughers.  These are the daughters of oath-breakers, and, even better, there is no one left to protest. This nets them 400 wives for the Benjamites.  

    But there are 200 men who need wives.  And I should note, when I say "wives", I mean "breeding stock".  Women hold no status in these negotiations and decisions.  

    So what do we do?  Well, the people of Shiloh have a festival where their virgin daughters do this festival thing out of the city.  Let's put the Benjamite men in hiding to come running out during this festival and kidnap the women as their 'wives'.  And when their fathers and brothers come to complain, we will tell them that Israel made a promise that no 'wives' would be given to this sinful tribe, and we do not break our promises made to God, so forced abduction, kidnapping, and human trafficking will provide the answer.

    Yah, that's really in there, Judges 19-21.  Which is why we turn to Jesus when it comes to using the Bible to provide a foundation for thinking about God, for our theology.  Jesus said love God and love neighbor.  That begins to mitigate against this HUGE abuse that was committed in the name of keeping promises made to the Lord.  

    Then he said, "Let your word be 'yes, yes' or 'no, no'; anything more than this comes from the evil one."  We tend to gloss over that last part, that promises in the Lord's name come from the evil one, but Judges makes it pretty clear why.

    That's a biblical example.  But Gaza, Ukraine, human trafficking in this country and around the world, the deterioration of the women's reproductive rights, unwanted children, How many more women (a preferred target) and men and everyone have been abused, vicitimized, injured, ostracized, and outright killed because of how someone believes that they are keeping their promise to God?  The promise to God has become an idol more important than loving God and loving neighbor.  

    That is why it is so important that we are actively, passionately, deeply, Biblically thinking about God and God's love.  Because others are also thinking about God and people are dying as a result.

Peace,
Pastor Peter

Theology...Or "The Ology"? The Science of God? Queen of the Sciences??

     What is Theology?  It is "Thinking about God".  "God loves me" is a theological statement.  It is an understanding and judgement of how God acts in our lives.  "Theological Inquiry" is both the most wonderful Christian pursuit for me and the one that I fear pushes people away from being serious about our faith.

    "The 'Ology'", so most sciences end in 'ology', its Latin or something (Greek).  According to the crowd-sourced, second string online knowledge farm, Wikipedia 'ology' is 'a branch of knowledge'. Thus, an 'ologist' is 'one who studies the topic'.  One who studies biology is then a biologist.  So, to track that, one who studies theology would be a...'theologist'?  I kind of like that, something to distinguish from 'theologian' or 'theologue' as I have self-purposed in the past.

    So "Ology" is a Branch of Knowledge while "The-" is actually 'Theos', the Greek word for god, not necessarily the God of Christianity, but the 'gods' of the Greeks like Zeus and Apollo.  Maybe a better way to clarify is to look at Arabic.  "Allah" is the designate to the God of Islam, but Christians who worship in Arabic use 'allah' to define God the Father, as we Christians understand it.  Does that then mean that Allah and God the Father are the same, but understood differently?  That's a deep theological question, a deep question to bring to our thinking about God.

    But to make a long story short (probably too late for that), "Theos-Ology".  Or "The God Branch of Knowledge".  Being Greek transliterated into English, we smushed the words together to get 'theology'.  When 'ologies', branches of knowledge, were being divided into areas of studies, 'theology' emerged as the Queen of the Sciences.

    According to www.compellingtruth.org, "Theology was named queen of the sciences in the High Middle Ages when schools divided classical liberal arts learning into grammar, logic, rhetoric, artithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy."  I feel I must add a disclaimer.  I am not at all familiar with the focus or point of view of compellingtruth.org, but their summary is one of those moments where I must say "I could not have said that better myself", so I did not try.

    So, the Queen of the Sciences, the presumption of the High Middle Ages that every bit of knowledge derives from God.  I still believe that but the world in general has gotten more skeptical.

    So what does this mean?  It means whenever a person of authority, from church leader to elected official, invokes God or their faith to define an issue, they have 'done theology', they have thought about God.  But the act of thinking about God, no matter how loudly or eloquently a person might share their point of view, does NOT mean they are correct.  So, there is no elected individual, community leader, pope, bishop, high scholarly muckity muck in the most prestigious theological institution, or simple pastor (like me) who cannot be mistaken when they share their thinking about God.   

    As Christians, calling Theology the Queen of the Sciences translates to calling our thoughts about God as the governing authority for how we live our lives.  Because there is no branch of knowledge independent of the creative power of God.  Thinking about God is highly personal; including things like 'where am I?', 'What am I blessed to have?', 'Who stands against me?', 'What choice shall I make?', and 'How then shall I live?'

    As Christians, whose eyes are open to the sin of the world around us, we need to know better than anyone that, as with any other knowledge, theology can be used to manipulate, to deceive, to impose a point of view, to force matters.  Theology can be used to wrap things up in the 'authority of God' and confuse sinful, human agendas with the loving, grace-filled, forgiving plan of God.

    So, "Theos-Ology", the God branch of knowledge.  That is a capital "G" God because I am coming at this as a Christian.  This does not discount that there are branches of knowledge about Gods or gods who are not the one I worship.  But we generally bundle those under 'comparative religions', something for a different post.

Peace,
Pastor Peter