Our Relationship with God

Personally, I find it somewhat discouraging to hear the messages about our relationship with God and how we should constantly be talking to him through prayer and to always be reading our Bibles...because after all, you wouldn't NOT talk to your best friend right?

It seems like too much emphasis is placed on the "best friend" part of our relationship with Jesus and there has been a loss of the fearfulness of God that was so evident and prevalent throughout scripture. Don't get me wrong...I truly believe that as Christians, "praying continually" is beyond necessary and the Bible, well, it needs to be read. But the reverence and generally respect for a just, powerful, and omniscient God seems to have dwindled away. Simply put I think that there is obviously a huge difference between being so fearful that you don't feel that you can even be in God's presence and treating God like a "BFF"...or whatever. The importance of going to God with our problems and receiving comfort cannot be interpreted or related to any other relationship other than one between God and human beings.

A time to kill?

Ben texted me and asked my thoughts on "A time to kill" and I presume he is referencing the following verse from Ecclesiastes. I figure it is easier to give a complete thought here, and then others can jump in as they see fit.

So here is the passage:


Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 ESV  For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:  (2)  a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;  (3)  a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;  (4)  a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;  (5)  a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;  (6)  a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;  (7)  a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;  (8)  a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace.

First, let me say I am open to correction here, Ecclesiastes has always been a difficult book for me.  First we ought to realize that this was written by Solomon who was given extreme wisdom, so we ought to take heed to this whole book as wise counsel, though it seems 'meaningless'.

The Law says "Thou Shall not Kill" Exodus 20.  Yet throughout the conquest of the promise land, and even Solomon's father David, when he slew Goliath, God has given order to kill.  The wise conclusion then, especially for Solomon who lived in a time when God commanded to kill, was that there was "a time to kill".  Now is there a time to kill today?  Not so sure I want to weigh in on that, because frankly I don't know what I think.

I think in this passage however Solomon is dealing with something much more important.  He is smashing legalism altogether.  He is making in clear that there is a time for everything under the sun... you cannot make simple moral rules for people to follow in order to give them life.  This was the error of the Pharisees, and the error of much of fundamentalist Christianity today. It's like someone asking Jesus "Is it okay to do ____________" and then Jesus really doesn't give answers but turns the question back against the questioner.  That is what I see happening in this passage.  Yeah, there is a time to kill, but there is also a time to heal... so stop being legalistic about it all, and don't try to reduce spirituality into a simple list of does and don'ts to obey.  (Make sense? not sure if it does to me, but that is kinda where I am at with this.)

 Look at this whole passage, and really the whole book, Solomon seems to see the despair of inability to satisfy ones self, and also the inability to satisfy God through the Law.  He expresses the human condition pretty well, and it is to this end that Christ not only satisfies the law, but satisfies the self in the process... this book seems to be the perfect setup to show the glory of the Christ.

Anyway that's my $0.02.

It would be good to get theo-convo up and going again.

The Danger of Scripture Memorization - Jay M.

First, do not be misled by the title, I believe firmly that we should memorize scripture.  The apostles quoted OT scripture, Christ quoted scripture, and the scriptures themselves seem to command us to commit the scripture to memory.  

On the flip side, I contend that one should never memorize a single verse until they have read the entire book which contains that verse (i.e. don't memorize Romans 10:9 until you've read all of Romans) and understand the overall theme, genre, original audience, and message of that book.  Moreover, one should not memorize a given scripture from a given book until they know how the book fits in with the overall redemption narrative of the entire cannon.

At this point you say whoa... um... that's a little demanding.  Not really.  If the amount of time one spent memorizing a particular verse was spent figuring out what that particular verse meant, and contributed to the whole announcement of redemption you would be better off.  Though you may not have word for word what the verse says you will have mastered in a sense what it means... which is far better for you.

In most academic disciplines you start broad and then narrow in.  In chemistry you start with the nature of matter, and eventually move into very specific molecular interaction.  In the faith we would do better to teach new people in the faith the overall redemption history of this earth, then narrow into the finer points.  When this is done properly we can then look at any verse of scripture, see how it relates to Christ, and what it contributes to the redemption that is in Christ (which I would say is the theme of the whole bible.)

Thoughts anyone... sorry this was long.

Jay

How do you know you're right? (Schill)

Has anyone else ever wondered if we, as Christians, are really right about all this "stuff" about God and Jesus? What if we have completely missed the mark? I mean really though, if the Bible was just made up and God was just a "being" that we, as humans, thought we needed to help answer questions about where things came from...we might feel pretty stupid.

John 3:3 - "born againism" does it miss the point (jay)

I have been mulling over this one for sometime now and I would be interested to see what the theo-convo thinks about this.

I propose that the term "born again" has been misused for a very long time. The current excepted meaning of this term is "regenerated". I would agree that at conversion we are regenerated and all who are truly saved are indeed regenerated. So in that sense if you equate born again to regeneration it is certainly true that every must be "born again". So here is my qualm: John 3:3 was part of a midnight discourse between Jesus and a prominent Pharisee, likely there was no gentile audience. Moreover, the entire force of John 3 seems to be that salvation was not only for the Jews ie John 3:16 "for god so loved the WORLD...". I submit that this verse has nothing to do with regeneration, but instead is jesus' declaration the being of Jewish decent was no longer sufficient for salvation. If you look at John 3:18 it seems to pronounce condemnation upon the unbelieving Jew. Again recall the audience was a Pharisee. I think one of the primary reasons we have this dual covenant gotta stick with Israel at all cost mindset is because we have not seen the real implications of this text. John 3:3 is a convenient text for regeneration to be taught from, but I don't believe that is what Christ was talking about. Any thoughts?

Sorry for any spelling issues I posted this from my iPod.

Convo #8 - Authority (Jay)

I have my doubts that this convo will take off, but who knows.

I'd like to have some discussion on authority.  What type of Authority does the Pastor of a church have?  How about a parent?  The government?  The rink guard at the skating rink?

In light of all authority being established by God what do we do will authority that appears unbiblical?

Finally what is a proper hierarchy of authority?

I'd say...

God
Family leader (Father / Mother) if still under their authority
Local Congregation Leadership
Government

Share your thoughts,
Jay

Convo #7 - Eschatological Optimism (Ben Schilling)

Is it fair to say the world is becoming a better place? Is Christianity spreading and will it continue to spread throughout the world as Christ tells his disciples to do?