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.