10.10.2020 - week 75
so … i’m writing a research paper about ancient near eastern cultures and wisdom literature. the big finding is that lots of tidbits we read in proverbs were circulating hundreds of years before they were written down in the biblical record. as one example … whole sections of proverbs 22-24 are carbon copies of the ‘instructions of amenemope’ which dates to 500 years before proverbs was written around 1200 BC.
should it bother us that secular culture had ideas that made it into the bible? of course not.
john calvin explains this well …
“Therefore, in reading profane authors, the admirable light of truth displayed in them should remind us, that the human mind, however much fallen and perverted from its original integrity, is still adorned and invested with admirable gifts from its Creator. If we reflect that the Spirit of God is the only fountain of truth, we will be careful, as we would avoid offering insult to him, not to reject or condemn truth wherever it appears (II.2.15).”
everything true is from god and we must take a posture that something that is or is labeled ‘christian’ makes it superior. when you need an operation, do you want the best christian surgeon or the simply the best one?
christ exceptionalism = truth
christian exceptionalism = damaging myth
we must kill our propensity toward ‘christian exceptionalism’ in order to reach our neighbor the way jesus wants us too. we know better, but are not in fact better. our behavior is similar but still falls short of the standard. our destination is secured but not because of anything we did to merit it. our reputation is certainly not much to write home about. we aren’t better. jesus is better.
so if we want to reach our neighbors .. we should grab at all good truth everywhere we can see and use it.
KG Korner
(a few wise words from lady kristen macdonald)
Another year at summer camp I decided to go with ‘mountain biking’ as my choice activity. There were some large hills but no mountains (we were raised as midwesterners not Californians haha) and it seemed like a fun adventure. As we took our journey through the woods I stopped quickly and kind of gracefully (or so I thought) fell off the seat and my feet skid off the pedals but I landed on the crossbar of the bike, my feet in the leaves. As we concluded our adventure someone looked at my lower calf and mentioned I was bleeding, as I looked at my leg I wasn’t in much pain but let’s just say the metal pedal made its mark! I was supposed to go tubing on the lake in a few minutes so as I walked to the waterfront my leg wound began to hurt but I was confident that telling my counselor, ‘I was fine’ and bandaging it up would lead to a fun afternoon. However, my plans were thwarted when I got to the lake and my counselor laughed, sent me to the nurse and before I knew it I was on my way to get stitches.
Often I think that this is how we deal with grief. We have a gaping wound that hurts and instead of leaning into the grief we deny it and try and move ahead categorizing it as pain but not sitting in it trying to learn from it and ask God to heal it.
Ecclesiastes 7:3 says, ‘Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of the face the heart is made glad.’ Sorrow isn’t all bad. Whether it’s sadness caused through our circumstances or our sin, it is an emotion that God gave us to help us work through what we face. We see in God’s Word that Jesus experienced it, he knows how to comfort us through it. Often sadness alters our focus in a good way directing us to take a glimpse at eternity and remember the greater purposes in life; finding our completeness in Him instead of the things we can see and touch in this world.
At one point or another we all face grief and many of us get to those moments and are forced into a sink or swim mentality because we haven’t thought about how to work through or think through grief. I mean who wants to read about grief on their best days? But I’m not just talking about the death of a loved one (although that certainly entails grief) but rather all the moments of grief in life : divorce, the end of a relationship, family ties that break down, friendships, career opportunities, physical health issues and financial setbacks. I think so often grief is seen as negative because it embodies painful emotions but what I am finding is that on the other side of grief there is room for NEW. I found this paragraph from Dr. John Townsend so helpful:
‘Grief helps you redirect your energies and focus on what you can have and what is good in your life. It provides a way to clear out regrets and hurts as a way to make room for the new. And grief converts a wound into a memory. That is, when you learn the process of letting go, the pain you feel in the present moves down your neurological pathways into our memory banks, where the past resides. In the memory banks, you can review the past, understand the past, and learn from the past. Without grief, the wound never becomes a memory.’
The scar on my calf reminds me of the wound I once had because I got the proper care at the proper time and it healed up. God is more than willing to help you and bring healing, ask him and seek him in your grief so he can bring the beauty beyond the pain.
cup of leadership
manhole or megaphone
there’s nothing inherently special about knowing or seeing the negative. we all see it. it’s thrown in our face constantly. the politics / the racial unrest / the disaster of zoom school / the virus / the economics effects of the virus / and on and on and on it goes. the real reality of the bad is ever-present. so i wonder …. are you a manhole or a megaphone?
do you keep sewage in the sewer, blessing those near you by keeping junk away and out of sight??
or are you a megaphone? endlessly desiring to re-hash + rehearse + react the daily horrors of this moment in a way that makes the folks near you genuinely bummed out after every interaction?
megaphones gets headlines, but manholes are good friends.
book review
this work of investigative non-fiction examines the international sensation around ‘the gospel of jesus wife’ and its subsequent outing as a fraud. i fell into reading it a bit accidentally, but i found it quite insightful. it’s incredible how often our desire to accomplish a goal or perpetuate a narrative gets in the way of good judgement. world-renowned scholar karen king was betrayed by her desire for the finding to be true, leading to endless problems for her. if you have any background in academia, i think you will find this book quite interesting.
super christian guy
stuff for you to click on
1. we continue through the book of mark called ‘the real jesus’ // message #7 on podcast + youtube. watch it here!