Geoff's Miscellany

When I was in college, I went to a mewithoutYou concert and the band played this song for, if I remember what they said properly, the first time. That version used to be posted online. Seems to be gone. But it's a great song

If I had written it back in the days when I wrote a lot of poetry, I'd have probably included some lines about Amnon, Absalom, Joab, Jonathan, and Saul. But it's not my song. Nevertheless, it is a marvelous work of art. There's a weird thing with the timeline of David's life in the song, but that's okay. It's worth a listen and then ten more. I hope you enjoy it.

Mike Heiser makes a compelling case against referring to the rabbinical authors uncritically when trying to understand the Bible:

You have to realize appealing to rabbis means nothing. Rabbinic thought and biblical thought (and academic work) are miles apart. Hey Christians enamored with rabbis: The rabbis can’t even get the messiah right (or, to be more charitable, the two powers in heaven doctrine right — that belief they used to have in Judaism until it became uncomfortable due to Christianity). If you’ve ever listened to Ben Shapiro (I’m a fan of the show) you know what I mean. He often does “Bible time” on his podcast. But what you get isn’t exegesis of the text in its ancient context. What you get is rabbinic opinion (with all the contrarian rabbinic opinions shelved to the side). Rabbinic interpretation (think Talmud and Mishnah) contradicts itself over and over again. That’s what those works do — they fling opinions at each other. That Hebrew food fight got codified into the Talmud and Mishnah. And Judaism is fine with that. We shouldn’t be. Most of what you’d find in rabbinic writings bears little to no resemblance of exegetical work in the text understood in light of its original ancient Near Eastern worldview. Not even close. They’re frequently making stuff up (they apply biblical material to situations in which the community found itself in; the work of the rabbis was responsive to community circumstances — it’s very applicational or situational).

A common evangelical slogan, which I think comes from a Ravi Zacharias sermon is:

Jesus didn't come to make bad people good, he came to make dead people live.

While I think I agree with the main point of this phrase (Christianity is not merely morality), I usually hear it said in a way that contradicts everything the New Testament says about morality. For instance, Paul says that we'll be judged for everything we do (Romans 14:12). Jesus says to do good works (Matthew 5:14-16). Peter says to add virtue to your faith (2 Peter 1:3-5).

The literary device of an unreliable narrator may make an appearance in Job. The literary device is essentially when a narrator presents reality in a way that contradicts the logic of the narrative. Some unreliable narrators could be crazy people like the narrator of Fight Club, deceitful gods as in Aristophanes' Frogs, in the Dark Knight, Heath Ledger's Joker unreliably narrates his life story two or three times in the film. The narrator of Job present two versions of Job's status before God. He presents a contradiction as though it was a straight presentation of things. But the stories logic perhaps only allows for one of the claims to be true. The author unreliably narrates, perhaps, to bring the reader further into the story. I'll show you where below.

Dallas Willard's understanding of the Beatitudes:

It will help us know what to do—and what not to do—with the Beatitudes if we can discover what Jesus himself was doing with them. That should be the key to understanding them, for after all they are his Beatitudes, not ours to make of them what we will. And since great teachers and leaders always have a coherent message that they develop in an orderly way, we should assume that his teaching in the Beatitudes is a clarification or development of his primary theme in this talk and in his life: the availability of the kingdom of the heavens. How, then, do they develop that theme?

Introduction
A feature of Paul's letter to the Romans that I've never noticed being explored in depth is the concept of obligation or indebtedness. I am interested in this topic because there is a great deal of hand wringing in modern Christian thought about the notion of debt or obligation to God.

John Piper, for instance, thinks that the language of obligation in the context of the Christian life and worship is akin to telling your wife that you bought her flowers out of obligation (Desiring God, 97-98). Piper even calls obligation the "mortal enemy" of worship. Similarly, Greg Boyd (Piper's opposite), in his book Seeing is Believing seems to say something similar, "striving to be holy, loving, kind or patient means nothing if these attributes are sought as ethical ideals, or to fulfill a rule, or to meet an obligation (Seeing is Believing, 53)." These attitudes toward obligation are psychologically confusing to normal people who don't have doctoral degrees to help them keep silly things straight. When Jesus says, "train them to do everything which I have commanded you (Matthew 28:19)," we rightly feel obligated to do what he says and to tell others of the obligations Jesus lays on them. As an aside, it is interesting that Boyd and Piper are utterly in disagreement about many things, but find themselves in complete agreement on this modern/romantic point of view.

In an article at Relevant magazine, a competent and articulate writer named Lauren Oquist challenges readers of her article to stop obsessing over the Proverbs 31 woman. The point of this post is not to be critical of the author of the post quoted (though I will be critical of her post), the point is to demonstrate how a fuller reading of a Biblical book might help it yield its treasures.

Matthew 6:33:
Now, see first the kingdom of God and its righteousness and these things will be added to you.^[1]

Introduction

Everybody wants to be happy and every good wandering philosopher tries to tell them how to do it. Matthew 5-7 is Jesus’ summary treatise on human happiness or how to live an honorable life.[2]

In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis explains that knowing a bit of theology is important for Christians now, in a way that it was not in the past:

...In the old days, when there was less education and discussion, perhaps it was possible to get on with a very few simple ideas about God. But it is not so now. Everyone reads, everyone hears things discussed. Consequently, if you do not listen to theology, that will not mean that you have no ideas about God. It will mean that you have got a lot of wrong ones-bad, muddled, out-of-date ideas. For a great many of the ideas about God which are trotted about as novelties today, are simply the ones which real Theologians tried centuries ago and rejected... 

In all toil there is profit, but mere talk tends only to poverty.

(Proverbs 14:23 ESV)

The proverb above is one I have always associated with one particular type of talk: talking about what you're going to do instead of doing it.

I think that this aspect is true, but incomplete. I have overly limited the meaning of talk.