Geoff's Miscellany

Pro 22:9 Whoever has a good eye will be blessed, for he shares his bread with the poor.

Pro 28:22 He who hastens after wealth has an evil eye and does not know that poverty will come upon him.

In the ancient world, particularly in the culture that influences the writers of the Bible, the eye was in a metaphorical and literal sense thought ot be connected to the inner life of man. By inner life, I mean the world of thought, emotions, and intentions: the heart and soul.

Evagrios of Pontus wrote these instructions for Christian meditation. I think it’s important to utilize the imagination and the feelings in meditation just as much as thoughts and concepts. As humans we are deeply susceptible to hypnotism and rhetoric. This is important because we often can find ourselves convinced of truths upon which we do not act because they do not affect our feelings enough to goad our will into action. And other times we might act without reference to the truth because we’ve been emotionally persuaded into a habit or action. When we meditation upon truths received in the way Evagrios instructs us, those truths can make it further into our lives.

Gen 12:1-3  Now the LORD said to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you.  (2)  And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.  (3)  I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed."

Gen 24:1  Now Abraham was old, well advanced in years. And the LORD had blessed Abraham in all things.

In a recent experiment, psychologists “designed a procedure to intentionally induce a placebo effect” in order to test the claims of intelligence increasing software.[1]

The study has a small sample size, but bear with me. 

In the control group (people who simply thought they were participating in an experiment) there was no difference in pre and post training intelligence. In the experimental group (who were told they were training to increase their intelligence) an increase in intelligence was measured (5-10 IQ points) after only one hour of training.

Pro 24:27 Prepare your work outside; get everything ready for yourself in the field, and after that build your house.

I suppose you could shorten this Proverb to “put first things first.”

Of course, to do that we’ve got to think things through.

In the case of buying property in the ancient world, you’d want to make sure it could produce wealth before building a house on it.

Similarly, one might want to find a good source or several sources of income before buying a house.

Text

Translation

Reflections

1. Eye for an eye was an Old Testament legal precedent applicable to situations in which an unborn baby or neighbor is injured by violence. The law was also a precedent for cases concerning false witnesses.
2. Jesus does not seem to be claiming that courtroom judgments should be abrogated. He uses court circumstances and assumes their enduring relevance in two previous triads. Instead, he seems to be correcting the use of these passages as justifications for using evils suffered as justification for evils done.
3. The way out of the cycle of returning evil for evil is illustrated in four ways, but I think it’s important not to limit the process to these specifics and indeed, Jesus himself does not treat these commands as absolute rules for all times but as wise ways to avoid resisting evil with evil. So turn the cheek, go the mile, give the garment, and so-on are illustrations.
4. For instance, Jesus tells people, “No” when they ask him for a sign (Matthew 16). He also criticizes a man for striking him (John 18:23).
5. So, if there are exceptions, it is perhaps best to think of this teaching as recommending that one do the shocking or disarming thing to create peace in the face of institutional oppression and personal honor challenges.
6. Jerome Neyrey sees this particular passage as a way out of the tit for tat honor/shame game played in the ancient world. I think that is part of the idea, though probably not the whole idea as Jesus and the apostles in Acts participate in that game verbally.

References

“The world is nothing but change. Our life is only perception. (bk IV ch 3)”

A great deal of our life is based on fiction which we mistake for reality.

We worry about this disaster in the future or we bother over this memory of the past.

The fact is that our memory of the event is transfigured by its repeatedly being brought before our minds with all of the negative feelings we associate with it.

One of my students told me that this song would be sure to get me pumped up for morning visits to the gym.

Results may vary, but I listened to it when I dead lifted 325 Friday. But I often turn my music off for heavy lifts to make sure my focus is on form.

Also, here’s a version for nerds who like cartoons with a lot of yelling:

I’ve slowly been writing summaries of my reasons for being a Christian using the three phases of persuasion: ethos, pathos, and logos. This is the third post under pathos (emotions).

When it comes to emotional reasons for being a Christian, this one might seem the most unusual, but here it is: The idea of a cosmos teeming with purpose imbued upon it by an infinite intelligence within which a conflict of temporal and everlasting significance takes place is just damned interesting. Worldviews with cosmic level conflicts this sort can be found in most ancient cultures.[1] That the Bible contains a worldview like those of the ancient shouldn’t astonish us, as it was written and compiled when the majority of people thought this way.

A challenging book in the tradition of Christian devotional manuals is The Imitation of the Christ by Thomas A’Kempis. While some of the advice he gives is geared especially or even exclusively toward monks, a great deal of what is said is quite useful advice for appropriating a godly mindset. Here is an excerpt from the first chapter:

What good does it do to speak learnedly about the Trinity if, lacking humility, you displease the Trinity? Indeed it is not learning that makes a man holy and just, but a virtuous life makes him pleasing to God. I would rather feel contrition than know how to define it. For what would it profit us to know the whole Bible by heart and the principles of all the philosophers if we live without grace and the love of God? Vanity of vanities and all is vanity, except to love God and serve Him alone.

Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, 1996), 1–2.