The 3:16’s

We all know John 3:16, and many know II Timothy 3:16, but what about the other 3:16’s?

The divisions of the Biblical books into chapters and verses was not handed down by God to the original scribes and authors, but was divided by several groups or individuals during the Middle Ages. (You can read more about it in this article from Probe Ministries, friends of mine.) And while in many cases, the divisions seem to ignore logic and context, it would be interesting to get God’s take on them.

There is also a book I discovered while researching this post (incidentally, it was written by a computer science professor who is also a Christian). While I haven’t read it, it is cool to think that there are others who’ve asked the same question:  “What can I learn from Scripture by just reading a key verse from each book?” Of course, it makes sense to start with one of the most important and well known verses in the entire Bible, where the Gospel is summed up in a concise statement of faith, John 3:16. So, here for your meditation are the 49 “3:16’s.” I leave it as an exercise for the reader to figure out why there are only 49 3:16’s if the Bible has 66 books.

While not every verse has immediate deep insightful meaning, it is a little surprising how many do, or how many are part of key events. What is kind of fun is how many of them seem to flow into each other and form a storyline of their own, sometimes with humorous results.

Defeaters

In American culture, including the academy, there are actually very few unique objections to Christianity. It is helpful to understand six basic ones and recognize when someone is proclaiming a variation and then understand a humble but solid response.

Tim Keller, the author and pastor of Redeemer Church in New York City labels these objections as ‘defeaters.’ As academics of faith, I suggest we have a certain responsibility to be able to competently discuss these defeaters with both our students and colleagues.

Syllogism of Sin

To sin is to put anything above God.

God is the self-existing one.

Therefore, He is Life and the source of life.

Therefore, to sin is to put something else above the source of life.

This puts a barrier between the one who sins and the source of life.

To be cut off from life and the source of life results in death.

Therefore, it makes sense that the wages of sin is death, as the Bible claims.

SDG

You Can Lead a Horse to Water, But You Can’t Make It Read the Syllabus

Today’s thought comes from a friend’s Facebook comment:  “help...students not reading the syllabus then getting burned at the end of the semester, it is so sad to see..”

One of her friends commented,: "Yeah...I give my (esl) students a syllabus activity on the first day and a syllabus quiz the next day during the first week of class. It helps a little, but not as much as you'd think.”

One Size Fits All

Today, I visited a friend’s church where he started a 14 week class he wrote as a “thoughtful, reasoned, Christian response to Richard Dawkins’ latest book, The Greatest Show On Earth.” (If you are interested, it is held at The Palace Theatre, 810 South Austin Avenue, just off the square in Georgetown, Texas. It is being hosted by Main Street Baptist Church and runs from 9:45am to 10:40am. The next session is May 15. For info, contact John, the teacher, at john@murphyacq.com.)

Simultaneously, in the car, I’m listening to Donald Miller read his bestseller, Blue Like Jazz. I’m probably the last person in American Christendom to read it—even my dad has read it before I’ve gotten to it. (I’ll likely post on it once I’ve finished it.)

Talk about engaging both halves of your brain! As I reflected on the things I’ve heard and learned today, I had to laugh.

Bizarrities in the Bible

One of the all-time strangest passing references in the Bible occurs during the description of the crucifixion. I share it with you now as food for thought for Easter weekend.

“And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit. And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the rocks were split. The tombs also were opened. And many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many.”

Holiness versus Legalism

If you’ve been reading TSR for very long at all, one of the themes I often come to is that of God’s holiness, goodness, and righteousness, and how they are surprisingly dynamic, unpredictable and even in some ways, wild. I also explored the idea that God interacts with humanity as a single organism, growing to maturity as a race, not just with individuals. Under this paradigm, the Old Testament, with its Mosaic Law, is essentially God’s version of “don’t play in the street,” “don’t stick things in the electrical socket,” “clean your room,” “don’t color on the walls,” “eat your vegetables,” “mind your manners, please, thank you,” and so on.

I proposed that Christ’s incarnation and the birth of the church was in some ways, our bar mitzvah, or ‘coming of age.’ The rules are lessened and independence increased. This has lead to a wide range of approaches by Christians, from those that largely ignore the Old Testament and the Law to those who largely follow its dictates, well, ok, religiously.

I am currently following a reading plan that will allow me to read the entire Bible in a year. (I’ve done this sort of thing several times over the years, and this is the second year in a row in recent history.) It is good for me because I do get to read the whole thing, and it helps me be disciplined to do so daily. Currently, I am in Leviticus, the third book of the Mosaic Law, and where most of the minutiae are given. So it has been interesting to read it in light of the above perspectives.

Much of the Law we now know is for their protection—the dietary restrictions, the health and safety rules about various diseases and unhealthy situations, and so on. It led to the Jews being healthier, safer, and therefore easier to prosper. Other laws are moral, but even there, most are meant as protection from threats that would not be obvious to people back then. Then there are the ceremonial laws on how to do sacrifices, what the priests’ tasks were, and so on. I know that many of them functioned to keep them aware of their sin nature and the need for a redeemer. As such, they point to Christ’s coming and Redemption (one of the other major TSR themes). Fine.

But there are still some doozies. I know many of those are given with reasons along the lines of ‘because I am a holy God,’ so I conclude that they created a hyper awareness in some way that as God’s people, the Jews were to be different than the other nations, to be separate, called to something higher, even if they didn’t make much sense. There are other laws that I simply don’t get. Why is it that a woman is unclean for a week after giving birth to a boy, but two weeks after a girl?

The idea of uncleanness after birth makes some amount of sense—it gives the woman a chance to heal up before her husband has sex with her again—being told that he’ll be ceremonially unclean if he does, when you live in a deeply religious society like that, and that you’ll have to sacrifice the finest in your flock to atone for it, can be a good motivator to keep the hormones in check for a few days. I also suspect there is something deeper than merely giving the mother a break during a stressful and busy time, but I haven’t studied what that might be.

However, why the gender difference? Given that there are so many GOOD reasons for most of the other laws, leads me to conclude there must be one here too. I just don’t get it. Similarly, most sacrifices must be a male, but some are specified to be a female. Why? The males I interpret to point to Christ, so what about the females? Again, I am fully confident that it is far from arbitrary, and I look forward to learning someday. (Maybe you know and can educate us all—leave a comment!)

So, what? As Christians, we have been given freedom to live in a relationship with God in and through Christ. He calls us friends, and His bride. Yet, that is not done in a vacuum, but in the very context of the Law that Christ fulfilled on the cross. The purpose of the Law was to train us in God’s character, just as our parents raised us in a certain way as children, so that when we have the freedom to act, we do so within the context of our upbringing. If we individually are not taught those ways, then it is difficult to live in a manner consistent with God’s character.

Thus, learning and studying and understanding the Law is a healthy thing for those free from it by the blood of Christ. On the other hand, hopefully we have moved past the stage where we need to be reminded not to write on the walls or clean up our room, and we have the maturity and collective wisdom to apply those principles in a more sophisticated way to other problems and issues that arise in our new-found freedom.

But we cannot apply knowledge and wisdom we do not have.

SDG

Walter Bradley: Is the Bible Scientifically Reliable?

Dr. Walter Bradley is a mechanical engineering professor with a long and distinguished career at three major institutions:  Colorado School of Mines, Texas A&M, and currently is at Baylor. His current research studies various uses of the coconut plant for improving the standard of living in tropical areas. He is also a personal friend and mentor for the last nearly 20 years.

One of his passions is studying the interface between science and Christianity. Over the last 40 years, his views have evolved from young-earth creationism to increasing sophistication in old earth theories, as his studies have gotten more in-depth.

About two weeks ago, he was in Austin to give a presentation he entitled, “Is the Bible Trustworthy in Areas Related to Science?” At the request of a friend also in the audience, Walter has sent me the slides in order to post here. Most of the slides are self-explanatory. For those that aren’t, that’s the limitation of not having the audio attached.

I hope they are useful, interesting and informative for you. (I apologize for the delay in posting this due to technical issues.)

Is the Bible Trustworthy in Areas Related to Science? by Walter Bradley

SDG

myth vs. Myth

I just finished listening to a CD set of the BBC Radio version of J. R. R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings.” I’ve read the books, I’ve seen the movies (several times), and this was the second listening to the series. It is simply a great story, an amazingly well done myth of a fictional world.

It got me thinking again of the many things said by both Tolkien and Lewis about myth and stories, and what a pivotal role they played in Lewis’ conversion. It also reminded me of something over which I have puzzled deeply many times:  how we can watch Star Wars, Superman, Star Trek, Narnia, Lord of the Rings and so many others on the big screen and it is amazing entertainment, cinematography, special effects, and we are taken away to new planes of thought and the amazing feats or magic don’t faze, but thrill us. Yet, we use those same moviemaking techniques to tell Biblical stories or projections of Revelation, they ring hollow, fake, cheesy—choose your own adjective. Why the dichotomy, even for believers, but especially for non-Christians?

It turns out, this was exactly C. S. Lewis’ issue when he read the Gospels as a young boy. They read like myths, but in a stilted, banal style that didn’t flow with the majesty, grace and power of the pagan myths. It was like reading a newspaper account of Scarlett O’Hara’s life instead of Margaret Mitchell’s telling in Gone With The Wind. How could anyone believe it? It was mythological like Zeus gestating Dionysus in his leg, but a myth told badly, by authors with no imagination.

Lewis explains the problem and its resolution thus:

“There was no such historical claim (in Hindu mythology) as in Christianity. I was by now too experienced in literary criticism to regard the Gospels as myths. They had not the mythical taste. And yet the very matter which they set down in their artless, historical fashion – those narrow, unattractive Jews, too blind to the mythical wealth of the pagan world around them – was precisely the matter of the great myths. If ever a myth had become fact, had been incarnated, it would be just like this.”

And elsewhere:

“Now what Dyson and Tolkien showed me was this:  that if I met the idea of sacrifice in a Pagan story I didn’t mind it at all: and again, that if I met the idea of god sacrificing himself to himself… I liked that very much and was mysteriously moved by it:  again, that the idea of a dying and reviving God (Balder, Adonis, Bacchus) similarly moved me provided I met it anywhere except in the Gospels. The reason was that in Pagan stories I was prepared to feel the myth as profound and suggestive of meaning beyond my grasp even tho’ I could not say in cold prose ‘what it meant.’”

“Now the story of Christ is simply a true myth:  a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened:  and one must be content to accept in the same way, remembering that it is God’s myth where the others are men’s myths:  i.e. the Pagan stories are God expressing Himself through the minds of poets, using such images as He found there, while Christianity is God expressing Himself through what we call ‘real things.’”

“The gospel is myth become fact –a moment in actual history, yet also the perfect mythological story. It is a dream that has really come true. The story of Jesus is the pinnacle where two God-shaped slopes reach together – mythology and history, fiction and fact. All previous history and mythology served to prepare the way for the story of Jesus. Pagan myths were like the star in the East, guiding non-Jewish wise men and woman [sic] to the child Jesus, just as the messianic prophecies had guided Jewish believers to Jesus.”

(Thanks to James Hogan for the Lewis quotes. It is quite an excellent article.)

We are so busy today that we think we don’t have time for story and myth, but our hearts cry out for the transcendent, and somewhere inside, we time to time long for it to appear in this world. It has. And there are two mistakes we can make:  we can miss it and we can dismiss it. Both are fatal folly. Just as our bodies tell us when we thirst for water, so our souls tell us when we thirst for God.

SDG

Faith and Fear

Continuing yesterday’s discussion on faith and fear, I’d like to suggest that faith is a muscle or tool to be used and strengthened through that use, not a porcelain trinket that must be protected and hidden away.

When we protect our faith from all attacks, real or perceived, we run the risk of actually turning it into an idol, lifting it above the God with whom our faith is meant to be the vehicle of relationship. It is like sleeping with a marriage license and keeping the spouse in a file cabinet.

Paul called our faith a shield for quenching fiery darts, and sometimes believers seem to prefer to keep it polished in storage so it won’t get scratched. Then, logically, if we are not carrying it with us, we become afraid to come out.

There is a second mistake believers make with our faith shield. We hunker down behind it because the rest of our armor is missing or we don’t feel we know how to use it. We are afraid to use the sword of Scripture because we feel we aren’t prepared for the clever tricks of the enemy attempting to disarm us, so we curl up and let our faith get beat on or run from the engagement.

Again, this is all summed up in the one word, fear. Robert Kiyosaki of “Rich Dad” fame calls fear, “False Evidence Appearing Real.” Not bad, even with the strong whiff of aged cheddar coming off of it. But that is exactly why Paul talks about Scripture being a sword, testing for truth versus falsehood. Faith without truth is under siege. Faith with truth advances.

In college, I took a fencing class and loved it. I’ve always been fascinated by swords and swordplay. One thing about swordplay, you are limited by the number of strokes or moves you know. If you only know one way to block an attack, then your opponent will use others and you become defenseless. If you only know one type of lunge or slash, your opponent quickly learns how to block you completely. To become proficient, you need different teachers who teach different styles, you need to spar with different opponents, you need to be familiar with different types of blades, and so on.

It is the same with our study of the Bible. Most of us do not speak ancient Hebrew or Koine Greek. We don’t understand the different approaches to translation and the effect of the translator’s theology on the nuances of translation. We listen to just a few Bible teachers and come to rely on them rather than critically evaluating what they say. We don’t spend time in commentaries or reading theologians with whom we disagree. We don’t discuss with each other the hard things and examine them in a safe, controlled environment before facing them in life.

As a result, we become very one-dimensional in our ability to apply Scripture to the challenges of our lives and the challenges by our culture and education, and thus have less proficiency in addressing difficult issues. We become afraid, and our faith shrivels or becomes the only tool we have and try to make it do more than it is meant to. This is not the abundant life to which Christ calls us.

The solution? Practice with your sword like your life depends on it. It does.

SDG