Check out this blog entry from my colleague, Steve Taylor. Steve helps us consider what to make of the “unrebutted” charges against God found in Psalm 89. If you ever struggle with feeling that God has not kept his promises or struggled with what to do with OT passages that seem to charge God with failure to keep his promises…read this:
Jesus Redeems a Psalm: What a Difference “Christotelicity” Makes!.
During my recent trip to the DRC and Rwanda I practiced French by reading the Bible in French and English. Not sure it helped much but I did discover an interesting difference in Matthew 5:6 between the two translations that made me stop and think.
First the NIV:
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
Now the French:
Heureux ceux qui ont faim et soif de la justice, car ils seront rassasiés!
Notice something different? Most English translations use the word righteousness. Those who hunger after righteousness will be filled (or satisfied). Now, when you substitute the word justice–those who hunger and thirst for justice–does it add meaning to you? It does to me.
When I hear the word righteous, I think of individual holy acts, attitudes, and character. When I hear the word justice, I often think of fairness, judgment, and legal outcomes that make right prior wrongs. In reading this verse in French and in Goma, DRC where so many have no justice and can’t return to their villages due to ongoing conflict, my mind considers that Jesus might be saying that those who hunger and thirst after justice are going to be blessed in a particular way.
Obviously, those who hunger and thirst after righteousness will also long for justice for individuals, communities and states. One cannot be righteous and yet unjust or just and unrighteous. However, it is possible for us to fight against sin in our own lives, practice individual acts of righteousness, and yet forget to pray and work for justice for those who are being oppressed.
Some years ago Carl Ellis, in a class on African American theology, suggested that White evangelical churches often preach and teach about individual righteousness (i.e., what to put off and what to put on) but rarely teach about corporate righteousness unless it is to rail against worldly matters (e.g., abortion, homosexuality, greed, etc.). I do think this is changing as evangelicals are paying attention to matters of justice around the world. Yet, we can be reminded that God cares about those who are unjustly treated. It is not just Abel’s blood that cries out (Gen 4:10) for justice.
Thankfully, there is a just and righteous outcome. The sacrifice of Jesus “speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.” (Heb 12:24). Yet when you read Matthew 5 don’t forget that God is actively blessing those who are oppressed. He will satisfy them by fulfilling their desires. Let us not forget to hunger and thirst after justice for ourselves and for the world.
¹In this post I am not tackling the best translation for the Greek word (δικαιοσύνην) used in this verse. The 92 times it is used in the KJV are all translated righteous/ness. However justice is implied in 2 Peter 1:1 as we have faith due to the righteousness of God.
Maybe Christian counselors shouldn’t use the bible when they promote their counseling theory. Maybe they should just articulate their theory and leave the bible verses out. Sound radical? An overreaction? Guilty as charged. But…consider with me that some of our most popular Christian models may be built on rather flimsy biblical data.
All Christian counselors recognize that the bible plays a unique role in counseling theory. Otherwise, they would just be “counselors.” But not all use the bible in the same way. Some view the bible as the primary (even sole) guide or resource for understanding human nature and recovery from every sort of relational and/or emotional struggle. These counselors would likely cite 2 Tim 3:15-16 as evidence that Scripture is powerful and primary in our fight against sin and suffering. Others view the bible as a helpful foundation designed to remind us who God is, who we are, and a resource for comfort, encouragement, and rebuke. But, these counselors might also look to other resources as well–psychological research, physiology, medicine, sociology, etc. They would not dismiss the value of the bible but would argue that the bible doesn’t intend to be the answer guide for all the questions we might have. Thus, sources of human knowledge are important to the work of good Christian counseling. Now within this second camp, counselors vary widely as to how important either Scripture or human sources of knowledge function in their given practice. Some seem to emphasize (or neglect) one source more than the other.
No matter where a counselor falls on the above continuum, it is far too easy to use the bible to baptize a particular viewpoint or theory. From my most recent christian counseling conference, I heard a plenary speaker say something like this (not a quote but pretty near exact):
Men need respect. It is their airhose. Women need love. It is their airhose.
Along with this statement, the speaker bolstered their points with personal stories and biblical passages indicating the women should be loved and men treated as having authority (submitted to). Here the speaker used bible passages to indicate that men are designed to operate optimally when respected and women designed to operate optimally with love.
Is this true? It could be. I certainly think that this SEEMS to be true for most men and women. But, and this is the BIG BUT…does Scripture indeed teach this. Does Paul teach us that these are our basic needs in order to function well?
Notice that love and respect cannot be our “airhose.” Habakkuk 3:16f would suggest that when everything has been taken away, it is possible to have joy in all things. Notice that Ephesians 5 is about what each are commanded to do…not about what each of us needs to receive. Christ is our “airhose” and nothing else. This speaker would have been better served just teaching us about observations made about what actions tend to make for better marriages than to indicate that the Scriptures teach us we have these two needs.
So, the next time you pick up a cool book by a christian counselor. Check out how they use the bible. As a support for a good theory (e.g., this verse teaches us…)? Or, as a source for understanding the problem of evil and the nature of our God who leads, guides, and saves us?
If you are interested in this topic, let me give you a couple of resources.
Last week my prayer partner John read me a bit from CS Lewis’ “The Business of Heaven“, a daily reader. This little vignette covers the controversial topic of headship. Christians have frequently gotten up in arms over the meaning of headship and submission in the marriage relationship (Ephesians 5:21-33). We can boil most of these arguments down to matters of power. Who gets to be in charge? What is mutual submission? Are you loving right? Submitting right? How often should the decider (thank you George Bush and Saturday Night Live for this wonderful noun) be putting his/her foot down?
Wherever you fall on this discussion of the meaning of the Ephesians 5 passage, the following from Lewis is quite apt:
We must go back to our Bibles. The husband is the head of the wife just in so far as he is to her what Christ is to the Church. He is to love her as Christ loved the church–read on–and gave his life for her (Ephesians 5:25). This headship, then, is most fully embodied not in the husband we should all wish to be but in him whose marriage is most like a crucifixion; whose wife receives most and gives least, is most unworthy of him, is–in her own mere nature–least lovable. For the Church has no beauty but what the Bridegroom gives her; he does not find, but makes her lovely. The chrism of this terrible coronation is to be seen not in the joys of any man’s marriage but in its sorrows, in the sickness and sufferings of a good wife or the faults of a bad one, in his unwearying (never paraded) care or his inexhaustible forgiveness: forgiveness, not acquiescence. As Christ sees in the flawed, proud, fanatical or lukewarm Church on earth that Bride who will one day be without spot or wrinkle, and labours to produce the latter, so the husband whose headship is Christ-like (and he is allowed no other) never despairs… (p. 169-170)
There is a lot of substance in the above quote. You might do well to read it again, slowly. I gather a couple of crucial points.
Lewis goes on to say that he does not mean to baptize difficult or miserable marriage. There is no extra value to martyrdom. He only wishes to remind us that it is easy to point out the flaws of another in such a way that makes our self-serving choices legitimate. Even when we must refuse a loved one or confront them about their flaws, it should be done for their sake, and not our own.
David Lamb, a colleague, as just published a book with InterVarsity Press entitled, God Behaving Badly: Is the God of the Old Testament Angry, Sexist, and Racist? If you have found yourself asking or being asked this question, you might find this book a help. Dave doesn’t shirk from the questions that most find difficult to answer. Plus, the book is VERY easy to read. He interjects personal stories and funny media depictions of God in such a way as to illustrate his points (What do Bruce Almighty and Elijah have in common?) and does not use highly esoteric language found in some OT oriented books.
I believe you will be hooked right from his first question on page 1: “How does one reconcile the loving God of the Old Testament with the harsh God of the New Testament.” Don’t we usually ask this the other way around? You’ll see David has been thinking about these topics for some time.
Filed under Biblical Reflection, Biblical Seminary, Uncategorized
A friend of mine in the blogosphere has written this fine piece on addictions. Love how he starts it…that we think repentance should kill temptation. Further, he goes on to talk about Satan’s end-game with addictions. Is it getting you to imbibe in your addiction or is it something else?
And what is our end game? Not having to struggle with saying no to an addiction? Maybe it should be something else. Click the link above and read his short but helpful response.
Filed under addiction, Biblical Reflection
Pretty true isn’t it? We trust electrical current to be available when we flip the light switch. We trust that the water we get out of our taps won’t be carrying disease. We trust that when we get to the checkout line at the grocery, the cashier will be able to take our debit card.
Most of our trust is below our daily awareness….until we face a new technology or lose one we use every day. Last week I made a quick trip by air to another city. I had to rent a car to get to a meeting about an hour away from the airport. Since I was traveling to a new location I decided to splurge and pay a little extra to get a GPS unit. Now, I know the rest of you probably already own one of these devices but this was my first time using one. So, instead of getting out my pre-printed Google map directions and trying to memorize the turns, I turned on the unit and put my trust in it to get me to my destination.
I knew I needed to go south, but I did not know the roads I needed to use. Well, the GPS put me through my paces. “Turn left…bear right…continue on…in .9 miles.” But, when I began going east and then told to get off the highway and onto an extremely rural back road I wasn’t sure anymore. My distrust only grew when my lovely assistant told me, “re-calculating” even while I continued to follow her every direction. Maybe she wasn’t as wise as I thought she was. Or, maybe I typed in the wrong address.
It was at this moment that I wondered what it was like for Abraham as he traveled from his home in Ur to some new home in what is now Israel. Like me with my GPS screen, he could see the road in front of him without being able to see the destination. The Lord tends to open doors for us but we often have no clear picture of where we are going and what the “roads” will be like. We are required to trust that we can keep going forward and not get lost.
At a stop I took a moment to check out my unit a bit more. I found out I could change the screen and see more of my destination. To my relief I found that I was indeed moving in the right direction and had just 20 minutes left to get to where I was going.
With all our technologies, we can “see” a lot. I am personally thankful for the imaging technologies that helped us know what we were facing with my wife’s cancer. Some day we may be able to see who is really likely to have dementia and be able to alter their lives before getting sick.
But these great technologies cannot tell us how our lives will turn out, how relationships will change, or what opportunities and struggles the Lord will bring our way. For these things, we must trust God or try to go it alone.
I for one am glad that there is one technology that allows us to scan out to the end and see that no matter what troubles and trials are in our path…we know the end point…heaven.
And now back to trusting in technology as I push “publish”.
Filed under Biblical Reflection
What is your usual response to someone who brings up your “stuff”? You know, that stuff you’d rather not talk about because it is embarrassing or painful or causes you to have to confront some issue in your life? And yes, I know it matters WHO is doing the bringing up and HOW.
But if we are honest we probably recognize the tendency to blame-shift by bringing up their stuff or change the subject to some intellectual debate in order to get off of the topic of us.
At the end of yesterday’s post I mentioned the passage in John 4 that tells about Jesus’ interaction with the woman at the well. Notice a few of her responses as a result of her discomfort:
1. Jesus asks for something………she’s suspicious and defensive and brings up Jewish arrogance against her kind of people
2. Jesus offers something………she’s wondering how he thinks he’s better than their forefather Jacob
3. Jesus tells her to get her husband (she is living with someone not her husband)……..she tells a partial truth
4. Jesus tells the woman her own private story–5 husbands and the one you are with isn’t your husband (notice he doesn’t call her a liar but actually validates her half-truth)………she brings up a doctrinal debate between Jews and Samaritans.
5. Jesus avoids the debate and gives a bigger picture…….the woman THEN drops her defensiveness and gets her village-mates to come see Jesus
We’re probably a lot like this unnamed woman of ill-repute. We blame-shift, focus on possible problems of the other, tell half-truths when cornered and then finally resort to rabbit trail debates all so we can avoid facing certain things about ourselves.
The good thing is that God rarely lets up in his gentle but persistent pursuit.
Filed under Biblical Reflection, Christianity, conflicts, counseling skills, Doctrine/Theology
As one who makes a living listening to brokenness, there are times when troubles seem everywhere. Everyone is swimming in a pool of their own tears–to quote the former PBS motivational speaker John Bradshaw. Sometimes, the pool seems pretty deep…cancer, mental illness, sexual abuse, infidelity, mania, marital discord, identity confusion, etc.
If not careful, we counselors can begin to believe that brokenness is the ONLY reality–a dreadful position if all we have to offer our clients is a knowing sad smile. On Sunday I went to a class on Isaiah, what some call 2nd Genesis because of the prophetic descriptions of re-birth and redemption of Israel through the work of Emmanuel.
In the class, someone said something that has been banging around in my head. It went something like this (gist, not quote)
It is not a challenge to see brokenness around us–that is easy. The challenge is to see God’s re-creative activity. Oddly, we call reality (God’s activity in redeeming us) a myth and prefer myth (superficial Christmas peace) over the reality of God’s working through brokenness to make us whole. I repeat, the challenge is to see God’s recreation and Glory.
Not sure how much of that was said and how much of that is just my own thoughts. But, still, the challenge for us is to see re-birth and not merely dying and death. What looks like an ugly stump (Isaiah 11:1) to us is a fruit bearing shoot.
See if you can catch glimpses of growth and rebirth today!
A friend recently sent me this Leadership article link (below) on the topic of pastoral narcissism. He wondered if those two words were oxymoronic. Yes, he’s right…but no, we do often seek out self-promoting leaders. It makes us feel good.
I encourage you to read the essay–but not so you can point your finger at some TV personality pastor. Read the essay and consider how you might be tempted to promote yourself in a conversation this holiday week. Or, check to see if you ever dream about your own “brand.”
Pastoral Narcissism | LeadershipJournal.net.
Musings on Faith and Psychology 