Wrestling with the "everlasting Word of life," as Quaker founder Geo. Fox called the good book, we at the Bible study seem to be aligning ourselves with the worldview promoted therein: have faith to mingle with all members of society great and small, actively do good in your world, go forth in meekness with an open heart listening intently for God's direction.
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We got through the part where the O.T. commandments are recapped ("You have heard it said: thou shalt not kill...") and read the Lord's Prayer version of Matthew (a little different to Luke 11 version). We wondered how come we say the version "forgive us our sins" [until the 1970s we used Debts]. We noted that this model prayer has the praise part to begin and the "give us" part afterwards. But many people skip the first part...
Getting back to the "you have heard it said..." discussion, we looked for the common denominator in all those statements. In other words, by taking things to that full (spirit of the commands, not just going through the motions/behaviors of the commands) meaning, what is Jesus really getting at in terms of the Right Attitude and Relationship between us and our God. One clue comes from the scene when Jesus is asked "what is the greatest commandment": love God and love your neighbor as yourself. By doing that master command, then all the rest of the commands/behaviors are mere details. When love for the creator and for fellow person is overflowing, then the sins/commandments will take care of themselves.
[listing the beatitudes alongside the reward/result of each illustration, a pattern emerges]
poor in spirit ->searching out/inside
those who mourn ->paused from rut
the gentle/meek ->power voluntary
hunger/thirst ->righteousness urgent; singlemnded
merciful ->forgive yield to bigger/higher
pure in heart ->open, not cluttered
the peacemakers ->vision of good
persecuted for righteousness->undaunted
reproached/persecuted/say evil of you for my sake ->foregrounded, searching out/inside
in summary, one's heart should be:
-paused from rut, routine or knee-jerk responses
-voluntary spirit
-urgent, single-minded
-forgive yield to bigger/higher
-open, not cluttered or distracted
-vision of the good
-undaunted by obstacles or threats
-foregrounded
Feb 15, 2011
beatitudes, Letter of THE LAW vs the Spirit of the Law
Matthew 5:17 talks about "fulfilling the Law, not abolishing it."
The Beatitudes include a series of statements about "you have heard it said" [insert Old Testament/Ten Commandments list]. In each case the point is that what is stated pertains to external, observable actions against The Law. However, in each case we hear that this is only the visible "tip of the iceberg" and that the spirit of the law is what matters. In other words, by making your heart/outlook/intentionality Righteous, then the external behaviors will naturally follow [cf. Book of James in which there is the statement about black hearts are indicated by black words: what is on the inside comes out].
During our Tuesday Bible Study discussion the experience of leading worship and study in prison yielded this insight: because the church experience there is not institutionalized (no building or hierarchy), there is more latitude for the Christian Experience to focus on the spirit of the teachings, not its trappings. The structured society of prison gives enough institutional inertia, so that church matters can be dispensed with. An analogy could be to the Bible itself: during the time of Jesus there was no bound version with red lettering or gilt edges. So the Word was not objectified or institutionalized. Instead the emphasis was on the spirit or content of the Word. Paradoxically the published and bound volume can be a compact gateway (not endpoint or final destination) and yet for the false sense of finiteness this leads to a false belief that it holds power or sanctity as an object alone. Therefore, while it can be an entry to God's Word, it can also be a stumbling block.
Feb 1, 2011
Men's bible study, Feb. 1
Beatitudes, Matthew 5:
-That the list of how to go through life is about relating to God and God to each person. It is BE-attitude, in which attitude or perspective is the connective tissue between what you know in your head (knowledge; what is right) and how you act in the world (seizing opportunities now that you can see them right in front of you)
-Human weakness makes us scale our ambitions, expectations, and sense of insult or irritation in relative terms ("at least I'm better than..." or "at least I'm not as much of a sinner as..."). However, in God's eyes, such mortal preoccupations is just like "rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic." In other words, there are much, much bigger things than the puny jockeying relative to one's neighbors. When it comes to God's working and relating to each person, that is an absolute (not relative) thing. So much of our experiences are relativistic that it is counter-intuitive to our lived experience to perceive differences with our fellow children-of-God and accept that we are equally sinful, blessed and loved.
-Just as life experience allows us to actually understand the significance of things like disability, children's care, in-laws, mortality and so forth, the same is true of the Beatitudes: by moving from head-knowledge (logic; logos) to heart-knowledge, the full meaning hits home. It becomes part of who we are; our identity; what we claim as our own. As such, we carry it out in daily decisions and actions.
Lived experience, both the sweet and the bitter, does make things come alive for us; makes the concepts real. As such, the things that surround us (opportunities, temptations, obligations) suddenly become visible. They were there all the time, but somehow we never could "see" them. God's grace is there; His righteousness is there; joy, mystery, glory and power for ever and ever are there. But until we are prepared to see this, no matter how many times to go to places to see God, we won't really see Him.
-Hungering and thirsting for righteousness is not only a "pull" (positive attraction), but also a "push" (negative repulsion): we resonate with being Righteous (but not Self-righteous) much like a radio that moves from out-of-tune into clear tuning, but we also rankle at being un-righteous. There is pleasure in being Right with the Lord at the same time that there is pain in being not-Right with the Lord.
-Just as "People don't care what you know until they know that you care," so too, for people to accept that God's Word is relevant and hunger for this, first of all they need to feel that God cares.
=-= Why does it matter to seek more knowledge, then incorporate into one's working understanding and vision, and finally to act in consonance with that improved stature?
Take the example of reading an owner's manual versus just trial-and-error. For having wrestled with the word, then applying this to one's working method the resulting improvement in vision (acuity, finer distinctions, ability to make connections that were not apparent before) means that you can see farther, wider and deeper when faced with the same circumstances than ever you could before. Whereas the trial-and-error or lucky-guess person bumps into all sorts of troubles, the person with the Big Picture or map can navigate the intermediate obstacles to most readily reach the point they seek.
-That the list of how to go through life is about relating to God and God to each person. It is BE-attitude, in which attitude or perspective is the connective tissue between what you know in your head (knowledge; what is right) and how you act in the world (seizing opportunities now that you can see them right in front of you)
-Human weakness makes us scale our ambitions, expectations, and sense of insult or irritation in relative terms ("at least I'm better than..." or "at least I'm not as much of a sinner as..."). However, in God's eyes, such mortal preoccupations is just like "rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic." In other words, there are much, much bigger things than the puny jockeying relative to one's neighbors. When it comes to God's working and relating to each person, that is an absolute (not relative) thing. So much of our experiences are relativistic that it is counter-intuitive to our lived experience to perceive differences with our fellow children-of-God and accept that we are equally sinful, blessed and loved.
-Just as life experience allows us to actually understand the significance of things like disability, children's care, in-laws, mortality and so forth, the same is true of the Beatitudes: by moving from head-knowledge (logic; logos) to heart-knowledge, the full meaning hits home. It becomes part of who we are; our identity; what we claim as our own. As such, we carry it out in daily decisions and actions.
Lived experience, both the sweet and the bitter, does make things come alive for us; makes the concepts real. As such, the things that surround us (opportunities, temptations, obligations) suddenly become visible. They were there all the time, but somehow we never could "see" them. God's grace is there; His righteousness is there; joy, mystery, glory and power for ever and ever are there. But until we are prepared to see this, no matter how many times to go to places to see God, we won't really see Him.
-Hungering and thirsting for righteousness is not only a "pull" (positive attraction), but also a "push" (negative repulsion): we resonate with being Righteous (but not Self-righteous) much like a radio that moves from out-of-tune into clear tuning, but we also rankle at being un-righteous. There is pleasure in being Right with the Lord at the same time that there is pain in being not-Right with the Lord.
-Just as "People don't care what you know until they know that you care," so too, for people to accept that God's Word is relevant and hunger for this, first of all they need to feel that God cares.
=-= Why does it matter to seek more knowledge, then incorporate into one's working understanding and vision, and finally to act in consonance with that improved stature?
Take the example of reading an owner's manual versus just trial-and-error. For having wrestled with the word, then applying this to one's working method the resulting improvement in vision (acuity, finer distinctions, ability to make connections that were not apparent before) means that you can see farther, wider and deeper when faced with the same circumstances than ever you could before. Whereas the trial-and-error or lucky-guess person bumps into all sorts of troubles, the person with the Big Picture or map can navigate the intermediate obstacles to most readily reach the point they seek.
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