too much knowledge; the Joneses; leading early house churches

Tuesday Bible Study May 1, 2012

<>How much knowledge of Bible [Torah, Qu'ran, sutra or other holy book] is enough? Perhaps the value is not so much the command of detail and the heights that one climbs to gain an overview of deeper patterns and relationships. Instead the value comes in time and repetition: by going to the Book with a question or curiosity, the simple fact of active engagement (imagery of clinging to the vine to sustain growth) is what matters, not whether one gets to the bottom of the matter in any final sense. And yet the question remains: by deferring actions because one needs first to know more Bible, then nothing is accomplished outside of the garden of one's mind. The opposite extreme is to put all effort into deeds, without periodically going back to the Word. Best of all, perhaps, is to discover a productive cycle between incomplete knowledge and imperfect actions in the World. In other words, one should intend and hunger for better comprehension of the Word, and one should intend and hunger for tangible results in the World. But one should also accept the unending and imperfect condition under which the cycle rolls along during one's lifecourse, and then across one generation to the next, and over the course of one historical era to the next.

<>Status preoccupations. The urge to "keep up with the Jones" and to benchmark oneself to those taken to be peers, either measuring oneself as a little worse or better than those reference points. Although each follower is on a different road and has different burdens and vehicles to travel the road, in God's eyes we all are equivalent; none can claim absolute moral superiority. Sin big or small (by Worldly measures) is no different in separating a person from God and from the habit of seeking to be holy; whole; healing. By sheer repetition we tend to judge how well we are doing not in reference to God's will, but in reference to family or friends.

<>Early (primitive) church [eklesia: those called out from the others; saints in the World]. How would traditions be reproduced from site to site and from one generation to the next? Would there be squabbles over who is an authority; who is authorized to dictate a course of action, or who could perform wedding, funeral, baptism, communion, laying on of hands, exorcism, etc? With no written text (unless copied by hand of the OT set of Wisdom Books, Laws, Histories, Pentateuch/Septuagint), all scripture would be oral tradition. Certain itinerant experts of one or more books would reside for a time to tell all about these; sometimes also writing it all down. But with little institutional momentum to carry the small grouping forward, and some degree of external persecution connected to the rumor mill/grapevine of the day, it seems like the likelihood of small house churches rising and falling would be common. And yet those first 300 years it all did persist somehow.

<>Distractions and dissipation of modern times. Where once information was scarce and imagination filled in the vast spaces where information was unavailable or in a form unusable, now there is "more information than there is shit to know about." [quoted from movie, Apocalypse Now]. Where once hunger to learn more prevailed, now there is resistance to spend one's attention on the myriad versions of Bible and proliferation of titles and authors. The essential message and the teachings it comes from remains unchanged, but perhaps it is harder than ever to keep a firm grip on it. There are as many paths to that message as there are different kinds of people; a sort of modern day Tower of Babel. And yet paradoxically, this superabundance may drown rather raise us. What to do? The analogy of the Internet rate of information doubling may suggest an answer: algorithms that track the information that actually is accessed and used is one kind of filter. Word of mouth (social tagging and 'buzz' about certain content) is another filter.