Missing the Word

Missing the Word

As I suspect is true of too many of my fellow Christian' lives, just as it is in mine, there are times when we do not read the Bible as regularly, as frequently or as much as we really should. I realized as soon as I wrote that title though that it could also lead to a misunderstanding and not really convey what I am discussing here. I am not just referring to reading words on a page in the book; I am talking about missing fellowship with God, our Heavenly Father, that occurs when we read the Bible, The Word. That is the ultimate point of the Bible, communion with God. In reading it, we open ourselves to further communication through the Holy Spirit, as we are enlightened about what we read by the very same Person that we believe inspired the writing to begin with (John 14:26; 15:26).

My understanding of how we as Christians view the Bible is that it is an inspired record that God has given us to show us how he is at work in his creation, particularly on earth and in the lives of humans. We do not regard it in the same way as I understand the Orthodox teaching of the Muslim is about the Koran, namely that every word is sacred in Arabic as it is written and therefore can never be altered.  They believe this because the belief is that the entire document was given in this form to the original Prophet Muhammad over a period of time in the early 7th century CE. That is why you will find orthodox Muslim scholars even discounting the study of the Koran in different languages. Some of them therefore then also have difficulty with we Christians who have the Bible that has come down through so many languages, translations and copies. They don't believe that we can have a believable record anymore.

The first Bible delivered to me as my very own copy of this The Word of God was a King James Version, which was the only form known to most English-speaking Christians at the time (I am referring to the early 1950s). I believe it was a 7th birthday gift. I read that through, although not immediately of course. While attending Canadian Mennonite Bible College in the mid-60s, I purchased the version used for the most part there, the Revised Standard Version, and read that in its entirety. A few years later, when the New English Bible came out, I read all of it. I have read the Bible from cover-to-cover several more times since then. Now I have begun to read a “Green” edition of the New Revised Standard Version. This is a special version that highlights everything in the Scriptures that has to do, according to its editors, with creation and the environment. I had just before this, for the first time ever, purchased a study Bible, in the form of the Harper Collins Study Bible, which is another New Revised Standard Version translation. I had not really felt much of a need for this type of Bible previously because even my very first Bible had cross-references, a concordance and other such study helps that served me well over the years.

So, I have read through The Word a number of times. I have studied it from when I was an elementary age Sunday School student until the present time. I have taught it to Sunday school classes, led small groups in its study and preached sermons based on it. When I was about 12-years-of age, I remember wanting to read it diligently to discover all the rules I could to live the proper life of a Christian.

However, I must confess that it was not until I was almost middle-aged that I reached the point where the desire to read the Bible came from somewhere inside of me, not because of that external compulsion that this was something a Christian should do. To me, this could only have happened because of having reached a certain degree of maturity as a Christian, having come to the point in my relationship with God were I really wanted to keep in touch with Him through His Word. It is the indwelling Holy Spirit prompting me to keep up my communion with God.

So, this is where I am when I said to the current small group of our congregation of which I am currently the leader, I have missed the fact that we have not been meeting this fall, as it has had a negative impact on my reading and studying the word, and therefore my being in communion with God. Now I truly sometimes say with the psalmist David, "As the heart pants after the water brooks, so my soul pants after you, O God." (Psalm 42:1) He actually expresses it a little more graphically yet in Psalm 119:131: “I opened my mouth and panted: for I long for your commandments." (Commandments is just one of many words David uses, especially in Psalm 119, to refer to the Word of God.) Therefore, I am going to begin, as it were, to catch up on the studies that we would have done this fall, had we been meeting.

HOW WE RELATE TO GOD

IV. HOW WE RELATE TO GOD

1. The Bible

In some ways we have already referred to this in our talk of how we get our knowledge of God. Yes, if we believe that the Bible is the Word of God, if we want to hear the voice of the I AM, what is more obvious than that we need to read the scriptures. The more we do this, the greater the possibilities are that we will come to know that God is indeed speaking to us through the Word.  

2. Prayer

I think it is quite obvious that when we want to speak to God we engage in what we call prayer. Prayer is really nothing more than a special word that has entered our vocabulary to refer for the most part specifically to communication with a deity. To be sure, it is sometimes used otherwise, quite often in poems or songs to do with love. Have you ever noticed that in these cases it usually describes an unspoken wish or message, one that is not communicated directly? Sometimes there is also the idea that it is just fantasy, it isn’t expected that there will be an answer. That is the secular definition of prayer: “an earnest request, an entreaty, a supplication”. The only difference in the dictionary’s definition of prayer when it refers to God is that it adds that it is a humble request

This idea that prayer is just a request should not be the case when we are engaged in prayer with God. Notice that I said with. Real prayer in the religious sense, at least in the Christian understanding, should be a two-way street. I think it often isn’t because we don’t go about it properly. We may give some thanks, some praise, but mostly we are hurriedly dashing off a string of often poorly thought out requests. Then we’re done. How can we expect an answer? That’s like writing a letter. You do that; send it off, especially on the Internet, never to hear about it again sometimes. Actually, of course, the Internet actually does better than that. It usually tells you in graphic terms, such as that there was a fatal error at such and such a place, that your letter wasn’t deliverable. Prayer should be a dialog. If it’s not we need to really look at how we go about prayer, and I’m speaking to myself here as much as to you.

3. Meditation

Meditation or contemplation is something that I think is rather foreign to most of us. It’s not a discipline we, in our busy lives, often take time for. Therefore, it’s difficult to even speak about it. However, we know that it is another practice that makes possible communication with God. It is a method that requires even more preparation and commitment than prayer. To meditate we really have to leave the world, our everyday life, behind, find a quiet place where we can just let go and focus our minds on God. 

 

The secular use of the word meditation refers to “thinking deeply and continuously” about something, “reflecting, pondering.” My dictionary also refers to meditation as a “solemn reflection on sacred matters as a devotional act”. I think that’s rather a limited definition, but what can we expect from a secular dictionary?

 

4. Relationship

This brings us back to where I began. God is not a thing, a ‘sacred matter’ we can just think about. Too often that is how we view God though. God Is the I AM, remember? God is alive. God is a being, moreover, a being that can and wants to relate to us. That seems to be why we were created. God wanted more beings to have relationships with. To be sure, the Bible may not be very clear on this at first glance, particularly the Creation account itself. However, the whole story of the Bible should make this clear. In fact, ultimately, God had to come to earth as a human to understand us and be understood and known by us. God chose to walk in our sandals, our shoes, and our moccasins, whatever it is we wear. It finally came down to that. God had to become one of us. The Creator became the creature.  

God’s love is too vast to be confined to heaven and a few legions of angels. God’s generosity knows no bounds. His grace has no limits. When humankind was created, God gave them a couple of tasks, but the main one seems to be simply to multiply and fill the earth. Isn’t that kind of odd? That doesn’t strike us as a particularly divine calling, to reproduce. That doesn’t seem at first glance to be a religious practice.

I think these lines of thinking only reflect how far we have come from the Garden of Eden. Before there was sin, we lived in a perfect world that only required some care taking, some gardening. We didn’t have to worry about where next meal was going to come from, about making sure we had shelter from the elements. We didn’t have to worry about jobs and taxes and not even about death, yet.

What was left? Life was about relationships and communication, the more the better. What is this leading to? Sex! Ah, some of you squirmed. Again, this shows how far we’ve come from the Garden. Let’s be honest though. What’s on most of our minds most often? If we took away all the cares and concerns of the world, some of which I’ve already referred to, what would be left? A lot more time to focus on sex.

Now, when I speak her of sex, I’m not referring just to intercourse, although that’s the ultimate expression of human love that involves all our senses. That is the ultimate expression of love with another person. Was this God’s other great idea? There was already love in heaven. But we don’t think of the angels as sexual beings. In fact, we don’t think of God as a sexual being. But again, be honest, what, next to the drive to stay alive, which involves getting food, obtaining shelter, in our climate at least – what is the strongest drive we have? It’s the sexual. Or is it?

Well, if it is, I think it’s only so because of The Fall, because of sin. Don’t; get me wrong. It’s not that sex is wrong or sinful. Not at all. But if our strongest drive is to another person, and with sex in mind, we have ‘fallen short of the glory of God’.

If you have been listening carefully, you will have noticed that I never used the word he or she to refer to God in this whole message so far. It’s not easy to do that when we have become so used to addressing the I AM in human terms.

God is not sexual. We all accept that. Somehow though, too many of us mean by that that God is beyond, above sex. We’re still not sure that God should have anything to do with sex. But God created sex, so how could there be anything wrong with it? Well, of course the thing that’s wrong about it is if we do view it as the ultimate in relationships. Indeed, isn’t that the problem with sex in our world? The less people engage in relationships with one another, the more they turn to sex in a distorted desire to achieve what we were created for. The hunger has become for the creature and the physical, not the spiritual and the Creator.

It’s not by accident that our relationship to God as individuals, and as a people too - and that’s very important - that this relationship is compared to a bride and groom. Sex is the next most important experience after life and relationships. Indeed, as we were created it is inseparable from our – should I say – other? drive for relationships. In fact, the King James Bible speaks of sexual relationship as knowing. We moderns think, what a euphemism, why can’t we just say intercourse or coitus or whatever technical term we like to use?  Well, it’s because, in God’s design, there is a lot more to sex than just an act. When we know someone most intimately, well, that often includes sex. But there’s more to it than that. At least there should be. Relationships don’t survive on sex alone. We know that. Relationships come first.

This is also why, when we sin sexually, that we, and the others involved, suffer perhaps more than after committing any other sin except murder. Sex is at the core of our being as part of our drive for relationship. However, it is only involved in the human level.  We are created first to relate to God. I think it’s why sex is so increasingly distorted in our increasingly Godless society. When we forsake God, our number one priority in relationships, we turn to the human physical part that’s left. God planned that to include relationship too, but when we destroy relationships by the many ways we do, what’s left? Empty sex. The Evil One knows what’s important. Satan knows where to trap us. If we can’t have the real thing., give us the substitute. Since we don’t have the real thing, which we are created with such a hunger for, we go crazily after the substitute. Just look at our society. Sex is everywhere. The media is full of it. The business world is full of it, in more ways than one. It’s even in our bad language. What do people say when they swear? It’s either something to do with God or with sex. Interesting huh? But not accidental.

If we were still perfect humans, would our strongest drive not be to relate to God? We talked of God creating us to relate to. I hope those of us who are or have been married and partaken in sex enjoy it. No human experience can beat it. It’s one thing that’s uniquely human. God made it to be so. That’s how he could be assured that the world would fill up with more and more people for him to love. So there’s the full circle again. Sex is part of God’s great design. But still, it is God’s design, not something that evolved just for survival of the species. God is behind it all, in it all, and that’s where our ultimate focus should be. That’s where the ultimate relationship is to be had. Our human relationships, wonderful as they can be, are only a shadow of what our most important relationship can be. After all, our human relationships, at least the sexual, would appear to end with this life. Jesus said there was no marriage, by which he also meant sexual union, in heaven. Our most important relationship is one that we need to establish here for eternality.

God Is, and God is to be related to. Praise be to God! 

_____________________

Lorne Brandt

(First) Nation(s) or a People? - Thoughts on the Origins of the Jews

There is division and confusion within the Christian community today with regards to the status of The Children of Israel. There are those who claim that God's promises to The Children of Israel as recorded in the first portion of The Bible, in The Old Testament, as part of what Christians sometimes refer to as the Old Covenant, now refer to The Church, to Christians. Other, who come to this position in part because they may be taking a more literal translation of Scripture, perhaps also because of giving Old Testament content and messages equal weight to the New Testament message and what Jesus said, believe that the promises of the Old Testament to the Children of Israel in terms of geography and place with the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the Temple in all its Judaic Solomonic glory is to be fulfilled once again.

I am not a scholar in any of these areas. Some say that this division really only took on a significant role in the church's discourse with the 19th century rise of Zionism. As I understand that, this was a Jewish movement, which received Anglo-American support. The underpinnings of this doctrine were also in part promulgated and given further weight through the publication of the Scofield Bible and the rise of what some refer to as Dispensationalism. On the other hand, the first view mentioned, came to be known as the doctrine of Displacement, referring to the belief that Of the Church has "displaced" the Jews in God's story.

Because of the influence and lobbying of the Jewish population, particularly in the USA, and perhaps also the guilt of particularly the evangelical Christians, along with their interpretation of the Bible as mentioned above, this issue has yielded an increased murkiness of the church-state separation in recent decades in North America.

I am not a scholar of Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. However, I sometimes wonder whether some of the difficulty in this area goes back to the beginning of this story and where the word "nation" first appears. The first English use of the word is when God promises Abraham to make of him a great nation in Genesis 12:2. However, there is nothing in the story of the patriarchs to suggest that God was making a nation here in the geographic location other than in these promises. Indeed, even when The Children of Israel returned to the area Abraham had settled in after their 400-year stay in Egypt, and wanted a King, like the other nations around them, it is recorded that God, through the prophet Samuel, expressed his displeasure with this idea.

I can't help but wonder if what God had in mind all along was not simply a people. The whole story of the Bible, especially the messages of Jesus himself in the New Testament, do not really suggest that God was interested in establishing a nation for any particular reason. Everything that the prophets talk about has to do with a people's and their leaders’ obedience to God and what the results of that could be, and what the results of disobedience are.

However, one way or another, what passed for a nation by worldly standards, occurred with Abraham's descendants. This is not to say this was the original plan. Jesus did not support that. The rest of the New Testament writers for the most part, except for Paul's tortured arguments in chapters 9-11 of Romans, do not really support that concept. In fact, Paul argues strongly that the people God is interested in are those who believe in him. Faith is the mark of this nation, nothing racial or geographic.

My point with this entire here though is not so much to study this issue further. It is rather to come back to the issue of church-state separation that I mentioned had become intertwined with this in recent years. We in Canada had often prided ourselves that we did a better job of keeping this separation than our American cousins in large measure. However, suddenly we find ourselves with a Prime Minister who, like former US Pres. George Bush and others, was at times doing things like ending his speeches with "God bless Canada."

Now, at one level, I am all for that. However, I am equally in favor of God blessing the rest of the world just as much as Canada. Now let me take a turn in the development of my theme and get to the crux of the matter that I want to lead into.

Prime Minister Harper wants God to bless Canada. If he reads his Old Testament carefully, he would see that one of the regularly repeated commands to the Children of Israel, from Moses on through the prophets, is to look after the aliens, orphans, widows, sojourners etc. Jesus himself said, as recorded in Luke chapter 4:18-19, quoting the Prophet Isaiah (61:1-2), that he came to preach the gospel, the good news, to the poor, heal the brokenhearted, preach deliverance to the captives, set prisoners free, restore sight to the blind and set at liberty those who were bruised.

One could point to many areas where the current Conservative government's ideology and programs are not accomplishing this. However, I think the area where our government continues to fail most grievously in this area, covering all of the categories in Jesus' message above, is in Canada's dealings with our First Nations fellow inhabitants of this land.

I do not believe that God can bless this land as much as he might like to as long as we continue to fail to treat the first Nations as equals, making sure that they have living conditions as good as or better than the rest of us. Now, given my beliefs about church and state, I am not so much ultimately concerned though about God blessing the state. However, we have in the last 30 odd years heard increasingly about how the church has been very complicit in this, particularly in the past. I refer to the whole saga of the Indian Residential Schools, which is now being dealt with through the traveling Truth and Reconciliation Commission and its hearings. It is God's blessing of the church that concerns me more than anything else. I do not believe that God can bless the church in this land, unless we as the church do more to carry out Jesus' message as it pertains to the first Nations.

Now, do not get me wrong. I am not calling for a renewed evangelical missionary effort directed at our neighbors. They can tell you that they have been the most “missionized” group of people in this country. No, what we need to do is get to know these neighbors of ours, listen to them and their stories, walk with them and see what they have to tell us about how we together can move to living in equality and harmony in this land. We European colonizers and settlers have long thought we knew best and had the best way, but we do not have a monopoly on the truth. God has not only revealed himself to the white men. God has revealed and is revealing himself to the red man too, and we need to take note of what they understand. God wants one church. There will not be one church, one unity, in this land, until the First Nations are as much a member of the church as the rest of us.

These are my thoughts on this matter. This is not intended as a researched paper or thesis. It is simply another viewpoint on what I hope we can travel together on in a good way.

All my relations,

2013-8-16

The Bible - I. Introduction

My wife and I were teaching the Life of Jesus as recorded in The Bible for ESL/EAL students.  This series of lessons left many unanswered questions about The Bible itself. Therefore, we took some time for lessons on The Bible itself, which I am sharing here.

The Old Testament

No one knows for sure how old The Bible is. Most Bible scholars believe the first written parts of the Bible were recorded about 1200 years Before Christ (BC).  These are the oldest sections of the Old Testament and we usually say they were first written by a Jewish leader named Moses. They are the first five books of the first part of the Christian Bible, which we call The Old Testament. The Jewish people have only The Old Testament as their Bible. It was first written in their Aramaic and Hebrew language. The rest of The Old Testament was written over the next 800 years. Some other writers are thought to be people like the famous Jewish King David and his son, King Solomon. For the last 400 years before Jesus was born nothing new was added to The Bible we have. However, there are a number of writings that the Jewish people have which are sometimes included in the Bible between the Old and New Testaments in what we call the Apocrypha.  The parts of the Old Testament on different subjects and written by different writers are called ‘books’. There are 39 books in The Old Testament. It is called The Old Testament because it is the oldest part of The Bible, written before Jesus was born.

Jesus himself said about The Old Testament:

John 5:39 Search The Scriptures; for in them you think you will find everlasting life: and they do indeed talk about me.

The Apostle Paul, one of he most prolific writers of the New Testament wrote:

Romans 15:4 For whatever things were written in the past were written for our learning, that we through patience and the comfort of The Scriptures might have hope.

The New Testament

Just as with The Old Testament, no one knows for certain when the New Testament was written. It is believed to have been written between about 30 to 65 years after Jesus died and was raised to new life. Also as with The Old Testament, it consists of a number of smaller sections. There are 27 of these so-called books in The New Testament. They were mostly written by Jesus’s followers or disciples, whom we later knew as The Apostles. Two were also written by a doctor named Luke, and many were written by a special apostle named Paul. The first 5 books tell the story of Jesus and The Early Church. Most of the rest of The New Testament consists of letters to churches in parts of what we now call The Middle East and Europe.  Unlike the Old Testament, the New Testament was written not in Hebrew but in Aramaic and Greek. This is because those were the common languages of the time. What is recorded in The New Testament fulfills predictions made in The Old Testament.

As Jesus himself said after he rose from the grave:

25  Then he said unto them, O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken:

26  Should Christ not have suffered these things, to be able to enter into his glory?

27  And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he explained to them in all The Scriptures the things about himself.                                                           Luke 24:25-27

44  And he said to them, These are the words which I spoke to you, while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the Law of Moses, and in The Prophets, and in The Psalms, concerning me.                     Luke 24: 44