What does this mean to you?

"What does this mean to you?"

That's possibly my least favorite sentence in the English language.

It's also one that I hear way to often in church settings.

Have you ever sat around a table when this question was asked?  Chances are, if you're reading this, that everybody at the table had a Bible sitting in front of them.  A worn out King James across the table.  A brand new NLT Life Application Study Bible next to you.  A slightly wrinkled and faded NIV Thompson Chain at the end of the table.  And a dinged up hard-cover Gideon Bible two chairs down.

What does this collection of books have in common?  They are all the divinely inspired word of God, and no matter the choice of translation, binding, or reference commentary, they all say the same thing!

That's right.  They all contain the same message, no matter slight variations in word choice.

So then, if they all say the same thing, why did the guy at the end of the table just read a verse and then promptly pose the question to the assembled crowd "What does this mean to you?"

It has no special meaning only to me.  It simply has a meaning.

Let me give you a real-world example.

I'm an engineer by trade and training.  Part of my job is to take special customer requests and come up with a concept and price and send it back to the customer for approval.  I get these request, invariably, in writing.  Now, I can look at what the customer wrote and say "well, to me this means he wants a widget in front", but if I send that back and what he really wanted was a gadget in back, then my work was useless.  The customer request doesn't have a meaning that varies from person to person reading it.  The request simply has a meaning.

Now, that's not to say the meaning is always straight forward and easy to understand, quite the contrary, it usually takes some digging to figure out what the customer really wants, but ultimately if I want to get it right, I have to find the actual meaning of the text.

The same principle applies to Bible study.  Do you think that the Apostles had multiple meanings in mind when they wrote epistles to churches they had founded?  No, of course not.  They were dealing with the everyday problems those churches were having almost 2,000 years ago.  Now, there are many, many timeless, absolute truths that can be found in studying those letters, but we have to do it correctly. 

We have to change our perspective. 
Start by determining what the author meant instead of what we want it to mean.  Then figure out the timeless truth contained in that passage.  Only as a final stage determine how that truth applies to your life.

Skipping straight to how the passage applies to your life is like my assuming I know what my customers want without doing the background work… an exercise in futility, because most likely I'm going to get it wrong.

So next time you're sitting at a table doing Bible study, simplify your question.  There is only one meaning, so just ask "What does this mean?".

Phineas Jacob Garrington was born today at 11:25 AM.

He's 8 lbs 2 oz and 20 inches long.

Momma and Baby are both doing great.

Here a video clip of the C-Section.  Be warned, it's a c-section, so there is a bit of blood involved.

For those of you too squeemish for the blood, here are a couple pictures.

10 minutes old

   big sis loving her brother while he eats

 first tempertantrum.  actually, the only one so far.  keep your fingers crossed!

The Faint Red Thread

Sunday's schedule this week was a bit off from usual.

Most Sunday mornings, I spend the hour of Sunday School in the nursery with Lili.  She's the only infant or toddler there for the Sunday School hour.

This past Sunday Lili had spent the night at her Grandparents house, and therefore wasn't at church for Sunday School.  So, I went to the adult Sunday School class.

This really is an anomaly.  For whatever reasons, I don't think I've attended our adult Sunday School class more than a half dozen times in the almost four years I've lived in Manitowoc. 

It turned out to be a good Sunday to show up. 

Our Sunday School teacher Ray, who was looking a little sickly at the start of the hour, made it about half way through before he turned a lovely shade of green and made a hasty exit of the room.  On his way out the door he asked me to take over.  I looked at the material in front of me: a flimsy paperback book including this week's lesson and my pocket ESV Bible that I keep in my tunic, nice and portable but with about size 2 font.

The lesson was on 1 John 3.  Now, I'll be honest, I've read 1 John, more than once.  None of those times, however, have been recently.

So I took a few minutes during the active discussion to re-read the text and pay a bit more attention than I had the first time around.

There it was.

An almost visible thread running through the passage.  A hazy red line that seemed to encompass key words and phrases in our reading.  '…love…children of God…in him there is no sin…Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil…'

In my mind that thread stretched out in both directions.  To the immediate left were the Pauline epistles and the Gospels with the same thread running all through them.  Tracing the thread even further left I saw Daniel, Hosea, Isaiah, and the rest of the prophets connecting to the string.  I could see exiles and returns from exile.  I saw the lives of David and all the Judges.  I saw the Exodus from Egypt and the covenants made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  I saw the rainbow over the ark and the struggle between Cain and Able.  The whole Old Testament story connecting to this thread.  All the way back to the thread's origin at Eve's first bite of fruit.

To the right of 1 John the thread continued straight out of the tru-tone synthetic leather back cover of my Bible.  There was a timeline.  Well, almost more of a family tree.  A visual representation of Church History.  It was harder to see the red thread here.

A tangle of branches quickly developed.  Some branches diverged from the red line almost immediately they had labels like "Aryanism" and "Gnosticism".  Most of the branches however stayed close to the red thread.  They seemed to zigzag back and forth across the thread.  At some times right on top of it, at others pulling rapidly away.  Every time it seemed that the branches would lose reach of the red thread they corrected back towards center.  The correction points were labeled with names like "Nicaea" and "Wittenberg". 

When I looked closer, the branches were actually made up of millions of little dots clustered so close together they looked like lines.  These were people.  The individuals who have made up the Christian Church over the last two millennia.

All of this; from humanity's disgraceful exit from Eden, through Christ's sacrifice, and on to the dozen people sitting in front of me; are all tied together by this red thread. 

Connected by God's plan for redemption.

I could sit back and see that the whole of not just Christian history, or church history, but of human history was connected in a way planned by a creator.  An omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent deity who was carefully rescuing his creation.

I looked up from my Bible.  The discussion was starting to fade.  I looked at each of the faces around me.  I started winging leading the discussion.  My mouth was on autopilot.  We've got an insightful and talkative group, the discussion only required a bit of guidance and prompting.  I didn't have to carry it.

My mouth may have been on autopilot, but my mind was in overdrive.  I wanted to pull aside each and every person and say "Can't you see it?  It's so clear!  We're not disconnected individuals following God!  We're connected!  We're permanently tied into God's plan for human redemption.  God's plan to rescue us from ourselves and return us to his presence.  To return us to Eden!"

I wanted to scribble a white board full of the images floating in my head.  I wanted to hand out a half dozen lovely books to everyone so they could see the connections between the dots and not just the dots.

I looked at the clock.

10 minutes.

That's what I had left of Sunday School.

Other eyes were starting to glance toward the clock and the donuts.

It didn't look like I was going to be able to do that today.  Besides, I think they may have tried to have me committed if I had started pointing to crazy squiggles on a non-existent white board and shaking people saying "CAN'T YOU SEE?!?!?!?"

Now to figure out how and when to lay it all out without resorting to entry-level violence…

* * * * *

Okay… so the above was a bit of an over-dramatization of the actual events.  True in essence, exaggerated by creative license wherever the author saw fit.

The connectivity of the Biblical narrative and connection to Church history have both been things I've been studying off and on for the last two or three years. 

It started because I realized that I had a decent grasp of the New Testament whereas when reading the Old Testament I quite regularly had what I refer to as "What the heck??" moments.  Readings that made no sense to me and didn't seem to be related to the real story of the Bible, the Gospels.  I made the O.T. a defacto second class citizen.  Sure, I would articulate that "We believe that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments were given by inspiration of God, and that they only constitute the Divine rule of Christian faith and practice."  And if you asked me I would tell you that both Testaments were of equal value and equally God's inspired word.  But in practice I was a borderline Marcionist, even if the church father's declared Marcionism a heresy almost 1700 years ago.

I decided I didn't want anymore "What the heck??" moments when reading the book I professed to base my faith on.  So I started reading up.  Not just reading the Old Testament, but referencing commentaries and study Bibles and other reference works on what this was really talking about.

It started to click.  This two-thirds of my Bible actually was useful for more than children's Sunday School class and as a collection of nice stories that we can learn a moral from.  This was talking about the exact same stuff that I already knew the Gospels were talking about.  Not only that, but it made my understanding of the New Testament richer, deeper.  It was like I'd been driving in the dark and trying to read my speedometer.  Sure, I could see it, but once I turned the lights on the backlight just brought everything into focus.  It sharpened my vision.

Church history was maybe not quite as dramatic.  But I was aware that I was lacking an understanding of exactly what all lay between Paul the Apostle and John Paul II.  Well, from high school history I knew about Constantine and Luther and Papal Political machinations.  From my Honor Jr. Soldier days I could still recite by rote "Booth, Booth, Higgins, Booth, Carpenter, Orsborn, Kitching, Coutts, etc…"  That was about it though.

So I started reading.  About Origen and Irenaeus, Polycarp and Tertullian, Jerome and Augustine.  Placing the first seven ecumenical councils on a timeline.  Reading about the split with the Eastern Orthodox and the rise of Monastic culture.  The rise of the reformation and it's effect percolating through Europe.  Understanding the origins of the Holiness Movement and who this character John Wesley and how his thinking affected my doctrines.  Beginning to understand how doctrine is developed and how dealing with a heresy can push our theological understanding to a whole new level. 

The greatest value came in fully grasping that while special revelation may have ceased with the death of the last Apostle, that does not mean that God ceased working on his plan to redeem humanity. 

Yes, the risen Christ is the culmination of the redemption story. 

He is the cog that makes redemption possible. 

But if God's plans had ended completely on Easter Sunday we wouldn't even have a New Testament.  He continued to use humanity to write what we call the N.T.  He used people to translate the Bible so that more fallen humans could be reached and brought into a redeemed state.  God used people to study and write about scripture so that we could imitate Paul and give a defense of our beliefs.  God gave people the ability to look critically at teachings and test them on the basis of scripture and tradition to follow the instructions Paul gave Timothy and to watch out for false teachings. 

God's individual plans for people throughout history tied directly into his redemptive plan for all of humanity.

So my allegorical "red string" above was dramatized for your entertainment, but the more I've read, discussed, and asked questions, the more often I've had "Aha!" moments.  These are when the "What the heck?" puzzle pieces snap into place to make the big picture of the puzzle more and more visible.

The part of my story about where I wonder how to make everybody understand the background so they can have an "Aha!" moment is true though.  Well, minus the threat of violence.

I wish I knew how to do that.

Oswald Chambers: Abandoned to God

In a tangent off of my last post, I've finished up listening to Oswald Chambers: Abandoned to God.  It was an excellent biography.  I will admit that I basically knew nothing about him prior to listening to this, but he was a fascinating man.  It's rare that I will pause an audio book in the middle and jot down a quote from it for further pondering, but I ended up doing it multiple times during this book.  My favorite is below.

 Diary Entry

July 19th 1907

On a ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean

"I am more and more convinced that the personality of Jesus Christ is the truth, and anything about him, that does not lead to him, is not the truth."

Anyway, I'm highly recommending this, and you still have 10 days to get it FREE!  If you go to christianaudio.com and click on the red words in the top right corner that say "Free Downloads" you can follow the directions to get it free for the rest of January.

Currently The Bible Jesus Read By Philip Yancey see related

Heather and I were having an interesting conversation on Sunday with my in-laws on how to define or recognize a "call".  Whether to the ministry, missions field, local church leadership, teaching, or to be a street sweeper.  Then listening to a biography of Oswald Chambers today I came across this: 

Diary Entry April 26th, 1896

"The Holy Spirit must anoint me for the work, fire me, and so vividly convince me that such and such a way is mine to aim at, or I shall not go.  I will not.  I dare not.  I shall just be content to earn my living.  But no, that cannot be.  From my very childhood my persuasion has been that of a work, strange and great, an experience deep and peculiar.  It has haunted me ever and ever.  It spoke clearly to me about my coming here, and I came.  But now the mists have risen and chase and seethe up through my soul and nothing is distinct.  There seems to be a great flood tide bearing me out and all voices grow fainter.  I am afraid I am to sodden and earthly for God to inspire.  But I will wait for a heavenly vision in this matter.  No man, by mere high human wisdom, would dare undertake a step for Jesus' sake unless he knows that the spirit has directly spoken to him, and until he comes, I shall not go.  Here is the lamp and the wood, but where is the fire?  Nothing but the fire of the Holy Spirit of God could make the offering holy and unblameable and acceptable in his sight."

 I'd be curious for the thoughts of people reading this, what is a call?

As background information, when Oswald Chambers wrote this, he was thinking about what he thought to be his calling of bringing Jesus to the world of art.  He was in University studying art at the time.  As it turned out, he had a different calling, one to full time ministry.  In practice that call was recognized with more influence from trusted friends than the quote above would make you believe.

What are your thoughts?  Agree with Chambers?  Disagree?  Agree partially?