fruitful faith » Jewish

wineskins at laidlaw

Dale — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 02:42:30 +0000

Monday nights, 1, 8, 15, 22 September 2008

7:00 – 9:30pm, Laidlaw College – Auckland Campus,

80 Central Park Drive, Henderson, Waitakere

Heaven and Earth: Where are we going? Does it matter?

We are excited by the opportunity we have to introduce you to some of the new faces at College. This group includes Dr Martin Sutherland (Vice Principal Academic) and the Heads of School Dr David Williams (Counselling), Dr Rod Thompson (Theology), and Dr Meredith Wheeler (Mission and Ministry). They will all be taking part in the series alongside Mark Strom.

Hopefully, there will be discussion over the talks over at http://wineskinreview.blogspot.com

good news for all the people

Dale — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 10:19:03 +0000

If only people in general –and Christians in particular– could grasp just a few key things that makes Jesus who He is… then I’m convinced not only that Christianity would have a better reputation, but –even further– those who aren’t Christians might be far less against the growth of Christianity…

People are scared about the growth of Christianity because they (often) think (and not without reason to) that this could eventually lead to a Christian state. All those voting Christians, voting in all those ‘religious’ laws, taking away our freedom, taking away our shopping on Sunday, etc. Many Christians are not at all hesitant to affirm that this is, in fact, precisely what they are working toward…

Now, this post is not directly about how Christians should relate to politics, but it does relate. I am convinced that the Christian faith is to be lived out in the public world, and not simply in private. However, the question is: “What does this look like?”

For many Christians, the technique seems to be to work for change by attempting to secure a place of influence and power and then use that to implement the changes they want – in a kind of ‘top-down’ way. Whether it be in a school, a community, a marriage, a work-place, a state or even a nation, they seek to play the ‘power game’ and ‘win’ for Jesus. The more power and influence, the better. This is their way of working to bring the Kingdom ‘on earth as it is in heaven’, and it makes many people nervous (including me at times!)…

Other times, the approach is to work for change by withdrawing from all things you think are wrong, and build your own version of them. Whether it be in music, bookstores, political parties, schools, greeting cards (or other places where the word ‘christian’ become an adjective), the strategy is: withdraw and build a ‘christian’ version. If you can’t secure the world’s places of power, and bring the Kingdom here, build your own ‘Christian’ thing and make it powerful somewhere else (and then try to attract others to it)… This approach also makes people nervous (including me)…

So how is it supposed to be done?

My answer would be: like Jesus and the Apostles did it…

First a quick summary of the setting: For centuries, the Jews had lived under the rule of one empire or another; Persian, Egyptian, Greek and finally Roman. This was –to put it lightly– not enjoyable. There was a reason Romans were good at crucifixion. It was their brutal answer to anyone who would resist their rule.

Now then, Jesus was a Jew, and he had several types to choose from in his day. For some Jews, the Essenes, (probably the community behind the texts found at Qumran – the Dead Sea Scrolls) the response to Roman oppression was to escape out to the hills and start an alternate community. Many other Jews before (and after) Jesus knew how to revolt. The Maccabean Revolt had won them freedom from the Persians, and many Jews of Jesus time (they were later called ‘Zealots’) were more than ready to do the same with the Romans. Matter of fact, Jewish hope for a ‘Messiah’ figure was precisely to do with a leader who would lead such a charge.

Jesus, however, was not that kind of a Messiah.

He wasn’t building that kind of kingdom.

Make no mistake, the kingdom was most certainly not some private thing to be lived out by private prayer rituals and scripture reading. It was indeed a public thing. And it also certainly wasn’t some compromise with the Roman way of life. The early Christians hailed Jesus as Lord (Greek – ‘kyrios’) instead of Caesar.

For the early Christians, the kingdom of God coming ‘on earth as it is in heaven’ meant being an alternative community which cared for those the Roman system neglected (the poor, the sick, slaves, abandoned pregnant women, etc.). A community in which –in the shadow of an Empire built on rank and status– all were equal, whether Jew or not (Gentile), slave or free-born, male or female.

It was not political maneuvering.

It was not power-grabbing attempts to take ‘control’.

It was the power of embodied love.

Most places in the world I know about, and most times I’ve heard of, that sounds like good news to most everyone I know…

embodied souls

Dale — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 22:23:45 +0000

Body?

…soul?

…or both?

Some hold to the idea that there is no ‘self’ or ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’, so to speak, but rather than we are complex biological organisms with complex biological functions; including complex mental processes which have caused some to imagine that we have a ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’.

At the same time, there are those who hold to the idea that ‘they’ are primarily not their body, but rather their ‘soul‘ or ‘spirit’ or ‘self’. This spiritual entity is said to be the essence of who ‘you’ are, and is often said to be ‘immortal’ or ‘eternal’.

Varying views on this topic are not new. In the ancient world, the two main views we know of were either that humans were endowed with an immortal soul, or that they… well… were not so endowed.

Interestingly, the Judeo/Christian tradition has been thought to be in the former group – believing in an immortal ‘soul’ that ‘lives on’ after death. I’m convinced that this was not the case. I can’t argue in the necessary detail here, but suffice it to say this: While the Judeo/Christian writings do use the word ‘soul’ (Greek: psyche, Hebrew: nephesh), they did not view it as a separate ‘compartment’ of the person.

A classic example of the Judeo/Christian usage of this word is found in the famous Hebrew ‘Shema‘ prayer from Deuteronomy 6, which instructs to love the Lord your God ‘with all your heart, with all your soul (nephesh), with all your mind and with all your strength.’ This is kind of a super Hebrew-parallellism. Much of the time, such parallels are 2 in length; giving a first thought, and then paralleling it with another (i.e. ‘…let justice roll like a river, and righteousness like a mighty stream…’). The Shema prayer, however, contains a 4-fold parallelism; heart, soul, mind and strength. This is not a list of 4 components of a person, but rather a classically Jewish way of saying ‘you’. Love the Lord your God with ALL of YOU.

So, the Jewish view of the ‘soul’ is inseperable from the rest of ‘you’. One way of seeing this is to say that the soul is thoroughly and 100 percent ‘embodied’; like software which is fully installed onto a computer. The software does absolutely nothing apart from the hardware, and the hardware is vastly more functional with the software.

covenental confusion

Dale — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 16:14:00 +0000

A friend and I was checking out the various ministry booths at a Christian music festival this past weekend. We encountered two ministries that were very similar. Both of them were what you could call ‘pro-Israel’ ministries. Now, I don’t think we should be ‘anti’ Israel, but I do think their understanding of the covenant(s) is reflective of the ‘covenental confusion’ right through Christianity.

If you are not familiar with the topic, the ‘pro-Israel’ position emphasises all things Jewish. They do so with good intent and with the appearance of good reasons. After all, Jesus (and most of the early church) was indeed Jewish.

The ‘pro-Israel’ people will usually teach (or encourage) the observance of various Jewish festivals and rituals (Passover, Sabbath, Days of Unleavened Bread, and much more). They will often point to the various examples of the Jewish-ness of the early church (Synagogue attendance, etc.) and various verses of the New Testament to demonstrate that the early Jewish simply carried on in their Jewish-ness, and to support their suggestions that Christians today need to do these Jewish things as well.

This discussion is vast, (and I’m generalising to keep it short) but I’ll try to explain my understanding of it as simply as I can.

Part of the difficulty is that the Bible wasn’t written in the same style as, for example, a theological encyclopedia. Since the New Testament is not a Covenant Theology handbook, we often see the details of Covenant as we read in-between-the-lines of what the writers are communicating (having said that, you don’t have to read between the lines much in the epistle to the Hebrews!). Another thing to remember: we can see from Acts 15 and Galatians 2 that the Apostles didn’t always see eye to eye about everything. Paul disagrees with Barnabas and Peter at various times.

Having said that (and trying to keep this short), let’s look at the issue further.

Everyone agrees that Jesus ushered in the New Covenant, but the question is this: How is the New different from the Old? What changes to the lifestyle/belief of believers did it make?

OK. Here’s how I see it.

God is a covenental and promise-making God. He doesn’t break His covenants or His promises. As for any and all of the promises of God, Paul is emphatically clear (and I make a point not to be this dogmatic very often) that they are ‘Yes’ in Jesus. In other words, God keeps all His promises, and He keeps them in His way – namely, the Jesus kind of way.

As for the covenant(s), the way I like to say it is this: the ‘Old’ covenant was ‘baptised’ and became the ‘New’ Covenant. Baptism is, of course, a symbol of death and resurrection – of dying and rising. There are too many points of detail, but basically, all of the various aspects of the Old Covenant (the Land, the Temple, the Sacrifice, the Passover, the Sabbath, the Law, etc.) were ‘baptised’ and raised anew. All of their meaning and significance was now found in not a place, time or event, but a Person – namely, Jesus.

The implications of this were huge. Gentiles could ‘come to Jerusalem’ by simply ‘coming to faith in Christ.’ Their circumcision was not of the flesh, but of the heart, and so on…

The Old system was tired, worn and fruitless. God was bringing judgement on Israel. This judgement, however, was going to be like no other. But thankfully, with God, judgement always is one side of the 2-edged sword… the other being blessing. Judgement for fruitless and nationalistic Israel, and Blessing for believing/spiritual Israel.

yokes, disciples and dust

Dale — Sun, 25 Sep 2005 10:04:00 +0000

Note: I’ve shamelessly ‘borrowed’ some (all?) of these concepts. You can find them yourself if you research Judaism. Also, Rob Bell covers them quite well in his book, “Velvet Elvis” and his Nooma DVD entitled “Dust.”

Studying the Torah (first five books of the Old Testament, or the books of Moses) is an integral part of Jewish life. In Jesus’ day, Jewish boys would begin Torah study around the age of six (bet sefer), and would memorize it entirely! Around age ten, while the majority of the boys would begin learning their fathers’ trade, the best of these Torah students went on to study other Jewish writings and memorize the rest of the Old Testament (bet talmud)! That’s right, even Psalms and Proverbs! Finally, in their early teens, the best of the best of these would apply to a rabbi’s disciple (bet midrash). They didn’t just want to know what the rabbi knew, they wanted to DO what the rabbi DID. If a rabbi thought the student could ‘do what he did’ (known as a ‘yoke’), he would ‘call’ the student to be his disciple by saying, “Come and follow me.” The student would then leave family, friends and his whole life to follow the Rabbi and take his ‘yoke.’ Each Rabbi’s ‘yoke’ was shaped and influenced by the interpretations of the Scriptures that the Rabbi had, so some ‘yokes’ were more strict or ‘heavy’ than others. Following the Rabbi wherever he went inspired the Jewish blessing, “May you be covered in the dust of your Rabbi.”

Jesus was a radical rabbi…

When other rabbi’s looked for the cream of the crop, Jesus called fishermen and tax collectors! That’s right, He called those who didn’t even make it past learning the Torah! He also said that His yoke was easy, and His burden was light!

These radical actions and words of Jesus highlight His turning away from burdensome, strict, ordered processes of learning and teaching. Jesus’ emphasis was on relationships. He must have believed that if His disciples loved Him, then they would be like Him!

Perhaps this sheds new light on the Great Commandment to love the Lord your God, and the Great Commission of Jesus to go and make disciples of all nations. He wants us to share a way of life with each other and the world that He said was easy and light. He wants that way of life to flow from a relationship with Him.

Are you involved in a discipleship relationship?

May you see the importance of your relationship with Christ above all others.
May you realize the calling of Christ to disciple-making.
May you understand that this means disciple-being as well.
May you be covered in the dust of your Rabbi.