Sermon Addendum for June 30 2024

 What got left out of the sermon this past Sunday?

Lots of things:

First, background on 1 Samuel: It's a long work, and as best can be told, our 1 and 2 Samuel were 1 work, divided at the "this scroll is too big" line. We do not know who wrote it, but it covers too long of an era to likely have a single author. At the very least, the author works from records passed forward to his time frame. (Yes, given the source culture it is reasonable to assume a male author.) Some traditions put everything from 1 Samuel through the end of 2 Kings as compiled in their final form by one author working from the official court records of Israel, then Israel and Judah. 

We do see him anticipate the installation of kings over Israel as well as the inauguration of the Temple. The references to both of these institutions at the beginning suggest that the author is familiar with them, and some scholars think the authorship fits post-Exile, meaning he's perhaps even pining for them.

Speaking of things being "post-Exile," it's a good time to remind you of the general outline of Old Testament History:

You start with: Adam, Noah, Abraham, and Moses. 

Then you take the people into the Promised Land with Joshua, have the time of the Judges and Ruth.

After which comes the United Kingdom, Israel, has three kings: Saul, David, and Solomon, and it falls apart into two kingdoms. The Northern Kingdom is called "Israel" and has all bad kings. The Southern Kingdom is called "Judah" and some good, but mostly bad, kings. Israel is destroyed by Assyria in 722 BC, Judah is destroyed by the Neo-Babylonian Empire in 586 BC. 

The destructions resulted in exile and resettlement, but under the Medo-Persian Empire, the Israelites return to the land under the leadership of Ezra and Nehemiah.

1 Samuel covers the development from the Judges to the United Monarchy.

Second, textual info in 1 Samuel: 1 and 2 Samuel pose some of the bigger challenges in Old Testament textual criticism--that is, the science of discerning the original document from the extant sources. I'm not an expert in the field, so we won't really delve into it. I would recommend a good technical commentary on 1 & 2 Samuel to help examine what is happening here. There are some significant differences that will come up between the Masoretic Text (the Hebrew text most English Bibles are based on), the Septuagint (the Greek text made around 200 BC), and the Dead Sea Scrolls (both their Hebrew and other language versions of this text). 

The main points of doctrine and even of history are the same, but some of the details develop a bit differently.

Finally, left out of Sunday's sermon was a strong critique of a society that valued women primarily for childbirth. Why? While it may seem appropriate to note that women should not be limited to only one future and not be counted worthwhile without meeting that one target, it's not present in this text. We do not see anyone say to Hannah: "No, you are valid and worthwhile without children and everyone needs to straighten up."

Instead, we see God answer her prayer. Over the course of all Scripture, I think we can see the critique of the "moms are better than anything else" point of view, but it's not here. We should be careful not to press a viewpoint into the text if it is not there.

On top of that: where does the situation go, if Hannah is not used by God to bring Samuel into this world? What happens then?

Also left out, because I would not likely have chased it anyway: the attempt to read this narrative downward from the definite work of God to it being just another "hero story" like many ancient cultures, beginning with the "heroic birth" of the special child. First, I think that downplays the uniqueness of the Bible. Second, arguably, the "hero" of 1-2 Samuel is David. Samuel, Saul, Hannah, Eli, are all part of the setup. I don't buy it, but my presupposition is that the text of the Bible says what the truthful God wants it to say. Interpretations that start from a perspective of "God's not particular about being honest" are outside what I will consider, normally.

Books: Why read?

I know, I know, I'm doing two things today that are a bit...wrong.

First, I'm going to use a blog post to encourage you to read materials that are longer than blogposts.

Second, I'm going to use the Internet and electronic communications to encourage you to read "dead-tree" books. 

You are correct: there's a bit of hypocrisy going on here. Log off, go read a book for an hour and then come back and tell me.

First, why read long form? After all, there are plenty of soundbites, short posts, even the news is broken down into fairly short stories. 

Realize this: I'm not saying you should never read shorter things. A newspaper article. A Twitter thread. Your friend's Facebook post about their trip to Aruba and Jamaica. However, your attention span and mental processing becomes tuned to the average what you normally read.

So if you normally are reading news articles and then sprinkling that with Tweets, telegraphs, or bumper stickers, your abilities will stretch as far as that requires. Much like your biceps may become excellent at picking up 12 pounds if you pick up 12 pounds every day, but struggle with 20, if you read 5-minute snippets daily, you'll be good at 5 minutes. 

And multiple "reps" are more about toning than about building up--reading 12 5-minute items (or worse, 60 1-minutes!) does not have the same mental strengthening effect that reading 1 30-minute item would have. In truth, it helps your brain learn to shallow switch back and forth through many things, and you do not learn to discern what matters are important and what matters are not--everything bounces through so quickly you miss that understanding. 

Neil Postman hits on this very well in Amusing Ourselves to Death. It's a book worth reading ;)

Want a quick test for whether or not you are sliding into that trap? How do you feel when the news puts too many murders, wars, and disasters between you and the sports and culture events? Are you hitting the website looking for Taylor Swift and annoyed to see Ukraine in the way? You might be trending toward a problem. Oh, and if you always avoid news sites so that you can always miss the "bad stuff," you have probably gone even farther.

Reading long-form helps train your brain to discern what is, and is not important. Further, it helps you distill information as you read it. I have (and like!) some of the shortened versions of books. I have a *lot* from Optimize.me that takes some of the bigger books in productivity, etc., and distills them into 6 pages (3, front and back). It's a speedy way to consume information, but it does not help you retain it better. And, you're assuming the distiller got the right parts. Basically, the TL;DR helps of the current era are just like the Cliff's Notes they're patterned after: better than nothing but often like taking a prime steak and grinding it up to make a quick hamburger. You're losing a lot.

So make the time to read long-form.

Second, make the effort to amass, and read, actual printed books. Yes, get a Kindle. Read on e-ink. Get Logos Bible Software, read/research through those tools. For that matter, get all the books digitized and uploaded in PDFs so that researchers throughout the years can access them. (I mean, seriously, let's get old newspaper archives digitized from microfilm and accessible; there is equipment for that and student workers who need hours and digital tools to help with it. There is no reason to limit historical research to those wealthy enough to travel to large libraries and spend all day reading microfiche.)

But at the same time, you should still acquire and read the printed word. Why? Well, take this blog as an example. It's digital. I can go back and edit it at any time. And, sure, if you know how to parse the metadata, you can see whether or not I backdated that prediction of a Trump win in 2016 (I did NOT make any predictions) or if I added a post or even use Wayback to, perhaps, find one I deleted. 

If you don't, though, or if the other tools do not support seeing behind-the-curtain, what do you do when someone is changing the information? How do you even know?

This is why I would argue for digitization of historical materials, like newspapers and such, through PDFs. These are not impossible to change, but they are harder to change.

Plus, it's far easier to see the footnotes, the references, the linking between information. 

Generally, for me, if I am looking at non-fiction material, I would rather have several editions of a print book than an evolving e-book or website without a chain of reference of what changed and when. Additionally, yes, it costs more to create the print book. Which should result in a stronger effort to get it right.

There are some notable exceptions--at least 4 biographies I've seen in the last decade or so were not only shaded by political and theological agenda, but also missed important points of accuracy. This happens when the author does not bother to engage the primary sources himself.

(Which he could have done without visiting the relevant archives if those sources had been digitized, but they are not. And he did not.)

Now, fiction, generally, I'm more okay with digital but even then, you want books with reference copies available in print. Many of the great works of literature are fiction, after all--can you imagine if you could not determine the original text of 1984 or A Handmaid's Tale? Or Moby Dick? You could do a find and replace and make the whole thing about Moby Duck.

It's always better to read than to not read, but I think you would do well to make sure most of your reading is long-form and at least some of it is coming from printed, dead-tree books. 

PS: Audiobooks? Yes, if you are constantly on the go and can listen, do so. If at all possible, find a way to make space in your life to also read with your eyes if physically able. Again, read what you can, some approaches are better than others but even a cheeseburger has more nutrition than a cardboard box. 

Sermon Recap for June 30 2024

 Here is yesterday's sermon from 1 Samuel 1.

Historical Thinking: "What is History?"

 As we get started down this rabbit trail of “Historical Thinking,” the first thing I’d like to work through is a question: “What is history?” 

Why? Because too many people come back with “I don’t like history” as their response to the idea of studying, learning, or reading anything about history. Now, some folks will probably still never like history. And certainly, not everyone is going to vibe on the academic discipline of history, but history as a whole can be very enjoyable even without perfectly spelled footnotes!

First, let’s dismiss some wrong definitions of history. History is not just a collection of dates. While it is necessary to keep up with what happened when—I read once that a key factor in history is knowing some things happened before other things—your school-aged history tests of just memorizing and reciting dates is not really history. It’s facts.

Second, “history” comes from a Greek word “ ‘istoria” and has nothing to do with the gender pronoun. It’s not “his story” in place of “her story.” Sometimes it’s presented as such—and it’s sometimes presented that we need a “her story” to counterbalance “his.” Folks, it’s all “history.” Because the word doesn’t break down into a pronoun.

Third, a corollary on the second point: I firmly believe that history involves the work of God in the world. Fully and completely. But it’s not “His story,” either. He gave us His story—has garden-based bookends, Creation, fall, redemption, REDEEMER, redeemed. That’s not the same. Neither is it appropriate to apply to God all the causation in history, though that’s another matter but we’ll hit it here: God is sovereign. Historical causation can be viewed as understanding how God did it, but we do not drop back to “Well, it happened because God did it, moving on….” 

Apply that to something as simple as World War II: I’ll take miraculous intervention helping the Allies overthrow the Nazis. But a “all that matters is God did it” view means that God caused the Nazis. I don’t think that lines up with theology, how about you?

Another thing that is not “history” are the memory triggers we use, like statues or single items in museums. Those help us remember history, but without “history” it’s just a guy on a horse. Who is he? Why did we put up his statue? 

You need to know that.

So what is “history”? 

For our purposes here, “history” is the recorded story we tell to understand the past. That’s my combination of several pieces of definition from around the academic world. It is not just a record of events, but the interpretation and collation of the facts surrounding them. This is why history, at times, needs to be reconsidered. For example, throughout the 1950s-1970s, much of the story about events in the American space program focused on the astronauts and the “high profile” lead scientists, like von Braun. Recently, though, the lens has widened to show that men and women, including Black women, were always in the picture. The story we need tell needs to be told better.

Or, as we look longer into the past, we have long heard the popular tale that Columbus proved the Earth was round. Yet clearly understanding history shows that this story was told without regard to the facts: it was a widely known fact that the Earth was round. The initial story was more focused on “heroic development” of America at the time.

History is the story we tell about the facts—it cannot exclude the facts but instead explains them, interrogates them (asks questions, seeks understanding), and puts together a mostly cohesive narrative about them. That narrative is recorded, shared, and then open to debate and discussion. Perspectives affect our creation of history as well as our understanding, but the facts remain the same. 

That’s why history remains an open discussion. Some things are fairly plainly settled, but new information should lead to re-evaluation of the story, correction of errors, and plainer dealing with what has gone on before now. History does change, because we understand the story better. The facts remain the same, and that’s the key.

Sermon Addendum June 23rd 2024

 Sermon Addendum June 23rd 2024

(Keep in mind, the date is for the sermon, not the post :) )

This past Sunday, I wrapped up the sermon series in Acts that I’ve been doing for several months. There wasn’t enough time to get all the way through Acts, and when it comes to Acts you either need about 2 years or you have to leave something out. After all, one of my “want but am not spending the money” book purchases is Craig Keener’s four volume commentary on Acts. We do Acts a disservice if we only read it as one-off actions stories.

So, what’s going on in Acts 15?

First, it’s the justification for what is called in church history The Conciliar Movement. At least, one of my textbooks used that label. Most of what we deem standard (orthodox) Christian doctrine is born from bodies of church leaders in the 2nd-5th Centuries AD gathering and establish what Scripture means, how Christianity understands the truths contained in the Word. For example, our understanding of God in Three Persons, the Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, was defined by the Councils of the Early Church. It is drawn from Scripture’s revelation of the nature of God, but there is a lot of Bible about God.

And the idea that a group of wise Jesus-followers can make plain what Scripture means starts here in Acts 15, where Peter, Paul, James, Barnabas, and others gathered to sort out how the Old Testament Law needed to be applied on the current church.

Second, we see some basic guidelines on how the Old Testament Law needs to be applied on the current church! Note the nature of the four instructions passed on to the Gentiles. As we look at the expectations given to the people, these were about clear worship (abstaining from idols); clear lifestyle (abstaining from sexual immorality); and clear fellowship (avoiding foods that would have re-divided Jew and Gentile). And the last one we see some development through later years under Paul’s authority as he mitigates that command somewhat. (He never backs up from avoiding idolatry and immorality.) As we examine the traditions and expectations of years gone by, our questions could rightly come back to these: are we clearly worshiping only Jesus? Are we honoring God with our lifestyle? Are we strengthening our fellowship with one another or being self-absorbed?

Third thing that we see here is some of the leadership of the church in Jerusalem. We see James, and we know it is not James Zebedee, as he died earlier in Acts (Acts 12). So it’s another James. Usually we connect him to James the (half-)brother of Jesus, and author of the Biblical book of James. We see Peter, we see Paul, we see Barnabas. Both the primacy of James as spokesman and the equality of all to share their views are important here.

Finally, Acts 15 wraps up with perhaps one of the sadder moments in the flow of the story of the early Christians. Paul and Barnabas have a sharp disagreement, sharp enough that they no longer work together. The text’s statement of “they parted company” implies something deeper than a “well, agree to disagree, see you later,” moment but more of a “Nope, we’re done” kind of event. Tragically, we sometimes go down that path: it is okay to have a disagreement, but strive to keep it from causing you to “part company.” That’s an important idea to keep in mind, that we can disagree. We can even decide that we are not going to work with someone because our approaches are too different. But preferences and styles should never drive us apart in our relationships.

Books: What I'm Reading

Rather than a book review this time, I would like to hit a rundown of some of the things I am currently reading. I would not automatically endorse everything in all of these...but they should be useful reading anyway!

Fiction:

1. I'm rereading Timothy Zahn's Thrawn and Thrawn: Ascendancy trilogies during wind-down time in the evening. It's a good relaxation moment.

2. Before that I read the Michael Crichton/James Patterson work Eruption. It's not as awesome as Jurassic Park, but it's still good :)

Non-Fiction Devotional:

1. I'm working through Dallas Willard's Renovation of the Heart and the accompanying work by Jan Johnson Renovation of the Heart in Daily Practice. Thought-provoking.

2. Ryan Holiday's latest in the Stoic Virtues series: Right Thing, Right Now. I like this series, even though I might not always agree with all of Holiday's philosophical ideas, this is a good series.

3. Jesus Every Day: A Journey through the Bible in One Year by Mary DeMuth, which is a great opener with a short Bible passage and devotional.

Non-Fiction Learning:

1. The Battle of Brandy Station which is about the largest cavalry battle in North America. It occurred in the Civil War, shortly before the Battle of Gettysburg. It's by Eric J. Wittenberg, who also wrote a good book about John Buford during Gettysburg.

2. Ownership: The Evangelical Legacy of Slavery in Edwards, Wesley, and Whitfield by Sean McGever. Why? because.

That's the current spread of reading outside of the dissertation work.

Doug

Sermon Recap for June 23 2024

 Good afternoon!

It's time for the sermon recap for yesterday. The morning sermon was the last one in our series on Acts. We've wrapped up that one and we're moving on to 1 Samuel next week.