Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Bigger Barns

1 John 3.1 raises a bunch of interesting questions.  The words of the verse are  See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him.  One of the questions is, "When John tells us that God has "given" (or bestowed) the kind of love that makes it so we are called "his children", how do we understand "given" or "bestowed"?  The Greek makes it possible to understand the word as a gift that is given or something that is given in response to a request.  Did God give us this love as a gift or has he called us his children because we asked for this gift?  The answer to that sends us on a theological trek that I don't want to explore right now.  

But there is another question I do want to explore.  John tells us that the world does not know us because it doesn't know the father.   To which my response is "So what?"  So the world doesn't know us, what's the big deal?  Now we know that because the "world" didn't know Christ that he ended up on the cross.  So if that is what John has in mind here, then it is a big deal.  The world doesn't know the Father, so it doesn't know us and the result is going to be persecution.   That has some possibilities.

However, I wonder if there is another big deal here, especially for North American Christians.  In 1 John 2.15 John has told us that we are not to love the world.  The world is about the desire of the eyes, the desire of the flesh, and the pride in possessions (esv).   Or putting it another way.  A person of the world lives a certain kind of lifestyle where they operate on a purely human level and have no interest in spiritual things.  They focus on protecting themselves and find security in their stuff rather than in God.  The best picture of this in the Bible is Jesus parable of the man who wanted to build bigger barns, 
Luke 12.13 Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” 14 But he said to him, “Man, who made me a judge or arbitrator over you?” 15 And he said to them, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” 16 And he told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man produced plentifully, 17 and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ 18 And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. 19 And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ 20 But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ 21 So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”    
Now in all of this, this is what I see.  Bigger Barns people are those who have no love of God or spiritual things, who are willing to take from another to gain their own security, these kind of people don’t know followers of Jesus because they don’t know the Father.  Here's my punch line:  Implied in this is a powerful statement about followers of Jesus.  They live a distinct lifestyle where their affections are centered on God, they have a deep love for spiritual things and they have a deep concern for the good of others.  The words of John speak as much about our behavior as they do about the world.  If our lifestyle distinct enough that instead of looking like bigger barns people, our life looks so odd that the rest of the world can't understand it?

Monday, May 25, 2009

No Teacher Needed

I am always intrigued by what seem to be conflicts in the Bible between what the Text says in one place and in another.  I noted just such a conflict in 1 John 2.   The conflict is both an internal and external one.  Here are  the verses, 1 John 2:26   I write these things to you about those who are trying to deceive you. 27 But the anointing that you received from him abides in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about everything, and is true, and is no lie—just as it has taught you, abide in him.  
Now compare this verse to Acts 2.42:  "They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching...."  

The external conflict seems to be between needing teachers in Acts 2 and not needing anyone to teach us in 1 John.  The internal conflict is that as John tells these people they don't need to be taught that John is sending them a letter which teaches them.

So what do we do with this and why is it important?  I believe it's important because if we get these conflicts in scripture wrong it can lead us in bad directions.  For instance, if I believe that I don't need teachers, then I can start to interpret Scripture on my own (sometimes called Solo Scriptura), rather than listening to the wisdom of those who have come before me and understanding the Scriptures through the lens of the historic and orthodox Christian faith (an understanding called Sola Scriptura).  

So what do we do with the conflict of John and Acts?  We need to deal with it in two ways.  One is the practical.  Practically we know from Acts, the writings of Paul, John and all the rest in the New Testament that they take teaching and having teachers very seriously.   Since that is the case the words about not having to be taught can't mean dump your teachers.  The other way to deal with this passage is in context.  John is dealing with false teachers who are destroying the faith.  His word about teaching would seem to refer to our not needing a new teaching from these false teachers that leads us away from the truth.  What John's audience has already in terms of knowledge about the faith is enough.  All that conflicts with it doesn't add to this faith, but destroys it. They have no need for this teaching.

It strikes me that to properly read the scriptures we need at least three things.  First, we need to read them through the eyes of the historic Christian faith (the early church called this "the rule of faith", truth that came out of the Scriptures and yet becomes the eyes through which we read the Scriptures, an early rule of faith is the Apostles' Creed).  Second we need to see how a text falls into the practice that we find in other parts of scripture.  This keeps us from grabbing a text and declaring something that simply doesn't fit what we see going on in other parts of the Bible.  Finally, we need to carefully discern context so we see what the text means in the midst of what is going on in a certain time and place.  

Thursday, May 21, 2009

Education: Time to make it harder

John Seel continues to be one of my favorite writers.  In this article he talks about the state of our educational system.  Just a bit of what he writes, 
And so it is that the April 2009 McKinsey & Company report, "The Economic Impact of the Achievement Gap in America's Schools," finds American schools wanting. The economic cost of this gap is larger than the US recession of 1981-82. "These educational gaps imposed on the United States the economic equivalent of a permanent national recession." The longer a student spends in an American school the wider the gap becomes. In short, increased exposure to American classrooms makes one increasingly uneducated.