Self or selfless - 2 Cor 5:15

From 2 Cor 5:15 during self-study in the Life Application Bible Studies series:

He died for everyone so that those who receive his new life will no longer live to please themselves. (NLT)

Questions to ponder:

• Is it to please ourselves to spend much time talking about God and telling others?
• If we are caring for others, are we doing so with the idea of a reward? Does the idea of "reward" negate the good of caring?
• Is it best to focus more on telling, or best to spend more time on showing? Are these two ideas incompatible? Or are they companions?
• Is the message complete if we tell and don't do?
• Is the message complete if we do and don't tell?
• How do we find the right balance? Is it up to us to find that balance?
• No matter our motivation and our failings, does God work his wonder in others through our lives?

Possibly related verses:

• Matthew 10:39 - Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. (NIV)
• Matthew 16:25 - For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. (NIV)

More thoughts to ponder:

• Let go and let God has new meaning. We can't really manage our eternity. Once our lives belong to Christ, he manages our eternity.
• If we stop too long to examine, we may be focusing too much on ourselves and miss an opportunity that God has placed before us.
• A fine balance. We can never "nail it"! All the nails belong to Christ.

Bonhoeffer - Speaking of Faith

From Kristin Tibbett's 4/9/07 podcast from her book, a quote from Bonhoeffer, in prison in 1944:

I’m still discovering, right up to this moment, that it is only by living completely in this world one learns to have faith. In so doing, we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God.

What a thought! To me, it seems that Bonhoeffer is saying that only by engaging in living does one engage in faith. Such a fine balance. Bonhoeffer certain followed that idea, totally engaged in his time and the needs of people in that time. We can't protect our faith (and our hope of eternity) by living only for the end times. In order to be in a heavenly state of mind, we must be engaged in a worldly frame of mind.

Dead Sea Scrolls - The Torah and Jesus

Last night (July 16, 2007), we went to a lecture on the Dead Sea Scrolls at the San Diego Natural History Museum. The 50-minute lecture was presented by Dr. Risa Levitt Kohn, curator of the exhibition. It was certainly worth our time and provided food for thought! Here's my morning-after notes of what I learned.

In ancient Israel, the Tabernacle, and then the Temple, was built to be the dwelling place of God - or at least of God's name. The Ark of the Convenant was in the Holiest of Holies, and God dwelt between the tips of the wings of the gold cherubs on the top of the Ark. This was the place where God made his will known to the people.

The Ark disappeared, and the Temple was destroyed. Where did God go? The Temple was rebuilt, but there was no Ark. How were people to communicate with God? The second Temple was also destroyed in about 70 CE, but that was of probably lesser importance than the destruction of the first Temple because the Ark wasn't present in that second Temple. The people had already had to deal with that important question - Where was God and how did they know his will?

The Scrolls lead us to believe that the people resolved that question by believing God was now within the Torah (Jews) or, later, in Jesus (Christians). Dr. Kohn's proposal, based on the information in the scrolls, is that the new Jewish way of seeing God and the Christian way of seeing God may have evolved as twin belief systems, not as parent-sibling systems. It's an interesting way of seeing the Christian-Jewish relationship now.

One of the important things I came away with from the lecture is a new awareness of the importance of the Torah to the Jewish faith. God is present there. The sacredness of the Torah, in the Jewish faith, is equal to the sacredness of the presence of Christ in the Christian faith.

Martin Marty on Speaking of Faith

Yesterday, I listened to Krista Tippett's podcast interview with Martin Marty entitled America's Changing Religious Landscape. The podcast, published November 2, 2006, and a written guide to the interview (entitled "Particulars") is available at http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/marty/index.shtml. It's well worth the time to listen at least once, and probably much more than once. The interview covers a lot of ground about contemporary American religious practices.

Although I've heard Marty's name many times (he's a Lutheran, a teacher, a modern-day religious thinker), I've never read anything he's written, nor have I heard him speak before this time. Now I know why I've heard his name so many times during the course of my Lutheran life. He's thoughtful and thought-provoking. A general theme throughout his career centers around religious pluralism in our society. Pluralism is a hot topic and one that dances around in my head, but that's not the subject of my thoughts today.

What brings me back to that podcast today is not only Marty's candid statements of his own faith and the state of contemporary religious life, but a quote from a talk he gave during a series of lectures at the Clinton White House, from a book by Reinhold Niebuhr:

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore, we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true, or beautiful, or good, makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore, we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, could be accomplished alone; therefore, we must be saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our own standpoint; therefore, we must be saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness.

This struck a chord with me. In our hopelessness, we find hope, faith, love, and forgiveness. This describes to me the ultimate humility - the fact that we can do nothing, that we cannot do it our way, that instant gratification is not a reality we can depend on.

Is this one of the ways God steps into our lives and says "I AM"? Is this one of the ways he gets our attention, by making the realization known to us that, by ourselves, we are hopeless?

Take this in the same thought as the story of the rich young man in Matthew 19:16-26 and its key verse, Matthew 19:26, and remember it:

NIV: With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.

NLT: Humanly speaking, it is impossible. But with God everything is possible.

See also http://sroesner.blogspot.com/2005/09/puddleglums-testimony.html for a C. S. Lewis response to hope being born out of hopelessness.

Be it so for me to remember.

Galations 6:9

July 8 07 - Epistle at Mt. Olive - Galations 6:9

NIV: Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.

NLT: So don't get tired of doing what is good. Don't get discouraged and give up, for we will reap a harvest of blessing at the appropriate time.

Thoughts about why we would become weary in doing good:

• Do we feel taken for granted and under appreciated?
• Do we get tired of doing good because we think we are the only ones doing good?
• Are we doing good for brownie points - or just to work off a list - and we don't engage in the moment we spend in this good deed? And therefore we would simply become tired working off the list?
• Are we looking for a reward every time we do something good? Know anyone like that? Could it be that is our attitudes, too?

Some reasons to do good:

• There's a lot of satisfaction in doing good when you don't need to. I have better days and sleep better at night.
• Doing good sometimes produces rewards later down the line, when I need a reward (a helping hand from someone else).
• Doing good produces friends, and who doesn't need a friend? I surely need all my friends!
• Doing good is what God expects of me. After all, none of my "doing good" will ever equal the good he has done for me. When I do good, it's my response to the good God has done for me, even when I don't deserve that good.
• I am disappointed in myself when I do "bad" to someone, whether it's a harsh word wrought from my own exasperation or frustration or an opportunity to help someone who is in need.

Note to self: Doing good doesn't always mean being "nice." "Nice" and "good" are not necessarily the same thing. But "not nice" should always be delivered in and with love and acceptance.

Galations 5:15 - Devouring each other

From the epistle reading at Mt Olive on July 1: Galations 5:15:

NIV: If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be
destroyed by each other.

NLT: But if instead of showing love among yourselves you are always biting and devouring one another, watch out! Beware of destroying one another.

Does this verse speak to our critical spirits? A few examples that occurred to me:

• When two or more of us criticize the lack of work others do in the church.


• When we express our dissatisfaction with the hymns for the day.


• When we have expectations that others should behave as we think we do and we voice our dissatisfaction about their behavior.


• When we judge before we learn.

Things to think about:

• Is there a cure for the critical spirit?


• Whose responsibility is it to lead the way to change?


• Can we make this change on our own?


• How do we stomp the critical spirit within our own selves?