Theological Musings

…and all I can say is, you had to be there! I wanted to write a post about it, but I have no words.  It was just awesome. Raborn, Erica, Lisa, David, Freida, Tom, and of course my lovely wife, Christy, I love you all, and am so blessed to fellowship with you.  Thank you all (and thank You, Lord!) for an amazing time of sharing Christ with each other.

ometimes, verses of Scripture take on a whole new meaning when read in context. It’s amazing to me how we can read (or hear) a verse for years and gain some meaning from it, but then a fresh reading will show something completely different.

Take for example, 1 Corinthians 2:9. Paul, in quoting from Isaiah 64:4 writes:

Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him. (NKJV)

I have heard this verse many, many times before in my life. The interpretation I have heard most often is that we are incapable of comprehending the things that God has prepared — for the future. While this concept certainly fits with some of Paul’s other statements, I was amazed today to read this verse in context. Bear with me while I quote a larger portion of the context:

[We] speak wisdom among those who are mature; a wisdom, however, not of this age nor of the rulers of this age, who are passing away; but we speak God’s wisdom in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God predestined before the ages to our glory; the wisdom which none of the rulers of this age has understood; for if they had understood it they would not have crucified the Lord of glory; but just as it is written, “THINGS WHICH EYE HAS NOT SEEN AND EAR HAS NOT HEARD, AND which HAVE NOT ENTERED THE HEART OF MAN, ALL THAT GOD HAS PREPARED FOR THOSE WHO LOVE HIM.” For to us God revealed them through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God, which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words. (1 Cor 2:6-13, emphases mine)

There are a couple of phrases that I have highlighted in bold because I want to draw attention to them in this context. In Paul’s use of the quote from Isaiah, to whom is he referring? He says, “If they had understood it”, referring to the ones who crucified Jesus. Understood what? The “hidden wisdom.”

But notice very carefully how, immediately following the Isaiah quote, Paul shifts from talking about “them” and says, “For to us God revealed them.” In other words, this “hidden wisdom”, things that were not known to the religious leaders of Jesus’ time, have been revealed.

This reference to Isaiah is not a statement about believers. It is not a statement about our future blessings or God’s plans for us in the future. In context, we see that when Paul talks about eyes not seeing and ears not hearing and hearts not conceiving of these things, he is talking about the eyes/ears/heart of natural man apart from God.

He goes on to say that “now we have received…so that we may know….” Received what? The Spirit of God. So that we may know what? The thoughts of God!

Look at how he spells it out. No one can know the thoughts of a person, except the one who is having those thoughts. I can’t know the thoughts that are in my wife’s heart, nor can she know the thoughts that are in my heart. And Paul says the same is true of God. We can’t know the thoughts of God. The only One Who can is the Spirit of God.

But — and this is where it gets really exciting — he then tells us that we have received the Spirit of God with the specific result that God then is able to reveal those thoughts to us! Is this amazing, or what?!

We can’t underestimate the power of this concept. We cannot afford to downplay it. At the end of the chapter, Paul again quotes from Isaiah (Isaiah 40:13) by saying, “For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he will instruct him?” And then counters, “But we have the mind of Christ.”

God has let us in on his thoughts! He has revealed things to us. Things that are foolish to the unsaved. Things that don’t make sense to the natural man. But things that, in spiritual maturity, we can grasp because of the Spirit within us.

So the next time someone tells you that you can’t possibly know what God is thinking because “eye has not seen…”, remind them of the tremendous gift we have in the Spirit of God within us. Yes, we can know the thoughts of God! What an amazing God we have!!

Until next time,

steve

y wonderful blogging buddy, Gordon Cloud, has interviewed me on his blog.  I realize that in the absence of genuine posts on this blog here, it’s not necessarily nice to write a post only to point you to someone else’s post, but bear with me!  Life has been very crazy the last couple of weeks, and I’m working to restore a balance to it once again that would allow me to post again and interact more here and elsewhere.

Anyway, hop on over to Gordon’s blog and read the interview there.  For those of you who only know me as a blogger, it will give you insight into the musical side of my life.

Until next time,

steve

s most of you know, Christy and I are homeschooling our son. I’m not ready to make the claim that homeschooling is the right choice for everyone, but for us, it definitely was the right choice.

One of the challenges with homeschooling is deciding what curricula to use in educating our child. Thanks to the increasing freedoms over the past several decades across our nation with regard to homeschooling, there are many, many choices and options available.

Over the course of this first year of homeschooling (our son was in the public school system up until the end of last year), we have already made several modifications in our curricula and looked at many different choices for various subjects.

Quite a few of the choices out there claim to be biblical in content, either directly based on the Bible or based on principles derived from the Bible. For example, we started the year with a grammar curriculum that used verses and passages from Scripture to illustrate different grammatical principles. The concept behind it was that the child would not only learn correct grammar, but get familiar with many passages of Scripture in the process.

We are no longer using that curriculum for several reasons. One reason is that it used the King James version, which is not a version we use much at all in our home, nor is it the way we speak in modern English anyway. The other reason is what I am about to get to in this post.

Recently, while looking at some curricula online, Christy came across a reading program that, again, used the Bible as the source of its material. Like with the grammar curriculum, the idea seems to be that children get exposed to the Bible as a side-benefit to their academic studies.

Now, in and of itself, I don’t have a problem with this. Obviously, I want my son to become familiar with Scripture. That’s why we take time every morning in our homeschool schedule to read from the Bible, reading straight through from Genesis to Revelation.

However, I have a concern about some of these ideas for Bible-based curricula that prevents me from embracing them 100% wholesale. That concern goes back to my days in Bible college and seminary. It is the idea of using the Bible as any sort of textbook.

When I was in college, it was not uncommon for a course to require us to read certain books of the Bible 4, 5, or even 10 times through. And often, 10% or so of our grade on a test was the simple question, “Did you complete the assigned reading for this test?”

You would think that reading through so much Scripture would be extraordinarily life-changing, right? Wrong. At least for me, it wasn’t. And for many of my classmates, it did not appear to be, either.

Why is that? And what is the alternative? Just not reading the Bible altogether? I hardly think so!

I think that the reason the Bible had so little impact on my life in those days (and the same was true in seminary), was because the Bible was a textbook. It was a place to find answers to homework questions. It was a source for a grade needed to keep moving through my studies. It was a means to an end that had nothing to do with Jesus Christ.

The most frequently given basis for viewing the Bible in this way is the familiar command to “Study to shew thyself approved unto God” (2 Tim 2:15, KJV). However, as I have pointed out several times before here on this blog, the translation of “study” has no basis that I can find. For this reason, almost every translation apart from the King James translates that word as “be diligent” or “do your best” or “work hard”, etc.

See, the problem with using the Bible as a textbook is what that ultimately leads to. It leads to viewing the Bible in small, disconnected fragments (the basis for “prooftexting”), and it leads to seeing the Bible as a means to knowledge alone.

It also can lead to what I see as some unbalanced views of Scripture.  For example, some people turn the Bible into a scientific textbook, using it as the “proof” for certain scientific concepts.  Others turn the Bible into a legal document, using it as justification or condemnation of certain activities or choices.

What was Jesus’ view of the Bible of his day (what we now call the Old Testament)?

You do not have His word abiding in you, for you do not believe Him whom He sent. You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me; and you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life. (John 5:38-40)

The point of the Old Testament, according to Jesus, was to point people to Himself, the source of eternal life. Hebrews 1:1-2 seems to confirm this notion, as well.

It took me quite a few years to “detox” from my view of the Bible as a textbook. And what I have found in the time since then is that a relationship with the One to Whom the Bible points is so much more fulfilling, so much more exciting, and so much more life-changing than merely studying the Bible in and of itself.

One of the buzzwords currently used by some who have the same idea I have here is “narrative”. The Bible is a narrative. This recaptures the notion of seeing the Bible as a whole, not a bunch of smaller parts. It doesn’t minimize anything about Scripture, nor its origin, nor its value to our lives. But it seems to me to put it into a more proper perspective. I like that.

So, in our homeschool, we have chosen not to use the Bible as a textbook, but rather to give it the place it deserves — as a written record (or revelation) of who Jesus is, and how to have a relationship with the Father (and by extension, each other) through Jesus.

It is my hope and prayer that my son will grow up to know the One revealed in Scripture, and not just know the Scripture itself.

Until next time,

steve

ll of a sudden, the posts have all been technical posts about this blog, and very little of actual substance in line with the name “Theological Musings”! So, I’ll just drop this quick update on here as an “aside” and then write the “real” post that’s on my mind.

For the time being, I have switched spam management plugins (thanks to a tip from Subversive Influence) and so I have removed the anti-spam word function that you all loved so much (right, Kansas Bob? hehe). I’m going to see how this goes. Ironically, I was getting spam comments anyway, so I’m not sure how they were getting past the anti-spam word anyway, but maybe my list of composers was too easy to guess! By the way, the new plugin I’ve installed for spam management is Spam Karma 2.2.

Also, for those interested in the WordPress plugins that I’m developing, I realized that my “WP Plugins” page was going to quickly get over-crowded, and so I have started a new site called “Plugins By Steve”. It’s located at, oddly enough, PluginsBySteve.com!