Since I’m running late this morning and in light of the new school year starting, I’m posting a link to Skip Moen’s daily word post. It’s, appropriately, about enlightenment, the relative worth (or lack thereof) of knowledge, and the importance of application. Have fun! If you’re feeling (I can’t think of the word, but it’s a little like “ready to debate”) this morning, read the comments of his previous day’s post. It’s very interesting.
Psalm 119:126 It is time for You to act, O LORD, For they have regarded Your law as void. The reason this verse caught my eye is because the next two verses start with “Therefore…” and they’re about the writer’s love of God’s commands and his hatred of all evil. I wondered, “If these are the effects, what is the cause?” It would seem to lie in this verse. This verse is a call to action. Whoever “they” are have ignored God’s law (that would be the Torah – it’s even in the text). Doing this is grounds for action (an effect). And David loves God’s commands and hates evil because he knows that God will act when the people ignore God’s laws. And, even though this wasn’t something I thought about immediately upon reading this, Christianity has done this today – regarded the Torah as void. This is grounds for action today, too! Looking at God’s response to idolatrous nations (here’s an interesting article on what that means), I’d really want to be on the other side – the one that obeys Torah and doesn’t regard His laws as void. Can I say that I love His commands more than gold? That I consider all His precepts to be right about everything? David does. I should, too. God doesn’t make mistakes. God is a god of action. And He requires action from me, too. The questions beg an answer: Do I love His commands more than my stuff? Do I truly consider Him right about everything? Do my actions (the way I act and live) reflect my answers to those two questions? That’s the real question.
Today’s post by Dr. Skip Moen sparked a vein of frustration in me. It is about the Shema (the prayer that Jewish people say every day), and it’s translation in the gospels. First read his post here. Then you can read my comments, if you’d like: As a teacher, I see this mindset (that it’s what you know, not what you do) perpetuated everywhere and saturating the educational arena. One of my biggest struggles is to take my students from a point where they are waiting for me to feed them facts and stuff things into their heads (which is what most of them have come to expect after years of being told to memorize facts for a standardized test), to a point where they DO something with information. One of my favorite quotes is by Plutarch (yes, he’s Greek, I think) that says the mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled. Fires rage and consume and MOVE. Water in a cup just sits there and eventually becomes stale. Perhaps the way we teach students in school promotes this idea that God is about what I know and faith is about what I know and love is about what I feel, instead of it all being about action and movement and flow. Maybe that’s why I get so frustrated when students come to me bored and hating school and expecting yet another class of facts. Maybe that’s what we’ve done to Christianity. Facts are boring unless you understand what to do with them and understand why they’re important. But above all, you must DO something. Sorry for a bit of a rant! This post sparked that frustration I feel about the way things work in society, and it’s reflected in how we understand Yeshua and YHWH. Scary. Sad.
Conversion Monday, May 17th, 2010 | Author: Skip Moen The young lions have lacked and been hungry, but those who seek YHWH shall not lack any good thing. Psalm 34:11 Those Who Seek – The Hebrew word vedorshei might be translated “but those who seek” but such a translation converts the Hebrew grammar into English grammar. You see, vedorshei is the combination of a conjunctive (ve) “but” with a verb, not a noun. This verb, darash, is a plural participle in the active tense. That means it is an on-going action of many. We might think of it like this: “but seeking (ones).” In other words, the Hebrew construction doesn’t describe people who happen to be seeking God. In Hebrew, the action of seeking is the essence of who these people are. Without seeking, they just don’t exist. The our language base we see the world as component parts strung together by actions. John hit the ball. John is one component; the ball is another. These two components are connected by the action of hitting. One component hits the other. But Hebrew is a world comprised of actions. John hitting is the action, not the subject and the action. Without the hitting, there is no purpose for John to be connected to the ball. Since all action have a purpose, John exists in the active purpose of hitting. Similarly, seeking is the action purpose of followers of YHWH. Without the active purpose of seeking, there is no follower. Stop for a moment and consider what this means for our Greek-based understanding of Christian terms. What is the purposeful action of faith, justification, trust, salvation, the community, confession, forgiveness, etc.? How does our understanding of these terms change when we do not apply them as descriptions of “believers” but rather see them as constituting what a believer is. Without actions, there is no faith. Without works, faith is dead. Followers are seeking ones, trusting ones, praising ones, praying ones, studying ones, hoping ones, waiting ones, walking ones, obeying ones. Without the actions, there are no followers. They do not exist except in the actions themselves. Darash is their verb of being. They seek, inquire, examine and require. Oh, yes, by the way, God is the speaking One, creating One, sustaining One, delivering One, forgiving One, redeeming One. Are you beginning to see that being human is not a biological state but rather an active purpose to model the Creative One? What actions bring about your purpose for being today? This was a post today by Dr. Skip Moen. It’s a radically different way of thinking – that your life is your action. It makes sense though if I think about the fact that if I don’t actively breathe, I’m dead. The Hebrews believe that for something to be alive it has to change – an action. (That includes God, by the way. But that’s in a different post by Skip.) So the premise of it all is, if seeking God isn’t something I do in an ongoing and consistant way, am I really a follower of Him? You can’t follow something you don’t seek. To the Hebrews seeking has to be part of what makes me alive, if I claim to be a follower. That puts a pretty different spin on having quiet time with God in the morning. So am I saying that if a person doesn’t seek God, then he or she isn’t in relationship with God. I don’t think that’s the proper interpetation. After all, Jesus died to restore that relationship – He did the work and continues to intercede for me before the throne of God (restoration and intersession is part of the essense of who He is, perhaps?). I can be part of that relationship, even if I don’t seek and follow. It’s like having a friend. I can be friends with someone, or rather I can have a relationship with someone, but if I’m not actively seeking time with him or her it won’t be a very deep friendship. It’s not an easy statement. And trying to step out of my very Greek way of thinking to image how the Hebrew mind worked/works, it quite difficult. It’s worth it though, if it helps me to grow in my understanding of who God is.