I am His faithful follower. Revelation 17:14b He is Lord of lords and King of kings, and those who are with Him are the called and chosen and faithful. Ephesians 5:1 Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children; The Greek word for imitators in the Ephesians verse also means follower, which is why it’s a reference for this identity. It’s interesting, too, because it indicates that those who follow should also imitate. It goes along with the whole being doers of the Word, not just hearers. It’s like the Hebrew word for “to hear” (sh’ma). It also means “to obey” which indicates that if you hear you obey. If you don’t obey then you never heard. So perhaps, if we follow God we will imitate Him. If we don’t imitate Him, then we aren’t followers of Him. Definitely food for thought.
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.