Is Scripture Too Pointed For Us?

George Orwell on writing:
"The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns, as it were instinctively, to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink....
(He provides an example) In modern English:
" Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account."
(It is) a well-known verse from the Bible, found in ECCLESIASTES:
" I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth."
---------------------------------------------------------------

What Lies Ahead?

Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him... (The Bible, I John 3:2)
-------------------------------------------------------
Let us picture a woman thrown into a dungeon. There she bears and rears a son. He grows ups seeing nothing but dungeon walls, the straw on the floor, and a little patch of sky seen through the grating, which is too high up to show anything except sky. This unfortunate woman was an artist, and when they imprisoned her she managed to bring with her a drawing pad and a box of pencils. As she never loses hope of deliverance she is constantly teaching her son about that outer world which he has never seen. She does it very largely by drawing him pictures. With her pencil she attempts to show him what fields, rivers, mountains, cities and waves on the beach are like. He is a dutiful boy and he does his best to believe her when she tells him that that outer world is far more interesting and glorious than anything in the dungeon. At times he succeeds. On the whole, he gets on tolerably well until, one day, he says something that gives his mother pause. For a minute or two they are at cross-purposes. Finally it dawns on her that he has, all these years, lived under a misconception. “But,” she gasps, “you didn’t think that the real world was full of lines drawn in lead pencil?” “What?” says the boy. “No pencil marks there?” And instantly his whole notion of the outer world becomes a blank. For the lines, by which alone he was imagining it, have now been denied of it. He has no idea of that which will exclude and dispense with the lines, that of which the lines were merely a transposition-the waving treetops, the light dancing on the weir, the coloured three-dimensional realities which are not enclosed in lines but define their own shapes at every moment with a delicacy and multiplicity which no drawing could ever achieve.
The child will get the idea that the real world is somehow less visible than his mother’s pictures. In reality it lacks lines because it is incomparably more visible.
So with us. “We know now what we shall be’” but we may be sure we shall be more, not less, than we were on earth. Our natural experiences (sensory, emotional, imaginative) are only like the drawing, like penciled lines on flat paper. If they vanish in the risen life, they will vanish only as pencil lines vanish from the real landscape; not as a candle flame which becomes invisible because someone has pulled up the blind, thrown open the shutters, and let in the blaze of the risen sun.

• C.S. Lewis in “Transposition”

What You Think Is What You Feel!

On Community Living - Living in Community Takes More Than Looking Out for Your Feelings...
Living in Christian community requires each person take intentional (deliberate) care for other people. Serving each other 'works' in putting things right in so many people's life, for love is serving.
However, service when it becomes the end, it has become a monstrous Master, catapulting people to heights of arrogance from which they may never recover due to the blindness of pride.
How susceptible we are to being sucked down into the undertow when someone talks of his/her 'my feelings!'
How is it then that it can be possible to live in community, having 'respect' for your feelings? We need to have a standard to measure “respect for feelings.” What is the answer? And more than that, what motivates me to have respect for your feelings, or you for mine?
There are those people who dare to insist that you need to respect my feelings because: ' I believe [i.e. feel], I did this for glory of God...'
The reality is that if you really wish to do something for the glory of God, your feelings will matter less and Christ's "feelings" will matter more.
So what is the answer to this condundrum? There is no earthly help--we really do need to turn to the truth of the scriptures for our standard-and let them search our heart:
"So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.
Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.
Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus..."
(Philippians 2-1-5 English Standard V)
----------
"If with the tongues of men and of angels I speak, and have not love, I have become brass sounding, or a cymbal tinkling;
and if I have prophecy, and know all the secrets, and all the knowledge, and if I have all the faith, so as to remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing;
and if I give away to feed others all my goods, and if I give up my body that I may be burned in sacrificial giving, and have not love, I am profited nothing.
Love is long-suffering, it is kind, the love doth not envy, the love doth not vaunt itself, is not puffed up, doth not act unseemly, doth not seek its own things, is not provoked, doth not impute evil,
Rejoiceth not over the unrighteousness, and rejoiceth with the truth-it all things beareth, it believeth all, it hopeth all, it endureth all.
Love will never cease; and whether [there be] prophecies, they shall become useless; whether tongues, they shall cease; whether knowledge, it shall become useless; for in part we know, and in part we prophecy; and when that which is perfect may come, then that which [is] in part shall become useless.
When I was a babe, as a babe I was speaking, as a babe I was thinking, as a babe I was reasoning, and when I have become a man, I have made useless the things of the babe;
for we see now through a mirror obscurely, and then face to face; now I know in part, and then I shall fully know, as also I was known; [See 1 John 3 below] and now there doth remain faith, hope, agape -- these three; and the greatest of these [is] agape."
(1 Corinthians 13 - Young's Literal Translation)
---------------------------
"Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God!
Therefore the world does not know us, because it did not know Him.
Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be
but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.
And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure. "
(I John 3:1-3)

Martha Re-Examined

If you've been a Christian for a while, you likely know what the "Martha Syndrome" is. Succinctly, it's falling into the trap of worry and distractions which steal from recognizing God and giving Him due place in life.
I'd like to re-examine Martha later in the gospels - in John 11- because if we examine her here, I wonder if Martha made more progress towards faith than is normally assigned to her. Look at her encounter with Jesus after Lazarus died in John 11, beginning at verse 1:
John 11:1-44
Now a man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. This Mary, whose brother Lazarus now lay sick, was the same one who poured perfume on the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair. So the sisters sent word to Jesus, "Lord, the one you love is sick." When he heard this, Jesus said, "This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God's glory so that God's Son may be glorified through it."
Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. Yet when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days. Then he said to his disciples, "Let us go back to Judea." "But Rabbi," they said, "a short while ago the Jews tried to stone you, and yet you are going back there?" Jesus answered, "Are there not twelve hours of daylight? A man who walks by day will not stumble, for he sees by this world's light. It is when he walks by night that he stumbles, for he has no light." After he had said this, he went on to tell them, "Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I am going there to wake him up." His disciples replied, "Lord, if he sleeps, he will get better." Jesus had been speaking of his death, but his disciples thought he meant natural sleep. So then he told them plainly, "Lazarus is dead, and for your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him." ... On his arrival, Jesus found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. Bethany was less than two miles from Jerusalem, and many Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them in the loss of their brother.
When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him, but Mary stayed at home.
"Lord," Martha said to Jesus, "if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask."
Jesus said to her, "Your brother will rise again."
Martha answered, "I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day."
Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life.
He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?"
"Yes, Lord," she told him, "I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who was to come into the world."

It seems outstanding that Martha responds not only to Jesus' question of her understanding of his mission, but that she connects his mission with his being.
By contrast, look at other places where Jesus is affirmed as the Son of God-pay attention to the circumstance surrounding the affirmations:

John 1:32-34 - John saw the sign of the Holy Spirit upon Jesus' baptism and he declared: "Then John gave this testimony: "I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on him. I would not have known him, except that the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, 'The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is he who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.' I have seen and I testify that this is the Son of God."
Matt 14:25-33 - when Peter walked on the water, the disciples were afraid and thought he was a ghost. And, the worshipped him.
14:28 "Lord, if it's you," Peter replied, "tell me to come to you on the water." "Come," he said. Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, "Lord, save me!" Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. "You of little faith," he said, "why did you doubt?" And when they climbed into the boat, the wind died down. Then those who were in the boat worshiped him, saying, "Truly you are the Son of God." (Matt 14:8-33)
John 1:47-50 - Nathanael - "When Jesus saw Nathanael approaching, he said of him, "Here is a true Israelite, in whom there is nothing false." "How do you know me?" Nathanael asked. Jesus answered, "I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you." Then Nathanael declared, "Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the King of Israel." Jesus said, "You believe because I told you I saw you under the fig tree. You shall see greater things than that."
John 20:30-32 - The end of the book of John-a summary of the purpose of the gospel of John. "Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name."

In John 11 we read that Martha believed 1) Jesus was the Life, 2) Jesus was the Son of God.
In the passages listed right above, of all the people who were recorded as stating Jesus is the "Son of God, " Martha is the only one who stated this without having seen a 'sign' or miraculous event.
I causes me to at least wonder why it is that Martha undestood who Christ was without the benefit of a miraculous event. ? In this respect she is similar to those believers of whom Jesus said, "Blessed rather are those who believe but have not seen." In this respect, Martha is the anti-thesis to (doubting but honest) Thomas.
It seems that faith, that attribute so highly esteemed in the Bible, was hers. No, she was  not perfect (as we can see from the previous mention of her in Luke and from the rest of this chapter)-but she was believing. "Be not weak in faith, but be strong in believing."
So I wonder from the passage in John 11 and because Martha, Mary and Lazarus were called  "loved of Jesus," if we are misinterpreting her progress from being a distracted person to a strong disciple? I wonder if  she merits a different reputation.
Goodness, we all know disciples is not always right. But we also know that progress in faith makes for growth as a disciple. 

Leaky vessels, filling with God's love

CS Lewis speaking on Old Testament Scriptures:
“The human qualities of the raw materials show through [referring to the content of scriptures]. Naivety, errors, contradiction and even (as in the cursing Psalms) wickedness are not removed. The total result is not “the Word of God” in the sense that every passage, in itself gives impeccable science or history. It carries the Word of God, and we… receive that word from it not by using it as an encyclopedia or encyclical but by steeping ourselves in its tone and temper and so learning its overall message.
To a human mind this working-up (in a sense imperfectly), this sublimation (incomplete) of human material, seems no doubt, an untidy and leaky vehicle. We might have expected, we may think we should have preferred, an unrefracted light giving us ultimate truth in systematic form—something we could have tabulated and memorized and relied on like the multiplication table. One can respect, and [even] envy, both the Fundamentalist’s view of the Bible and the Roman Catholic’s view of the Church. But there is one argument which we should beware of for either position: God must have done what is best, this is best, therefore God has done this. For we are mortals and do not know what is best ofr us, and it is dangerous to prescribe what God must have done—especially when we cannot, for the life of us, see that He has after all done it.
   We may observe the that the teaching of Our Lord [Jesus Christ] Himself, in which there is no imperfection, is not given us in cut-and-dried, fool-proof, systematic fashion we might have expected or desired. He wrote no book. We have only reported sayings, most of them uttered in answer to questions, shaped by some degree by their context. And whne we have collected them all we cannot reduce them to a system. He preaches but He does not lecture. He uses paradox, proverb, exaggeration, parable, irony; even…the “wisecrack.” He utters maxims which, like popular proverbs, if rigorously taken, may seem to contradict one another. His teaching therefore cannot be grasped by the intellect alone, cannot be “got up” as if it were a “subject.” If we try to do that with it, we shall find Him the most elusive of teachers. He hardly ever gave a straight answer to a straight question. He will not be, in the way we want, “pinned down.” The attempt is...like trying to bottle a sunbeam.
…
It may be indispensible that Our Lord’s teaching, by that elusiveness (to our systematizing intellect) should demand a response from the whole man, should make it so clear that there is no question on learning a subject but of steeping ourselves in a Personality, acquiring a new outlook and temper, breathing a new atmosphere, allowing Him, in His own way, to rebuild in us the defaced image of Himself.
…
…it seems to me that from having had to reach what is really the Voice of God…in the cursing Psalms..through all …the distortions of the human medium, I have gained something I might not have gained from a flawless, ethical exposition. The shadows have indicated (at least to my heart) something more about the light.
…of course these conjectures as to why God does what He does are probably of no more value than my dog’s ideas of what I am up to when I sit and read.
…
[The final] reason for accepting the Old Testament [is] simpl[e] and… compulsive. We are committed to it in principle by Our Lord Himself.
[Still, it] is…idle to speak here of spirit and letter. There is almost no “letter” in the words of Jesus. Taken by a literalist, He will always prove the most elusive of teachers. Systems cannot keep up with that darting illumination. No net less wide than a man’s whole heart nor less fine of mesh than love, will hold the sacred Fish.”

• CS Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms, pp.112-119

Let It Speak

Good writing and good and truthful thinking don't always go together-and sometimes it seems less often than more often. With that in mind, sometimes I like to let the Scriptures speak...trusting them to convey the best thoughts. Today, I'm placing sections of what is said to be the earliest book of the Bible - Job. And since the story of Job is familiar to most people, pieces from that story are placed below:
Job Speaks of the Power of God (from Job 12)
13 "With Him are wisdom and might;
To Him belong counsel and understanding.
14 "Behold, He tears down, and it cannot be rebuilt;
He imprisons a man, and there can be no release.
15 "Behold, He restrains the waters, and they dry up;
And He sends them out, and they inundate the earth.
16 "With Him are strength and sound wisdom,
The misled and the misleader belong to Him.
17 "He makes counselors walk barefoot
And makes fools of judges.
18 "He loosens the bond of kings
And binds their loins with a girdle.
19 "He makes priests walk barefoot
And overthrows the secure ones.
20 "He deprives the trusted ones of speech
And takes away the discernment of the elders.
21 "He pours contempt on nobles
And loosens the belt of the strong.
22 "He reveals mysteries from the darkness
And brings the deep darkness into light.
23 "He makes the nations great, then destroys them;
He enlarges the nations, then leads them away.
24 "He deprives of intelligence the chiefs of the earth's people
And makes them wander in a pathless waste.
25 "They grope in darkness with no light,
And He makes them stagger like a drunken man."
----
In Job 19 Job speaks his heart’s desire:
23 "Oh that my words were written!
Oh that they were inscribed in a book!
24 "That with an iron stylus and lead
They were engraved in the rock forever!
25 "As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives,
And at the last He will take His stand on the earth.
26 "Even after my skin is destroyed,
Yet from my flesh I shall see God;
27 Whom I myself shall behold,
And whom my eyes will see and not another.
My heart faints within me!"

Job 38 God Now Begins Speaking to Job
"1 Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind and said,
2 "Who is this that darkens counsel
By words without knowledge?
3 "Now gird up your loins like a man,
And I will ask you, and you instruct Me!
4 "Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?"
(AND ETC)
Job 42
"1 Then Job answered the LORD and said,
2 "I know that You can do all things,
And that no purpose of Yours can be thwarted.
3 'Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?'
"Therefore I have declared that which I did not understand,
Things too wonderful for me, which I did not know."
4 'Hear, now, and I will speak;
I will ask You, and You instruct me.'
5 "I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear;
But now my eye sees You;
6 Therefore I retract,
And I repent in dust and ashes."

The Jogging Monk and Exegesis Of The Heart

Being a disciple is simple, but not necessarily easy since the heart needs to be supple. Reflecting on this, here is an article from a man who was in seminary and his struggle:

The Jogging Monk And Exegesis Of The Heart

How to go beyond simple understanding to hearing Scripture speak

By James Brian Smith

During my second year of seminary, the spiritual moorings of my life came loose. I decided to go on a five-day silent retreat at a northeastern Episcopalian monastery to try to reclaim the spiritual warmth I had somehow lost.
Upon arrival I was assigned a monk who would be my spiritual director. He walked into our meeting room with jogging clothes underneath his cowl. I was disappointed. I had been expecting an elderly man, bearded to his knees, who would penetrate my soul with searing blue eyes. Instead, I got "the jogging monk."
My director gave me only one task for the day: meditate on the story of the Annunciation in the first chapter of Luke's gospel. I walked back to my cell, wondering how I would occupy my time with only this one assignment. After all, I thought to myself, I could exegete this entire text in a few hours. What was I to do for the rest of the day-in silence?
Back at my cell I opened my Bible to the passage and began reading. For the next hour I spliced and diced the verses as any good exegete would do, ending up with a few hypotheses and several hours to sit in silence. As the hours passed, the room seemed to get smaller. There was no view to the outside through the window of my room. Without any view to the outer world, I was forced to look within. Despite my hopes of finding spiritual bliss, I had never felt more alone.


What else is there?
The next day I met with the monk again to discuss my spiritual life. He asked what had happened with the assigned text. I told him that I had come up with a few exegetical insights. I thought my discoveries might impress him.
They didn't.
"What was your aim in reading this passages" he asked.
"My aim? To arrive at an understanding of the meaning of the text, I suppose."
"Anything else?"
I paused. "No. What else is there?"
"Well, there's more than just finding out what it says and what it means. There are also questions like, 'What did it teach you? What did it say to you? Were you struck by anything?' And most importantly, 'Did you experience God in your reading?'"
He assigned the same text for the day, asking me to begin reading it not so much with my head but more with my heart.
I had no idea how to do this. For the first three hours I tried and failed repeatedly. I practically had the passage memorized and still it was lifeless, and I was bored. The room seemed even smaller, and by nightfall 1 thought I would go deaf from the silence.
The next day we met again. In despair I told him that I simply could not do what he was asking. It was then that the wisdom beneath the jogging clothes became evident: "You're trying too hard, Jim. You're trying to control God. You're running the show. Go back and read this passage again. But this time, be open to receive whatever God has for you. Don't manipulate God; just receive. Communion with Him isn't something you institute. It's like sleep. You can't make yourself sleep, but you can create the conditions that allow sleep to happen. All I want you to do is create the conditions: open your Bible, read it slowly, listen to it, and reflect on it."


I went back to my cell (it had a prison-like feel by now) and began to read. I found utter silence. After an hour I finally shouted, "I give up! You win!" I slumped over in my chair and began to weep. I suspect it was for my failure that God had been waiting.


Let it be to me.
A short time later 1 picked up the Bible and read the passage again. The words looked different despite their familiarity. My mind and heart were supple as I read. I was no longer trying to figure out the meaning or the main point of the passage. 1 was simply hearing it.
My eyes fell upon the famous words of Mary: "Let it be to me according to your word," her response to God's stunning promise that she would give both to His Son. Let it be to me. The words rang in my head. And then God spoke to me.
It was as if a window had been thrown open and God was suddenly present, like a friend who wanted to talk. What followed was a dialogue about the story in Luke, about God, about Mary, and about me. I wondered about Mary-her feelings, her doubts, her fears, and her incredible willingness to respond to God's request.
This prompted me to ask (or the Spirit moved me to ask) about the limits of my obedience, which seemed meager in comparison to Mary's. "Do not be afraid," said the angel to Mary. We talked about fear. What was I afraid of? What held me back?
"You have found favor with God," the angel told Mary. Had I found favor with God? 1 sensed that I had, but not because of anything 1 had done (humility had become my companion in that room). I had found favor because 1 was His child.
I wondered, too, about the future, about my calling. What was God wanting of me? Mary had just been informed of her destiny. What was mine? We talked about what might be-what, in fact, could be, if I were willing.
I had reached the end of my rope and was, for the first time in a long time, in a position to hear. Desperation led me to begin praying. My prayer was really a plea: help me. After an hour of reflecting and listening, Mary's "Let it be to me according to your word" eventually became my prayer. The struggle had ended.
The room that had seemed small now seemed spacious. The silence no longer mattered, no longer made me anxious, but rather, seemed peaceful. And the terrible feeling of being alone was replaced by a sense of closeness with a God who was "nearer to me than I was to myself."


The Word exposed in the Words.
Before my retreat, I would have laughed if someone had tried to tell me that my real problem was not prayer or meditation or personal discipline, but that it was my inability to read the Bible. After all, to me, an evangelical with a touch of Wesleyan pietism, the Bible was sacred. I had memorized 2 Timothy 3:16 early on as a Christian.
I had studied under brilliant Bible scholars and maintained a high view of authority and inspiration. Even my Bible could attest to the hours I labored to understand it, covered as it was with marginal notes and multicolored "highlighter" markings. Like Paul, I list my achievements to point a finger not at me but at the God who redirected my ways.
Quite simply, I had forgotten that there is much more to reading the Bible than merely understanding the words on the pages. Learning how to study the Bible was an important and essential skill. However, I had lost "the ears to hear" anything beyond that kind of study.


What I relearned in my room was how the Bible should be read, namely, with an ear to what the text might be saying to me. Simply doing responsible exegesis is not enough, as enlightening as it often is. The next steps are listening to the text, reflecting on it, and asking not merely what it means, but what it is asking of me, what it is asking me to hear.
What I had been unable to understand was what Søren Kierkegaard called the "contemporaneity" of the Bible. The past does not merely parallel but actually intersects the present. The Christ who called His disciples to follow Him is calling each of us at this moment. I had been reading the Bible as if it were describing a world in which I might find parallels. I now came to understand that when I read the Bible, I am reading about a world that in some sense also now is.
For example, I had been prone to read the story of God's call to Abraham to sacrifice Isaac by saying, "Boy, Abraham sure had a tough decision. I am glad I am not in his shoes." Now I see that I cannot read it only that way. Why? Because I am in Abraham's shoes. God sometimes calls me to sacrifice my most precious possession. The story has much to say to the present.
I had to relearn that the Bible is a book aimed primarily at the will of the reader. I was afraid to hear what the Bible might say because I suspected it might ask me to change my life. It did. When I was "running the show," as the monk observed, I could sidestep the contemporaneity of the Bible. Mary was Mary, and I could observe her dilemma and even write a good sermon about it. But now it was my dilemma. Could I-will I-say, "let it be to me"?
Finally, I relearned that reading the Bible requires what the saints of old called "contemplation." It was in solitude and silence that the noise and hurry of the world finally ceased long enough for me to hear. There was not enough silence in my life for me to hear the Word within the words, and I knew that deep down, which is why I went on a silent retreat in the first place. Now I have learned that silence is possible outside the haven of a monastery, but I still have to work to find it.
I also learned that contemplation is more than just silence. The monk's insistence that I stay with the same passage for three days unnerved me. Now I understand what he was trying to do. Contemplation requires deep reflection, repetition, patience, and persistence. The veil that covered my heart would not be removed by a single reading. I needed then, and still need, to read it slowly, until the words strike a chord within me. Once they strike, I am able to let them resonate.


A new world opens up.
The end of the retreat was much better than the beginning. My "jogging monk" was pleased to see that I had relearned how to read the Bible. He gave me different passages to meditate on for the remainder of the retreat, and, like Mary, I was able to "ponder" them in my heart. I felt what an illiterate person must feel on learning how to read. A new world opened up.
Seminary, too, became more of a joy. I finished that year and my final year with a new way of looking at the Bible. I found that there can be a happy marriage between textual study and contemplation, viewing them not as competing but complementary. One without the other feels incomplete. Now, five years later, I feel that any day on which I do not open the Bible and let the words descend from my head into my heart, letting them mold my thoughts and shape my prayers, is wasted.
Unlike the room at the monastery, I now have a beautiful view outside my window. Now and then I close the shades.

• James Bryan Smith (M.Div., Yale University Divinity School, Ph.D., Fuller Seminary) is a theology professor at Friends University in Wichita, KS and a writer and speaker in the area of Christian spiritual formation. A founding member of Richard J. Foster's spiritual renewal ministry, Renovaré, Smith is an ordained United Methodist Church minister and has served in various capacities in local churches. Smith is the author of A Spiritual Formation Workbook, Devotional Classics (with Richard Foster), Embracing the Love of God, Rich Mullins: An Arrow Pointing to Heaven and Room of Marvels.

Would you prefer the truth or love?

Jesus has the first and last word on love:


A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:34, 35)


This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends. (John 15: 12, 13)


...when (the Holy Spirit) has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: (John 16:8)


Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth. I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word; (John 17:18, 20)


...for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they also may be sanctified by the truth. (John 17:19)


In God's Kingdom truth and love are one and the same.

The Thing Only You, and not God, Can Do

(On Love’s Surpassing Value )
“…(in I Corinthians 13) Paul says love is even greater than faith…(though) faith is even greater than understanding in this life. The whole Christian life begins in faith, progresses in faith, and culminates in faith. Only in heaven will knowledge replace faith when we no longer see “through a glass, darkly” but face to face…. Jesus was constantly exhorting people to faith and bemoaning their lack of faith. For faith is the golden key that unlocks the doors of our life to God’s presence and power. There was nothing that Jesus sought more than faith, except love. Faith is the necessary beginning of the Christian life, but love is its consummation. Faith exists for the sake of love, as the root exists for the sake of the fruit, as the beginning exists for the sake of the end. Even faith, without the works of love, is dead (James 2:26). But even the works of love are no substitute for love itself.

(Yet) Paul mentions that (all) is nothing without agape (love)... For instance, I can give away all that I have and even let my body be burned in suffering as a martyr, but it is all for naught without love. You can be a martyr without love: an angry, hateful martyr. A terrorist suicide bomber is not an apostle of love. Even good deeds without love are nothing, for God does not want deeds first of all but hearts.

He owns the cattle on a thousand hills (Psalms 50:10). He does not need anything from us. God could perform all the deeds He desires, but even He cannot give Himself one thing: our free love. That is the thing that is most precious of all to Him, and He has put it in our charge!”

Peter Kreeft, The God Who Loves You! (p. 76, 77)

God cannot make you love Him.

More On Pride (Moron Pride?)

Pride most prominently displays itself in narcissism and other forms of self-centeredness.

Yet pride also wears masks. For example, pride can be masked as autonomy (self-independence) or by relational distance. It surfaces when one is hyper-critical, defensive, questioning, resentful about authority, and being overly sensitive. Then again, if one is in authority, perhaps it shows up as being either demanding of people (and self)-or the reverse may be operating: and one might try to curry favor by not expecting much of anything to gain popularity points. Still in what form it takes outwardly, pride is certainly a deeply tangled root.

One of the added difficulties with pride is that when you put your mind to working at not being prideful, it shows up in one of its variants - as self-pity, self-flagellation or even of self-sacrifice but motivated by vanity.

Judges 9 is a good illustration of the haughty kind of pride that sets itself up against the God versus self-respect or "healthy pride"- which is doing what one was designed to do:

Judges 9:5-15
5 Then he went to his father’s house at Ophrah and killed his brothers, the seventy sons of Jerubbaal, on one stone. But Jotham the youngest son of Jerubbaal was left, because he hid himself.
6 And all the men of Shechem gathered together, all of Beth Millo, and they went and made Abimelech king beside the terebinth tree at the pillar that was in Shechem.
7 Now when they told Jotham, he went and stood on top of Mount Gerizim, and lifted his voice and cried out. And he said to them:
“Listen to me, you men of Shechem,
That God may listen to you!
8 “The trees once went forth to anoint a king over them.
And they said to the olive tree,
‘Reign over us!’
9 But the olive tree said to them,
‘ Should I cease giving my oil,
With which they honor God and men,
And go to sway over trees?’
10 “Then the trees said to the fig tree,
‘You come and reign over us!’
11 But the fig tree said to them,
‘ Should I cease my sweetness and my good fruit,
And go to sway over trees?’
12 “Then the trees said to the vine,
‘You come and reign over us!’
13 But the vine said to them,
‘ Should I cease my new wine,
Which cheers both God and men,
And go to sway over trees?’
14 “Then all the trees said to the bramble,
‘You come and reign over us!’
15 And the bramble said to the trees,
‘If in truth you anoint me as king over you,
Then come and take shelter in my shade;
But if not, let fire come out of the bramble
And devour the cedars of Lebanon!

"Make the world go away..." or Why Mediate?

It has been said that you eventually become what you think about continually.
If, for example, you dwell on how to make more money, that eventually is the target of every waking (and sleeping) dream of your life.
Naturally, when you lose your money, then, you lose everything that makes you what you are-and so often, you lose those things which cannot buy money: health, peace of mind, happiness and friendships.
Likewise, if you think about what people's opinion of you is, your job, your appearance, your prestige, and so on.
The question we need to consider is what is worthy of my continual and deep consideration, if not myself? I would submit that navel-gazing is the fastest route to neurosis.
Mental health is most quickly achieved and held if one’s life focus is on God, the Father, who created you, and Who loves you eternally. But,you wonder, how do we “think” about Him properly?
The primary revealed source for that is the scriptures. This is a repulsive conclusion for some people who have been abused or mishandled by those who claim to believe the Bible. Yet where does the problem lie? Do we blame the Bible for others' abuse? Since emotions have been involved, this kind of thinking is not at all straight, but certainly understandable for anger and hurt repel them from the Bible. Yet they are confused because they are mixing up the people who purported to know the information in the scripture with the actual scriptures. There is nothing wrong with the scriptures-only with the “reporter” in this case.
It is similar to me adding figures incorrectly and passing the incorrect sum along to you: my inaccuracy handling the operation does not invalidate the entire mathematical operation of addition.

God remains, no matter what, the only one worthy of our focus and, specifically, the one to desire to be pleasing to above all others.

Once our resistance to the scriptures is overcome and we understand what we are reading, we have another hurdle to get over: we wish to hold on to the beautiful truths, those which reveal God's compassion and faithfulness. We need them to penetrate through the noise within our heads. The answer is that we need to meditate on God. A certain writer responded to this (language is a bit antiquated):

"(but)...I have no time for this work (of meditating on the scriptures). (If) you would meditate on God and the things of God, then take heed that your heart, and your hands be not too full of the world and the employment thereof.
Friends, there is an art, a divine skill of meditation which none can teach but God alone. (If)...you would have it, then go and beg of God (for) these things."

• William Bridge

I Am a Resident Alien

Psalm 84

1 How lovely is Your tabernacle, O LORD of hosts!  2 My soul longs, yes, even faints for the courts of the LORD; My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God. 3 Even the sparrow has found a home, And the swallow a nest for herself, Where she may lay her young— Even Your altars, O LORD of hosts, My King and my God.
4 Blessed are those who dwell in Your house; They will still be praising You.
5 Blessed is the man whose strength is in You, whose heart is set on pilgrimage. 6 As they pass through the Valley of Baca, they make it a spring; the rain also covers it with pools.
7 They go from strength to strength; each one appears before God in Zion.
8 O LORD God of hosts, hear my prayer; Give ear, O God of Jacob! Selah
9 O God, behold our shield, And look upon the face of Your anointed.
10 For a day in Your courts is better than a thousand. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness.
11 For the LORD God is a sun and shield;The LORD will give grace and glory; No good thing will He withhold From those who walk uprightly.
12 O LORD of hosts, Blessed is the man who trusts in You!

The Jogging Monk And Exegesis Of The Heart

Being a disciple is simple, but not necessarily easy since the heart needs to be supple. Reflecting on this, here is an article from a man who was in seminary and his struggle:

The Jogging Monk And Exegesis Of The Heart

How to go beyond simple understanding to hearing Scripture speak

By James Brian Smith

During my second year of seminary, the spiritual moorings of my life came loose. I decided to go on a five-day silent retreat at a northeastern Episcopalian monastery to try to reclaim the spiritual warmth I had somehow lost.
Upon arrival I was assigned a monk who would be my spiritual director. He walked into our meeting room with jogging clothes underneath his cowl. I was disappointed. I had been expecting an elderly man, bearded to his knees, who would penetrate my soul with searing blue eyes. Instead, I got "the jogging monk."
My director gave me only one task for the day: meditate on the story of the Annunciation in the first chapter of Luke's gospel. I walked back to my cell, wondering how I would occupy my time with only this one assignment. After all, I thought to myself, I could exegete this entire text in a few hours. What was I to do for the rest of the day-in silence?
Back at my cell I opened my Bible to the passage and began reading. For the next hour I spliced and diced the verses as any good exegete would do, ending up with a few hypotheses and several hours to sit in silence. As the hours passed, the room seemed to get smaller. There was no view to the outside through the window of my room. Without any view to the outer world, I was forced to look within. Despite my hopes of finding spiritual bliss, I had never felt more alone.

What else is there?
The next day I met with the monk again to discuss my spiritual life. He asked what had happened with the assigned text. I told him that I had come up with a few exegetical insights. I thought my discoveries might impress him.
They didn't.
"What was your aim in reading this passages" he asked.
"My aim? To arrive at an understanding of the meaning of the text, I suppose."
"Anything else?"
I paused. "No. What else is there?"
"Well, there's more than just finding out what it says and what it means. There are also questions like, 'What did it teach you? What did it say to you? Were you struck by anything?' And most importantly, 'Did you experience God in your reading?'"
He assigned the same text for the day, asking me to begin reading it not so much with my head but more with my heart.

I had no idea how to do this. For the first three hours I tried and failed repeatedly. I practically had the passage memorized and still it was lifeless, and I was bored. The room seemed even smaller, and by nightfall 1 thought I would go deaf from the silence.
The next day we met again. In despair I told him that I simply could not do what he was asking.

It was then that the wisdom beneath the jogging clothes became evident: "You're trying too hard, Jim. You're trying to control God. You're running the show. Go back and read this passage again. But this time, be open to receive whatever God has for you. Don't manipulate God; just receive. Communion with Him isn't something you institute. It's like sleep. You can't make yourself sleep, but you can create the conditions that allow sleep to happen. All I want you to do is create the conditions: open your Bible, read it slowly, listen to it, and reflect on it."

I went back to my cell (it had a prison-like feel by now) and began to read. I found utter silence. After an hour I finally shouted, "I give up! You win!" I slumped over in my chair and began to weep. I suspect it was for my failure that God had been waiting.

Let it be to me.
A short time later 1 picked up the Bible and read the passage again. The words looked different despite their familiarity. My mind and heart were supple as I read. I was no longer trying to figure out the meaning or the main point of the passage. 1 was simply hearing it.
My eyes fell upon the famous words of Mary: "Let it be to me according to your word," her response to God's stunning promise that she would give both to His Son. Let it be to me. The words rang in my head. And then God spoke to me.
It was as if a window had been thrown open and God was suddenly present, like a friend who wanted to talk. What followed was a dialogue about the story in Luke, about God, about Mary, and about me. I wondered about Mary-her feelings, her doubts, her fears, and her incredible willingness to respond to God's request.
This prompted me to ask (or the Spirit moved me to ask) about the limits of my obedience, which seemed meager in comparison to Mary's. "Do not be afraid," said the angel to Mary. We talked about fear. What was I afraid of? What held me back?
"You have found favor with God," the angel told Mary. Had I found favor with God? 1 sensed that I had, but not because of anything 1 had done (humility had become my companion in that room). I had found favor because I was His child.
I wondered, too, about the future, about my calling. What was God wanting of me? Mary had just been informed of her destiny. What was mine? We talked about what might be-what, in fact, could be, if I were willing.
I had reached the end of my rope and was, for the first time in a long time, in a position to hear. Desperation led me to begin praying. My prayer was really a plea: help me. After an hour of reflecting and listening, Mary's "Let it be to me according to your word" eventually became my prayer. The struggle had ended.
The room that had seemed small now seemed spacious. The silence no longer mattered, no longer made me anxious, but rather, seemed peaceful. And the terrible feeling of being alone was replaced by a sense of closeness with a God who was "nearer to me than I was to myself."

The Word exposed in the Words.
Before my retreat, I would have laughed if someone had tried to tell me that my real problem was not prayer or meditation or personal discipline, but that it was my inability to read the Bible. After all, to me, an evangelical with a touch of Wesleyan pietism, the Bible was sacred. I had memorized 2 Timothy 3:16 early on as a Christian.
I had studied under brilliant Bible scholars and maintained a high view of authority and inspiration. Even my Bible could attest to the hours I labored to understand it, covered as it was with marginal notes and multicolored "highlighter" markings. Like Paul, I list my achievements to point a finger not at me but at the God who redirected my ways.
Quite simply, I had forgotten that there is much more to reading the Bible than merely understanding the words on the pages. Learning how to study the Bible was an important and essential skill. However, I had lost "the ears to hear" anything beyond that kind of study.

What I relearned in my room was how the Bible should be read, namely, with an ear to what the text might be saying to me. Simply doing responsible exegesis is not enough, as enlightening as it often is. The next steps are listening to the text, reflecting on it, and asking not merely what it means, but what it is asking of me, what it is asking me to hear.
What I had been unable to understand was what Søren Kierkegaard called the "contemporaneity" of the Bible. The past does not merely parallel but actually intersects the present. The Christ who called His disciples to follow Him is calling each of us at this moment. I had been reading the Bible as if it were describing a world in which I might find parallels. I now came to understand that when I read the Bible, I am reading about a world that in some sense also now is.
For example, I had been prone to read the story of God's call to Abraham to sacrifice Isaac by saying, "Boy, Abraham sure had a tough decision. I am glad I am not in his shoes." Now I see that I cannot read it only that way. Why? Because I am in Abraham's shoes. God sometimes calls me to sacrifice my most precious possession. The story has much to say to the present.
I had to relearn that the Bible is a book aimed primarily at the will of the reader. I was afraid to hear what the Bible might say because I suspected it might ask me to change my life. It did. When I was "running the show," as the monk observed, I could sidestep the contemporaneity of the Bible. Mary was Mary, and I could observe her dilemma and even write a good sermon about it. But now it was my dilemma. Could I-will I-say, "let it be to me"?
Finally, I relearned that reading the Bible requires what the saints of old called "contemplation." It was in solitude and silence that the noise and hurry of the world finally ceased long enough for me to hear. There was not enough silence in my life for me to hear the Word within the words, and I knew that deep down, which is why I went on a silent retreat in the first place. Now I have learned that silence is possible outside the haven of a monastery, but I still have to work to find it.
I also learned that contemplation is more than just silence. The monk's insistence that I stay with the same passage for three days unnerved me. Now I understand what he was trying to do. Contemplation requires deep reflection, repetition, patience, and persistence. The veil that covered my heart would not be removed by a single reading. I needed then, and still need, to read it slowly, until the words strike a chord within me. Once they strike, I am able to let them resonate.

A new world opens up.
The end of the retreat was much better than the beginning. My "jogging monk" was pleased to see that I had relearned how to read the Bible. He gave me different passages to meditate on for the remainder of the retreat, and, like Mary, I was able to "ponder" them in my heart. I felt what an illiterate person must feel on learning how to read. A new world opened up.
Seminary, too, became more of a joy. I finished that year and my final year with a new way of looking at the Bible. I found that there can be a happy marriage between textual study and contemplation, viewing them not as competing but complementary. One without the other feels incomplete. Now, five years later, I feel that any day on which I do not open the Bible and let the words descend from my head into my heart, letting them mold my thoughts and shape my prayers, is wasted.
Unlike the room at the monastery, I now have a beautiful view outside my window. Now and then I close the shades. Ω

→ The author: James Bryan Smith (M.Div., Yale University Divinity School, Ph.D., Fuller Seminary) is a theology professor at Friends University in Wichita, KS and a writer and speaker in the area of Christian spiritual formation. A founding member of Richard J. Foster's spiritual renewal ministry, Renovaré, Smith is an ordained United Methodist Church minister and has served in various capacities in local churches. Smith is the author of A Spiritual Formation Workbook, Devotional Classics (with Richard Foster), Embracing the Love of God, Rich Mullins: An Arrow Pointing to Heaven and Room of Marvels.