I'm back?

Mirrored from Musings from the Cornered Hill

I just logged into my blogger account for the first time in...forever? At least it seems that way. Most of my readers should already know that I'm not dead, but now you come to find out this blog isn't (at least for the moment) dead either. I'm thinking I may start blogging again. I make no promises since I don't know how much will power I have at this point, but we'll see.

The biggest deal for me in coming back is the question of content (I've been planning a come back for a while, but obviously it didn't happen...until now). What do I want to write about? Do I have anything worthwhile to say? Does it even matter if I have something worthwhile to say? (I mean, come on, look at the many crappy blogs out there, this one included ).

My idea for content at this point is my own personal schooling. I'm planning to make myself keep learning because I know I need it. Figuring out how to do that is the hard part. The plan I'm toying with now is one "class" every 4 months, allowing me plenty of time to work on things. I'll make up a curriculum and then do my best to follow it. Part of that will be writing (because God knows I need to learn to write better) and since I'm not very good at grading myself I figured I'd shove my shoddy work off on y'all. So you'll probably see some "papers" on here in the future, as well as some posts on the process of self-learning as well (since I think it's an important topic to the Christian church, but I'll get into that later).

All this to say, "Hi, again." Bye for now

Introduction to the Kingdom

Mirrored from Musings from the Cornered Hill

As always, plans change, and I want to talk about the kingdom now.  What kingdom?  The kingdom of God (or the heavens in Matthew) which is so central to the Gospels.  I tried to do some of this with my guy’s group a while back but I didn’t have a good enough grasp on what the Kingdom was yet, so it mostly failed.

The Kingdom was expected by the Jews, especially as a result of the later prophets, but I’ll get to that in a later post.  Jesus brought the kingdom in an unexpected way, but before you become interested in that you need to know why the kingdom is even so important.  I think there are two major reasons why everyone should be interested in the kingdom: it was the center of Jesus ministry, and it becomes the organizing principle for the Christian life.

What do I mean when I say that it was the center of Jesus ministry?  Well, the most obvious way it is central is the teachings of Jesus.  The majority of His parables are introduced by “The kingdom of God is like…” or some variation thereof.  This was the main way Jesus corrected the Jewish expectations of the kingdom.

The proclamation of the kingdom is also how Jesus ministry is summarized in some places in the Gospels (see Matt 4:17, 4:23, Mark 1:15, etc).  He also told His disciples to proclaim the same message (Matt 10:7).  With so much pointing to Jesus’ kingdom ministry it is hard to avoid the kingdom if you read the gospels.

In fact, it is so hard to avoid that scholars actually agree (this is amazing, trust me) that the kingdom is the center of Jesus’ teaching.  Not just conservative scholars, but scholars from a broad spectrum.  They disagree on what kind of kingdom Jesus was talking about, but the vast majority will at least recognize that Jesus preached the kingdom.

But wait, if the kingdom is so dramatically central to Jesus teachings then why don’t we hear more about it in our churches today?  (maybe you heard about the kingdom in church, but I have not and still don’t for the most part)  One explanation (and what I think is a good one) is that most pastors don’t understand it well enough to explain it in a way that will capture their congregation.  It’s much easier to preach specific sermons from the Sermon on the Mount or the Epistles than to preach a broad message about a concept known as the “kingdom of God”.

Unfortunately I think this misses the central importance of the kingdom to Christian life.  I think that everyone needs a central narrative for their life (even if they don’t react to that narrative in the same way) and that the kingdom is the answer to that need.  I’m going to start using a bunch of literary references, so if I lose anyone feel free to ask (they will probably all be fairly well known, so hopefully I won’t).

Nameless, faceless and formless causes have very little pull on people.  While there have been men through history that have sought merely to live the ‘virtuous life’ they generally went to some length to give that concept real form.  Unless the people around them understood that form they tended to go on with their life, perhaps adopting the principles that worked well with what they already did or fixed minor problems in their lives.

Christianity is much the same way.  We present the ‘righteous life’ as the goal, and to give it form, face and name we show people Jesus.  That isn’t all bad, I’m all for pointing to Jesus, but His standard is not only high, but unachievable.  The Church isn’t supposed to become the groom, it is supposed to be the bride for that groom.  None of us could ever be an atoning sacrifice for all of humanity, not only because we have sinned but also because it’s already been done.

So the majority of Christians go along in their humdrum lives trying to be like Jesus in a few small ways that can ease their conscience about the whole ‘Christian endeavor’ so they can get on with real life.  Trying to get them to start moving towards our concept of ‘righteousness’ is like telling someone in middle earth to fight without giving them the Shire or Gondor or whatever it is they are fighting for.

You can point me to Aslan all you want and I’ll look at Him and love Him, but if you don’t give me Aslan’s kingdom to move towards then I’m not likely to do much, especially since you’re probably just pointing at a picture of Aslan and telling me stories about Him.  The real Aslan came and told them how to get where He is, and continued to be active, do we have that kind of picture of Jesus?

We get to be a part of the kingdom of God and fight to make it even more a reality in our world.  We yearn for the day when the full consummation of the kingdom comes, but if we don’t talk about the kingdom and meditate on it then we’ll get lost in all the little details of life and lose our reason for fighting.  That is why we need a good understanding of the kingdom.

The kingdom allows us to read the entire Bible (Old or New Testament) and see how it all flows together into the tapestry that God has created and is continuing to work on.  We don’t get the somewhat disconnected pictures of the average Christian because we can see it all as well as seeing the little details.  I hope you’ll join me as I seek to express (and as a result better understand myself) the reality and principles of the kingdom.

Contagious Purity

Mirrored from Musings from the Cornered Hill

Sorry about not getting a post up yesterday, moving home and then going to see my grandparents got me kind of caught up so I didn’t have much time and didn’t remember during the time I did have.  Also, after this week I may up my word count to 1000 (rather than the 500 I do now) because I have more time so I should be able to write it sooner and hopefully edit it well.  And that’ll allow me to say more.

This post has a fairly simple message, but one that really struck me during my summer school class (Jesus Life and Ministry).  I’ll probably share other things from that class, though perhaps not as obviously.  But let me start with a little bit of background to get you in the mood to really get this idea.

Hopefully you are familiar with the Old Testament and to a certain extent the laws contained in the Pentateuch for the nation of Israel.  Many of those laws had to do with ritual purity.  There was a certain amount of purity that was required for everyone, and even more was required for the priests.

In general that level of purity was not accomplished early on.  Failure after failure occurred until eventually God sent the nation off into Exile.  The people were then looking for the return from exile, and though some did return, it was not in the way that was expected.  As a result the people decided that they must be even more purified in order to bring about the full return from exile and the kingdom of God.

This is in some ways what brought about the Pharisees.  They were the teachers of the people, lay people trying to hold the nation to a higher standard.  All kinds of oral laws grew up around the law in order to build a ‘fence’ to keep people from trespassing the law.  Some of these oral laws were in regards to ritual purity, raising the standards and keeping some people out of the community.

Enter Jesus of Nazareth, a seeming prophet proclaiming the coming of the kingdom.  But instead of hanging out with all the pure people (especially the Pharisees) and spreading their message he broke their rules and hung out with the ‘dirty’ people like sinners and tax collectors.

But He brought an extremely strong purity, as well.  He understood His purity to be so strong that it was contagious (and it showed through physical healings).  Rather than making Him unclean, touching people like lepers made them clean.  Do you see the extreme reversal?

Even today we think about germs being contagious and rubbing off on the clean person.  It’s not ritual purity, but it’s still a form of purity.  But Jesus reversed nature and brought a contagious purity that rubs off on all of us.  Think on that for a while and perhaps it will refresh you like it did me.

Learning From Life

Mirrored from Musings from the Cornered Hill

I’m going to hold off on the reasons for my faith for a couple weeks so I have more time to gather my thoughts on that. Consider this an interlude.

I read a number of different blogs, but one that really catches me sometimes is internetmonk.com. He has a very interesting perspective on some things, so I enjoy reading a lot of his stuff. I was skimming one of his posts recently and recognized a way to actually get myself to journal.

Let me explain. I don’t like to journal in general. But I think I should. This combination is very annoying because it leads to sporadic attempts to journal with long periods of ignoring the idea altogether. But this blog post might just have redefined my ideas of journaling enough to get me to both like journaling and want to do it (only time will really tell).

His idea is to write a book about the lessons that life is teaching you and to go back and reread it. I’ve mostly viewed journaling as an emotional outlet and so have almost never even attempted to read old entries. But this gives the idea value now (I have to be thinking about what lessons I’m learning) and for the future (because I get to maintain those lessons).

This also manages to mesh well with my view of salvation history and what we are supposed to do with it. The Israelites were commanded to remember certain events in their history because those events taught them lessons about who God was, is and will be. If I can cultivate this kind of thinking on the small day to day things I can also integrate in this kind of salvation history thinking.

Beyond the personal application, lessons also seem like something that could be shared with other people. In fact from the little I can derive from friend’s posts about their journaling and what they share of it there seems to be a few people in my social circle that already do this. The hard lessons might not be shared immediately or with everyone, but the can benefit more than just yourself.

Basically, I like the idea that IM mentions in one of his paragraphs about learning from life. I may not have a wife to journal about like he does, but I surely have a lot of life to learn from. Ask me about my journaling in the future to see if I’m doing it, and perhaps some of the lessons I learn will show up on here to be shared with all of you.

Motivation

Mirrored from Musings from the Cornered Hill

This post is a struggle over how much of your time I’m willing to waste just talking about my own issues and my desire to talk.  Maybe it will connect with something in you that will help you understand or help you help me, but that is not my motivation and that is my problem right now: motivation.

I just started reading New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton, which on top of what I already know and other sources of self-reflection has pretty much stripped me bare.  I still have not had the time to figure out if I have anything left.  An analogy to help explain: I’m like a person who is so convinced that using a gas powered car is wrong that he will no longer use one but that does not have an alternate power source, so he is just stuck in one place.

I probably cannot even number the desires inside of me that I have (correctly, I think) labeled as wrong at this point.  But I still need to find some that I can label as good and right.  Thomas Merton illustrated well the ways that so-called “holy” people can be self-deceived about their own goodness and turn it into something that is wrong.  Realistically I think Merton has made me lose faith in myself before I am ready to fully put my faith in God.

As a result I do not think any of my normal rants is appropriate to be sharing with other people and trying to convince them of.  I am not sure if I will have anything of substance in the near future, but I do not want to abandon this because I am trying really hard to build into myself integrity and perseverance (I am pretty sure those are good) and ditching this would be counterproductive for those goals.

Ok, enough about me, a little about what I do know about this blog.  My plan is to limit myself to 500 words or less for the near future.  That will mean more focused posts which are also short enough to edit, rewrite, or basically completely scrap (this is an example of the result of the third, then the first).  I know I have not been living up to my writing abilities in college, so I will hold this limit until I am convinced I am starting to live up to them, then I will slowly expand the limit.

Next week I will probably attempt to start a series on the reasons for my faith.  I have a sort of ‘bedrock faith’ I can fall back on in times of serious doubt, but I do not think I know it enough, and this seems a good place to develop it (so it can be challenged or strengthened publicly).  Time will tell if I can put something together fast enough, though.  And I apologize for the immensely personal post, but it seemed the only appropriate thing to do.