Friday, September 28, 2012

You can't read the Bible like any other book...?

I recently took some holidays.
One of the projects I set myself was to re-read my favourite novel, David Foster Wallace's "Infinite Jest". I wanted to get a better grasp on the novel, and test out some theories about what DFW was up to.
So I committed to taking notes. Nothing too onerous. I set out to list the order of scenes, and to map the chronology of scenes. I also noted references to language and speech (testing a theory about the influence of James Incandenza), and also attempted to diagram what Enfield Tennis Acadamy looked like. (given references to the lung and the brain).
Anyway, just paying this close attention to the book meant all sorts of interesting things turned up in the first 30 or so pages. All sorts of interesting links and themes and clues. I loved it. I got so much more out of those 30 pages. But then I gave up. Mostly because when I was too tired to take notes, or couldn't, or didn't have my notebook, I didn't read. So 30 pages was all I got through.
Instead I picked up the 'Hunger Games' series and knocked one over each afternoon for three afternoons. Now, admittedly, they are an easier read. But it got me thinking...

Has our approach to 'Bible Study' made us people who can't read the Bible.

That is, because we move so slowly through the Bible, trying to milk every last drop, does it put us off actually reading the thing. 

So spurred by these thoughts, and by some stuff from 'Cor Deo', our young adults group is trying something different.

We are just going to read the Bible because we love it, and love God. We aren't going to set aside a disciplined time for reading. You don't do that with a book you love, you pick it up whenever you get a chance. We aren't going to set the number of chapters you 'must' read each day, we are just going to read it because we love it. As we read, we will highlight the bits we like, and then share those together when we meet. We won't labour through any passages. After sharing the bible bits, we will talk about it together, and how we think we need to respond
 We have set a provisional goal, the whole thing in 4 months, and so a provisional target of about 40 chapters a week. As one of our ladies said ' yeah then people can read more if they want to'.
The idea then, is that you could get through the whole bible three times a year. You may miss some things as you whizz through the first time, but the second? third? fiftieth time? My hunch is you will know and love the Lord and his word a whole lot better than our plodding method

I'll let you know how it goes


Thursday, September 20, 2012

Wisdom and Education

…the values which we most ignore, the recognition of which we most seldom find in writings on education, are those of Wisdom and Holiness, the values of the sage and the saint….Our tendency has been to identify wisdom with knowledge, saintliness with natural goodness, to minimize not only the operation of grace but self-training, to divorce holiness from education. Education has come to mean education of the mind only; and an education which is only of the mind…can lead to scholarship, to efficiency, to worldly achievement and to power, but not to wisdom.

- T.S. Eliot. The Idea of a Christian Society and Other Writings (London: Faber and Faver, 1982), p 142, cited by Craig Bartholomew & Ryan O’Dowd, Old Testament Wisdom Literature: A Theological Introduction, 293

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Brian Rosner, Tim Foster...and now this. Ridley is taking over the world

Saw the announcement today that Mike Bird has been appointed Lecturer in theology at Ridley College Melbourne.
Wow.
I'd seriously consider studying there now. What with Brian Rosner and Mike Bird.

Saturday, September 15, 2012

Samson and Delilah

Since Jonathan is doing such wonderful serious stuff on Samson and Jesus over at the grit, I thought it was appropriate to share this equally serious reflection

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Friday, September 14, 2012

Principles for preaching- Thieleke

‘The aim of the sermon, after all, is to create something living and set it in motion. Consequently, it should be directed not only at the intellect, but must at the same time also be aimed at the conscience, will, and imagination. It is addressed to the whole person! Corresponding to the complexity of this goal are the wealth of reflections in which one is absorbed before one makes ones way to the pulpit.

The extremely pluralistic composition of my audience forced me to still further reflections. The different levels of education and social background necessitated an inquiry into that aspect of human nature that is common to all human beings, that center of their being in which – each in his own different way – human beings are moved by fear and hope, by their finitude, by ambition, desires, the search for meaning, by the burden of guilt and torment of conscience. My goal – and I strived to attain it at least partially – had to be above all to ensure that everyone could say afterwards (because he had been personally touched in this center of his being, “I was the subject of this sermon, he meant me.”

In order to find associations with the text for my sermon and so to illustrate it with images, stories, and a human touch, I constantly kept an eye open during my varied reading for anything I could use in the pulpit. I started various collections in files and card indexes in order to have suitable quotations and other material at hand. If this material then nevertheless failed to hit the mark, I could at least comfort myself with the fact that I had done all that I could.

I did not, by the way, keep to the prescribed readings, that is, to the texts stipulated for use in church sermons. At best these prescribed texts have one useful function, namely, they safeguard the preacher from misusing the text by preventing him from choosing a text simply as a motto for his pet ideas. Preachers who do this quickly preach themselves dry. Their only achievement is to cause deadly boredom – probably not only to the audience but also to themselves – by their constant rummaging through the remnants of a crop that has long since been completely harvested. A prescribed text is certainly the best protection against the law of inertia taking effect in this way. It is also possible for the preacher himself to build a defensive wall against this temptation. This can be done in the following way.

I forced myself to give series of sermons oriented towards a sequence of biblical texts or a single subject. This is how the aforementioned series on the Lord’s Prayer, the parables, the biblical creation story, the pastoral conversations of Jesus, the creed, and many others came about. I also gave openly “didactic” sermons, which were a sort of catechism lesson for adults, in which I explained, for instance, the theological significance of historic-critical textual research and allowed the congregation to take a look into the workshop of academic theology. This principle of preaching series of sermons proved to be fruitful for both sides. It was fruitful for the preacher because it subjected him to a salutary constraint and safeguarded him against arbitrarily choosing texts on his own authority. It was fruitful for the audience because their interest was sustained by the continuity and development of a particular subject or train of thought, as a result of which they always looked forward eagerly to the next sermon.

The fact that I brought current events into play in my sermons should not be taken to mean that I had been talking politics in the pulpit. In my opinion, there are two types of degenerate sermon, both of which, although very different in themselves, are today having a ruinous effect on the life of the church service.

The first of these decadent forms is the transformation of the sermon into a set political speech proclaiming a particular political position as the Christian position. In my experience, this mostly gains the upper hand among people whose spiritual substance is too diluted for them to give a rousing proclamation of the Gospel. They are then forced to give their sermons a political shot in the arm to lend their dead spirituality the appearance of life. But this form of sermon has no permanence. People very soon wonder why it should need the circuitous route of the pulpit to get this political message across and whether they could not get the same thing cheaper and without the Christian paraphernalia simply by going straight to a political meeting.

The second type of degenerate sermon is a certain ritualism that suppresses or at least obscures the personal faith of the individual through the excessive use of time-honored phrases and traditional musica sacra.

This brief look into the “theological laboratory” has not yet touched on what goes on inside the preacher. This remains hidden to outside eyes. I can only give the following hint at where one should look for an answer. Whoever sees so many eyes directed towards him is in great danger. He may believe that they are directed towards “him,” whereas he is in fact only the ambassador of another. In the sacristy of the Church of St. Michael there is a little altar where the preacher prepares himself to approach the pulpit and arms himself against the temptations that threaten him. This is all that I wish to say about this matter’.

– Helmut Thielicke, Notes from a Wayfarer: The Autobiography of Helmut Thielicke (trans. David R. Law; New York: Paragon House, 1995), 291–93.


H/T Jason