Of Good Sense and Sensibility

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Discretion shall preserve thee, understanding shall keep thee  –Proverbs 2:11

The other night, I met a family member’s fiancé, although I didn’t know it at the time. She’s a few years younger than me, in her early 20s, and this was her first boyfriend. I was very interested in getting to know him, because years ago, I had her pegged as a prime candidate for an abusive relationship. She fit the profile: youngest child, lousy father, compliant personality who tended to give the answer she thought people wanted, even if the question at hand was incredibly trivial.

I was pleasantly relieved to talk to this guy, then, and have a really great conversation.

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Egyptian Gold in the Christian’s Treasury

2014-8-7 Egyptians img01When the people of Israel were thrust out of Egypt in the time of Moses, they took at God’s command some of Egypt’s riches with them. To a Christian observer of the Western Heritage, the phrase “plundering the Egyptians” may have an additional, metaphorical meaning. From Tertullian’s “What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” to Clement of Alexandria’s “The way of truth is therefore one. . . . into it, as into a perennial river, streams flow from all sides,” the early church writers ran the gamut of attitudes towards extra-biblical philosophy. Augustine’s use of imagery from the book of Exodus, arguing for a sanctification of pagan philosophy, has prompted enthusiastic battle cries of “Plunder ALL the Egyptians!”

But before we take their stuff, can we make positively certain our use for it is better than theirs? Continue reading

American Idol

2014-7-24 Idol img01Do you worship idols? Don’t be shocked—I’m completely serious—do you?

Baal and Ashtoreth are referenced frequently throughout the Bible; I have known their names ever since I can remember. These gods were integral to the Canaanite culture of long ago. Indeed, worship of them and other false deities was certainly a common Old Testament sin. Naturally then, in answer to the question above, my 8 year old self might have answered: “Of course not—that is so BC!” Continue reading

Reading Lesson

5-29 VersesBack in grade school, a theology teacher of mine had a favorite expression: “Never read a Bible verse. Always read the context.”

It was our tongue-in-cheek joke at the arbitrary placement of verses and the subtle way it seemed to make each one into stand-alone text. More recently, however, I wondered if we shouldn’t take verses any more seriously than the joke implies.

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Group Projectiles

There is a phrase that strikes dismay and resentment into the heart of every good student: Group Project. Perhaps you are the only one who cares about doing well, or the only one who understands the material well enough to make a meaningful contribution, or the only one willing to put the shoulder to the wheel. Generally, there are two responses for the isolated, intelligent student in this situation, neither of them good: the first is to curse the numbskull of a teacher who first came up with group projects. This is individualism, and I will address it later. The second response is to dream of a group that would divide the work reasonably and fairly—that would be more of a team than a group—that would do work worthy of A’s—the chimerical A-Team. A few stellar people with diversity of talents, none of them stepping on the others’ toes or nerves, eminently competent people! That’s what it would take to make a group project worthwhile!

Let’s say you find just such a group. Continue reading