One of my most cherished possessions is my fourth edition Greek New Testament, edited by Kurt Aland et. al., with concordance. I received it in Seminary, as a gift from my second year Greek instructor, and over the last fifteen years, it has been one of my most constant companions in the spiritual life. It is dog-eared and worn. The fore edge is filthy from thumbing continually back to the concordance to look up words. It’s on its second cover (the first wore out about two years in, and I had it rebound at the Seminary library). Yet for all that, it is the most precious book I own.
When I was finishing my fourth semester of Greek in seminary, my instructor told our class a story on the last day of class that I never forgot. Looking back, this strange story has probably had more influence over my devotional life than any sermon I’ve ever heard.
“Imagine a fish,” he said, “Who was trying to swim up stream to spawn, when he came to a mighty waterfall. He struggled with all his heart to swim to the top of that waterfall, getting pounded back by the current with every swish of his tail. Finally, he reached the top. He was so relieved to get there that he splashed up out of the water, onto the riverbank to rest. And then, lying there in the open air, he died.”
The end.
It wasn’t exactly Aesop’s Fable material, but while we were all blinking at him and wondering what on earth he was talking about, he said to us: “You all have been struggling to learn your Greek for two years, and here you are, finally through all the hard work. And because you did it, you might be tempted to take a break from the Greek and rest. But just know that if you do, most likely within a month or two, it will all be gone. You'll have forgotten everything and all this hard work will have been for nothing.”
“So try to form a habit,” he said, “of reading a little bit of Greek each day.”
Not wanting to be that exhausted fish gasping for breath on the riverbank of Greek exegesis, I took his story deeply to heart. I went home that day and made it my goal to read the entire Greek New Testament, front to back, in a year. I worked out the math and figured that if I read 3 pages each day, I’d be able to do it with a few days to spare.
It was really tough slugging, at first. I had four semesters of Greek under my belt, so I wasn’t completely lost, but it wasn’t long till I realized how much swimming there was left to do. But I stuck to my 3-pages-a-day routine, and gradually it got easier and easier, and by the end of the year I had made it from Biblos geneseōs Iēsou Xristou (Matthew 1:1) to Hē charis tou kuriou Iēsou meta pantōn (Revelation 22:21). It was such a joy to think I had actually heard the Word of God in its original language like that, right from the beginning to the end, that I started over at the beginning the next morning. Matthew 1:1: Biblos geneseōs Iēsou Xristou.
This has been my habit pretty much ever since, reading three pages of Greek each morning, with a consistent goal of reading the whole New Testament in a year. And though I do miss a day or two here or there, still, in the last 15 years, I’ve made it through the whole thing about a dozen times or more.
A few weeks ago I started this series talking about the simple things in my life that give me joy. If you missed the first post, the idea comes from some research I heard about in the field of Positive Psychology. It suggested that incorporating regular experiences of every-day happiness into our routine (maintaining your “positivity hygiene,” they called it), is a simple way we can care for our mental health and build our emotional resilience.
As I’ve been reflecting on some of the things that help me maintain my “positivity hygiene,” it’s occurred to me that those three pages of Greek each morning have been a rich source of daily delight for me over the years. Some days are very taxing, I’ll admit. Even after fifteen years of reading, I still find the last half of the Book of Acts, all of Second Peter, and most of the Book of Hebrews pretty challenging, but even the challenge is joyful.
Reading the Greek New Testament has become far more than just a personal goal for me. Something beautiful seems to happen when I open that tattered book each morning. A world unfolds before me where the Word of God is mysteriously familiar, but just foreign enough that I have to slow myself down, and ponder deeply what it’s really saying, and wrestle with it word by word. As I do, it comes to life for me in all sorts of unexpected ways.
I can still remember reading through Luke’s account of the Lord’s Supper (Luke 22:14-35) for the first time in the original Greek. I had to look up basically every second word, at the time, and wrestle with the parsing, and untwist the syntax, but as I did, the scene, of our Lord’s giving of himself by hosting his followers at a final meal that would be, forever after, his body and blood, took on dimensions I had never experienced before. It has forever changed, not just how I read the passage, but how I participate in the Lord’s Supper itself.
There’s a place in the Psalms where it talks about how the Word of God gives joy to the heart. Of course, I did not need to keep on swimming in the river of New Testament Greek all these years to discover how true that statement is. I didn’t need to learn Greek at all, and neither do you. This is the beauty of the Bible, that it meets us wherever we’re at, and speaks to all of us no matter where we’re coming from.
Even so, I have come to cherish my daily pages of Greek; and my tattered Greek Bible—when I stop to consider how tattered it’s become—is a beautiful reminder to me of how much sweeter than honey from the comb the Word of God really is.
The Simplest of Delights: My Greek New Testament
The Thursday Review: Ministry in the Depths
Lectio Divina is a spiritual discipline that I would recommend to any Christian who wants to develop a listening ear for God's voice in the world. The term is Latin for "Sacred Reading" and it's a way of reading the Scriptures where you meditate closely on a single story, or image, or verse. The idea is to choose a text and read it prayerfully, over and over and over again, allowing God to speak through it as it settles from your mind, through your heart and into your spirit.
A quick example: a few years ago I was working through some self-doubt and self-image issues in my Christian life, and as I wrestled with this junk, I realized that a lot of it boiled down to fear: fear of rejection, fear of failure, fear of death (in the most abstract sense). It was at that point that God reminded me of 1 John 4:18, "There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear." So I spent a while in lectio divina on this passage, rolling it over and over in my mind. Perfect love drives out fear-- how does God love me and how do I know it? Perfect love-- what is it about my experience of love right now that is imperfect? Perfect love drives out fear-- what is the nature of my fears and how could God's love drive it out? And so on. As these words started to sink in, with their various shades of meaning and levels of emphasis, I actually began to experience the love of God driving out those fears in me.
The reason I'm telling you all this today, though, is because a while ago I was working through some stuff related to my understanding of my purpose as a pastor. I was praying about it one day, and God reminded me of the story in Luke 5, where Jesus calls his first disciples. If you recall, he meets Peter, James and John in a sailboat, washing their nets after a failed night of fishing. Jesus gets into the boat with them and tells them to let down their nets into the deep water (5:4). Peter is skeptical, but at Jesus' word he does so, and the subsequent catch they draw in is so miraculous it sinks Peter to his knees with an awed awareness of his own sin, even as the boat begins to sink with the weight of the fish. (And of course, it's after this catch of literal fish that Jesus calls them to become spiritual fishermen, suggesting, it seems, that this miracle is only a taste of what he will accomplish through them as his disciples).
As I spent some time in lectio divina on this passage, it was that phrase in 5:4 that bobbed to the surface for me: "put out into the deep water and let down your nets."
It struck me that Peter and the rest only experience the miraculous presence of the Kingdom of God (as signified by the catch of fish) after they put their nets into the deep water. And it struck me next that sometimes churches are content to do ministry in the shallows--not to go too deep in their encounter with the Word, or the emotional risk of their ministry, or their engagement with God's world. It can be tempting, I think, to keep things spiritually superficial--on the surface--safe.
But as those two observations struck me, I heard there God's call to put down the nets "into the deep water" in my own work as a pastor. With that call came his challenge that it's only there, in the deep water of ministry, that a church will ever answer it's call to become "fishers of men." Because it's only there, it seems-- going deep with people, spiritually speaking--that the life-transforming miracles of the Kingdom can occur.
Three Minute Theology 2.8: Make No Mistake
In geometry, the circumference of any circle is always equal to its diameter multiplied by the mathematical constant pi, that is 3.14.
There’s a place in the Bible, however, where it describes a solid brass “sea”—a circular water basin—that King Solomon built sometime around 950 BC. In 1 Kings 7, it says that it measured 30 cubits around and 10 cubits across. A cubit is roughly 18 inches long, so this brass sea was 540 inches in circumference and 180 inches in diameter.
The problem here is that, according to the rules of geometry, if the diameter of the sea was 180 inches, its circumference should have been 565 inches, not 540.
Was the author of 1 Kings unable to do basic math?
Theologians sometimes use the word “inerrancy” to talk about the unique character of the Bible as the Word of God. “Inerrancy” comes from the word “error” and it conveys the idea that, since the Bible is God’s Divinely Inspired Word, it is not, and cannot be, in error.
The concept of “inerrancy” is helpful for establishing the Bible as reliable guide for Christian life and belief, but if it’s used to imply that the Bible must always be scientifically accurate for it to be true, it can become like a house of cards, where all it takes is one card to slip and the whole thing comes tumbling down.
Of course, there are always ways of explaining away apparent errors in any given Bible passage. In the account of Solomon’s sea, for instance, it also says that the sea was a handbreadth in thickness , that is, about 3 inches.
If the author of 1 Kings measured the diameter from the outside edges, but measured the circumference from the inside edge, then we’d have to subtract 6 inches from the diameter—three inches on either side to account for the thickness of the sea.
When we make this adjustment, we get an inside diameter of 174 inches and a circumference of 546 inches, bringing us within inches of the actual measurement.
Some may find this helpful, but the problem now is that, instead of hearing what this passage has to say about God and life with him, we’re caught up in convoluted speculations that depend more on our own cleverness than anything else.
It may be that the author rounded the numbers. It may be that these measurements were estimations. In none of those cases would the “inerrancy” of the Bible come into question, provided we have a clear and full understanding of what inerrancy actually means.
Rather than thinking about it like a math problem, where the goal is mathematical accuracy, perhaps a better way is to think about it like a compass, where the goal is finding our direction.
If I’m lost and I pull out my compass, I can trust it to tell me what direction north is with unerring precision. Now, obviously, I don’t need to be standing precisely on the magnetic North Pole in order to use the compass. And depending on the actual terrain and what obstacles are in my way, I may not actually head north in order go north.
But still, I can trust that the compass is pointing me in the direction I need to go.
If God is Magnetic North—who he is, what he has done and is doing in the world, and especially how he’s revealed himself to us in Jesus Christ—if that’s True North, then, on this analogy, the Bible is an unerring compass.
Even though the details of any given passage may be more or less scientifically accurate, depending on the literary “terrain” of the specific text—that is to say, what it’s trying to accomplish and how it’s trying to communicate—still, we can trust that this book will lead us to true knowledge of God, and especially, a true relationship with him.
Some theologians chose not to use the term inerrancy for this reason, and use terms like “infallible” or simply “authoritative” instead. Or, we could simply say what the Bible itself says: that it’s a God-breathed book, useful for teaching, correcting, rebuking and training in righteousness.
Three Minute Theology 2.7: It Takes All Kinds
I grew up in the Canadian province of Alberta. Now: if someone were to ask me, “What is Alberta like?” there are, obviously, many ways I could answer that question.
I could refer them to one of the many history books written about Alberta. Or, I could give them an AMA Travel Guide to the province. I could give them Thomas King’s classic novel Green Grass Running Water, which is about the Native American experience of colonialism and is set in Alberta. Or I could sing them Ian Tyson’s famous song called “Four Strong Winds.”
In literary terms, we call the different forms of these various texts—a history book, a novel, a poem and so on—we call them genres. And we intuitively recognize that in order to make proper use of a text, we need to take its genre into consideration.
For instance, Green Grass Running Water wouldn’t be all that useful if I simply wanted to find my way from Calgary to Edmonton. But then, if I wanted to reminisce about my childhood in Alberta, it’s not likely I’d turn to the AMA Tour Book. “Four Strong Winds” might help with that, but then, just because the song has a line in there about how “the weather’s good there in the fall,” doesn’t mean I should use it to help me plan my next vacation to Alberta.
Perhaps this all goes without saying, but the genre of a piece of writing naturally determines how you interpret it. And at the same time, if you want a complete picture of something, it’s helpful to have a variety of genres to draw from. You’ll get a fuller picture of Alberta if you include “Four Strong Winds” and Green Grass Running Water, than if you simply read “The History of Alberta.”
All that may seem obvious, but, for some reason, it’s often overlooked when it comes to the Bible.
Because, while it’s often recognized that the Bible is a collection of different books, written over the course of thousands of years by many different authors, it’s less often recognized that the Bible is also a collection of different kinds of books: books of prophecy, books of history, books of poetry, stories and genealogies and personal letters and so on.
And just like a whole bunch of different kinds of writing help us better answer the question, What is Alberta like? The Bible’s range of genres—from prayers to temple inventories—are all included to help us better answer the question, What is God like?
Hermeneutics is the fancy word theologians sometimes use to describe “the art of interpreting the Bible.” And the point is: recognizing and understanding the particular genre of any given Bible passage is an essential part of good hermeneutics.
For example, in debates about whether evolution is true or whether God created the world in six literal days, neither side usually mentions the fact that the creation account in Genesis is a very specific genre of writing—an Ancient Middle Eastern Cosmology, that is—which was written to answer specific questions for a specific reason, and we ought to keep the specific conventions of this genre in mind as we interpret it.
As another example, there are popular interpretations of the Book of Revelation—the last book of the Bible—that try to line up modern day political events with its strange dreams and visions. Many of these interpretations get extremely elaborate and detailed, but they seldom acknowledge that the Book of Revelation is a very particular kind of writing—what we call an Apocalypse—with specific literary conventions that should guide how we interpret it.
Reading Revelation as though it were a modern political commentary is sort of like trying to find your way to Edmonton using only “Four Strong Winds” as your guide.
While this may seem overly complicated to some, and just plain common sense to others, understanding and considering the specific genre of any given part of the Bible is crucial if we want to be what the Bible itself encourages us to be: “Approved workers, who correctly handle the Word of Truth.”
Three Minute Theology 2.6: Bible Q & A
In Douglas Adam’s novel The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, he tells the story of an imaginary society that builds a super computer called “Deep Thought” that is supposed to tell them the meaning of life, the universe and everything.
Deep Thought tells them it will take a while and asks them to come back in 7 ½ million years.
They do, and after millions of years of calculations, Deep Thought finally gives them the answer—to life, the universe and everything.
The answer is: 42.
When the people ask, “What kind of answer is 42, anyways?” Deep Thought tells them, “It would have been simpler to know what the actual question was. Only when you know the question will you know what the answer means.”
This is a helpful way to think about that part of the Bible we call the Old Testament. Christians can sometimes get bogged down in the Old Testament because it’s full of things like ancient genealogies, and strange archaic laws, and so on that seem to have little to do with life in the modern world.
One way to make sense of all this stuff is to remember Deep Thought’s words of wisdom: “Only when you know the question will you know what the answer means.”
Sometimes, for instance, you see bumper-stickers or billboards that say things like “Jesus is the answer” in vague ways, without ever saying what the question was. If Jesus is the answer ... we’ll only understand him as the answer when we know what the question was.
The writers of the Old Testament, of course, did a lot more than simply ask questions. They told stories and recorded history and prayed prayers and made prophecies. But in another sense there were deep questions about God—who he was, and how you did life-together with him—lying at the bottom of all these stories and prayers and prophecies.
How did we get here? Of all the things people worship as “god,” which is the True and Living God? What is God going to do to fix the brokenness of this world? What is God’s plan for the creation?
Once you frame it in this way, it’s pretty easy to see how Jesus is the answer to all these questions. Which God is the True God? The God revealed in Jesus. What is this God like? He’s like Jesus. What is he going to do about the brokenness of the world? What he did in Jesus.
This is why Christians have always insisted that The Old Testament Scriptures belong in the Bible, because you can’t truly understand the answer, if you don’t know the question.
Another way to think about it, is like the difference between an engagement ring and a wedding ring.
Before I married my wife, I gave her an engagement ring as a sign of my proposal. And before we were married, she wore it to show that I’d ”asked her a question”—will you marry me?
Of course, this question was not really answered until the day of the wedding, when we actually sealed our wedding vows. And on that day, I gave my wife a wedding ring, a gold band to show that the promise was now fulfilled and we had become husband and wife.
But here’s the thing: my wife did not stop wearing the engagement ring, simply because she now had the wedding ring. She actually continued to wear them both. The one ring symbolized the “will you marry me?”, the other symbolized the “I will.”
The Old Testament is to the New Testament what the engagement ring is to the wedding ring. Even though the engagement ring no longer means what it used to mean, in light of the wedding ring, still, you don’t throw it away for that reason, rather, it reminds us of the question that the wedding band is the answer to.
In a similar way the Old Testament continually confronts us with the questions that God has answered for us, once and for all, in Jesus Christ.
The Seed of Revival, A devotional thought
There's this very powerful story about the power of God's Word in 2 Kings 22 that has, I think, something very important to say to our world, some 2500 years or more after it was first written.
It's about a young king of Judah named Josiah, who is, the text takes pains to point out, the best king Judah's seen in years. He's having the Temple of YHWH renovated, and as the workers are cleaning out one of the back rooms, they find a book of the Law--a forgotten book of the long neglected Torah. No one knows what to do with it. They give it to the priest, who gives it to the scribe, who brings it to the king, who reads it and realizes how far off track God's people have gone. He will tear his robe when he hears it, and institute massive religious reforms among his people.
This is, in some ways, the ultimate picture of revival among God's people, and what I notice is that it all starts with re-discovering the neglected, near forgotten Word of God, and bringing it out into the light. I've seen stats and heard recent studies that suggest biblical literacy, Bible memory, habitual Bible-reading, even *basic* acceptance of the Bible as God's Word is at an all-time low among Canadian Christians. Among Christians, mind you, not non-Christians. You can watch this video for more: http://vimeo.com/93482675.
The poignancy of this story, I think, should hit us deeply: the people found God's book, forgotten in God's house, and when they read it they tore their robes in dismay that they had let it lie neglected for so long.
May God help us all to re-discover his book in a similar way today, fresh and new and life changing; and may revival for us start there.