Sunday, June 17, 2007

Commitment

I came across this blog post tonight. Very though-provoking.

Seek

I haven't had a lot to post - well, actually, I've had a lot to post, but I just don't seem to be finding good words to write it all down. Life has been pretty good, although many of my friends seem to be in the middle of tough times, so there will probably be opportunities to be helpful there.

I've also been contemplating that I don't tend to be extroverted or high energy. I don't tend to resonate with fire-breathing (Mr. Awesome) or crazy spontaneous camping trips. Or as one of my friends likes to say, I'm boring. And I'm not quite sure what to do with that. I was reading Tipping Point and the author was talking about connectors. These are people who naturally enjoy and maintain light social connections with many, many people - and that doesn't tend to be me.

I not contemplating this in a "Oh, I really need to be reassured that I have other talents" way, but more in a "Huh...I wonder how this plays into my relationship with God?" way. Did Jesus have a personality? Would Jesus' ministry have been different if he had a different personality? Could there have been a still sinless but more introverted Jesus? Or more extroverted?

(On a side note, I've been reading in Isaiah about how many God tells people to seek him and they will find him. So I've been pondering why God seems so hard to find.)

Sunday, June 03, 2007

Okay, So I'm Ignorant

I was at a teaching a few months ago where the speaker talked about how Protestants don't know their Bibles nearly as well as they think they did. Specifically, he asked how many Protestants could summarize, say, Haggai. I brushed off the comment at the time. Anyway since then (and partially in response), I've been trying to get more familiar with the prophets.

Meanwhile I asked a friend for a theological book recommendation and he loaned me The Greatness of the Kingdom. He described it as talking about the Kingdom of God in the Bible, and it sounded a little dry - a few bits from the Gospels, a lot from Revelation, and maybe a scattering of other passages. I'd really wanted something that dealt more with the Old Testament, and definitely something more practical and thought-provoking than a discussion of a few passages.

So I wasn't very excited about the book (to be fair, that's mostly Dan's fault since he did a lousy job of describing the book) but I decided it would be rude to completely blow off the suggestion. It turns out the book is a fascinating 500-page in-depth study including significant discussion of the entire Old Testament, including the prophets, and many of the New Testament references to the Old Testament. The also includes sections of "How do we interpret the Bible?" (hermeneutics). It's also an interesting snapshot back in time - the book was written in 1959 - to see how the author applied the Bible to that place and time.

The book has been great - although slow reading - and I won't blog about much more of it. But one point that has really stood out to me is how many points in the New Testament refer back to the Old Testament, especially the prophets, and how badly I don't know the background. One quick example: Jesus' message starts with the announcement that the kingdom of God is coming (here and here). But there's no additional information provided about what kingdom. Why don't the gospel writers provide more information? Well, because they assume the gospel readers know about the kingdom from passages in the Old Testament -- especially the prophets.

So I'm realizing that the the speaker was pretty on target about his comment: There's no way I should be so ignorant of what the prophets said about something that Jesus talked about so frequently.