Category Archives: Old Testament
“god bless you!”: what is blessing?
When something becomes customary in a culture, such as the recitation of the phrase “(God) bless you!” following a sneeze, it often happens that the meaning of that custom is lost in habit.
So what does it mean to be “blessed” in a biblical sense?
Some people understand it to mean something like good fortune.
Others see blessing as referring to material wealth, as in some strands of contemporary Christianity.
Some Christians think blessing refers to God’s favour, and this can be understood in a great number of ways (including material wealth as above).
For others blessing is almost a physical thing to be passed on (as with some understandings of the story of Isaac, Jacob and Esau).
I have constantly wondered what blessing is. Read the rest of this entry
sodom and gomorrah: punished for homosexuality?
Saturday just gone was an important day in Australia for LGBTQI* people.
The Australian Labor Party (the current government) voted on its policy position regarding same-sex marriage at its National Conference; it voted to change its platform in support of changing the Marriage act to include same-sex couples.
In addition was a rally held in the Sydney CBD, with somewhere between five to ten thousand participants, calling for marriage equality in Australia.
In response to these events many Christians I know on Facebook posted comments critical of the push for the recognition of same-sex marriage.
Some, on both sides of the argument, were reasoned and thoughtful, recognising that there are in fact different viewpoints on the matter. They merely sought to offer an opinion in a respectful way.
Others were not so gracious.
But what struck me most was the amount of Christians posting quotations from the Bible, completely out of context and, by my judgement, absent of any form of exegetical investigation.
Something that I found fascinating was the repeated quotation of verses pertaining to Sodom and Gomorrah. Read the rest of this entry
rethinking bible “heroes”: how wise was solomon?
In my last post I looked at the character of Joseph in Genesis and suggested that perhaps he became a far more sinister character than is often thought.
I also suggested that the way we perceive some Bible characters could have more to do with our taste for imperial theology than with thoughtful reflection.
In this post I will turn my attention to Solomon.
Solomon
Most Seasoned Bible readers are aware that Solomon did not, as is often said, “finish well.” He married a lot of foreign wives for the sake of international diplomacy and compromised himself with their gods.
Despite this ending it is often thought that Solomon ‘started well.’ But how true is this? By comparing aspects of Exodus and Genesis with Solomon’s story in Kings we might be surprised by what we find. Read the rest of this entry
rethinking bible “heroes”: joseph the imperial henchman
Sometimes when we read the Bible we impose our own worldviews and values on the text.
One area in which this is apparent is that of “Bible heroes.” Are these people all we crack them up to be?
In the space of a few posts (maybe consecutive, maybe not, I haven’t thought about it yet) I’m going to explore some of the characters in the Bible who may have been misunderstood, for better or for worse.
Joseph
No, I am not talking about the stepfather of Jesus.
The son of Jacob’s story can be found in the later chapters of Genesis. He is often esteemed as a great man of God, someone to be imitated. Joseph, it is said, overcame great hardship, even his own attempted murder and imprisonment, only to be put into a position of great authority in Egypt by God: Read the rest of this entry
tgif (trash goes into flight): the bastardisation of creativity
Turn on the radio and you’ll find yourself bathing in the cesspool that is popular music.
Whoa, slow down there cowboy! That’s a pretty harsh way to start, you can’t open with that!
Maybe you’re right. I suppose that lots of music on the radio is actually very good. But you have to admit that a good deal of it can hardly be called beautiful.
Yes, yes, you’re right on that one. But on the other hand beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and those songs you’re talking about tend to be very popular, hence why they are on the radio. Somebody must like them!
Of course, I’m not denying their appeal. But I think the problem with these songs goes beyond their appeal.
What do you mean?
Well, I wonder what makes a song beautiful, or creative. Surely much of what appears in the music charts cannot be said to be creative.
That opens up a big set of questions. What does it even mean to be creative? Read the rest of this entry
what is eternal life?
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
John 3:16 is possibly the most famous verse in the Bible. It is so often said that its promise is life everlasting for those who believe in Jesus.
Certainly in our modern vocabulary the word “eternal” means “forever” or “everlasting”. Eternal life is almost universally understood as everlasting existence, immortality or life “in heaven” (type “eternal life” into Wikipedia or Google and you’ll see what I mean. It does however also bring up the song “Eternal Life” by Jeff Buckley… sublime).
But is eternal life (zōē aiōnion) really the same thing as everlasting life? Is that what is meant by the phrase in the Gospel of John? Read the rest of this entry
old testament violence: is God really genocidal?
On this blog I have written a good number of posts on violence in the Bible, arguing for a robust theology and practice of nonviolence based primarily on the ethics of Jesus.
The number one question I have received in response to these posts has been, “But what about violence in the Old Testament?”
This is an important question, for it is not simply about whether the Bible advocates violence – it is about whether or not God himself is violent. Read the rest of this entry
confessions of a “worship” leader
For years I have been involved in playing music to help lead Christians in worship.
Music leader, song leader, worship leader; call it whatever you want. Without wanting to sound in any way conceited (I assure you, about this I am not), I earned a fair amount of praise and encouragement from people who claimed my leading helped them in some way.
In my late teenage years (I have now just turned 26) so-called “worship” and music was central to my faith journey. My identity was largely derived from my music leading, and there was a lot of pressure to conform to the image of other well-known worship leaders. I truly believed that my calling, that my purpose, was to be found in leading people in worship by way of music.
I sang a lot of songs. A lot of words. But eventually something dawned on me – all that music, all that so-called “worship,” wasn’t necessarily changing me or anyone else I was leading. Read the rest of this entry
oh the idolatry: humanity, injustice & climate change
Even if the deniers were right – which is impossible to credit on rational grounds – the core argument of [A Moral Climate] is that the fossil-fuelled global economy is dangerous to planet earth and to human life, not just because it is warming the climate of the earth but because it is deeply destructive of the diversity and welfare of the ecosystems and human communities from which surplus value is extracted and traded across highways, oceans and jetstreams. The rituals encouraged by the recognition of global warming – turning off lights, turning down the heater, cycling or walking instead of driving, holidaying nearer to home, buying local food, shopping less and conversing more, addressing the causes of fuel poverty locally and internationally – are good because they are intrinsically right, not just because they have the consequence of reducing carbon emissions. Such actions correct modern thoughtlessness. They sustain the moral claim that it is wrong to live in a civilisation that depends upon the systematic enslavement of peoples and ecosystems to the high resource requirements of a corporately-governed consumer economy. …
… Actions which will have the effect of mitigating climate change are also actions which reaffirm the embodied relationship between inner desire and the outer world of what Christians call Creation. For this reason such actions are intrinsically good, and will promote flourishing even if, as a minority of dissenters suggest, greenhouse gases are not the primary driver of global warming.
- Michael Northcott, A Moral Climate: The Ethics of Global Warming, 273-274. Read the rest of this entry
walter wink on homosexuality & the bible (part 1): old testament
Sexual issues are tearing our churches apart today as never before. The issue of homosexuality threatens to fracture whole denominations, as the issue of slavery did a hundred and fifty years ago. We naturally turn to the Bible for guidance, and find ourselves mired in interpretative quicksand. Is the Bible able to speak to our confusion on this issue?
These words of Dr. Walter Wink, professor emeritus at Auburn Theological Seminary, ring truer than ever as Australians engage in constant debate about homosexual marriage. Whatever our position we must recognise that this is not a simple debate, nor is it abstract; it affects real people who are made in the image of God.
This post begins a two-part (maybe three-part?) series on Walter Wink’s thoughts on the Bible and homosexuality. This series is intended for the purpose of asking important hermeneutical and exegetical questions that often go overlooked in the course of all-too-common prooftexting. Such a practice is, in my view, inconsistent; why do we accept some of the Bible’s imperatives, but not others? Surely we need deeper biblical engagement on complex issues such as homosexuality. It is for this kind of discussion that I offer these posts. Read the rest of this entry
