James - Day 2

So we move forward in our study of James.

I just did some basic background research on what we know about the author, his reason for writing, and the historical situation. And obviously, there may be some disagreements, but I will simply do my best as I am forced to depend on the few written resources that I have.

The author of the book is probably James, and most believe this James to be the older brother of Jesus. He is believed to have written this sometime between 40 A.D. and 60 A.D, after a number of years of church leadership in Jerusalem.

At this point in history, an oppressive Roman government had a reputation of persecuting Christians because of their "disloyalty" to the Roman government. And James was without a doubt writing to Christians affected by this.

More specifically, James was probably writing to Jews who had converted to Christianity. And this explains most of the topics he covers. Those Christians in particular had a reputation for trying to get by with simply "intellectual agreement" being the same as faith. In his writing, as we have already seen, James stresses action. More than just belief.

Some believe also that James wrote after seeing some of Paul's letters in order to sort of offset Paul's emphasis on faith, in a sense. Not to contradict him (or maybe he was trying to; I don't know), but to show people that just staying at home and believing certain facts to be true was not enough. (Interesting... that sounds familiar.)

The only observation I made on my own without outside help was simply that James was really old when he wrote this. I am lead to believe even that he wrote this with a thought that his death was coming soon. He was probably close to 50 years old. It's almost as if he wanted to get this message out before it was too late.

As we can see, these few observations already connect with some of the thoughts I had on day 1. Also, we can see that American Christians today have something to learn from James: knowing nice things about Jesus doesn't cut it. That's probably why we like Paul so much. He's nicer about that kind of stuff when we don't look into it too much.

A Christmas Paradox

Wes had some thoughts on Christmas. See?

He writes of hope and power that we can find in the Christmas story. The joy of knowing what God has done for us.

And I can't disagree. The thing that Christmas represents is really something quite amazing. I mean, think about it: God of everything, Creator of the Universe, Designer of blue skies, Architect of the Grand Canyon... chose to be surrounded in our crazy, selfish, sinful lives.

But there is something else. Often we think of the joy of Christmas, but don't truly acknowledge the pain that a Father must have felt that first Christmas morning (probably in March).

There is an enormous amount of sacrifice and pain and anguish that must have been felt. I mean really. Seeing Your son and knowing that he's going to die a miserable death at the hands of misguided government officials. And just giving him up? There must have been suffering and pain there.

But obviously there was joy. There was a bigger picture. And so despite the tears and anguish, there was utter relief in knowing that His children would finally be able to see life. Real life. An eternal life beginning here on earth. And that is the joy of Christmas.

I cannot think of a stronger paradox. Ultimate suffering allowing for everlasting joy.

What Jon Foreman Is Up To

As if he wasn't doing enough before, Jon Foreman's got a new project.


Fiction Family - When She's Near from ATO Records on Vimeo.

James - Day 1

As I mentioned before, I'm going through a book about how to study the Bible. So as an exercise, our whole group is reading and studying through the book of James to see how much we learn. So yesterday I began by just reading through the whole book in one sitting. Here's a couple things I noticed (and for the record, so far, this is without any outside reference):

The book is split into several sections. The first verse is obviously the introduction.

Then from 1:2 to 2:26, James covers actions. He starts with trials, then talks about doing v. hearing, and finally how we behave.

The next section is kind of 3:1 to 4:10. Here, James discusses words, wisdom, and then how we behave again.

And before the conclusion, James advises us how to act from 4:11 to 5:6.

Then the conclusion takes place from 5:7 to 5:20 in which James talks about patience, words, and closes with the importance of prayer.

Now, granted, these may not be the best choices for sections, or even the topics covered in each of my sections. But that wasn't my goal when I set out to create them.

What I wanted to do was pick up on themes or reoccurring topics in the book. I wrote this down in my notes, and I think it sums up what I did pretty well:

This book is largely about what we do. There is a big difference between our faith and our actions. And what we say is a major part of our actions, as is wisdom seeing as how it determines them. Also, one of the most important actions we can actually do is pray.

We shall soon see (hopefully) that with these thoughts James wrote his letter.

Viva La Vida

So I finally listened to Coldplay's new album last night from start to finish. And it was good, but I did feel like it was hyped up just a little bit too much. I mean, I'd buy it, and even listen to it, but it's not the most spectacular piece of metal I've uploaded to iTunes my entire life. I guess I'm just not really sure what everyone likes so much about it that sets it apart. I mean, it's definitely better than Coldplay's other stuff...

Help me out...

The Other Mark

I've been reading again. This time from Living By the Book: The Art and Science of Reading the Bible by Howard Hendricks. I'm reading it with a men's group from church, and it's been very insightful and has helped me enormously with picking out observations in the text.

This morning I read a section called "Getting the Big Picture" and worked with chapters 4 & 5 of Mark (the gospel - not me). At the beginning of Hendrick's book we'd look at just one verse, then we did just a paragraph, and now we're here.

So I whipped out my hip Extreme Teen Bible (NCV) since it was the first thing I found after moving back home for Christmas. I opened to Mark 4 and read the two chapters straight through.

Verses 1-34 of chapter 4 cover Jesus' teaching on the kingdom of God. And from what I can tell, this is really the only part of Mark that really hammers out kingdom teaching. The topic comes up again, but not this extensively.

Then the end of ch. 4 and all of 5 cover 4 miracles: the calming of the storm, the man with demons, the bleeding woman, and Jairus' daughter.

After my brief read-through, I decided to get some background, so I went back to Mark 1 and sort of skimmed through to gain some context. I made some interesting finds.

Mark seems to write in a very specific way. He moves forward chronologically, but covers only one particular aspect of Jesus' life at a time. He starts with Jesus preparing for ministry from the call of John the Baptist, through the baptism, and then to the desert with fasting and temptation. Mark spends hardly any time on these details which would lead the reader to believe that this is not what he wants to talk about.

Then Jesus picks some followers.

Then he begins healing people.

Now both the followers and the healings are reoccurring events in this gospel. Over and over, Mark will describe how Jesus separates his followers from the crowds that follow him around (4:11). The followers were told that they could "know the secret about the kingdom of God." Mark also makes a distinction between Jesus' first few followers and when he officially picks his twelve apostles (3:14). I think this attention to Jesus' disciples is very important. But I want to focus more on what happens at the healings. Or the first several at least.

Before even the first chapter is finished, Mark records Jesus forcing out an evil spirit. The text says that the spirit knows who Jesus is - "God's Holy One." Jesus immediately responds, "Be quiet!"

The next subheading in my Bible is "Jesus Heals Many People." And 1:34 says Jesus "would not allow the demons to speak, because they knew who he was." And the next morning when Jesus finds out people are looking for him, he tells his disciples that they should go to other towns.

Verse 44: "Don't tell anyone about this," Jesus says after healing a sick man.

Then Mark moves his focus to people criticizing Jesus and his followers, the section which will end with the Pharisees plotting to kill Jesus for the first time.

Like you probably are beginning to notice, I observed that Jesus was developing a habit of telling people to keep quiet about what he was doing.

Why in the world would Jesus do this? I feel like this was a question raised in Sunday School a couple times. We'd read just the one little passage ending with this statement, and then were asked why Jesus would do this. But I've never noticed before that Jesus did this all the time.

Could it be because once the wrong people caught wind of this, Jesus knew he was going to be in trouble? Possibly. Could it simply be because Jesus was humble? Possibly.

Maybe Jesus was just worried that these people just would not understand. After all he told his followers that if they couldn't even understand the parable stories, then how could they understand the actual kingdom of God?

Fast forward to the demoniac. He was crazy with a lot of demons (5,000 if his name was literal). Jesus healed him, and then told him, "Go home to your family and tell them how much the Lord has done for you and how he has had mercy on you." The text says people were amazed at the story.

So why was Jesus not okay with people talking about his healings, but then it was okay for this guy?

To be honest, I don't know. Maybe an in-depth study on Mark as a whole would help us find out.

In the very next story, Jesus tells Jairus not to tell anyone about him bringing his daughter back to life.

It makes sense that Jesus did not want to be killed yet. It makes sense that he still had work to do. But why is it ok to just give one guy permission?

Maybe it was just geography. Maybe the place this guy was from (Decapolis) had no other way of hearing or witnessing news like this.

I think the point I'm trying to make is that Jesus kept his work a secret. And it's important that we find out why. If we don't, then our evangelizing might be all wrong. What if our perspective is skewed and we're not doing it right?

The life of Jesus is fascinating. But it is a model that we are supposed to use in our own lives. And if we choose to just shrug something like this off, I think we've missed why Jesus even came here in the first place (Christmas reference).

I encourage you to look into this. And I will too. Chances are there will be another blog about it soon.

Crazy Love

I started in on Francis Chan's new book. I'll admit that I wasn't too impressed with the first thirty or so pages. But then he impressed me. Check out some of these quotes:

We don't get to decide who God is. "God said to Moses, 'I am who I am'" (Ex. 3:14). We don't change that. (p. 31)

Don't we live as though God is created for us, to do our bidding, to bless us, and to take care of our loved ones?
... we keep questioning Him: "Why... are so many people dying of starvation? Why... is my family so messed up?"
... The answer to each of these questions is simply this: because He's God. He has more of a right to ask us why so many people are starving. (p. 33)

Can you worship a God who isn't obligated to explain His actions to you? Could it be your arrogance that makes you think God owes you an explanation? (p. 33)

God is the only Being who is good, and the standards are set by Him. Because God hates sin, He has to punish those guilty of sin. Maybe that's not an appealing standard. But to put it bluntly, when you get your own universe, you can make your own standards. (p. 34)

Now I'm not very far in the book, but I found these statements in particular both challenging and comforting. Knowing that there is a God like this is humbling. Knowing that my God is this in control I'm ok with. But that also means that sometimes I don't get the answers I want. And the reason for this is because I'm not in charge. Obvious, yes, but overlooked.