The Incongruent Believer

I'm still making my way slowly through the Old Testament, savouring the content and seriously reflecting on it. A question I ask myself, particularly when reading some of the more mundane chapters, is “why is that included?” Sometimes I am perplexed, as I have been reading Chapters 34 and 35 of Genesis. Reflecting over a few days on this I realised something; I am constantly looking for the deep spiritual meaning when I should be looking from perhaps a more secular perspective. This realisation has been a breath of fresh air. I have come to understand that some of this content is there to show what the real life was like behind Bible heavyweights such as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and also where it fitted in to the world at that time. The fact that we read of these people having children with their servants or servants of their wives, or we read of the ‘rape’ of Dinah and Rueben sleeping with Jacob’s concubine, or the fact that Jacob’s even had concubines we see real life; messy, ...

How many times have you heard in folklore, read in a book, seen in a movie, or even witnessed in your own life someone trying to make a contract with God? It normally takes the form of "God if you get me out of this situation, I will never do wrong for the rest of my life" or something like that. I find it interesting that people in fiction or in real life acknowledge that they knew there might be a God around but have refrained from testing that knowledge, in a sense ignored God, until they find themselves in a sticky situation. The other scenario we might find is when someone needs something or needs guidance making a plea to God like, “God, if you make this happen for me then I will go to church for the rest of my days.” One might be forgiven to think that this kind of contracting with God is found in the latter verses of Genesis 28 where following a dream Jacob makes this vow, “If God will be with me and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat an...

Man fathers children with his two daughters, shock, horror! Upstanding member of the community found to have married his half-sister; people are stunned! Although these sound like headlines from a tabloid newspaper, they are actually facts (with a little bit of sensationalism added by me for effect) from Genesis 19:36 and Genesis 20:12. We have all probably read these passages dozens of times, yet I have no doubt we haven’t let those facts sink in, either because they are not palatable considering they are in God’s word, or we don’t focus on what we are reading at the time, or that God has not chosen, through His Spirit, to make them known to us. When it comes down to it the word of God, as expressed in the Bible, is as shocking as an 18 rated Hollywood movie, perhaps it should have a warning banner on the front similar to that we see on Sky: What we read in those blessed pages may assault our twenty-first century sensibilities, even to the point that we subconsciously refuse to ...

When I think about the creation story in Genesis the enormity and weight of those passages fills my mind and all my senses. For me the first few words of the Bible are the most powerful that have ever found themselves consigned to paper, "In the beginning God.." When I hear these it's as if I can hear and feel the entire universe pulsating in response. Yet when one opens one's Bible the creation story only takes up two chapters, a mere couple of pages of text. Is it only me who thinks that's strange? I think one has to ask oneself why these words carry such weight. Perhaps it's because the impact that these words have had on billions of people alive today; Jew, Christian, and Muslim alike. More likely we find the answer in the New Testament, John 1:1 "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." The words that we read are living, the living God. If we read on in John we hear that these words also are imbued with th...

When I was a child, it was common for only one parent to work whilst the other ran the home and dealt with the welfare of the children, which worked for me as I could read and write before I went to school aged 4 years and 9 months. Work would mean 9 to 5.30 or a 40-hour week, with Saturday and Sunday off. Saturday would be spent on hobbies, chores, or watching TV and Sundays were truly a day of rest, barely any shops were open, pubs closed at 12noon and reopened at 7pm, even television went off air for a few hours on Sunday afternoon, public holidays would have the same restrictions. Summer holidays whilst generally very basic for working folk, really were an opportunity to escape from work and take a break, which for me was to go for a week or two to a caravan on the Kent coast. Today both parents generally work full time with mothers returning to work when a child is barely finished breast-feeding (perhaps this is why one in four children start school without being toilet trained an...

Reading James the other day I was quite surprised to find the word “religious”. There in the midst of my favourite book of the Bible was a word that frequent readers of my blog will know often raises some comment from myself, if not my hackles, especially in a 21 st  century context. So, when I saw it there, having never noticed it before for some reason, I had to do some digging (vernacular for research) on why this word was used. A quick search revealed that “religious”, or “religion” is not a common word in the Bible, in fact it is only used 6 times, twice in James in quick session, three times in Acts, once in Colossians. Referring to one of the heavy tombs available to me in the form of Strong's Concordance - in fact although I do possess a copy I cheated and enquired of it online - I discovered that in Greek religious was θρησκὸς (thrēskos) and that it “refers probably to a careful observance of religious restrictions” and in a limited sense, it may mean devout. Further enqui...

Next to my house is an old hedgerow, in that hedgerow at this time of year one can find apples laden with fruit, and an abundance of blackberries and rosehips. A short walk down the path and you there are cobnuts, wild garlic, and depending on the season elderflowers or elderberries. There are also numerous birds in the sky, fish in the river, rabbits, deer and other wild animals live close by. Walking past this hedgerow today I reflected on the bounty of the natural world that God created and created us to live in, I found it amazing that in parallel to our lives where we live in a complex and exacting network of relationships and activities that ensure that we have a roof over our heads and food on our tables, that there exists a simpler world, a natural world, where one can still find the abundance that God promises in spite of hundreds of years of destruction wrought upon it by humanity. Throughout scripture  God's promises to bless his people - " your carts overflow with ...

As I have done myself of numerous occasions along with multitudes of preachers in a church context, I delivered sermons that were just telling people what they know already, telling them how it was. Yes this often involved clarifying points of scripture and encouraging people in their faith, but the messages whilst not falling on deaf ears was generally just going over somewhat familiar ground but in a new way. What we might call 'Preaching to the Converted'. However, in some cases a preacher will actually challenge the converted, assaulting the listeners ears and their faith, and getting them to ask themselves where they actually stand with God. Today I had the pleasure of one such sermon preached by a dear friend of mine at a local Baptist Church.  Speaking on Ezekiel 37 - the Valley of the Dry Bones - the preacher challenged us to reflect on our own situation, our own faith, our own Christianity by asking if we were in fact Dry Bones; did we come to church faithfully every S...

Reading a book of the Bible having understood its context is invaluable even if i t's only gained from one of the synoptic introductions that one sometimes gets at the beginning of a book in some Bibles. It helps one understand the mood or maybe even the state of mind of the author. Reading 2 Timothy with an understanding that this is possibly Pauls last letter and that he is soon to go to his untimely death by execution,  phrases such as that describing him being ,” poured out like a drink offering ” take  on more significance , it may even bring a tear to one's eye.  I think it also helps if one meditates with the authors situation in mind, trying to put oneself into their head or their setting; for me I can see Paul, an elderly gentlemen  perhaps in chains and not simply being under house arrest having faced some sort of trial - ”At my first defence no one came to stand beside me” - and sad at bei ng abandoned - “but all deserted me.” Yet still holding out ...

On the inside of my left forearm I have a tattoo in Hebrew of Job 19 verse 25. When people ask what it says and I respond, they often comment that I must be religious, however they are somewhat puzzled when I reply that I am not. I then explain that I am a Christian and have faith in God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit but that I am not religious. This has lead to some interesting discussions starting with the tattooist who did my ink in the first place. My younger sister, a Humanist, commented on my POV that the way I speak of my faith makes it all very believable. When I first became a Christian the wife of an American friend of mine said that Christianity was about a relationship not religion and would elucidate that it was about having a relationship with Jesus and not about following and adhering to the tenets of religion. In my own personal journey of faith I have become to believe that principle myself  (and I am sorry it is a bit of a soapbox of mine), and I  see an i...

When I first became a Christian we were often encouraged to read the New Testament or even the whole Bible in its entirety. I then settled down to the regular Christian habit of reading a few verses each day, often the passage chosen for that following Sunday, or when following a daily study programme. With the length of the books in the Old Testament and also the gospels in the New, this I'd an advisable strategy if one isn't to spend hours reading and little time reflecting. However, recently I have taken a different approach with the epistles, reading them in their entirety at one sitting and by doing so I have found it easier to understand the purpose of the letter and and to appreciate how the writer chooses to approach his readers. For instance in 1 Corinthians one can sense the ebb amd flow of Paul's approach; cautious almost fawning in the early part of his letter before he drives home his argument in the latter chapters. It is really quite an experience as one can ...

Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 1:10-13. " I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another in what you say and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly united in mind and thought.   My brothers and sisters, some from Chloe’s household have informed me that there are quarrels among you.   What I mean is this: One of you says, “I follow Paul”; another, “I follow Apollos”; another, “I follow Cephas”; still another, “I follow Christ.”  Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized in the name of Paul?"  Even during its formative years divisions were beginning to arise in the church and Paul was having to warn against this in his letter to the church in Corinth. If Paul were to write his letter today to all the churches of the world it might say, " What I mean is this: One of you says, “I follow the Pope Francis”; another, “I f...

Apparently one of the football rules that people unfamiliar with the sport find the most difficult to understand is the offside rule, or Law 11 according to IFAB. Many jokes and much mirth can be attributed to this fact especially when associated with the fairer sex. Often when one is unfamiliar with a sport, it's rules and regulations one cannot appreciate why others would spend a lifetime watching, participating, or following a certain team. When one becomes familiar, as I have recently with baseball, it is easier to appreciate and you can find yourself getting caught up in all the excitement and hype (let's go Blue Jays!!). When I think of the apostle Paul and the years of effort he spent presenting the gospel to the Jews the majority of whom failed to get it it’s easy to put this down to lack of understanding but the thing is they understood ‘the rules of the game' so it's not like they couldn't appreciate the arguments Paul was making, they just didn't want...