Why Campus 6 -- Spreading the Good News

I had not put up a link here to my final post in the series, Why Campus? I thought I'd do that so that anyone would have easy access to all seven posts in the series. Here they are in one place:

Preface: The Future of Modality in Higher Education

Why Campus?

1. Expanded markets

2. Enriched curricula

3. Enhanced courses

4. Quantum leaps

5. Softer landings

6. Spreading the good news

Book Review: Designing for Growth

Designing for Growth: A Design Thinking Tool Kit for Managers

I started this book in December. Just finished it this week. It is an introduction to design thinking. It was straightforward. It was simple to understand. I'll confess I found the book very boring. It may not have helped that I tried to cover a lot of it as an audiobook while driving to and from Chicago.

Design thinking is basically a way to operationalize creativity. The book's basic thesis is that managers often don't feel like they are particularly creative or innovative, even though they need to be. Similarly, designers are often far more creative than they are organized. This book is meant to create a Reese's Peanut Butter cup that mixes the peanut butter of the manager with the chocolate of the designer.

It is very useful. The four basic steps are:

1. What is? -- Where are you currently in your organization?

2. What if? -- This is a phase of focused brainstorming.

3. What wows? -- This phase involves actually prototyping and talking to potential customers for input.

4. What works? -- Going beyond prototyping, you do a learning launch with a small sample.'

That all makes sense. The ten steps that the four questions expand out into are:

1. Visualization -- necessary throughout

What is?

A four-step project management sequence is interspersed with these four questions. The first project management step is to have a "Design Brief" that clarifies what problem you are trying to solve and sets kicks off the designing process.

2. Journey mapping -- looking at things from the customer side

3. Value Chain mapping -- looking at things from the organizational side

4. Mind mapping -- Get a group together to find patterns in those mappings. This is a crucial step to determine where you currently are as an organization.

What if? 

The project management tool emerging from the first question is Design Criteria. Hopefully, you now have insight into where your organization is. What are the perceptions of your organization? What is the ideal end state of the process for your organization?

5. Brainstorming -- Giving clearly defined parameters, begin to generate ideas that address anecdotes and stories depicting the problems you are trying to solve. Keep iterating by asking probing questions that question your assumptions, explore the extremes, look back from the future, etc.

6. Concept Development -- Now choose the best ideas that emerged out of the brainstorming process. Combine them. Mix and match them. Look for that spark of creativity.

What wows?

You kick off pursuit of the third question with a "Napkin Pitch." What does the customer want? What assets does your organization have to give? How will the customer benefit? What is the competition?

7.  Assumption Testing -- Begin to plan out how you are going to test the assumptions with which you have emerged from concept development. Will your new concept pass basic business tests like 1) will customers buy it, 2) can you create and deliver it, 3) can you scale it, and 4) how easily can competitors copy you?

8. Rapid Prototyping -- Fake creating the new service or entity. Run it by a very small number of people for feedback. "Fail fast to succeed sooner."

What now?

You launch the final stage with "The Learning Guide." How are you going to test the direction in which you are heading? How much is it going to cost? What remaining assumptions do you need to test?

9. Customer Co-Creation -- Bring some potential customers in and get their input. 

10. Learning Launch -- Now build a more realistic version of your product or service and try it out on a small sample with a small team working on it. A couple months, maybe 100 people. Don't spend too much but spend enough to know whether you're really on to something.
 

Sermon Starters: God-Given Resolutions

Brookside Wesleyan Church, Wellsville, NY
January 2, 2022

Text: Micah 6:6-8

Prayer

Intro: New Year's Resolutions

• Did you make any? Have you already broken any? The person who resolved to get to start getting to work on time and overslept the first day.
• 27% break their resolutions by the first week of January.
• Most exercise resolutions are through by January 12.
• 41% don't last more than a month
• Over half have stopped by six months.
• 80% of resolutions fail by end of year.
• What if we let the Lord make our new year's resolutions? What would he set for us?

1. God wants us to do justice. (mishpat)

• Harry Potter 5, getting expelled from Hogwarts... "Justice"
• We don't always agree about what justice would be -- e.g., discussions about whether certain people should be acquitted or not?
• What is justice like for God in the prophets?
• In Micah 6:11 -- "wicked scales" -- people who cheat other people out of greed
• In Micah 3:1 -- abuse of power by leaders, those who take bribes and thus favor the rich and powerful
• Captain America -- "I don't want to kill anyone. I just don't like bullies."
• Chickens in the yard -- We have too many roosters. Our head rooster takes care of the hens.
• Zechariah 7:9-10 -- "Thus says the LORD of hosts, Render true judgments, show kindness and mercy each to his brother do not oppress the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner, or the poor; and let none of you devise evil against his brother in your heart."
• That's what biblical justice looks like.

2. God wants us to love mercy. (hesed)

• Hesed is perhaps the richest of all Hebrew words. It is one of the most frequent descriptions of God's nature in the Old Testament. 
• Jonah 4:2 -- "Isn’t this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity."
• The story of Jonah and Nineveh -- his actions and attitudes are the opposite of hesed. God wants to see Nineveh restored, even though he knows the path they are on.  

3. God wants us to walk humbly with him as our God.

• Pride in the Bible is putting ourselves in the place of authority that belongs to God.
• "The nail that sticks up is the first to get hit."
• Putting ourselves in the driver's seat -- planning to build bigger barns.
• Illustration -- "Easier to ask forgiveness than to ask permission."
• Did you consult God on that project of yours?
• We are free to be servants of God.

Conclusion

• God's resolutions have more teeth than yours and mine -- we can't just throw them away when we miss a day.
• But that's not the way to think about them. God's resolutions are for our good. God's resolutions are about shaping us, not grading us.

Deconstruction Novel excerpt from chapter 5

For the previous post, see here. Each weekend I am writing on a novel about some students at a Christian college from 2016-2020 and the current phenomenon being called faith deconstruction.

_________________________________ 

... For Matt, the Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage was one of the worst moments in American history. “Obama has brought so much judgment on America because of his sin,” he said once.

“But he isn’t even on the Supreme Court,” April responded in frustration.

“Doesn’t matter,” he continued. “He supported it. We’ve got to elect Republicans as president so we can stop these activist judges and reverse Roe v. Wade and Obergefell. There’s just no other choice. You can’t be a Christian and vote for a Democrat.”

April looked at him in disbelief. Her parents had always voted for the Democratic candidate for as long as she could remember. Her dad was a Methodist pastor.

Brad represented the fourth type of student. They agreed with April and Jessica that Trump was a deeply immoral man. But they believed Hillary was worse. More than anything, they were worried about her stance on abortion. That issue more than any other would keep them from ever voting for a Democrat in a presidential election.

As he put it, Brad would “hold his nose" and vote for Trump. There were some professors who seemed like that. Most of the ones in that category either didn’t vote at all or voted for the Libertarian or Green candidate. April believed that this group of Christians cost Clinton the election.

I didn’t know who to vote for. I listened intently to the lunch debates of my friends. They didn’t really even notice that I was there most of the time.

Once, out of the blue, Jessica blurted across the table, “Hey, David, who are you voting for?” I was startled that I would be put on the spot like that, but glad that she knew my name.

“I don’t know yet,” I quietly answered a few seconds later. But by then their argument had continued...

University Chemistry II for stable geniuses

I mentioned in my review of last year that I had taken Calculus II for Engineers this past fall with ASU online. I was scheduled to take physics and chem 2 this spring (psycho), but yesterday I hesitantly decided it just wasn't a good use of my resources right now. (I actually CLEPed out of Chem I last summer trying to get into the Chem 2 class. They wouldn't count my AP from high school or my chemistry from SWU in the 80s. I get it.)

Some may know that for over a decade I have slowly been putting physics, calculus, and chemistry videos on YouTube. I thought, why don't I go ahead and put up the equivalent of that Chemistry II course on YouTube this spring. But instead of the crazy 7.5 week courses that ASU does (mega-psycho), why not pretend it's a 16-week online class?

So here's a possible schedule for videos this spring. Without the pressure of a grade hanging over my head, we'll see what happens. But I'll try to pretend at least a little. Let's try to cover eight chapters in Brown, LeMay, Bursten, and Murphy's Chemistry: The Central Science.

As usual, we'll see. I have a day job.

Module 1: Chemical Kinetics (chapter 14)

Week 1: Videos on reaction rates, the rate law, and the change of concentration with time (14.1-4)

Week 2: Temperature and rate, reaction mechanisms, and catalysts (14.5-7) 

Module 2: Chemical Equilibria (chapter 15)

Week 1: equilibrium and the equilibrium constant, heterogeneous equilibria (15.1-4)

Week 2: calculations and applications of equilibrium constants, Le Chatelier's Principle (15.5-7)

Module 3: Acid-Base Equilibria (chapter 16)

Week 1: types of acids-bases, ionization of water, pH  (16.1-5)

Week 2: weak acids and bases, constants, chemical structure (16.6-11)

Module 4: Aqueous Equilibrium Continued (chapter 17)

Week 1: common ion effect, titrations, solubility equilibria (17.1-3)

Week 2: precipitation, qualitative analysis for metals (17.4-7)

Module 5: Chemical Thermodynamics (chapter 19)

Week 1: spontaneous processes, entropy (19.1-3)

Week 2: Gibbs Free Energy, Energy and Temperature/Equilibrium Constant (19.4-7)

Module 6: Electrochemistry (chapter 20)

Week 1: redox reactions, voltaic cells, EMF (20.1-4) 

Week 2: batteries, corrosion, electrolysis (20.5-9)

Module 7: Nuclear Chemistry (chapter 21)

Week 1: radioactivity, nuclear transmutations and decay (21.1-4)

Week 2: nuclear reactions and power (21.5-9)

Module 8: Coordination Compounds (chapter 24)

Week 1: complexes, ligands, nomenclature (24.1-3)

Week 2: isomerism, crystal-field theory (24.4-6)

Sermon Starters -- God of the New Year

Brookside Wesleyan Church, Wellsville, NY

January 2, 2022

(Text: Genesis 1:1-2:3)

Intro: A different way to read Genesis 1

• Brief summary of the chapter
• A different picture of God than the Babylonians
• John Walton -- the New Year's festival of Yahweh, the reinstallation of God as king of the universe

Genesis 1:1-2

1. Do you come to this year with any "tohu vavohu"?

• Genesis 1 isn't like other creation stories. Chaos but a conflict between gods.
• The world is a mess. Is your world a mess? What's not working in your life?

Genesis 1:3-5

2. God brings light out of darkness.

• Illustration (e.g., dressing in the dark)
• Walton -- the creation of time (days and nights)
• Time is a path to walk out of any sorrow.

Genesis 1:6-10

3. God clears a space in the mess. He brings dry ground.

• Hoarders
• The seas were chaos to them, full of danger and fear.

Genesis 1:11-13

4. God provides food.

• We know where the story is heading--to the creation of us. This story, after all, is for us. If God were writing it for the angels, it would look different. Let's not get too cocky. We are sparrows, after all.

Genesis 1:26-28

5. God gives us a charge in his world.

• This is the "political image of God. We should steward the world as God wants us to.
• All humans are valuable, because we are made in God's image.

Genesis 1:31-2:3

6. It's all good. God rests.

• Everything's working. (we're good)
• The world is built, God's temple. Everything is ordered. Chaos is beat. Now he can rest from creating and get down to ruling. (Walton)

Conclusion

• Is God resting over your life?
• Install him again this year.

Explanatory Notes -- Matthew 2

2:1 Now, after Jesus had been born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, Magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying...

We are privileged to have four Gospels, each of which provides us with unique perspectives on Jesus. For example, if all we had were Matthew's Gospel, we would not think that Joseph and Mary started in Nazareth and only went to Bethlehem because of a census. We would think that Joseph and Mary started in Bethelehem and only went to Nazareth because of the ruling of Archelaus after Herod the Great.

Herod "the Great" was a client king to the Romans who ruled from 37-4BC. Jesus' birth is usually dated to 6-4BC on the assumption that Jesus was born before Herod died. This may seem puzzling, since BC means "before Christ" and 1AD was meant to be the year of Jesus' birth. However, it would seem that the man who set this calendar in the early 500s AD (Dionysius Exiguus) was slightly off.

The Romans trusted the strength of Herod's leadership so much that he was allowed to hold the title "king" and was given rule over the entirety of Israel, north and south. He was very strategic to get into this position and protective of his position. He ended up putting his wife and two of his sons to death so that they could not undermine the security of his rule. The story of him putting the children of Bethlehem to death is thus entirely believable as the kind of thing he would do.

The Magi are "wise ones." They are from the east. Like the women in Jesus' family tree, they show that the good news of Jesus is not only for Jews. It is for the whole world. More than once in Matthew, Gentiles are better examples of faith in Jesus than his own people are. The east could be Persia or Babylon. There were rumors of star-watchers from those regions. 

2. "Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews, for we have seen his star in the east and we have come to bow before him?"

Have you ever stepped on a landmine you did not know was there? The wise men ask where the true king of the Jews is to a man who killed his own sons and wife to keep his kingship. There is something deeply ironic and dangerous about such a question. Under normal circumstances, such a question might easily spell the death of the one inquiring.

The nature of the star has long been a matter of speculation. A conventional star moves in a fixed course and doesn't stand over a house. The planets are "wanderers" because they don't follow the same fixed course as the other stars, but they also don't come to rest over a house. A comet might point in a certain direction, but once again, they don't come to a halt.

We thus must look to a supernatural explanation. Stars were sometimes thought of as heavenly, spiritual beings, even angels. The star of the story may thus be an angel, showing the wise men the way. Some explanation along these lines seems most likely.

They want to bow before the king. We might translate the word as worship: "we have come to worship him." The two perhaps blur into each other. We do not know whether the wise men have a "high" or a "low" Christology. It is perfectly normal for a person to proskyneo before a human king. And it is of course necessary for us to proskyneo the Lord. 

2:3 When Herod the king had heard, he was terrified and all Jerusalem with him.  

We are used to thinking of there being three wise men, but this is only because three gifts are mentioned later in the story. If all of Jerusalem was terrified, we might imagine a rather significant company of visitors to the city. If it was only a tiny group, he might easily dismiss them. This is a significant enough group that they brought some fear with them.

So Herod turns to his experts--chief priests and scribes. This is after all what scholars are for, right? They are there to answer the questions to which other people don't have the answers. They are a resource for information when the time comes.

2:4. And having gathered together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired from them where the Christ is born. 5 And they said to him, "In Bethlehem of Judea, for thus has been written through the prophet, 6. 'And you, Bethlehem of Judah, by no means are you the least among the rulers of Judah, for from you will go out one ruling who will shepherd my people Israel.'"

Interestingly, they know the answer to Herod's question. It is, to some extent, coincidental. In context, Micah 5:2 is possibly more about the Davidic kingship than about a literal place of birth. In context, Micah probably meant "from old, from ancient times" as likely a reference to David as the beginning of the dynasty rather than a prediction of Jesus' pre-existence.

Nevertheless, they are right whether they understood the original meaning or not, and who is to say that God did not steer Micah's words so that they were ready to mean more than they had meant before. Once again, Matthew has found that an event in the life of Jesus "fills up" or fulfills words from the Old Testament.

2:7 Then Herod, secretly having called the Magi, determined precisely from them the time of the star's appearing, 8. and having sent them into Bethlehem, said, "Go, search accurately concerning the child, and whenever you should find [him], announce to me so that I also, having come, might bow before him.

Herod wants to know the time of the star's appearance so that he can find and kill his rival. The fact that he will later kill the male children under two suggests that Jesus is surely at least a year old at the time of their arrival. Far from the scene of our Christmas plays, with shepherds and wise men together in the manager, the wise men likely arrived much later. Jesus was surely already walking when they came.

Herod's pretense is obvious to us and would have been to Matthew's audience. He has no intention of bowing before another king in Israel. He only wishes to kill his potential rival.

2:9 And they, having heard the king, went and, behold, the star that they saw in the east went before them until, having come, it stood over where the child was. 10. And, having seen the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy.

Here is the strongest indication that this is not really a normal kind of astronomical phenomenon. Comets, planets, and distant stars don't stand over houses in Bethlehem. The wise men have found the king that they have been looking for, and they rejoice.

Others must surely have seen the star, but they didn't see it. The priests and scribes knew the Scriptures but made no move to come to Bethlehem. Herod knows that he should bow down before a king, but he fights a fight he cannot hope to win. The wise men see, know, and worship. 

2:11 And having come into the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother, and having fallen, they bowed before him. And having opened their treasures, they brought to him gifts: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. 12. And, having been revealed in a dream not to return to Herod, they withdrew by a different path into their country.

The fact that three gifts are mentioned has led tradition to speak of three wise men, but Matthew never gives a number. If in fact Herod and all Jerusalem were troubled at their entrance, we can imagine a rather large and impressive company of individuals. They bow before the king of the Jews in the manner befitting of a king.

Once again we see that Matthew emphasizes dreams as a key manner of revelation. As the angel of the Lord spoke to Joseph in a dream to take Mary as his wife, a number of revelations come in dreams in Matthew 2. They do not go back to Herod to report the location of the child, as he had schemed. Instead, they return east by another way.

2:13 And when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph saying, "Having arisen, take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt and be there until I should tell you, for Herod is about to seek the child to destroy it." 14. And, having arisen, he took the child and his mother at night and withdrew to Egypt.

Another revelation comes by way of a dream, once again from an angel of the Lord. It could also be translated "the angel of the Lord," although there is no word "the" in front of angel. It is not clear why they would flee to Egypt except for the Scripture that Matthew will quote in 2:15. We are again not surprised that Herod would try to kill someone that he sees as a possible claimant to his throne. We are also not surprised that Joseph believes the revelation and obeys the angel. 

2:15 And he was there until the death of Herod so that it might be fulfilled what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying, "Out of Egypt I called my son."

In the birth story, Matthew repeatedly emphasizes the fulfillment of Scripture, the filling up on the words of the Old Testament with meanings that fit with events in the life of Jesus. In this material of the first two chapters, which is unique to Matthew, we especially see this theme.

The Scripture quoted is Hosea 11:1. As have already seen, Matthew "fills up" the words with spiritual meanings that go beyond the original meanings of the verses in their first contexts. In this case, Hosea 11:1 was originally referring to the exodus. It is not a prediction of the future but a reflection the past. The exodus was already some five hundred years in the past when Hosea prophesied. Hosea 11:1 says, "When Israel was a child, I called my son out of Egypt."

It is of course possible that Matthew wants us to hear a parallel between the salvation of Israel that happened in the exodus and the fact that Jesus came to save his people from the consequences of their sins. But Hosea 11:1 was not about the Messiah originally--after all Hosea 11:2 tells of how this son worshiped false gods, something Jesus never did. Nor was Hosea 11:1 a prediction at all, let alone a prediction that the Messiah would spend some time in Egypt. 

The fulfillment is thus not a prediction-fulfillment but at most a symbolic parallel. This is nothing to fault Matthew for. This is fairly typical Jewish exegesis from the time. 

2:16 Then Herod, having seen that he was tricked by the Magi, was extremely furious and having sent, he killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all its surrounding areas two years old and below, according to the time that he had inquired from the Magi.

Here is the clearest indication that Jesus was likely older than a newborn when the Magi finally arrived. No doubt allowing a little margin, Herod kills the male children in Bethlehem under the age of two. The number of likely children has sometimes been exaggerated (e.g. over 10,000). If Bethlehem were a village of 300 or so, it might have been less than 10 children. It was probably not more than 20.

Such a relatively small number does not minimize the evilness of Herod's heart, for he was the sort of person that would have killed thousands if it suited his purposes. Although we have no record of this slaughter from any other ancient report, it is exactly the kind of act Herod would have done under such circumstances.

2:17 Then was fulfilled what was spoken through Jeremiah the prophet, saying, 18. "A voice in Ramah was heard, crying and much wailing, Rachel crying for her children and she did not want to be comforted because they did not exist."

Matthew finds the meaning of yet another verse from the Old Testament "filled up" by an event in the early life of Jesus. The slaughter of the babies in Bethlehem reminds Matthew of a verse in Jeremiah 31:15. Clearly one of the Gospel of Matthew's special themes is that Jesus' life fills up the meaning of Old Testament Scripture.

At the same time, we are reminded once again that these are not prediction-fulfillments in any ordinary sense. They are "spiritual" fulfillments following the manner of Jewish interpretation. In this instance, the original meaning of the verse is about the restoration of Israel after its destruction by the Assyrians. It was about events in the eighth and sixth centuries BC, hundreds of years before Jesus.

Rachel was of course the mother of Joseph, from whom came Ephraim. Ephraim was a shorthand for the northern kingdom, Israel. The northern kingdom was destroyed by the Assyrians in 722BC. Metaphorically, Rachel has wept for her children because they were destroyed. Jeremiah 31 goes on to speak of how God was restoring his people. "Keep your voice from weeping... the sons will return to their country" (31:16-17).

The verse thus was no literal prediction of the slaughter of young boys in Bethlehem, which was not in the territory of Ephraim, Manasseh, or Benjamin. It was about the return of the Jews from Israel in the late 500s BC. This is not a problem if you understand Matthew is simply using standard Jewish exegesis. He is reading the Bible much as modern charismatics and my holiness forebears did. 

But you are setting yourself up for a crisis if you think this is some sort of proof of God knowing the future or the supernatural nature of the Bible. God does know the future and the Bible is inspired, but you have misunderstood how the New Testament reads the Old Testament if you try to use these fulfillment passages for some sort of apologetics purpose. That's simply not how the New Testament is reading these verses.

2:19 And when Herod had died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt saying, 20. "Having risen, take the child and his mother and go into the land of Israel, for the ones seeking the life of the child have died." 21. And he, having risen, took the child and its mother and went into the land of Israel.

The theme of revelation by dream continues with this indication to Joseph that it is now safe to return to Israel because Herod the Great has died. It is once again an unnamed angel of the Lord. It is possible that the angel of the Lord could be in mind, but the word the is not present. On the whole, I have "fallen off the log" with an angel of the Lord in view.

The normal dating for this event is 4BC. Through this story, Joseph is depicted as an obedient man who does what the Lord tells him to do. He is a paradigm for a godly man whose role in God's plan is something anyone could do. He is a "good and faithful servant" of God as any of us could be.

2:22 But having heard that Archelaus is ruling Judea instead of his father Herod, he was afraid to go away there and having been revealed in a dream, he withdrew into the regions of Galilee. 23. And, having gone, he dwelt in a city being called Nazareth that it might be fulfilled that which was spoken by the prophets, "He will be called a Nazarene." 

Archelaus was one of the sons of Herod the Great. While Herod was a client king who ruled over all of the area of former Israel, the Romans did not entrust any one of Herod's sons to this role or this extent of territory. His son Herod Antipas would govern Galilee and the east of the Jordan. This is the Herod that would later behead John the Baptist. Archelaus only governed Judea from 4BC to AD6. It is at the end of his tenure that Josephus records a census as well as some revolutionary activity. 

Matthew seems to have no knowledge of any prior living in Nazareth by Joseph and Mary. In his narrative, they only seem to go to Nazareth to escape Archelaus, not because they have any prior connection to it. Once again, Joseph receives the prompting of a dream to go to Galilee.

It is a puzzle to determine what prophets Matthew has in mind in relation to Jesus coming from Nazareth. The first piece of the puzzle is the fact that he sees the prophecy coming from prophets plural rather than a singular prophet. This hint suggests that he could be joining together more than one Old Testament Scripture. Again, this is not the way we tend to read the Bible. It is a "spiritual" exegesis rather than a contextual one. Matthew is reading these verses as the Spirit strikes him rather than for what the verses originally meant in context.

But what verses does he have in mind? The village of Nazareth is not mentioned anywhere in the Old Testament or in other Jewish intertestamental literature. For this reason alone, it is impossible for this to be an instance of literal prediction-fulfillment. Nazareth was an insignificant village probably of significantly less than 1000, possibly not in existence for more than a century or so. 

There are some places where there is a formal similarity to the statement. It is said of Samson, "He will be a Nazirite" (Judg. 13:5, 7). But of course Jesus was not a Nazirite: "The Son of Man came eating and drinking and behold they say he is a glutton and drunkard" (Matt. 11:19). And of course even if he were, it would have nothing to do with Nazareth the village.

The most likely verse Matthew has in mind is Isaiah 11:1--"A branch (nezer) will go out of its roots." This verse was likely speaking of an heir to the Davidic throne ("a shoot from the stem of Jesse") and thus is a very fitting verse to connect to Jesus. The word for branch, nezer, bears some resemblance to the word Nazareth. Various speculations of an intentional connection have been made (e.g., that the village was founded by individuals looking for the branch to come), but these are purely a matter of creativity driven by a need for there to be a connection that Matthew did not likely feel.

For Matthew, Jesus is raised in a town that bears a resemblance to the word for branch. Jesus is the branch of David, the Messiah. Jesus' childhood thus "fills up" a hidden meaning that Isaiah 11:1 can have. There is absolutely no problem for Matthew here whatsoever. It simply undermines some contemporary rhetoric about prediction-fulfillment and it undermines the insistence of some Christian culture that the Bible must only be read in its exegetical context. 

But the first Christians were ancient Jews, and God spoke to them in their categories, not ours. Reading the Bible in context is an intercultural experience. This is how God speaks. God takes on the "flesh" of those to whom he wishes to communicate. Otherwise, we would not understand. Then God moves us in the direction he wants us to go from there.

New Year's Goals (2022)

And now for New Year's resolutions. Last year's post was relatively short. Here goes for this year. Too much as usual.

Personal

• Since I'm working from home, to treat each morning a little more like I were going to an office. Begin days with spiritual disciplines. Have more peace in my spirit.
• Run. I'm going to set the goal of 750 miles for this year (about 15 miles a week) with at least one half-marathon somewhere in there. 
• We'll see if I continue taking courses with ASU toward finishing my chemistry degree. Physics I: Mechanics would be up next. These are largely repeat-courses for me still at this point, but my brain is much older than it used to be. 

Reading

• Let me put down the modest goal of reading one book a month outside what I need to read for other reasons. Surely one, solid book a month is not too much to ask? My January target is Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman (roughly 15 pgs a day). 

Writing

• I hope to be more diligent in self-publishing the Explanatory Notes I've already done orally on YouTube. (for a record, I'm currently at 8363 subscribers)
• I have self-published some things for my youngest children. The current project is titled, "Key Verses of the Bible." 
• Again, it would be nice to write a peer-reviewed book this year.

Podcasting, etc

• I plan to continue my "Through the Bible in Ten Years" series on YouTube and Patreon. 
• I may start a more informal weekly podcast called, "The Bible and More." Perhaps I'll drop it onto Patreon on Fridays around noon.
• I may put some of the skills I've learned in coding and animation to work.

These are not all my goals, but I'm embarrassed to say how many things I have bouncing through my head.

Happy New Year!

Reflections on 2021

I typically do an end-of-year post followed by a New Year's resolutions post, so here are my personal and general reflections on 2021. It has not been a bad year by any means. I am far too privileged to have a bad year. But it has been a year of transition, a year of liminality. Although I don't know that I have had COVID, it feels like this time of isolation has finally begun to take its toll on my mentality.

1. I was working at Houghton at year's beginning. By summer I felt that I had played out my role there. Many of my initiatives were reaching their end, and I felt I wouldn't be able to give to Houghton as much as I wanted to give somewhere. The Lord opened a door, and we walked through it.

So I was excited when the chance to work for Campus Edu opened up. It felt like surfing as one wave was going out and another was coming in. I've joked that with Campus I am able to do the things that the structure of IWU wouldn't allow me to do and that Houghton didn't really have the resources to do. I've written a series of blog posts on the Campus blog expressing my sense of what the possibilities of Campus are for Christian colleges.

2. We were forced to buy a house in New York. We moved from the house we were renting into two Houghton College apartments (and 8 storage units) and then into a house that is too small for my books. Perhaps part of my current sense of alienation is that most of my books are in storage and I have no clear office space. I expect we will have moved back to Indiana by the time I do next year's post.

My wife did start raising chickens. They are both an incredible delight and yet we have a taste of a farmer's life. I will not say how many animal "wards" we have but it is no doubt a matter of significant underlying stress, despite the fact that they are all good listeners.

3. My children are on course. Sophie has graduated from Loyola in Chicago in 2.5 years. Tom is graduating from Purdue this year and will do National Guard after ROTC. Stefanie is doing well in Miami and Stacy is still in COVID transition.

4. The situation in America continues to be a matter of concern. The deconstruction of faith is real. The deconstruction of our democracy is real. This is a matter of some despondency for me at times. I am incredibly thankful that the Lord has had mercy on us thus far. I find myself asking what if anything I can do. I may continue a meeting for seekers.

5. I ran a good deal this past year. I ran in the Corning Wineglass Marathon. My training dropped off the last few weeks prior so I only hoped to run the first half without stopping, then to walk/jog the second half. I did play out that way. I must have pulled my Achilles' tendon in the second half. I still have a knot. 

6. I self-published one book this year, a summary of my thoughts on God--God with Ten Words. In this year of liminality, I took five courses with Southern New Hampshire toward a degree in Game Programming and Design. I learned three computer languages--JavaScript, Java, and Python. I don't know if I'll continue. The idea was that courses in the future will likely involve gaming components.

I also decided to work on the chemistry major I started in college. I took Calculus II for Engineers with Arizona State. It was a hardcore course--no punches pulled, as hard as any face-to-face course. I'm proud to say I ended with a 97% in the course, an A+. Don't know if I'll continue. It's a lot of work and money I probably don't need to be spending. It has, however, been very useful to know how these other schools are doing things. I'm currently auditing Calculus I with Outlier. It is perhaps the most innovative approach out there.

I am hoping perhaps that, through Campus, I can help some Christian college or colleges with the insights I think I have gained from these experiences. But most colleges can't see how math and science could be done well online. I've pretty much given up on the Wesleyan schools.

7. I suspect I preached more this year than I have any year since the 80s. I think I preached at least 8 times this year in several different Wesleyan churches in New York.

8. I read some books. Hard to say how many I've dabbled with this year. Let me see if I can jot down some of the ones I've at least dabbled in a little:

• For the Body by Timothy Tennant (strange book. It seemed to amount to--"Listen to your anatomy")
• Fault Lines by Voddie Bauckham (he's a hardcore Calvinist who thinks slavery was predestined by God)
• Reading While Black by Esau McCaulley
• Helgoland by Carlo Rovelli (liked his summary of quantum stuff, but he goes weird at the end, I thought)
• Platform Revolution (the "Bible" of Campusedu)
• After Whiteness by Willie James Jennings
• I started Jesus and John Wayne by Karen Kobes du Mez
• Bob Black's How Firm a Foundation, the history of Southern Wesleyan. He is such a good writer.
• Victor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning (I've owned but never finished)
• Some business books. I had started a certificate in business at Houghton and passed courses on Principles of Management and Accounting. 
• The Death of Expertise by Tom Nichols
• The Lean Startup -- didn't read but got the overview
• The Women are Up to Something by Ben Lipscomb. not done but very much enjoying
• Designing for Growth -- the main textbook for a course I'm teaching in January
• Android Programming for Beginners -- in process as well

I bought dozens of other very good and worthy books as well. Unfortunately, I have not managed to read them. 

8. I don't suppose many would call 2021 a wonderful year. Still, I have learned many very good things from it, and I have a job with spectacular promise. Put me to work, Lord.

Sermon Starters: Hidden in Plain Sight

Brookside Wesleyan Church, Wellsville, NY
December 26, 2021

Text: Matthew 2:1-12

Intro: Overview of the Wise Men story
who, where, when

1. Some are seeing but not seeing. (2:1-3)

• How is it that the wise men are the only ones who see the star?
• Three Amigos ("look up here"); Downton Abbey (nobody realizes that everyone has a crush on everyone else)
• The Star surely was visible. They saw it but they didn't see it.
• Mark 4 -- "Let those who have ears to hear hear." The filtering nature of Jesus' parables 
• What/who are we not seeing?
• What is God doing around you that you're not seeing?
• Especially we don't want to be like the goats in Matthew 25!

2. Some are knowing but not knowing. (2:4-6)

• Herod surely knows he can't fight God who has power over stars!
• Why don't the chief priests and scribes run to Bethlehem too? They know the Bible well enough but somehow it hasn't sunk in.
• Stubborn ignorance -- when we refuse to know what we know deep down
• Girl who doesn't like you.
• My easter story of paradigm shifting
• Matthew 22; Romans 13 are the key. Does it fit with a true love of our neighbor?

3. Some are doing but not doing. (2:7-12)

• Herod pretends to want to worship.
• Guy at supper in Crimes and Misdemeanors. He doesn't really believe all that "mumbo jumbo." He just attends and does the ritual.
• Luther's reaction to Rome and the Protestant Reformation

Conclusion

• Be like the wise men. See, know, and do.

Deconstruction Novel Excerpt 4

The beginning of chapter 4... Here's the previous excerpt. I hope everyone has a blessed Christ day!

______________________ 

Two big things happened in the fall of 2016 for our little group. One was the election, which is still echoing through history as I record these memories. The second is that Brad got a “call to ministry.” A “call to ministry” means God wanted him to become a pastor.

Brad was clearly a smart guy, at least in a book kind of sense. He was smart enough to wait to the last minute to write a paper and then stay up all night and get an A on it. He seemed horribly unfocused most of the time.

I would typically be in my single room studying in the evening. He would allegedly be studying out in the common space of our suite. Except he wasn’t. He would read a little, then get distracted by some Google search. Then he would go see what was going on in the hall. Sometimes he wouldn’t get back for an hour.

Come ten-thirty he and Matt sometimes would drive off to Huddle House. Allegedly they were going to study there. They’d get a “late key,” since we all had a midnight curfew. But they would have some waffles or a burger and change their plans. “Let’s go back and study at my suite,” Brad might say. (By then I was usually asleep.)

But it wouldn’t happen. By the time they got back, Brad's glucose level was calling him to slumber. Sometimes Matt would stay up, but Brad almost never did. The next day would come and he would start the whole cycle of getting nothing done again.

Meanwhile, Matt’s demon was video games. He often wouldn’t come back and study. He would come back and get involved in Call of Duty or something along those lines. Like Brad, he was somehow smart enough to pull out that paper or test. April and I didn’t know how they managed to get through.

I ran across Brad at 4AM one night by chance in the suite. I had gotten up to use the restroom. “Why do you do this to yourself?” I asked him.

“I know. I know. I always hate myself at about this point,” he said. “It’s really stupid. I never intend to. I just can’t seem to get it done any earlier.”

“How can you even think at this ungodly hour?” I asked.

“Not very well,” he said. “I was really interested in Beowulf three hours ago, but not so much right now.”

He got so far behind his first semester that he tried to pull two all-nighters in a row during finals week. It didn’t go so well. During one of his final classes—a fairly small one in fact—he woke up with the lights out and his face smudged by his desktop, in a puddle of his own drool. Thankfully that class didn't have a final. Apparently the professor and students had very much enjoyed leaving him there after the class time was finished.

He shared at lunch that day that all reality had become one for him at about 5am. He jokingly said he had become a Buddhist monk. He had become one with the Oversoul and he had joined the whole universe in perfect harmony.

Brad was smart, but he probably wasn’t as smart as the college thought he was. They gave him credit for all his first-year courses in math and chemistry on the basis of his AP scores. He took third-semester calculus and second-year chemistry his first semester at college. He was able to make it through the calculus, but the chemistry killed him.

It was a course called inorganic analytical chemistry, with only three students in the class. There were a couple tests but the bulk of the class was a series of ten experiments in which Brad had to figure what mystery substance the professor had given him. The kicker was that these experiments didn’t have to be turned in at any particular time. They just all had to be done before the end of the semester.

This was death for Brad. His skill at procrastination left him with half of the experiments still to go in the final week. He was also supposed to submit to his Old Testament professor how much of the Old Testament he had read that semester. He and Jessica were supposed to read the whole Old Testament. (The rest of us soon realized not to take that professor for Old Testament.)

Jessica more or less lied. Most students did even though it was a Christian college. It was on the honor system. You just said, “Yes. I read it.” A few fudged by telling themselves, “I will finish reading over Christmas,” and then put down 100%.

Not Brad. His conscience wouldn’t let him--at least not to lie that blatantly. The first of his all-nighters was spent desperately trying to read the Old Testament. The odds were against him. He had managed to read maybe half by the time he got back from supper the night before. Then the heaviness of the evening began to settle in. He had two finals the next day to study for as well as a final paper to write for World Literature.

Thankfully, he had read Crime and Punishment in high school. The paper bit the dust by midnight. Not his best work, but it would have to do. He remembered enough from class discussions with his twelfth-grade high school teacher to sound really smart. The teacher actually put the word "Brilliant" in her feedback.

The hours from 12-5am were all reading. He was not a good reader. He had a horrible time focusing. He told me he often read the same sentence over and over and over. Sometimes it went in. Often it didn’t. "I can honestly say, 'I've never read a book I couldn't put down,'" he once told me with a smile.

He would stand and read. He would pace back and forth with book in hand. Sometimes he would read to himself aloud. Every sentence was like a runway to somewhere else.

Eventually, he decided not to worry whether he really didn’t fully comprehend what he was reading. He just moved his eyes across the lines. Maybe he missed a line or two. By the time he diverted to study for biology, he had managed to say he had read 75% of the Old Testament with a slightly shaky conscience...

Explanatory Notes -- Matthew 1

I diverted to Matthew 1 and 2 for Christmas in my weekly podcast and video, Through the Bible in Ten Years. Here is the write-up of my notes on Matthew 1 from yesterday.

_______________________ 

1:1 [The] scroll of the genesis of Jesus Christ, Son of David, Son of Abraham.

Is this a heading relating to the entire Gospel of Matthew? It seems like the natural way to take it, given that the word for book/scroll is not used anywhere else in the New Testament for just part of a book or for a family tree. The Gospel of Matthew would thus be about the "beginning of Jesus Christ."

It is perhaps worth mentioning here that Matthew does not have much to say about Jesus in his pre-existence. The Gospel of John is distinctive in this regard because it emphasizes that Jesus existed in heaven before he came to earth. We also believe that Jesus became flesh as the human Jesus only when he was born (John 1:14). The Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, the Logos all relate to Jesus before he came to earth, but as Jesus the human being, a man with 23 specific pairs of chromosomes, the beginning was with the virgin birth, as Matthew relates. 

God the Son was not yet human prior to the incarnation. So it is not inappropriate to say that the Gospel of Matthew is about the beginning of Jesus Christ even though it was not the beginning of God the Son. These are of course very difficult concepts to get our heads around. The bottom line is that Matthew begins its narration about Jesus with the virgin conception, not with Jesus' pre-existence.

Jesus is the Son of David, a characteristic of Jesus' human genealogy that qualifies him to be king. If Matthew used Mark as a source, as most scholars think, then Matthew has deliberately decided to focus on Jesus as Son of David rather than Son of God, which is what Mark has in its first verse. Son of God was also a royal title, but Son of David might be more immediately meaningful to a Jewish Christian audience.

Matthew is the Gospel most focused on Jesus in his Jewishness. Here we should keep in mind that the earliest Christians were all Jews and none of them saw Christianity as a distinct or new religion. For them, following Jesus was following true Judaism. When a Gentile became a Jesus-follower, they saw themselves as converting to a form of Judaism. They became a sort of Gentile-Jew. It is thus more appropriate to call the audience of Matthew as Christian Jews even more than to call them Jewish Christians.

The audience that Matthew had in mind was almost certainly Jewish in origin. Not so much for the other Gospels. Mark, Luke, and even John seem much more directed toward Gentile than Jewish audiences. Those of us who are Gentile Christians may not notice the difference because we are Gentiles, but the Gospel of Matthew reads much more in line with the concerns of a Jewish audience.

If Son of David qualifies Jesus to be a king of Israel, his descendance from Abraham indicates that he is a child of Israel. He is not a Gentile. He was born into the people of God.  

1:2 Abraham begat Isaac, and Isaac begat Jacob, and Jacob begat Judah and his brothers [and sisters].

In keeping with its universal focus, Luke's genealogy in Luke 3 will start from Jesus and go backward to Adam. Matthew, in keeping with its Jew-centered approach begins with Abraham and moves forward to Jesus. The two genealogies do not fit exactly, leading some to suggest that Luke follows Mary's lineage and Matthew that of Joseph.

The genealogy is divided up into three groups of fourteen because it is the number of David's name, which we will explain further when we get to 1:17. Some names are left out to get to this number, which is symbolic. We should not be bothered by this fact, although Matthew might require us to shift our thinking to the way ancient Jewish interpreters thought rather than the way we might think.

The genealogy begins with the three patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as well as the twelve sons of Israel. Jesus is part of the Jewish family. His story is the culmination of the promises that were given to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in Genesis.

1:3 And Judah begat Perez and Zerah from Tamar. And Pharez begat Hezron, and Hezron begat Aram.

One of the interesting features of the family tree in Matthew 1 is the highlighting of five women. Women were very much marginalized in the ancient world, so the fact that Matthew goes out of his way to feature them is very striking. It suggests a theme that the Gospel of Luke will push even more, namely, that the good news of Jesus includes the empowerment and valuing of women.

What is even more interesting about the women in Jesus' genealogy is that they all have something about them that might have been viewed as somewhat suspect in Matthew's day. In the case of Tamar, she dressed up like a prostitute in order to trick Judah into fulfilling his duty has her father-in-law (Genesis 38). He was supposed to give her his son as a husband but he didn't. So she tricked him into sleeping with her, and that's how the twins Perez and Zerah were born.

A subtle message of the genealogy thus might be that God can take that which is not ideal and use it in the holiest of ways. God can take that which seems suspicious and use it for great good. God can redeem that which seems unholy and make it of the highest honor. God values even women who might seem tainted from a certain perspective and make them greater than the purest of all.

It also should not be lost on us that this selection of women culminates in Mary, who seemed morally suspicious to Joseph when he found out she was pregnant before they came together. But like the other women in the genealogy, she is now thought of as among the most honored of women. She is "highly favored," as Luke 1:28 says.

1:4 And Aram begat Amminadab, and Amminadab began Nahshon, and Nahshon begat Salmon. 5. And Salmon begat Boaz from Rahab. And Boaz begat Obed from Ruth, and Obed begat Jesse. 6a. And Jesse begat David the king.

We find this part of the genealogy in Ruth 4:18-22. Two more women are mentioned, Rahab and Ruth. Both were foreigners, which put them initially outside the people of God. Rahab of course was a prostitute in Jericho, so she was not only involved in an impure, "dirty" trade but she was part of a people that God would destroy for their godlessness. Interestingly, the Bible nowhere else indicates that Rahab was in David's genealogy.

There is nothing suspect about Ruth except again that she is a Moabitess, a member of a people that was often an enemy of Israel. The book of Ruth depicts her of course in a completely positive light. Yet as we see in history repeatedly, it is a human tendency to think of immigrants as dirty and second or third class citizens. Ruth's origins would thus normally have been considered a dishonorable thing.

The number of years involved may suggest that some names are missing. Abraham might be dated to the 1700s BC. Fourteen generations would give us about 50 years before each childbirth--not the typical span today and certainly not then. It is thus generally agreed that the genealogies of the Bible may skip some generations and "hit the highlights," so to speak.

The first fourteen generations culminate in king David. We will see in a moment that the significance of the number fourteen is that it is the number of David's name. The genealogy is thus configured to say, "David, David, David." Jesus is the Son of David. Jesus is the king of Israel, the Messiah.

1:6b. And David begat Solomon from the [wife] of Uriah.

The second group of fourteen thus begins with Solomon, David's son. Now we are in the period of the monarchy. The next stretch will run through the kings of Judah, the southern kingdom. 

Bathsheba is the fourth woman mentioned in Jesus' genealogy, although she is not mentioned by name. Instead, Uriah the Hittite is mentioned. This mention again seems to hint that God cares about the Gentiles as well as that God can redeem sin. Although Solomon was not born of David's affair with Bathsheba, David took her as wife after having her husband killed, in effect.

1:7 And Solomon begat Rehoboam, and Rehoboam began Abijah. And Abijah begat Asaph. 8. And Asaph begat Jehoshaphat, and begat Joram. And Joram begat Uzziah. 9. And Uzziah begat Jotham, and Jotham begat Ahaz. And Ahaz begat Hezekiah, 10. And Hezekiah begat Manasseh, and Manasseh begat Amos, and Amos begat Josiah. 11. And Josiah begat Jeconiah and his brothers [and sisters] at the carrying away of Babylon.

These names, so familiar from the Old Testament books of the Kings, make it clear that Jesus' lineage qualifies him to be king. He is indeed a son of David. From the list in 1 Chronicles 3:11-12, it looks like three names were left out to arrive at fourteen generations. There, Joram begats Ahaziah, who begats Joash, who begats Amaziah, who begats Uzziah. 

But by this reckoning, the symbolism of fourteen generations is maintained to cover the span from David to the exile. It is a natural place to divide up the story of Israel.

1:12 And after the carrying away of Babylon, Jechoniah begat Shealtiel, and Shealtiel began Zerubbabel. 1:13 And Zerubbabel begat Abiud, and Abiud begat Eliakim. And Eliakim begat Azor. 14. And Azor begat Zadok, and Zadok begat Achim. And Achim begat Eliud. 15. And Eliud begat Eleazar, and Eleazar begat Matthan. And Matthan begat Jacob.

The last stretch of names are not ones that we know from the Old Testament. But they stretch us from the exile to the time of Jesus. Zerubbabel was of course a Persian appointed governor who facilitated the reconstruction of the temple in 516BC just after the return from Babylon.

1:16 And Jacob begat Joseph, the husband of Mary, from whom was born Jesus, the one called Christ.

Thus we arrive at Jesus. Mary is the fifth of the woman in the genealogy. Like the others, she is honored to be in the family tree of the Christ. Like the others, there is some scandal associated with her story and with Jesus' birth. We should not be bothered that Jesus is not the biological son of Joseph, for "adopted" sons were counted just as much the children of their parents as genetic sons. In fact, because adopted sons were chosen, they were often considered even more significant than the biological ones.

1:17 Therefore, all the generations from Abraham to David [are] fourteen generations and from David to the carrying away of Babylon [are] fourteen generations, and from the carrying away of Babylon until the Christ, fourteen generations. 

As we mentioned above, the number fourteen is the number of David's name. Hebrew and Greek did not have independent symbols for their numbers. Their letters doubled as numbers. The numbers of David's name in Hebrew are thus daleth (4), waw (6), and daleth (4), which add up to fourteen. The genealogy thus embodies David's name three times--"David, David, David." It is a figurative way to reinforce that Jesus is the Son of David, the king.

Jesus' Birth

1:18 Now the birth of Jesus Christ was thus. When Mary, his mother, had been pledged to Joseph, before they came together, she was found pregnant of the Holy Spirit. 

The marriage between Joseph and Mary was apparently arranged. She may have been somewhat younger, with Joseph older. We do not know if he had a previous wife or even if she were an additional wife. She is found to be pregnant "from the Holy Spirit." In other words, she becomes pregnant without having sex with anyone.

1:19 And Joseph, her husband, being righteous and not wanting to disgrace her, wanted to release her secretly.

Joseph is called "her husband," indicating how far along the marriage process has gone. The word for divorce might also be translated as "release," but since Joseph is called "her husband," the word divorce seems appropriate. Joseph does not want to disgrace Mary unnecessarily, even though she has potentially disgraced him greatly. He does not want to stigmatize her. He apparently contemplates leaving her in her father's house without drawing attention to her apparent infidelity. The way he approaches the situation shows that he is a righteous man and man of honor.

1:20 And while he was considering these things, behold an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream saying, "Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary, your wife, for that which has been born in her is of the Holy Spirit.

In Luke, the women are visited by angels. In Matthew, they come in dreams to Joseph. The fact that Joseph is the son of David reminds the reader of the genealogy at the beginning of the chapter. Because Jesus is a descendant of David, he is qualified to be king of Israel and to fulfill the prophecies about David's kingdom lasting forever. 

The presumption is that the child has no human male parent but that the Holy Spirit is the sole origin of the child's conception. In general, the ancients did not think of the woman as contributing any substance to the child in the womb. She was rather an incubator for the seed of the male. The Holy Spirit would thus be understood to be entirely responsible for Jesus' substance.

Some translations render the verse, "take Mary [as] your wife," giving the impression that she was not yet his wife at this time. But since Joseph is called her husband in 1:19, we might simply call Mary his wife. The marriage has not been consummated, but the arrangement is apparently complete. If she were younger and the marriage was arranged, it is possible that Joseph was waiting for her to come of age.

1:21 "And she will bear a son and you will call his name 'Jesus,' for he himself will save his people from their sins."

Jesus is of course the Greek form of the Hebrew Joshua. Jesus' name was thus pronounced Yeshua while he was on earth. To say that Jesus would save Israel from its sins is shorthand for saving them from the consequences of their sins. 

In general, many Jews were probably expecting any Messiah to free Israel from its enslavement to foreign powers like the Romans. However, since Matthew was written after the destruction of Jerusalem (e.g., Matt. 22:7), perhaps political salvation is not really what he has in mind. For Matthew, the consequences of sin seem rather to focus on eternal torment following the final judgment (e.g., Matt. 25:31, 46).

1:22 And all this has come to be so that might be fulfilled what has been spoken by the Lord through the prophet saying, 23. "Behold the virgin will get pregnant and will bear a son and they will call his name Immanuel, which being interpreted is 'God with us.'"

This is the first of Matthew's fulfillment texts, a distinctive eemphasis of his gospel. At first, we might think that these are simply prediction-fulfillments. However, a deeper look suggests that Matthew largely interprets these passages in a non-contexual, "spiritual" sense. Some call such interpretations the taking of the Old Testament in a "fuller sense" (sensus plenior).

Of all the New Testament writers, Matthew's interpretive method comes the closest to the "pesher" interpretations of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Matthew takes the words of Old Testament verses without much attention to the surrounding words of their context and reads them in the light of events in Jesus' life. In this case, for example, we need know nothing about the context of Isaiah 7:14 to understand Matthew's meaning. 

In context, Isaiah 7:14 refers to a child that was a sign to king Ahaz that he did not need to worry about the two kings to his immediate north. If the sign was only Jesus, it was a very ineffective sign for Ahaz, since he was dead some 700 years before Jesus. A young woman can conceive the first time she has sex. Isaiah 7:15 goes on to say that before that child came of age, the political situation of Ahaz would be resolved. The verse thus originally referred to a child born in the 700's BC. 

This original meaning is not relevant to the "fuller," prophetic meaning in relation to Jesus. Matthew understood these words in the Greek translation of Isaiah to be potent with meaning in relation to Jesus' birth. We should not see this as a problem. It was a perfectly acceptable Jewish way of interpreting Scripture at the time and no argument against inspiration. We cannot accuse a text of error according to our ideology when it is perfectly in keeping with its own. 

And God knew Matthew would take the verse this way when he spoke to Isaiah. God knew Matthew would take the verse this way when Isaiah was translated into Greek well over a century before Christ. The words were pregnant with meaning that could be applied to the conception of Jesus.

The fact that the author draws from the Greek Isaiah is a significant argument that the author of Matthew in its current form was a Greek speaking Jew rather than the Aramaic-speaking Galilean disciple. In general, the "first language" Greek of the gospel argues for the same conclusion. The Greek of Matthew is actually smoother than Mark, one of its likely sources, which involves more Semitisms in its style.

Jesus is "God with us." This characteristic of Jesus occurs here and then again at the end of Matthew where Jesus tells his disciples, "I am with you all the days until the end of the age." The idea of Jesus as God with us thus forms an inclusio that brackets the Gospel of Matthew.

Matthew does not explicitly share the inner logic of how Jesus is God with us. But throughout the Gospel, Jesus is sometimes presented in terms normally reserved for God alone. Following the Parables of Enoch, Matthew 25 has Jesus on God's throne in judgment, an extremely rare image in surviving Jewish literature. And while Jesus tells Satan that only the Lord is to be worshipped, Matthew consistently has various individuals bowing before Jesus.

1:24 And Joseph, having been raised from sleep, did as the angel of the Lord commanded him and took his wife, 25. and he was not knowing her until she born a son and called his name, "Jesus."

If there were any doubt, this statement makes it clear that Joseph is not the father of the child. He does not have sex with Mary until after Jesus is born. He goes through with the marriage, despite her pregnancy. Matthew knows nothing of later Christian traditions in which Mary remains a "perpetual virgin." The assumption of the text is that Joseph does go on to have relations with her after Jesus' birth.

Novel Excerpt 3 -- Deconstruction

I've finished the first draft of chapter 3 of a novel I'm playing with, Deconstruction. I'm posting most of it for patrons on Patreon as a motivation for me to keep writing. Be interesting to see if I keep going. It's not easy to synthesize the reasons so many are deconstructing right now in a narrative form that conveys the swirl of thoughts and feelings involved. Here's the previous excerpt.

Here's the excerpt for today:

_______________________________

Chapter 3
The fall of 2016 was the beginning of a strange time. I didn’t realize it so much until I started looking back. They say that a frog won’t jump out of a boiling kettle if you turn the heat up slowly. It doesn’t notice smaller changes in temperature if you heat it up gradually. And then it dies. Mind you, I’ve never tested the theory.

Everyone at Ebenezer had to take a “Freshman Seminar” about adjusting to college, developing time management skills, budgeting your money, etc. We were required to keep a journal and submit at least one entry a week.

(I heard stories of earlier years when students fabricated a whole semester’s worth of journal entries the last week of class, but those days were gone. We had to submit them electronically now every week.)

For some reason, I didn’t stop journaling at the end of the semester. I didn’t really participate in the daily lunch and supper debates between Matt, Brad, and April. I was a quiet sort. Sometimes I wondered if they even knew I was there.

But I was there. I was paying closer attention to the conversations than they probably were. I started writing them down in my journal. As graduation approached four years later, I went back and read them from start to finish. It was amazing the amount of ground we covered, a virtual encyclopedia of topics.

But what most stood out to me was how we all boiled in the kettle. Matt went from being a somewhat reluctant Trump supporter almost to worshiping him. Brad went from holding his nose for Trump to the brink of socialism with Bernie in 2020.

April remained a moderate Democrat the whole time. From my notes, her positions hardly changed at all during those four years. But Matt could have sworn that she had become a flaming liberal at Ebenezer.

Like a frog in the kettle, we sometimes don’t perceive these changes. But reading my journal entries, they were plain as day.

Why Campus 5 -- Softer Landings

The second to last post in this series. Another reason for colleges to utilize Campus is softer landings in the difficult choices that often are facing colleges and universities today.
 

Why Campus 4 -- Quantum Leaps

The fourth post in my series on why Campus Edu might be useful to a Christian college. This one has to do with larger projects like adopting us as your LMS or using us for one's entire general education curriculum.
 

Novel Excerpt 2.2 -- the Cafeteria

Here's the previous excerpt. And now the new one:

___________________

It started Day 1. Brad had a required course called, “Introduction to the Old Testament.” It was right before lunch. Jessica was in there too.

“The teacher blew my mind on the first day,” Brad said as he and Jessica caught up with us at lunch. “I felt so stupid.”

He had my curiosity. I had almost fallen asleep at 7:50 in my only class that morning. Art Appreciation. The professor played some classical piece that she found very moving, but it just reminded me that I had been sleeping less than an hour earlier.

“What if we’re not the y-o-u of the Bible?” Brad continued.

“What?” Matt answered, puzzled.

“What if the Bible wasn’t actually written to us?”

“That’s completely wrong!” Matt blurted out. “The Bible is God’s answer book, God’s Word for all time.”

“Yes, but what if it was really more for someone different than me?”

I was pretty confused, and Matt was beginning to get angry. So Jessica stepped in.

“He’s making a big deal out of nothing,” Jessica said. “The teacher was just pointing out that the books of the Bible were written thousands of years ago for a bunch of ancient people.”

“Yeah, here look,” Brad continued, far more excited than seemed normal to me.

“I open up to Deuteronomy 6. What does it say? ‘Hear O Israel.’ It doesn’t say, ‘Hear, O Brad or Matt.’ It wasn’t written to me.”

“It was written for everyone,” Matt said somewhat emphatically.

Yeah, well it doesn’t say that,” Brad rejoined with a fiendish grin on his face.

“Let’s open to the New Testament, say, Romans 1. What does it say? Read it Matt.” Brad was having too much fun. He leaned clear across the table, his shirt almost dangling into my mashed potatoes. He held his finger on the desired verse. “Read it! What does it say, Matt?”

Now he was just being annoying. Matt reluctantly read it. “To all God’s beloved in Rome.”

“See. ‘In Rome.’ It doesn’t say, ‘To all of you at Ebenezer College.’ It wasn’t written to you, Matt.”

“You’re making a big deal of nothing,” April finally said. “Sure, it was first written to them, but God wrote it so that it would apply to all of us in all times and places.”

“Ah, but is that possible, April?” Brad fired back. It was a little too much for me, for someone to enjoy the subject matter of their class so much. But this would become the norm with Matt and Brad. They really got into ideas, while the rest of us pretty much just watched the show.

“The Bible is timeless, absolute truth,” Matt rejoined the argument. He seemed a little less riled up now that he could see what was going on. “It is for everyone, everywhere, all of it.”

“So when are you going to sell all you have and give to the poor?”

“Where does it say to do that?” Jessica asked.

It's something Jesus said to some rich guy once.” April added.

“Yes, I don’t know where the verse is,” Matt continued, “but the words of the Bible say, ‘Go and sell all you have and give to the poor.’”

“That was something Jesus said to one rich young ruler,” Matt finally answered. “It wasn’t a command to me or everyone.”

“Bingo!” Brad said with a grin from ear to ear. “It wasn’t written to you.”

That even brought a smile to Jessica’s face. “He’s got you, Matt,” she said.

“That’s different,” he finally said dismissively. “That was to one guy, one time.”

“So you admit that not everything in the Bible was written directly to you? It's what I've been saying all along” ...

Why Campus 3 -- Enhanced Courses

This is my third post in the series on why a Christian college should join the Campus Edu network:

Enhanced Courses

Previous posts in the series include:

• Expanded markets
• Enriched curricula

The kick-off to the series was The Future of Modality in Higher Education,
 

Novel excerpt 2.1

Since I publicly said I was starting this novel, I guess I will have to continue. I posted an excerpt from the first chapter here. 

Here is a first excerpt from the second chapter:

_____________________________

... Matt ate it up. He had gone to public school, and this was what he had been looking for, a school that was permeated with a “biblical worldview.” If anything, he would be disappointed by how much time teachers gave to perspectives he considered fundamentally unbiblical. Matt was a pre-med, biology major. The biology department didn’t endorse evolution, but they believed students should know the theory. Matt was ready. He had read a number of books on intelligent design and creation science in high school. If his professors left out any arguments against evolution, he was ready to fill in the gaps.

Brad started out a pre-med, chemistry major. To be honest, I didn’t see him as a doctor. He was smart enough, but he was a bit clumsy and impractical. He was great, but I would be afraid for him to operate on me. I'd be afraid he'd accidentally leave a scalpel inside. No one blinked an eye when he switched to ministry his second year.

We all had at least one class together. Matt, Brad, and Jessica all had freshman biology. April and I both had psychology. Looking back, I don’t remember half the classes I took. There’s something seriously wrong about that, especially given how much money we were borrowing. Matt was always complaining about what a colossal waste of money it was. Only Brad and April actually seemed to like their classes...

How we learn...

I'm working on my next blog post on "Why Campus." This next entry is on enhanced courses. I thought I would do a preliminary post here to get my juices flowing.

1. What are the weak spots of the typical college course? We have long heard that the lecture is the least effective way to learn. I did some quick research. This piece suggests that while students sometimes think lectures are the best, the introduction of interactive components can improve learning significantly. 

When I think back on my own thirty years of teaching, in the early decades I could tell when students were glazing over. I would insert a break or group activity when I saw this happening. However, my activities were not well designed. They were more release valves than truly helpful. I was somewhat entertaining, but it only helped with some students. 

When I started teaching Greek in the early 90s, I was the more entertaining of the two of us. However, I'm not sure that the students learned more from me than they learned from the other professor. They may have enjoyed the experience more, but it didn't necessarily produce greater learning. This may have been the case throughout my career--they enjoyed me more but did they learn more than they learned with the professor who was more regimented?

2. When wireless came into the picture, the scores on my tests went down. I used to be very clear about what would be on the test, but the attention to what I was saying went down. Now it didn't matter as much whether I was entertaining or not because they were entertaining themselves on the web during class. There were of course the curmudgeon professors who forbade laptops in class. I always looked down on them. Did they really think they could win that cultural competition?

No, we had to find ways to collaborate with the technology. In 2009 when I switched to primarily being administration, I was poised to used clickers to have in class quiz questions. I planned to ask questions throughout the class time that required you to snap out of whatever distraction you might be engaged in to answer questions. By golly you would learn in my class!

I have known for my whole career about different learning styles and I have felt the short attention span. I know because I have one. I always felt that my own inability to sit through sermons and lectures has made me a more interesting teacher because I can feel myself getting bored at myself. The idea that the average attention span is less than 10 minutes now is generally agreed, although this piece pushes back. My sense is that the piece mistakes being able to make a counterargument is the same as making a counterargument. This is one of the problems with much thinking today. It thinks that if you can show a contrary position is possible that it disproves the alternative or proves the minority position.

3. Zoom has been interesting. I continue to slip in group breakouts. But because I don't structure them, I'm not sure anything happens. I have found the students at Houghton College to pay better attention (I think) than the students I used to have at IWU. I don't know if this is a cultural shift, an indication of the typical Houghton student, or a misperception. 

At the same time, I have experience more silence and lack of conversation than my early years of teaching. It is always nice when there is at least one student that interacts. A few years ago I began to notice the "spectator student" dynamic. It seemed to correlate to what I saw in much Christian worship too. We watch the worship team but don't necessarily sing ourselves.

4. So what of the evolution of the online learning environment?

When we started Wesley Seminary, there was some defense made of online teaching. Those days are so long ago that I almost consider irrelevant any people who might still argue against its potential effectiveness. The twentieth century is calling you. Studies have shown that online teaching is at least as effective on average as face-to-face in terms of learning. You can also do spiritual formation virtually. 

In the end, it doesn't matter whether we like it or not. It doesn't matter whether we prefer it or not. It's here. It will always be here. You can grumble, but your grumbling is irrelevant. It is a train that will run over your grumblings and not even realize it has run over you. That's the situation whether we like it or not. Some purely face-to-face colleges may survive, but they will be few and likely very small. 

The early online course was convenient because it was completely asynchronous. Do it whenever you best can. It thus became out of sight, out of mind for many--sometimes even for the professor. You wrote a book--type, type, type, type, type, type, type. Those perceived to be the best professors were not the most entertaining but the best administrators. I often thought of the peppered moth phenomenon during the Industrial Revolution in England. They stood out and were eaten first before soot. Then they thrived after soot.

So the entertaining professor thrived before asynchronous online. The disciplined administrator thrived thereafter.

The pandemic has changed things. Mind you, I did a hybrid class in 2009. I was doing an online class with live Zoom sessions the very semester that the pandemic broke out. I blamed lack of bandwidth early on for the "type type type" phenomenon of online. I sense that we are now culturally used to Zoom. It's a clear shift, even though we are sick of it. We know it. It is not strange. 

5. I have speculated for several years now that the online class of the future will be more like video gaming. I know more than one (especially male) college student who has struggled in college because of gaming. They stay up late. They miss class. They don't get their work done.

There have always been students (mostly boys) who don't connect with the typical academic system. I call them the "lost boys." They are some of the brightest young people. They have a lot to offer. They often went on to pastor the largest churches and have some of the most "successful" ministries from one perspective. They failed their ministry classes.

I have worked with people who are extremely talented, extremely innovative, extremely successful, but they didn't do very well in the academic setting. I blame us in the academy rather than them. They found us irrelevant and uninteresting. We probably were not as irrelevant as they thought we were, but we were utter failures at our teaching method, I believe, at least for this set of students.

It seems to me that cultural shifts have turned us into extreme failures at teaching. We have not figured out how to teach this generation. Frankly, I don't think we knew how to teach the earlier generations either. They just sat and took it from us. When I look at the widespread cultural ignorance--no less present in the church than at large... when you consider that most of the culture went to college... I have to consider one of the primary tasks of the academy to have been quite a failure. "General education" hasn't seemed to do what it's supposed to do.

6. I've been doing "opposition research" for the better part of this year. I was at a pivot in my life and I thought I would go back to school part-time. I've taken online courses with Southern New Hampshire and Arizona State, two of the so-called leaders in the field. I've taken programming and graphic design courses with the one and a STEM class with the other. Meanwhile, I had been designing various online courses with Houghton College--webinars and software courses. I may take an Outlier course and maybe an Android course. What's going well? What isn't? 

Of course I'm working for Campus Edu, so I'm working with a bunch of brilliant people at this sort of thing. 

6. This blog post might begin here. What are we going to do about it? I come back to learning styles. In seminary, I learned about the Kolb experiential learning cycle. Concrete experience leads to observation. I reflect and then make some abstract conceptualizations. Then I experiment and the cycle continues. I'll confess this model doesn't connect with my personal learning styles so I have only taken away from it over the years that some people learn best in this way.

My son is one of them. He learns best by hands-on application and problem-solving. He is about to graduate from Purdue, which for all I can see has mostly failed to meet him at his learning style. 

Neil Fleming's VARK model (1987) seems to balance out Kolb a little. He had four learning styles: visual learners, auditory learners, physical learners, and social learners. My son, I suspect, would be more of a physical learner. The traditional academy may utterly fail this group. Some people need to see it. Some people need to talk it. 

I have worked a few times with "external processors." They have to talk it out to figure it out. You might guess that I learn best by writing and teaching. The process of presenting information or an issue helps me process it.

The model I like the most is the 7 learning styles approach, which I take to come from Howard Gardner (1991). I took this diagram from Educlouds. Google also has a helpful diagram here.

I think I can correlate some of this diagram with the Myers-Briggs personality types. On the introvert-extrovert spectrum, some learn best alone. Some learn best in a social context. That is, some people are internal processors and some people are external processors. 

Some people learn best by external/hands-on application and concrete problem-solving. Other people are most comfortable in reflection and abstraction. These differences seem to relate somewhat to the S versus N scale in Myers-Briggs, the concrete versus the intuitive.

The NTJ personality may learn best by the logical, sequential approach. Give me the subject matter in order, starting with the fundamental building blocks and building the structure up from there. This scheme may not account for the "P" learner as well, however. This is the person who learns best by getting right into it, using inductive learning. 

The "verbal" is sometimes broken out into writing/speaking. The very fact that I am blogging suggests I heavily function in this category. We should also not pigeon-hole a person into just one learning style. Most of us probably would learn best with some combination of these approaches.

This website, by the way, has 12 learning styles: 1) visual, 2) auditory, 3) tactile (touching), 4) kinesthetic (she breaks out physical into these two), 5) sequential (combined above into the logical), 6) "simultaneous" (this is the need to see the big picture first--I resonate with this one), 7) reflective (brainstorming, more inductive), 8) verbal, 9) interactive (social), 10) direct experience, 11) indirect experience (learning from experiences of others, and 12) musical or rhythmic.

7. Now for the synthesis. What is my own list, putting all the material above together?

• It seems to me that there are few purely "auditory" learners. Yet this is the basket of the traditional academy. The least effective, it would seem.
• I know there are visual learners. My daughter (and I) will not likely remember if we only hear something. We need to see it written down.
• I know that there are "hands-on" learners (kinesthetic, physical). There's a proverb falsely attributed to Confucius: "I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand." Well, for some. This connects to experiential learners. "We learn by doing" (John Dewey).
• I know that there are internal and external processors. There are clearly reflective and social learners.
• There are clearly verbal processors. Teaching is another example of this. I learned biblical Greek best by teaching it. I have learned a great deal about physics and math by creating YouTube videos. A variation on this style is the person who synthesizes material best by writing, as also applies to myself. 
• There are deductive and inductive learners. The former learn best in sequence. The latter are best thrown into the thick of it. This last approach I find better holds attention. 
• There are big picture and details people. The former need to see where you're going before starting the journey. The latter can follow the thread of detail into the subject.
• Somewhere in here should go problem-based learning. This approach learns best by trying to solve puzzles or problems. I suppose this connects to Kolb's reflection phase.
• Storied learning seems important. It relates to direct and indirect experience above. It is certainly one of the strongest human defaults, and this is something that should be kept in mind.
• Somewhere in here we also need to mention the ever-declining attention span. It is a parameter I believe for teaching.
• Where does the gaming mentality go? It is a kind of interactive learning that incorporates short attention spans. It is inductive. It is problem-solving. It is a kind of virtual hands-on. It is visual and auditory. It is interestingly very social these days. There isn't much abstraction or reflection involved, perhaps revealing a major weak spot in the current mental muscles of young men.

I'll stop there. I am writing a piece for the Campus Edu blog on how Campus Learn courses enhance learning. It definitely is more visual. It has more of a live component for better social. We'll see what my "learn by writing/teaching" style synthesizes further by Monday. 

Why Campus 2 -- Enriched Curriculum

Here is my second course in a series on the Campus Edu on the question, "Why Campus?" This one talks about how Campus Edu can be used to keep or expand curricular offerings in an enriched way.

Why Campus 2: Enriched Curriculum