Back to Basics 2 (Favoritism)

I mentioned Philippians 2 as a basic--Christians are servants of others, not just in the church but to those outside the church as well. Christians empty themselves of their status and think of others first.

Here's another basic from James 2:1--"Believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism."  I'm deeply troubled that someone would push back and say, "This is only within the church." Jesus' message to love our enemies extends all such values beyond the church to everyone else.

In fact, the example James gives points to individuals who are in your midst but do not really belong there (not to mention that the word James uses is actually synagogue rather than church): "Is it not the rich who are exploiting you? Are they not the ones who are dragging you into court? Are they not the ones who are blaspheming the noble name of him to whom you belong?" (2:6-7). James uses the example of a wealthy patron who expects the best seat in the gathering.

Christians treat everyone fairly. Christians don't play favorites on the basis of status or wealth. Christians don't discriminate on the basis of gender or race. These are fundamental Christian values.

This speaks to prejudice. Regardless of what we might think the tendencies are of a certain group, we must let all individual persons show us by their words and actions what they really are. We must act the same toward a person in any group. We must welcome into our churches people of any group and be excited that they have come.

Here's a strong word. We must not be unnecessarily offensive to people from other groups. A lot of Christians scoff at political correctness and always point to excesses. But the basic value of political correctness is Christian 101--don't say or do things to others that are hurtful or hateful. It would be more Christian to err on the side of the oversensitive than to err on the side of causing offense. There's no debate to be had here. This is basic Christian common sense.

So people somehow turn inclusive language into something of the Devil. Really? Speaking in a way that takes seriously the fact that the women in the room are just as present as the men? That's not showing favoritism. That's being Christian. What Christian motive would say, "I'm going to show those pansy liberals and intentionally only use masculine imagery"?

How is it that Satan somehow gets Christians completely turned around to where they actually feel they are standing up for God when in fact they are acting out worldly values? Our language and our actions should be loving toward everyone in the room. Anything else is of the Devil.

Christian ABCs...

What would Jesus do? (Philippians 2 version)

Sometimes I feel like the American church needs to forget everything it thinks it knows about Jesus and the Bible and go back to Sunday School. What would Jesus do? Fight those liberal Pharisees in the name of absolute truth? Fight against Roman taxation and imperialism? Purge his disciples of anyone who did not agree with him?

Philippians 2 is a good place to start. "Do nothing from selfishness or for empty glory but in humility regard others as more important than yourself."

What's that? Love your neighbors and your enemies?  Put others ahead of yourself?  Really?

"Think this way among you, which also was the thinking in Christ Jesus..." What are we going to hear? That he stuck up for absolute truth? That he fought statist thinking? That he put lawbreakers in their place? That he refused to compromise on principle?

How about this? "Although he existed with the status of God, he did not consider equality with God something of which to take advantage, but he emptied himself, taking the status of a servant."

But was that just around other Christians who were doing the right thing? Did he just help others who were in the right? Did he just help others who were in his group who agreed with him?  Those who looked like him and followed the rules? How about Romans 5:7-8: "Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us."

And how about Philippians 2:7-8: "Having been found in the likeness of mortals and having been found in human form, he humbled himself, having become obedient to death, even the death of a cross."

That's what Jesus would do. He would die for his enemies.

I fear that much of the American church knows little of Jesus, despite its zeal for the law and angry sounding words. I fear that a good deal of what will resound from American pulpits today will little resemble anything truly having to do with Jesus. We are a lost church that is angry about the wrong things.

"Lord, Lord, did I not set everyone else straight about the right way to think and how to be a good American?"

"Depart from me. I never knew you."

Simon the Sorceror (devotional thought)

I'm tidying up my Acts notes to try to finish the Acts book this weekend.  Here are my transformed notes on Simon the sorcerer:

"... The incident with Simon the sorcerer is interesting. Although he is not an opponent to Christianity in Acts, history would remember him as the beginning of all false Christian teaching, what is called, “heresy.”

"Simon must surely have been someone well known. Luke seems to want his audience to know that Simon had been out-miracled and outclassed by Philip. Simon was not quite a believer, the archetype of the stereotypical televangelist who is more interested in putting on a show and making money than truly following Christ.

"It is a sobering thought, to think of how close he came to believing and then apparently how bad an influence on faith he later seems to have had. We cannot absolutely control the spiritual destinies of others, because God in the end gives us all the choice. But it is staggering to think of the influence we can have on people’s destinies and how careful we should be.

"Think of all the children who have passed through our churches or that pass through schools where Christians teach. How sobering it is later in life to look back and realize how those little guys and gals we had under our teaching for a short moment went on into life. Some go on to be great. Some go on to live lives of ruin. Many go on to live faithful, Christian lives.

"But how sobering it is to think of the responsibility! Our words, our actions can sow seeds that blossom into faith. They can also sow seeds of discontent and discord. God gives them the ultimate choice, and God can work around us when we mess up. But it is important to take seriously the task of discipleship that we all play in the lives of others..."

Wesleyan Version of the Reformation

Happy Reformation Day!  496 years ago today, Martin Luther posted his famous 95 Theses on the door of the Wittenberg Cathedral.  Today I'd like to give a Wesleyan version of the Reformation.

1. When Martin Luther was over there in Germany, stirring up trouble, we were just a twinkle in Henry VIII's eye. The notorious loser king himself wrote a treatise against Luther called The Defense of the Seven Sacraments (no doubt with some help from someone he later beheaded). Henry opposed the Reformation, was made "Defender of the Faith" by the Pope, and was quite Roman Catholic...

... until the Pope refused to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon in 1527. Over the course of the next 10 years Henry VIII in stages would extract England from the authority of Rome and take over the new Church of England. Religious anarchy began to knock at the door. By 1539 Henry had reaffirmed transubstantiation, celibacy of priests, confession, etc and was trying to get control of English translations of the Bible.

2. The English Reformation didn't really begin taking on a more positive direction, in my opinion, until Thomas Cranmer put together the Book of Common Prayer in 1549.  As this book of Anglican faith and practice developed, it would come to include the Thirty-Nine Articles, the grandpappy of Methodist and Wesleyan statements (although not without alteration). These articles were not a complete statement of faith, but located the Anglican church in relation to the rest of Christendom at the time.

a. For example, they placed the locus of authority for the church in Scripture. You can't require believers to believe or do anything that can't be demonstrated through Scripture. The locus here has to do with salvation, however, not belief about any topic whatsoever. The Apocrypha were included for instruction, but not for doctrine (deuterocanonical, as for Jerome).

b. In general, the Thirty-Nine Articles bear the strong influence of the High Reformation.  There is justification by faith here.  There is Calvin's predestination and the continuance of a sin nature after faith. There is the rejection of transubstantiation but continuation of infant baptism. Priests can marry. Only two sacraments. It opposes those Anabaptists who shared their possessions in common, as well as speaking in other tongues. It was possible to commit the unpardonable sin.

3. Much of Anglicanism would follow a Calvinist route, and Wesley himself said he was a "hair's breadth" from Calvin. However, England in the 1700s was impacted fairly strongly by the thinking of another individual who came out of Calvinism, Jacobus Arminius (d. 1609).

Some of the most important distinctions included that God's election was conditional on our choice, that God desired everyone to be saved, and that the atonement was thus in theory for everyone. Wesley would follow this line of thought rather than that of Calvinist Anglicanism.

4. Wesley represents a true amalgam of influences.  At Oxford he drank deeply from Roman Catholic writers on the goal of holiness.  He took justification by faith from Luther and extended Calvin's more pessimistic version of sanctification to stretch toward Catholic holiness.  He took prevenient grace from Arminius.

But the real missing piece of the equation was the Pietism of the Moravians.  Very unusual for the day, they believed they knew they were saved. Wesley's thinking took on an experiential dimension. In 1738 he felt his heart strangely warmed. He would understand holiness as another experience to be pursued in the life of a believer, "Christian perfection."

5. The Wesleyan tradition is not part of the high Reformation. Justification by faith, yes. But not Luther's "at the same time sinner and saint." Depraved and elected, yes, but not determined and requiring faithfulness to be maintained. The Bible sufficient for salvation, yes? But much to learn from tradition as well.

Happy Reformation Day!

Who are you?

Did some thinking last week about this question.  Who are you?

1. A lot of who you are is who others think you are.
Whether we like it or not, a good deal of who we are is a matter of who others think we are.  It is real because it has real consequences.

• What others think of me (perception is a reality)
• What I think of myself (whether my self-perception is "accurate" or not)
• What God thinks of me - P.S. This is who I truly am and it no doubt includes all the complexity of this post and more. At root, he considers me to be created in his image, which makes me immensely valuable. 

2. A lot of who we are is determined, outside our control.

• We are more than animals, but we are animals. We have drives and urges. Much of what we call our sinful nature relates to our animal drives gone amok.  
• groups I didn't choose - A person does not generally choose to be Irish or female, yet these group memberships are part of our default identity.
• default self-concept - By default, we start with a sense of ourselves that intrinsically relates to our genetics and environment

3. In Western culture, we especially consider identity a matter of what we are by choice.

• self-concept by choice (who we decide to be, despite our default self-concept)
• decision for/against God (and what God does to me in response) - From a Christian perspective, this aspect of my choice is most determinative of who I am, not least because God changes us in response to our choice for him.
• my choices, actions, patterns of behavior - These relate to the previous one.  Probably more than any other factor, our choices in the face of all the forces around us indicate who we are. They are embodiments of the attitudes we choose to embrace.

Persuasive versus Coercive Leadership

Last week, in church leadership class at the seminary, we talked about whether God was a more coercive or persuasive leader. Does God orchestrate everything that happens in the world or is his normal operating mode to try to persuade us to make the right choices?

Have you ever heard the saying, "Don't ask a question you don't want an answer to?" Occasionally there is a calculus you make in leadership whether to use your power to lead a group or organization in a certain direction or to go through the process of building buy-in and consensus to get the group to own the direction you want to go.

Ideally, having everyone on board with a certain trajectory is much to be preferred. But the danger is that, having sought the approval of the group, you don't get it. In that case, moving forward would require even more force than before. If you ask a group what they think of a certain direction, they may say no.

So sometimes leaders use their power to set a change in motion without really asking. Or, they may only give the organization partial information, getting just enough buy-in to keep moving without the group really knowing what its in for until it's too late. Or, they may move a train so far along that it would take more and more force of opposition to stop it by the time it is put in the hands of the group.

There are clearly risks on both sides. If a leader believes a certain decision is very important, yet that it will face significant opposition or resistance, he or she may use the authority of his or her position to move in that direction without seeking the buy-in of the group until the train has already left the station. There are dangers here. It can be the last card a leader plays, an act of self-sacrifice.

A leader who takes this sort of risk better hope that the decision works, because the group will be looking for an opportunity to eat him or her alive.  If the risky manipulation falls on its face, the leader will probably be gone very soon. In a context where the people can boot you, a leader usually cannot play this card too often. Of course some leaders are good at this sort of thing and create a climate of passivity among a group.

So it's much to be preferred to get the buy-in and collaboration of a group--or at least to make the group feel like it's getting a say.  Unless the leader is a genius and absolutely right on everything, it's likely that the group has genuine insight into the consequences of a decision. Yes, there will almost always be nay-sayers. But the nay-sayers are probably right on some things. You want some of them around to point out the down side... you just don't want a majority of them around.

There is sometimes a hubris to leadership. I know the right decision for us to make. I'm the leader. Sometimes that's true. It would be interesting to know what percentage of the time it's false!

We could multiply examples. There's the health care law.  There's leadership of the House. There are many a general church decision. Pastors often have new directions in which they want their churches to go. No doubt you can think of an example in your context.

Goal-Setting in Marital Counseling (2)

I've already done a little summarizing of Stone's Strategies for Brief Pastoral Counseling.  Here's a summary of chapter 10:

Chapter 10: "The Necessity of Goal Setting and Counselor Flexibility in Efficient and Effective Couples Counseling"

This chapter starts with the assumption that a pastor must be careful with time management in the local church. The assumption is that most pastors will not have more than 10 hours a week to give to counseling. If you have one wedding a month, you might have 4 pre-marital counseling sessions. If you have one funeral a month, you might take up 4 hours that month to care for those who are left behind. If you have some individuals or couples you regularly meet with to counsel, it will be easy to fill up those 10 hours.

In this chapter, Frank Thomas focuses on a strategy in marital counseling that does not focus on past causes of problems but on what is potentially useful in their situation. What experiences, skills, and resources do they have? What can they actually do to alleviate their problems?

Thomas gives several basic principles for a “competency-based” type of counseling for relationships. One assumption is that change is inevitable. Most people engage a marital counselor because they are “stuck”. People tend to describe their situation in a static way, as if something is always happening a certain way or the state of their relationship is always a certain way. Movement can happen if they can identify exceptions—instances when the irritation was not happening or they were not thinking about that “state” of the relationship.

Counselees should set their own goals for counseling. Their motivation will be higher when they are headed in a direction they want to go. They should take a small, positive step as soon as possible.

“In pastoral care and counseling, carefully timed meetings that focus on what is changeable in the present and future are more effective than long-term, continuous counseling focused on the intractable past” (141). Focusing on the past may even make a situation more overwhelming. By contrast, the future can offer hope. “Efficient pastoral intervention seizes the moment of motivation, engages the couple’s resources, and establishes momentum.”

The chapter focuses on three basic principles in short-term marital counseling. The first is that brief counseling is not inferior to long-term counseling. Not only does the research indicate both to be comparable in effectiveness, but most counselors are not going to get a long-term commitment from their counselees anyway. The typical duration of counseling in a local church setting is two or three sessions. In short, no matter what you think the ideal is, you probably will only get time for brief counseling.

The second principle is goal-setting. Thomas considers goal-setting one of the most crucial tasks of a brief counselor’s “to do” list. Such goals must be important to those who are being counseled and should not be compromises. The goals need to be mutual so that both are motivated. So a commonly agreed goal might be to argue less rather than to fix a specific issue about which one or the other spouse tends to argue.

Goals should result in something positive rather than the absence of something negative. A future of “staying sober” is more likely than one of “not drinking”. So if the goal is “fighting less”, what would the couple be doing instead? What are they doing when they are not arguing?

Goals need to be small and focused on the beginning, not on the end or on the long term. It is obvious that goals need to be realistic—and realistic in the minds of everyone involved. “The surest way to continue a couple’s pattern of failure is to set a lofty standard for success that cannot be achieved incrementally” (144). The goal of “handling our disagreements more positively” is far more likely than “never arguing again”.

Goals need to be concrete, specific, and should have to do with behavior. The goals need to be observable to both individuals and the counselor (not in attitudes that you cannot see). It is important for feelings and ways of thinking to change too, but they are much harder to observe.

A final key principle is flexibility on the part of the counselor. Pastors need to be prepared to meet the needs of the people they counsel with a variety of responses. “It is the soul of wisdom to resist enshrining any single model or approach to counseling” (145). Empathy with counselees and showing that you value them is perhaps more important for success than a specific method. The counselor tries to relate to each member of a couple, one at a time, with respect and curiosity.

Flexibility is essential because there is no “normal” counselee, no “one size fits all”. The counselor must not start with pre-conceptions about what should happen but to connect with the couple and draw the necessary information from their conversations. The couple decides when they have achieved enough and whether they will return for more sessions.

This chapter ends with two case studies. The first involved a couple who only could agree that they needed help with their sex life. He wanted everything planned. She wanted everything spontaneous. Beyond the basic problem, they could not agree on any goals. The goal of one worked against the goal of the other. They both identified moments of “exception”, when the problem was not there, but these moments conflicted with each other. An encounter one considered an exception to the problem was the problem for the other.

One week, the counselor asked them not to talk about sex, just to do. That week was worse for both of them. The next week, he asked them not to have sex unless both agreed on every aspect of the encounter. He also had them separately write down “great little moments” so he could get a better feel for what both considered pleasant. He was following adages like, at times, “inaction may be the highest form of action” (148) and “The first rule of holes: When you are in one, stop digging” (149). He asked them only to talk about successful sexual experiences and only to offer ideas if one of them believed the idea could not fail. They found the metaphor of holding hands on a foggy road—he couldn’t see much to analyze and she could enjoy focusing on the next few yards ahead.

The second case study involved a divorced couple that was thinking about getting back together. He had an affair for six months after nine years of marriage, and they had divorced after fourteen years of marriage when she had found out. He had also made some bad business decisions that had hurt the family. The short term goal was to assess the direction and motivation they had to put the marriage back together.

During the second session, the counselor asked the former husband if he would leave the room for a moment and he agreed. The counselor asked her on a scale from one to ten, how motivated she was to get back together. She answered a three.

When he returned, the former husband was surprised to find her motivation so low. They both agreed on a pattern in their relationship. He pushed hard and she usually capitulated to his demands. The counselor met with her for a few more sessions. She was able to pay her bills, be a parent, and even thrive without him. A primary conclusion is that she would need to make significant movement in healing the hurt from the affair before she could even entertain the idea of remarriage.

The couple continued to meet and discuss their differences, but now they did so as equals. She was exhilarated by the thought of a future where she had a voice in the direction of her life—with or without her former husband. One of her most important insights was that she could only change herself. She could not change the past and she could not change her former husband.

The couple at that point continued to move forward on their own and the goal of the counseling session was achieved, namely, to assess the direction and motivation to get back together.

Good News for a Lifetime

Just wrote this:

"What does this fact mean for us [the meaning of the gospel]? In his book, King Jesus Gospel, Scot McKnight argues that it means we not focus narrowly on just trying to “get people saved.” That is to say, some parts of American Christianity focus quite heavily on getting people to “pray the sinner’s prayer” or get baptized. Preaching the gospel comes to be preaching people to cross an initial threshold into Christianity, getting them converted.

"But if the gospel centers on the good news that Jesus is king, then Jesus is not just king for a day. He is king for the rest of eternity. Believing in the good news cannot thus be something you do for a moment and then walk away. Accepting someone as a Lord is never a matter of a true/false test. A Lord is a master. Someone is not your master unless you do whatever they tell you to do.

"So the person who receives the gospel is someone who becomes a lifelong servant and follower of the Lord Jesus Christ. It may begin in a moment, but it never ends. Any narrow focus on the gospel as just salvation—let alone just how to get “saved”—deeply impoverishes it."

Paul, Romans, Political Chess (Acts 25)

1. So the Roman governor Felix has been looking for a bribe from Paul for a couple years. I do suspect that Paul brought a sizable amount of money to Jerusalem as a gift/peace offering to the church of Jerusalem. Paul seems to play dumb.

There are many places in the world where bribes are business as usual. Is it appropriate to pay a bribe to a government official to get medical supplies through customs and into a country, for example? It's a sign of a deficient system, yes, dare I say an inferior society. But can it simply be a cultural element that is considered appropriate for doing business in certain places, like a fee?  I suspect great wisdom is necessary here, not because of abstract rules (that answer, I think, is culturally unaware of how extensively our sense of ethics is affected by our own culture) but because of long term consequences.

2.  Festus forces Paul's hand. He suggests Paul go to Jerusalem to stand trial. If the earlier assassins kept their vow, they're all dead, but presumably there were others willing to take their place. The year is around AD60, six years before the Jewish War would break out and eventually spell Jerusalem's demise.

Paul's statement that he had not broken the Jewish Law or done anything against the temple or Caesar is significant. Now Luke has that on the record for posterity.

Paul appeals to Caesar, the right of a Roman citizen. He reminds me of Socrates here. Might be interesting to thumb through Plato's Apology and see if he says anything about being willing do die if he deserves it.  He willingly drank the hemlock after being convicted. Acts 4 also echoed the Apology, when Peter says it is better to obey God over mortals.

3. The rest of the chapter introduces Herod Agrippa II to us. This is the son of the Agrippa who killed the apostle James, son of Zebedee. Of all the Herods, he is the only one portrayed favorably in the New Testament. Herod the Great killed the babies in Bethlehem. Herod Antipas beheaded John the Baptist.

Again, a recurring theme Luke wanted to get across to his audience, is Paul's innocent (similar to Jesus). Festus tells Agrippa that the complaints about Paul had to do with Jewish matters and his claim that Jesus rose from the dead. Agrippa wants to hear him.

4. Typical monologuing by Festus. What should I charge him with? Help me out here, Agrippa. He has done nothing deserving of death. This again is a nudge to the audience, I think. Paul should not have been put to death by Caesar. Christians are not troublemakers although others give them plenty of trouble...

The Gospel in Acts

The Noun: "Gospel"
1. The actual word "gospel" (euangelion) is only used twice in the book of Acts. In Acts 15:7, Peter tells the Jerusalem meeting that God first chose to bring the gospel to the Gentiles through him. This good news was something that they believed. To get a better idea of what this good news was, therefore, we would look at the sermon of Acts 10.

2. The second instance is in Acts 20:24, where Paul says that his ministry is to testify to the "gospel of the grace of God." In this instance, it would be natural to take "grace of God" as the content of the good news. Paul's ministry involved testifying to the good news about the grace of God. Whatever the gospel is, it exemplifies the grace of God in specific ways.

The noun does not occur at all in Luke.

The Verb: "To Preach the Gospel"
The verb form, "to proclaim the good news" (euangelizomai) is probably more helpful in honing in on just want this good news is. The verb appears 15 times in Acts and 10 times in Luke.

1. In one translation of Acts 5:42, Peter and others preach the good news that Jesus is the Christ. This type of good news would fit with the Hellenistic use of the word to announce the birth of a future emperor or a military victory.  "Jesus is the Christ" is the announcement that the king has arrived.

2. Acts 8:4 seems to have a similar sense. Philip and others who are scattered preach good news of "the word." What is the word? The next verse suggests the word was as in 5:42.  Philip was "preaching the Christ" to the Samaritans. We can presume that the word means the same later in the chapter (8:25).

In 8:35 Philip shares the good news with the Ethiopian eunuch. It is also the good news about Jesus. Then Philip continues to share it in the towns of that area (8:40).

3. In Acts 10:36, the message of good news is "peace through Jesus Christ," who is "Lord of all things." Again, we remember Augustus and the good news of his kingship when he ushered in the pax Romana ("Roman peace").

What is nice about Acts 10 here is that Peter goes on to give the details of what this good news of the Christ is (and remember that 15:7 pointed us back to this passage in reference to what the gospel was). The gospel was the word that was proclaimed throughout Judea.  It involved a story that started with John the Baptist.

The story involved casting out demons. But the preaching about him was that he was ordained to be the judge of the living and the dead (10:42). In other words, the good news centers on his kingship. However, it also involves the possibility of forgiveness for sins (10:43).

4. Acts 11:40 - They preached the Lord Jesus (Jesus is Lord, Jesus is king again).

• Acts 13:32 - The good news promised is that Jesus is God's Son (13:33), his king.
• Acts 14:7 - Doesn't give contextual clues about what they're preaching but presumably the same.

5. Acts 14:15 - The good news here may be the same, but Paul approaches it much more broadly in terms of the right God rather than the right king.

• Acts 14:21 - No specifics mentioned, but the message elicits disciples or followers, which we would expect of a king.
• Acts 15:35 - Paul and Barnabas continue to preach the good news at Antioch. The good news is the "word of the Lord" (cf. 8:25). Since Lord relates to Jesus as king, it fits again that the center of the good news is the enthronement of Jesus as king.
• Acts 16:10 - no specific content given

6. The final instance of preaching the gospel is in Acts 17:18. Here, the Athenians connect the good news with the announcement of Jesus' resurrection. From elsewhere in Acts, we know that the resurrection for Luke represented Jesus' enthronement as Messiah, Lord, and Son of God... that is, as king.

7. As far as the Gospel of Luke is concerned. Luke 1:19 indicates that the coming ministry of John the Baptist can be good news. The birth of Jesus the Savior is good news in 2:10 (cf. Augustus). John the Baptist preaches the good news of Jesus' arrival in 3:18.

Jesus preaches the good news of the arrival of the kingdom of God (4:43; cf. 8:1; 9:6; 16:16; 20:1) and predicts its demonstrating in his healing ministry (4:18; cf. 7:22).

Summary
The good news in Acts centers on the inauguration of Jesus' kingship, with all that it entails. There is continuity between the good news of Jesus reign and the good news in Luke of the arrival of the kingdom of God, for Jesus is the king God is installing. Entailed in that kingship is of course the peace of his reign, forgiveness of sins, the judgment of God's enemies.

A Case for Brief Pastoral Counseling 1

I've been summarizing a few chapters from a book called Strategies for Brief Pastoral Counseling. Although clearly the author, Howard Stone, is fighting a battle I don't know, much of what he says fits my intuitions across the board about the penchant of many Christian personalities to want to determine "who you are" before they address "what you do." The result is often narcissistic navel gazing of which I did a plenty in college. This is one personality preference, but not the only one.

The prevailing model of counseling in the United States for a century has been long term counseling. Especially in the model inspired by Freud, the goal was to dig down deep into a person's head and find the underlying causes of problems. The idea was that a person may not even be aware of the real reasons for their current struggles and that if you cannot get at the root, you are just treating the symptoms rather than the real causes. Any solution would at best be short term. You may have heard the stereotypical question, "Now tell me about your mother."

Research does not bear out this approach. Howard Stone, the editor and primary voice behind this book, argues strongly for brief rather than long-term counseling.  Research shows that long-term, get at the root models are no more effective than shorter, get moving models.

"In actual practice, the extensive exploration of a person’s history and the discovery of a problem’s sources generally are not prerequisites for effective and lasting change" (7). Stone is not arguing that a counselor should ignore or gloss over history. Rather, he is claiming that remarkable progress can be made with little or no focus on underlying causes. Indeed, even if one knows the underlying causes of a problem, it is in no way a guarantee that a person will make any progress in solving it.

The task of the counselor is not to make a person perfect but to get them moving in the right direction. Most people resolve their problems by themselves without intervention. The goal is not to change the personality of the counseled or to resolve even most of people’s problems. “Brief pastoral counseling has a considerably more modest goal: to get people moving in a positive direction of their own choosing and then get out of the way” (16).
_________________
"Motion brings emotion."  Theory is an abstraction from doing, and it is only one personality that wants to complete the whole abstraction before actually doing anything. That is a legitimate personality (and one that often dominates academics and theology), but it often assumes it is the only valid approach. Treatment can begin before the diagnosis is completed--because when it comes to the human psyche, the diagnosis may never be completed.

The "theory, then practice" approach tends to dominate academics, but we can raise some theoretical questions about it. Ideas do not exist apart from the world of which they are abstractions (Plato was a moron). The purpose of ideas is to help us manipulate the real world. The larger the ideological system, the greater the skew of the real world. (By the way, the Bible is a collection of local ideas--the grander the theological system of reading the Bible, the less of the real Bible it actually is)

A more effective pedagogical (as well as theoretical) model is to present a critical mass of ideas in order to begin to engage the real world. Then return to ideas and refine. Then return to the real world. For most people this cycle of "running the car, looking at the engine, then running the car again" will be the most effective style of pedagogy... or counseling.

Ways the NT Uses the OT

Someone asked if I would post something like the following, so here it is.  What are the ways in which the New Testament uses the Old Testament?

1. Literal Interpretation
There are clearly instances where the NT takes an OT passage literally. For example, the examples/exempla of Hebrews 11 take individuals from Old Testament stories as literal examples of faith.  Abraham demonstrated faith when he left Ur and Haran for what would become the land of Egypt (Heb. 11:8). Of course here we are not surprised that the NT interpretation took place within the framework of understanding of the interpreter (e.g., contemporary traditions of authorship were assumed). The point here is that the author's intention was to interpret the OT literally.

Hebrews uses the "lesser to greater" argument several times on the basis of a literal interpretation. If the punishment under the old covenant was severe, and the new covenant is greater than the old covenant, then the punishment under the new covenant should be greater than the punishment under the old covenant.

2. Typological Interpretation
The category of typology is an invention of the Protestant Reformation, as it was important for some Protestants to make a distinction between allegorical interpretation (which was considered bad by the Reformers and associated with Roman Catholic interpretation) and typological interpretation (which was said to take the literal meaning seriously and was thus considered acceptable). 

An example is when Hebrews 3-4 consider the pilgrimage of Israel from Egypt to Canaan as analogous to the audience's pilgrimage in faith. The audience did not want to be like the wilderness generation. They left Egypt but did not enter into God's rest because of disbelief. So the audience was in danger of not entering into God's rest, of not making it to the promised heavenly homeland.  

3. Allegorical Interpretation
The New Testament obviously uses allegory from time to time and doesn't blink an eye. The most obvious example is in Galatians 4:21-31, where Paul even uses the word allegoreo.  Sarah and Hagar become allegories for the heavenly and earthly Jerusalem--clearly nothing that Genesis itself had in mind.  Nor is it based on a contextual reading of the story.

Another example include when Paul makes Deuteronomy 25:4 an allegory for supporting ministers. "Do not muzzle an ox when it is treading grain" becomes "Take care of your ministers when they are ministering to you." Some might argue that this comparison is typology because there is a similarity between the original meaning and the NT meaning.  That is possible in our breakdown, but it would have been an allegory in NT times. 

4. Spiritual Interpretation
In a number of instances, Hebrews changes the meaning of Old Testament words by a number of techniques. These include techniques like 1) excerpting words from a passage, 2) putting the words on Jesus' mouth, or 3) mixing more than one passage together.

a. excerpting
Matthew especially will lift a set of words from somewhere in the OT and put them against the context of Jesus. This method reminds us of the "pesher" interpretation of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Matthew 2:15 lifts the words "out of Egypt I called my son" and uses them not of Israel leaving Egypt but of the baby Jesus leaving Egypt. Matthew gives us no indication that he is comparing the exodus with Jesus leading us out of sin. The comparison is between the two sons and the geographical leaving of Egypt.

b. scripting
In a number of places, NT authors put OT words on Jesus' lips. Hebrews 10, for example, puts Psalm 40 on Jesus' lips in a way that obviously was not part of the original meaning.  The psalmist originally was saying that God would rather have obedience that animal sacrifices. Put on the lips of Jesus in Hebrews, the psalm comes to point to the end of the sacrificial system altogether in light of the body of Jesus on the cross. Hebrews makes this point, by the way, on the basis of a difference in the Greek text of Psalm 40 from the original Hebrew text.

c. cross-reference
Biblical authors, like other interpreters of their day, sometimes mixed diverse biblical passages together.  Gezera shewa, for example, was a technique that joined passages on the basis of stitch words or words two passages hold in common.

The NT authors traditionally mixed together Psalm 8 and Psalm 110, two psalms that originally had nothing to do with each other on the basis of things being under feet. Hebrews 4 mixes together Psalm 95 with Genesis 2:2-3 by the theme of "rest."

We might call the above examples types of "spiritual interpretation" because the passages are taken out of context and given a distinctly new significance.

Grudem 15b: Creation not God

B. Creation is Distinct and Dependent
Summary
The creation is something entirely distinct from God, yet the creation is always dependent on God. God is "far above" the creation, greater than the creation (God is transcendent).  Yet God is always involved with the creation and is present in all the creation (God is immanent).

Grudem presents a number of theological mistakes that have an improper balance of these two truths. Materialism treats the creation as if it is all that exists (practical materialists are those whose lives are oriented around possessions and money).  On the other hand, pantheism equates God with the creation. The world becomes god.  Views that see the world as an "emanation" from God are similar to pantheism because the world is not distinct from God.

Dualism sees the creation as having existed side by side next to God as another ultimate reality.  In other words, it does not see God as creating the universe out of nothing. Is God stronger than the creation?  Will God win out over evil?

Deism then sees God as transcendent but not immanent.  That is to say, God created the universe but is not currently involved in it.  God is like a clock-maker who wound up the world and then left it running on its own.

Evaluation
Grudem's treatment of these unorthodox views is accurate and appropriate. The only place where perhaps it could be improved is in his distinction between transcendent and immanent. I have argued previously that Grudem does not have a fully developed sense of what it means to say that God's essence must be outside the creation since he created the universe out of nothing.

That is to say, creation was not when the Trinity, existing in emptiness, put matter into space. Creation was when God created both the emptiness and the matter in it. The transcendence of God, in relation to the creation, is thus much more than the fact that God is greater and "far above" the creation.  It is that his essence exists "outside" or "other" than this universe, including its space.  God's immanence is thus the presence of his Spirit everywhere within this universe and its space.

C. God Created the Universe to Show His Glory
Summary
"The entire creation is intended to show God's glory" (271). "One glance at the sun of the stars convinces us of God's infinite power."  God did not have to create the universe.  It was a "totally free act of God."  God does not need us in any way.

The creation shows us God's power and wisdom.  And God has made us in such a way that we enjoy creating things too.  We gain fulfillment when we imitate God.

Evaluation
Grudem is completely orthodox here, although he misses an important dimension.  Calvinists of Grudem's sort often talk about the creation as if its sole purpose is to give glory to God. As the Westminster Shorter Catechism says, the primary purpose of humanity is to glorify God and serve him forever. True though it is, it is not the whole equation.

The part that Grudem and those like him tend to miss is the fact that God created the universe to enjoy it as well.  Calvinists of this sort tend to see God as the greatest narcissist there ever was, as if he only created us so that we would tell him how great he is.  But God genuinely loves the creation.  He genuinely enjoys us.  He created the universe as a legitimate object of love and glory in itself.

D. The Creation was "Very Good"
Summary
Since God made the creation to glorify himself, we are not surprised that it does, that it is good. Genesis 1 of course says so. "The material creation is still good in God's sight and should be seen as 'good' by us as well" (272).

Grudem thus teaches it is wrong to have a "false asceticism" that believes we should not enjoy the creation (including the pleasures of marriage and food).  We should feel free to have a "positive, thankful, joyful use of it," 272). God has given us enjoyment of it, so the proper industrial and technological development of it is legitimate.

Evaluation
Certainly Grudem is orthodox to teach that the creation is not intrinsically evil. What is a little surprising is that he does not say anything about the fallenness of creation, which was a key teaching of Augustine and a common Christian belief throughout the centuries. That is to say, most Christians in history have believed that it was not only humanity that became subject to sin when Adam sinned but that creation itself became subject to corruption and decay at that time.

To be sure, not all Christians hold this belief, perhaps especially those who believe in some form of theistic evolution. Paul perhaps more exactly saw the creation as being under the power of evil at this present time, due to an intrinsic weakness (not sinfulness) that it had. Nevertheless, Grudem expresses a fully orthodox sentiment when he sees the creation as good in itself. We are free to enjoy the creation, to exercise, and to explore the greatness God has put into it.

Grudem also misses the fact that God created us to be good stewards of it.  He did not create us to abuse it or exploit it.  That would be treating his property carelessly.

Grateful...

I am grateful to those Republicans in the House and Senate who, in the face of great pressure to vote against reopening the government, agreed to compromise.  You know it had to be a sacrifice for them. It looks like they thought it was the right thing to do, not the easy thing to do.

That, to me, is the sign of a true statesman, someone who can lose graciously for the greater good. In this case, it was to make a choice for what they believed was the lesser of two evils.  I have no doubt but that Senator Dan Coats of Indiana and my own Congresswoman Susan Brooks believe with all their heart that the Affordable Care Act is a bad thing. But they apparently thought defaulting on our debt obligations and keeping government employees out of work was a worse evil at this moment.

There are spiritual lessons here. Jesus was not an idealist. That was the Pharisees we love to hate. Jesus believed in getting an ox out of a ditch even if it was the Sabbath (Luke 14:5).  Paul urged the Corinthians that it was better to be cheated and lose, even when you were in the right, for the greater good (1 Cor. 6:7). Jesus' death was the greatest example of a person who was right but surrendered to being wronged for the greater good.

My point is that there is a time to compromise and there is a time to lose. There is even a time to lose a battle so you can fight another day. I remember talking to some missionaries in Sierra Leone who struggled with whether to leave the country during civil war. With some disgrace, they decided it was better to live and be able to come back than to die and never be able to minister there again. No doubt they had to wrestle with the shame of this decision, maybe even the anger of those left behind, but they believed it was the best course of action.

A pastor who operates with a "my way or the highway" attitude is a pastor destined for failure. And we know plenty of laypeople in the church with that attitude--we don't think highly of them. In the university, there is a time when you fight for your outcome. Then there is a time when you realize you've lost the argument and you yield to the majority. Those who don't are not people you ultimately want around in the long term.

The heart of the gospel is a story of winning by losing.  It's about the last being first.  Any construction of Jesus that sees him as a "win at all costs" down here kind of Messiah needs to go back to the Bible. That's the mistake Peter made when he corrected Jesus about going to Jerusalem to die. "No, Jesus," Peter thought.  "Messiahs don't die.  They always win."

So let me express my gratitude to Boehner and Cantor for voting yes.  Surely it had to be the right thing to do for them to vote against all the political pressure going the other way.  My respect for them has gone up greatly.

Compromise is not always a dirty word. There's a another term for it--mutual submission.

Philosophy of History Video

Here's a 34 minute video on the philosophy of history for a class. It's both too long and yet too hurried. But it at least mentions a lot of key issues.

First Century Lawyers (Acts 24)

1. The high priest Ananias (is this the Ananus who put James the brother of Jesus to death in 62?) goes up with a lawyer named Tertullus to see the procurator, Felix about Paul. Both Tertullus and Paul completely flatter the guy.

Tertullus: What tremendous reforms you've brought!
Paul: You are so knowledgeable I am very happy to make my defense.

2. Tertullus calls Paul a ringleader of the Nazarenes (a great put down indeed ;-) and a troublemaker who went around stirring up riots.  He says he tried to defile the temple. By the way, verse 7 appears to be an addition to the KJV text. In the verse, Tertullus faults Claudius Lysias for stealing Paul away from them.

Paul denies it. I didn't argue with anyone at the temple. I haven't stirred up things in the synagogue or anywhere else in Jerusalem. He does admit to being a follower of the Way. He believes in the resurrection of the righteous and the wicked.

3. Finally, evidence of the offering!  He came to Jerusalem with gifts for the poor.  Paul indicates that the ones accusing him are from Asia (i.e., Ephesus).

4. Felix wants a bribe. He keeps calling for Paul.  Paul keeps on talking. Felix gets no money.  Paul expounds on righteousness, self-control, and judgment instead.

5. Two years.  Paul runs out the clock until the next governor arrives in maybe AD60, Festus.

MOOC, anyone?

I think anyone can teach a MOOC using Blackboard's public face, CourseSites.  It occurred to me that instead of blogging as much in the Spring, I could offer an informal, not for credit course for 8 weeks or so.  I'd probably charge $10 for registration.

I doubt enough people would be interested to make it worth the time, but I thought I'd throw it out there. Here are some of the courses I've taught over the years: Greek, Hebrew, Latin, Paul's letters, Hebrews, Jewish literature between the testaments, Jewish afterlife traditions, Bible Study Method, New Testament Survey, philosophy, ???.  Languages would require multiple courses to get someone to where they could pass a competency exam somewhere.

The format of a MOOC is usually a series of videos with quizzes, optional discussion, and sometimes a final project.  Anyone interested?  If you were, what would pique your interest?

A random thought...

Why do they keep trying to kill me? (Acts 23b)

1. Romans are always rescuing Paul from the fray. The Roman commander rescues Paul from the Sanhedrin, the division between Pharisees and Sadducees is so great.  Some zealous Jews take a vow that they will not eat or drink until Paul is dead.

And they died, that is, if they kept their vow.  We find out that Paul had a sister and nephew in the city. The nephew catches wind of the plot, tells Paul, tells the commander. Instead of sending Paul to the Sanhedrin, Paul is shipped up at night to the coast, to Caesarea.

Fun to think that Paul had a sister in Jerusalem.  Was she older?  Did Paul go to live with her when he was young?  Or did he make it possible for some of his family to move south from Tarsus when he was rising the ranks of the Pharisees?

2. Paul did nothing worthy of death or imprisonment.  So says Claudius Lysias, the Roman commander. On the hypothesis that Acts is an amicus brief for his appearance before Nero, this would be a not so subtle hint to Nero.  I don't think that's likely because of the dating of Acts. The comment corroborates the sense that even though Nero put Paul to death, he was innocent. He was not the troublemaker.

By the way, the letter of Claudius Lysias is an example of an ancient letter--X to Y, Greetings, Body of Letter. The KJV adds a "farewell," a good example of how tradition smoothed things out.

Sadducees believed in angels (Acts 22b-23a)

1. In the latter part of Acts 22, we learn that Paul was born a Roman citizen. This implies a certain status in the Roman world. It fits with the idea that, back home, he was more the boss of the company than a skilled worker.

2. Paul appears before the Sanhedrin in Acts 23, the Jewish ruling council. He says his conscience is clear. The high priest has him smacked. He says, "The Lord will strike you, you whitewashed wall." Then he realizes it's the high priest and he apologizes, quotes Scripture. I always found that sequence a little funny.

He realizes it's a divided house between Pharisees and Sadducees. He says that he's only in trouble because he believes in the resurrection. That divides the house. The Pharisees start arguing with the Sadducees and Paul just sits back and enjoys.

23:8, however, is a very significant verse, even though hard to understand. It says that the Sadducees do not believe in resurrection, neither angel nor spirit, but the Pharisees confess both. This verse has sometimes been taken to mean that Sadducees did not believe in angels (and, anachronistically, people used to associate them with modern liberals who didn't believe in the supernatural--a good example of how easy it is to infect our interpretation with our own context).

But this would be the only evidence anywhere to suggest Sadducees didn't believe in angels. (the idea that Sadducees only followed the Law and not the other parts of the OT is similarly based on the contested interpretation of a single statement in Josephus. By the way, there are angels in the Law). And what is worse, the "no angels" interpretation of this verse seems wrong.

If you look at the structure of this verse, it seems to go something like the following:

• Sadducees do not believe in resurrection...
• Neither in the angel form nor the spirit form...
• But Pharisees confess both types of resurrection

So the question becomes, what is angel resurrection and what is spirit resurrection? This is a good example of how we read our categories into the biblical texts and say we have a biblical worldview. The distinction between material and immaterial, that we generally apply to these issues, comes from Descartes in the 1500s and not from the Bible. The lines they drew around reality were different in biblical times.

So the difference between embodied/corporeal and disembodied/incorporeal for them was not the same as the Cartesian difference between material/immaterial. Spirits were thinner material for them but still material. Spirit was breath and wind. To be embodied might mean a different material or a thicker material but still material.

So what is the difference between angels and spirits? Some thought of angels as spirits (e.g., Heb. 1:14). But it's possible that Luke thought of angels as more embodied than spirits. NT Wright (Resurrection of the Son of God) has suggested that Acts 23:8 is talking about the intermediate state of the dead. When the house church thinks Peter is dead, they wonder if it is his angel at the door (12:15).

After years of pondering this one, I remain puzzled. Do only special people become angels at death in Luke's thinking?  After years of us telling the people in our churches that you don't become angels at death and that angels aren't good people who died, we see that there was actually a biblical basis for this idea! An angel serves as a messenger of God.

But Luke seems to have another intermediate category for spirits. And neither of these seem to be the same as our resurrection body, for Jesus has flesh and bones in Luke 24:39. In that verse, Jesus contrasts a spirit with his resurrection body, which had flesh and bones.

An important take-away here is to remember that the books of the Bible were revealed in the categories of their day. Just as the universe is not three stories (Phil. 2:10) and the stars aren't in between the waters above and the waters beneath (Gen. 1), we should not confuse the form in which the revelation comes for the substance of the revelation. Biblical cosmologies came in ancient clothing and rarely if ever were the revealed point being made, only the envelope in which it came.

Balancing the Proverbs

My pastor this morning preached on being excellent in your work. It reminded me of one proverb my father passed on in the form of, "Anything worth doing is worth doing right."  There's also I another proverb I heard on his lips more rarely, "Good enough for who it's for."

The great thing about proverbs is, as I think Steve Lennox has said, sometimes they're true.  And of course, sometimes they don't apply. Wisdom is knowing when to apply which or even when to preach which. One day begs for the call to perfection. Another begs for preaching against perfectionism.

It might be nice to preach some proverbs in pairs, two point sermons.  Point 1 gives the one side and point 2 the other.  Both are true.

Discernment is knowing when to use which...