Good…good…good…good…good…good…very good…not good.
Because I trust God’s first seven assessments of his creation, I have no reason to doubt his eighth assessment. But this is not about me theologizing about what “It is not good for the man to be alone” means for humanity. This is about me reflecting upon how my own primeval (earliest days) baggage bumps into and finds meaning in light of God’s words and actions in his Primeval narrative (Genesis 1-11).
I want to blame my teenage yearnings for a girlfriend on the music of the 70’s. I have no idea if today’s music has a theme, but the 70’s had a constant flow of heart-wrenchingly romantic music for those of us put off by hard rock. My buddies and I were really into pop music. We had AM radio, and listened faithfully every week to American Top 40. We also had the Midnight Special every Friday night. So my particular subculture had a steady diet of love songs: Precious and Few, More than a Woman, How Deep is Your Love (OK, everything by the Bee Gees except Jive Talkin'), She’s Gone, You Make me Feel Brand New, Don’t Pull Your Love out on Me, Walk Away Renee, Daisy Jane, Sarah Smile, Alone Again Naturally, Ain’t no Mountain High Enough, All by Myself, After the Love has Gone, Midnight Blue, I Like Dreamin', Don’t go Breakin' my Heart, I’d Really Love to See You Tonight.
In high school I actually never had what you would call a long term relationship with a girl. Truth be told, I never had what you’d call an actually serious relationship with a girl. OK, I never had anything resembling a relationship with a girl. Well, while I’m at it I may as well confess that I never had a date. There. I said it.
What I did have were crushes. For most of jr and sr high school I think I averaged about one crush a week. Of course no girl ever got to enjoy the amusement of realizing they were the object of my brief (but intense) interest. I was too afraid to talk to a girl, and not quite sick enough to be a stalker. But I was one lonely boy. Thankfully, my buddies were afraid to talk to girls too, so we just got together and talked about girls. But we were all quite sure that getting together to talk about girls was different from (likely inferior to) actually having a girlfriend.
Going away to Briercrest Bible Institute, I gravitated to a gang of guys equally afraid of (but highly interested in) girls. We’d get together and talk about girls. And laugh our heads off at the thought that if we ever walked up to a girl to ask her out, we’d just throw up on her. Now 30 years later, as a member of the faculty at Briercrest, I can’t imagine that there are any Briercrest guys as dorky as we were.
To make a long story short, I asked Anne out. The main reason I didn’t throw up on her was that her friend told me that if I asked Anne to serve with me at the senior banquet (we were juniors) that I could be assured Anne would say yes.
And to bring things right up to today, when I try to describe what being married to Anne means to me, I’m always afraid I’ll stray into idolatrous talk. My anchor, my rock, my life, my light, my joy, my love. It’s scary how important she is to me. I try to be very constant in thanking the Lord for her, in part as an exercise in keeping God #1.
As I said, I won’t theologize beyond what it means to me personally that “it is not good that the man should be alone.” What it means to me is simply this: here is part of the Bible that is near and dear to me. I totally identify with it, and I feel like I’m living it. It reads like such an understatement, but wow, what a blessing that it is my real-life testimony: God has given me a “suitable companion.”
Friday, March 26, 2010
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Jim's Primeval Journey: Curiosity
I am enchanted with Genesis 1-11. I get goosebumps. God’s word on how it all started. I think a lot about the stuff in those few chapters. It has such a cool nickname: The Primeval Narrative. “Belonging to the first or earliest ages.” More goosebumps.
Another thing I think a lot about is my baggage. I live with debris from my own “earliest ages.” I had wonderful Christian parents and a great brother and sister, all the essentials and a bunch of happy adventures. Nothing falling into the categories normally thought to require therapy or steps or healing. But I’ve still got stuff. And stuff is stuff. I live with it because it shaped me.
In a creepy, cool way, my pondering of the Primeval Narrative and my processing of childhood occasionally meet up. The revelations about our primeval history speak into the musings about my own “primeval history.” No surprise here: approaching the Bible, I bring all my baggage. As I try to interpret the Bible, it interprets me. Helpfully.
I was curious. I was filled with curiosity about bugs, woods, animals, clouds, stars, rocks. I assume you were too; it’s just the stuff of being a kid. Kid’s stuff – but real and wondrous. Here’s how it was for me. Being a boy in the 60’s, scientific discovery was the air we breathed. The space race was the biggest and most obvious. I was 10 when we made it to the moon. But there were other strong voices. My teachers in grades 4, 5 and 6 were three men who had not lost their sense of wonder. All three: Mr. Haakenson, Mr. Hitzeman, and Mr. Bylund were just big kids when it came to science. They had the bug, and it was contagious. I think all us boys aspired to be scientists because of those men.
I heard other voices too: National Geographic specials on PBS, Jacques Cousteau’s adventures, the specials about the Craighead family and their adventures in the American west, books from Scholastic Book Services, especially the Danny Dunn science adventure books, and “The Adventures of the Mad Scientist’s Club.” I had the science and nature bug so bad that I used my allowance money to collect at least a dozen Golden Nature Guides on rocks, fossils, zoology, pond life, mammals, reptiles and amphibians, trees…
And our family adventures fed my curiosity about nature. Fishing for sunfish and crappies with Dad and Bob fed the dreams for future adventures in nature. Archery became a major summer hobby for Bob and me, and fed a longing for adventure and exploration. But when I got into rocks, that was the quantum leap for me: hunting for agates in northern Minnesota, using paper route money to buy specimens at rock shops, reading books about rock collecting and geology, fossil hunting along the bluffs of the Mississippi River.
I won’t try to sort out all the pieces that led me to choose ministry over minerals (theology over geology – sorry). But the kid still lives. And this time of year, the bug takes hold – I get infected all over again.
“The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it…So out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all the livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field.” (Genesis 2:15, 19, 20). Adam was a gardener and a zoologist—with occasional goosebumps, I bet.
This aspect of my boyhood—a consuming, thrilling curiosity about the wonders of creation—really is a God thing. I know we rightly end up in Romans 1 and the theological assertion that God’s existence is evident in his creation. I know that, and I always end up there. But today, I’m doing what I did countless times as a boy: I’m lingering, enjoying the wonders, and rubbing down goosebumps.
Another thing I think a lot about is my baggage. I live with debris from my own “earliest ages.” I had wonderful Christian parents and a great brother and sister, all the essentials and a bunch of happy adventures. Nothing falling into the categories normally thought to require therapy or steps or healing. But I’ve still got stuff. And stuff is stuff. I live with it because it shaped me.
In a creepy, cool way, my pondering of the Primeval Narrative and my processing of childhood occasionally meet up. The revelations about our primeval history speak into the musings about my own “primeval history.” No surprise here: approaching the Bible, I bring all my baggage. As I try to interpret the Bible, it interprets me. Helpfully.
I was curious. I was filled with curiosity about bugs, woods, animals, clouds, stars, rocks. I assume you were too; it’s just the stuff of being a kid. Kid’s stuff – but real and wondrous. Here’s how it was for me. Being a boy in the 60’s, scientific discovery was the air we breathed. The space race was the biggest and most obvious. I was 10 when we made it to the moon. But there were other strong voices. My teachers in grades 4, 5 and 6 were three men who had not lost their sense of wonder. All three: Mr. Haakenson, Mr. Hitzeman, and Mr. Bylund were just big kids when it came to science. They had the bug, and it was contagious. I think all us boys aspired to be scientists because of those men.
I heard other voices too: National Geographic specials on PBS, Jacques Cousteau’s adventures, the specials about the Craighead family and their adventures in the American west, books from Scholastic Book Services, especially the Danny Dunn science adventure books, and “The Adventures of the Mad Scientist’s Club.” I had the science and nature bug so bad that I used my allowance money to collect at least a dozen Golden Nature Guides on rocks, fossils, zoology, pond life, mammals, reptiles and amphibians, trees…
And our family adventures fed my curiosity about nature. Fishing for sunfish and crappies with Dad and Bob fed the dreams for future adventures in nature. Archery became a major summer hobby for Bob and me, and fed a longing for adventure and exploration. But when I got into rocks, that was the quantum leap for me: hunting for agates in northern Minnesota, using paper route money to buy specimens at rock shops, reading books about rock collecting and geology, fossil hunting along the bluffs of the Mississippi River.
I won’t try to sort out all the pieces that led me to choose ministry over minerals (theology over geology – sorry). But the kid still lives. And this time of year, the bug takes hold – I get infected all over again.
“The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it…So out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all the livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field.” (Genesis 2:15, 19, 20). Adam was a gardener and a zoologist—with occasional goosebumps, I bet.
This aspect of my boyhood—a consuming, thrilling curiosity about the wonders of creation—really is a God thing. I know we rightly end up in Romans 1 and the theological assertion that God’s existence is evident in his creation. I know that, and I always end up there. But today, I’m doing what I did countless times as a boy: I’m lingering, enjoying the wonders, and rubbing down goosebumps.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
"Living the Story" - My Hermeneutical Model
When I read a novel, I want to come away changed. That’s my hope. If it is a worthwhile story, and if I’ve “lived the story” as I’ve been reading it, then it impacts me. In “living the story” I am placing myself in a position to embrace the impact of the story.
“Living the Story” is what I call my hermeneutical model for Bible reading. It consists of 3 steps which closely parallel the steps of Jeannine Brown’s model in chapter 2 of her wonderful book Scripture as Communication. If you check it out, you’ll see that I’m following Brown closely, but saying the whole thing in my own—rather simple— way. (This is definitely an exercise in the classic study guide question: “Restate Brown’s hermeneutical model in your own words”).
1. First, I “enter the story world” of the particular Bible passage. When I call it the “story world” I’m not implying that it’s fiction. Believing in the supernatural goes hand in hand with believing in the God of the Bible, so I read the stories as real historical events. So I’m cool with Jonah and the fish, Balaam and his talking donkey, an ancient global flood, etc. But calling it the “story world” reminds me that there is a narrator telling me the story. And anytime you are hearing a story, you need to decide if you are willing to place yourself in the storyteller’s hands and risk being “changed” by his story. When I read the Bible, I’m going for it: I’m watching eagerly to see how this story will impact me. And what I really want to find is how the narrator himself wants me to be impacted. (The narrator, after all, is simply a convenient and useful term for the “voice” of the inspired author).
2. Second, because I have travelled to this (“long ago and far away”) story world, I know I’m going to need a “tour guide” to explain the foreign stuff. So it’s here in step 2 that I am seeking to navigate the gap between the “culture of the story world” and the “culture of Jim’s little prairie-dwelling, American-in-Saskatchewan life.” Every hermeneutical model has to deal with this gap, knowing that Old Testament instructions such as: “don’t plant 2 kinds of seed in one garden plot,” “don’t eat swine,” and “when you enter the land, kill all the Canaanites” had meaning and significance for Old Testament Israel. But what do they “mean to us today?” Well, the quest for meaning in these foreign passages has to start with figuring out what it meant to the first hearers of the story – the “original audience.” So we study their historical, cultural, and theological context, seeking to understand the impact that the narrator intended for his first listeners.
3. Finally, I seek to receive (embrace) that same “impact” in my own life. In whatever way the particular text was trying to impact the lives of those original hearers, I want to yield to that very same impact. I’m deliberately talking about the “impact” of a particular passage (when you may have expected “meaning”). But I’m committed to finding—and indeed expecting to find—the “appropriate impact” in the “intended meaning” of the text. But I really like the focus on “impact,” because I don’t think that God ever wants us to be done when we have “found the right meaning.” We are always to let that meaning—that message—change us. Also, if my reading mindset is merely a “quest is for the text’s meaning,” I am likely to settle for grabbing of a “universal principle” for “applying to my life” in some hypothetical future situation. Rather than gleaning principles for future use, I prefer the mindset of “looking for a text’s impact.” Because that’s what reading good stories is all about: in the very reading of the story, I am changed. And that is exactly what I want from God’s stories. When I read one of his stores, I want to come away changed.
“Living the Story” is what I call my hermeneutical model for Bible reading. It consists of 3 steps which closely parallel the steps of Jeannine Brown’s model in chapter 2 of her wonderful book Scripture as Communication. If you check it out, you’ll see that I’m following Brown closely, but saying the whole thing in my own—rather simple— way. (This is definitely an exercise in the classic study guide question: “Restate Brown’s hermeneutical model in your own words”).
1. First, I “enter the story world” of the particular Bible passage. When I call it the “story world” I’m not implying that it’s fiction. Believing in the supernatural goes hand in hand with believing in the God of the Bible, so I read the stories as real historical events. So I’m cool with Jonah and the fish, Balaam and his talking donkey, an ancient global flood, etc. But calling it the “story world” reminds me that there is a narrator telling me the story. And anytime you are hearing a story, you need to decide if you are willing to place yourself in the storyteller’s hands and risk being “changed” by his story. When I read the Bible, I’m going for it: I’m watching eagerly to see how this story will impact me. And what I really want to find is how the narrator himself wants me to be impacted. (The narrator, after all, is simply a convenient and useful term for the “voice” of the inspired author).
2. Second, because I have travelled to this (“long ago and far away”) story world, I know I’m going to need a “tour guide” to explain the foreign stuff. So it’s here in step 2 that I am seeking to navigate the gap between the “culture of the story world” and the “culture of Jim’s little prairie-dwelling, American-in-Saskatchewan life.” Every hermeneutical model has to deal with this gap, knowing that Old Testament instructions such as: “don’t plant 2 kinds of seed in one garden plot,” “don’t eat swine,” and “when you enter the land, kill all the Canaanites” had meaning and significance for Old Testament Israel. But what do they “mean to us today?” Well, the quest for meaning in these foreign passages has to start with figuring out what it meant to the first hearers of the story – the “original audience.” So we study their historical, cultural, and theological context, seeking to understand the impact that the narrator intended for his first listeners.
3. Finally, I seek to receive (embrace) that same “impact” in my own life. In whatever way the particular text was trying to impact the lives of those original hearers, I want to yield to that very same impact. I’m deliberately talking about the “impact” of a particular passage (when you may have expected “meaning”). But I’m committed to finding—and indeed expecting to find—the “appropriate impact” in the “intended meaning” of the text. But I really like the focus on “impact,” because I don’t think that God ever wants us to be done when we have “found the right meaning.” We are always to let that meaning—that message—change us. Also, if my reading mindset is merely a “quest is for the text’s meaning,” I am likely to settle for grabbing of a “universal principle” for “applying to my life” in some hypothetical future situation. Rather than gleaning principles for future use, I prefer the mindset of “looking for a text’s impact.” Because that’s what reading good stories is all about: in the very reading of the story, I am changed. And that is exactly what I want from God’s stories. When I read one of his stores, I want to come away changed.
Friday, March 12, 2010
Well, I guess it's a blog
I just poke away at trying to figure things out: how the obvious stuff in the Bible is relevant, why the confusing stuff in the Bible is so confusing, how we are to be impacted by any given Bible passage, how the abundant life and the promise of shalom is to become our daily reality, what it means that so much of God's message is poetry and story.
I'm not that bright, so if I can't say is simply, it means I just don't get it yet. With me, nothing is rocket science.
But if something grabs me I'll share it.
I'm goofier on Facebook.
I'm not that bright, so if I can't say is simply, it means I just don't get it yet. With me, nothing is rocket science.
But if something grabs me I'll share it.
I'm goofier on Facebook.
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