Contextuality

Last night in theology class I was exposed to a new understanding that is kind of rocking my world...or at least my understanding of the bible.

The Jews of Jesus' time did not live in a constant expectancy for the Messiah. It was something they would yearn for during times of oppression, such as when they were ruled over by the Romans, which is the context that Jesus arrived into. And even the concept of a Messiah was not one of a soul savior, but rather a king or ruler that would save them from subjugation by the Romans. This brings a whole new light on Jesus' question to Peter...who do the people say I am? and Who do you say I am? It makes sense that Jesus kept telling people he encountered to not tell others about him as noone knew what the Messiah was really about...ushering in the kingdom of God on earth, rather than a finite kingdom of man. All of this I had a sense of before, but the idea that the Jewish people were not waiting expectantly for a Messiah (perhaps in the way Christians are waiting for the return of Jesus with consistent expectancy) really makes me see Jesus and the Bible in a whole new light.

There's more. With regard to the New Testament, I knew that Paul's epistles were letters to church's that he helped plant. But what I had never really contemplated that these letters were the work of a missionary taking the gospel truths and putting them into a new culture, with new customs and understandings. So, the Bible we read, and accept as truth for us today, is actually a recontextualized presentation of the gospel. This has such huge implications for me...

This idea reminds me of the book Peace Child. It is about missionaries in Papau New Guinea that work to bring the gospel to a tribe that offer their children as sacrifices in order to make peace with another. The missionaries used this practice as a way of describing what God did by sending his Son to die to make peace with all of humanity. They contextualized the gospel to make it understandable to the tribe. But I wonder...what if we as first world, wealthy western people were told to accept this tribal understanding as the gospel and apply it to our lives. What would be the implications for us trying to understand and practice the gospel within the context of sacrificial killings of children, community/tribal living, etc.?

Would accepting their context mean that we would need to begin practicing sacrifices to understand the gospel? Would it mean that we need to start living in tribes so we can practice the gospel in the same way? Would it even make sense for us to engage their gospel since it is two very different cultures?

As most ideas, this one leads me to the idea of women in the church. Are we imposing a first century, Greco-Roman concept of women's roles to our 21st century context in order to stay faithful to the bible's teachings? If Paul had written planted churches in a society where women had equal status and education as men, would he have written the same admonitions of women? If Jesus entered our current world how would he have approached us? I can't imagine that he would enter with parables on the church steps and sermons on mountain tops.

In some ways all of this gives me a new excitement and hope about the biblical text. It holds so much more opportunity and freedom to me to explore the themes and ideas rather than the actual facts and propositions. In other ways it fills me with doubt and skepticism about the usefulness of the bible to me today. As we move further away from that context of 2,000 years ago, should the bible become less significant? It seems like in our stretching to make the bible relevant for today so much evil and harm is done toward others. What would the church look like if sought first the kingdom of God rather than the biblical text?

Snow Days

This has been my week...

Monday:
Arrive home from Thanksgiving with the family.

Yeah! There is snow on the ground, on my car, on the trees! We go to class and come out to a blizzard that makes the commute home a 3.5 hour tour!

Tuesday:

Snow Day! No Classes! Friends spent the night on Monday, so we have a snow day morning together playing SkipBo!

Wednesday:

Another snow fall is about to blow in, so class is cancelled again! Yeah! Friends go sledding in laundry baskets down our neighborhood hills. Oh, how I wish I knew how to upload movies so you could see them spinning down an icy hill...good times!

Wednesday Night:

Run an errand, drive up a hill that ends up being covered in ice. I get stuck, car comes around the corner, slides down the ice and hits me, and speeds off. Good news: the crash gets me unstuck, and the other cars license plate fell off! Bad news: my car is undriveable. I leave my car and proceed home to another snow day party where I enjoy several rum & cokes.

Thursday:

Snow Days Suck! Picture of the aftermath. And to top it off, that license plate isn't saving me from paying a $1000 deductable as my insurance company won't investigate the hit and runner until they have a financial interest, and the police won't investigate until maybe next week. Snow days suck!

Friday:

Intense anger and stress result in skipping class and going to bed early last night. So here I sit, with the snow almost completely melted outside, and a rental car waiting to be picked up. So much for the joy of snow days.