Month: October 2016

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The Beginning of Righteousness

The sum of your word is truth, and every one of your righteous rules endures forever. — Psalm 119.60

It is tempting when we read, in an English Bible, “the sum of your word” to picture a mathematical or financial metaphor. But the Hebrew word for sum—rosh—is more often translated with the English word beginning. To be fair, Bible translation is as much art as it is linguistics. Yet the significance of this word was not lost on ancient readers.

The psalmist, who wants his message to culminate with “every one of your righteous rules endures forever,” starts with, “the beginning of your word is truth.” The Babylonian Talmud observes:

The beginning but not the end? But [by] what comes at the end of your word—the truth of the beginning of your word is understood.

Could this be what Jesus was thinking of when Luke records:

[Jesus] said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.

The beginning is understood through the end.

If Christianity were merely about the imitation of Christ, the Hebrew Scriptures would have no meaning. Yet the heart of the Christian faith flows from relationship with Christ—and building intimacy begins in the words Jesus say introduce the divine to the world.

Spiritual maturity grows the immature curiosity of, “what would Jesus do?” to, “how will Christ live through what I choose to do?” This question presupposes freedom in Christ and demands intimacy to answer. And so the Psalmist cries:

I rise before dawn and cry for help; I hope in your words. My eyes are awake before the watches of the night, that I may meditate on your promise. Hear my voice according to your steadfast love; O Lord, according to your justice give me life.

Here lies the Psalmist’s hope that, “everyone of your righteous rules endures forever.” The Talmud remarks:

Wherever the language, ‘command,’ is used, the sole purpose is to encourage obedience both at that time and for all generations.

The joy for God’s word expressed in Psalm 119 is found in the Psalmist’s faith in God’s goodness as expressed in his word. He is no longer cynical to commands because he has tasted the righteousness of God.

*For Talmud references, see b. Qidd. 1:7, II.9.B and 1:7, I.3.J.

Today’s Reading
Hosea 5-6 (Listen – 3:44)
Psalms 119.145-176 (Listen – 15:14)

 

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The Road to Freedom :: Weekend Reading List

There is a superficial question which asks, “should Christians drive luxury cars?” Then there is a deeper question which examines the way everyday objects metastasize our idols so effectively we no longer notice their presence in our lives. Italian pastor Leonardo de Chirico observes:

Idols like to take form in artifacts. Statues, pictures, images, and buildings are not in themselves idols but are masks for idols, interfaces for idols. Idols like to leave their traces behind them. Idols like to shape the city in a visible way. We have to grasp spiritually the theological skyline of the city.

As individual car ownership begins its decline—replaced by car-sharing and autonomous vehicles—we can pause to reflect on how it has shaped our culture—and how what comes next will reshape the world.

In 1971 science fiction author J.G. Ballard pondered our “strange love affair” with the car. Ballard had just driven a 1904 Renault Park Phaeton across Germany for Drive Magazine and wrote:

If I were asked to condense the whole of the present century into one mental picture, I would pick a familiar everyday sight: a man in a motor car, driving along a concrete highway to some unknown destination. Almost every aspect of modern life is there, both for good and for ill—our sense of speed, drama, and aggression, the worlds of advertising and consumer goods, engineering and mass-manufacture, and the shared experience of moving together through an elaborately signaled landscape.

Ballard’s words are strangely prophetic and his vision of the automobile has come to define western culture. Recently, Robert Moor picked up Ballard’s work and asked the question it begs as we enter this new era of transportation, “Is the Self-Driving Car Un-American?” Autonomous vehicles eliminate many of the aspects of driving that have come, for better or worse, to define our culture. Moor explains:

[Ballard] sensed that the car’s toxic side effects—the traffic, the carnage, the pollution, the suburban sprawl—would soon lead to its demise. At some point in the middle of the 21st century, he wrote, human drivers would be replaced with “direct electronic control,” and it would become illegal to pilot a car.

In Ballard’s grim reckoning, the end of driving would be just one step in our long march toward the “benign dystopia” of rampant consumerism and the surveillance state, in which people willingly give up control of their lives in exchange for technological comforts.

The algorithms behind our favorite technologies have become the most significant higher power in daily life. Our apps and devices speak to us in silent moments, help us navigate the world, and extend our ambitions beyond our wildest dreams.

We give ourselves to them for what is, on the surface, convenience (they are engineered this way) and the allure of what is just beyond our reach—yet they are incapable of delivering more than mere images of our deepest needs.

After arriving in Stuttgart, the home of Mercedes Benz, Ballard reflected on the central promise that drives us back to the car, and perhaps all technology:

The car as we know it now is on the way out. To a large extent I deplore its passing, for as a basically old-fashioned machine it enshrines a basically old-fashioned idea—freedom.

Weekend Reading List

Today’s Reading
Hosea 1 (Listen – 2:08)
Psalms 119.73-96 (Listen – 15:14)

This Weekend’s Readings
Hosea 2 (Listen – 3:48) Psalms 119.97-120 (Listen – 15:14)
Hosea 3-4 (Listen – 3:53)  Psalms 119.121-144 (Listen – 15:14)

 

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Return to God’s Embrace :: Throwback Thursday

By Zachary Crofton (1626-1672)

Your statutes have been my songs in the house of my sojourning. — Psalm 119.54

Repentance is the great work of the word and loud call of the gospel. Sit with care, constancy, and conscience under the word of truth and gospel of grace. Study the nature of God. God must be the object of repentance: we must sorrow toward God and return to God.

The devil labors to keep all light out of man’s soul—so that he might sleep in sin and be locked up in impenitency. When God brings to repentance, he breaks these bars of ignorance, he pulls off these scales of blindness and begins with the understanding.

Sit close to the work of self-examination. No man sits so fast in impiety as the stranger at home. True grace begins always at “the renewing of the mind”—the transforming of the mind to know “the good and acceptable will of God.” And the knowledge of God, being the principle of it, is put for repentance: “They shall know God.”

Thus David professed, “I examined my ways, and turned my feet into thy testimonies.” And when the Prodigal’s wits returned and he considered his wickedness, he would run home to be a servant, where he had been and might have been a son.

You have heard before, that conviction must go before conversion. Man’s conscience is a register which will bring to remembrance, and a judge that will clearly determine of man’s ways. The worst of men, by a short conference with their own soul, would soon see a necessity of repentance. Censure others less and yourselves more: inquire not into other men’s condition so much as your own conversation. Let no day return without accounts. Be serious in self-examination.

Sit loose to the world—the world is the great pull-back to heaven, and hinderance of repentance. You may observe, that the reason of the rebellion and impenitency of Ezekiel’s hearers was, “Their hearts went after their covetousness;” otherwise they took delight to hear.

Seriously apprehend the positive certainty of pardon. The price of man’s sin is paid—the justice of God is satisfied—the pardon is sealed in and by the blood of Christ and proclaimed in the gospel. It is yours with certainty. Nothing needs to deter: God is reconciled—therefore return unto him.

*Abridged and language updated from Zachary Crofton’s “Repentance Not To Be Repented, Plainly Asserted, And Practically Explained.” 

Today’s Reading
Daniel 12 (Listen – 2:40)
Psalms 119.49-72 (Listen – 15:14)

 

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Clinging to Dust

My soul clings to the dust; give me life according to your word! — Psalm 119.25

As a parent I feel a near-moral responsibility to upgrade my phone every year. I use my tiny computer (which occasionally receives a call) primarily to capture so many moments of our children’s growth and life—and how can I properly archive something of such magnitude with an outdated camera?

My family means so much to me, and I feel these memories—riding bikes, going to the philharmonic, bagels in the East Village, hiking the Rockies—slipping away, even as they happen. I realize this is one of the signs of my own idolatry. I’m clinging to dust.

The Biblical image of dust is not meant to diminish the joys of our world—the power of love’s embrace, the pleasure of food, or the depth of nature. Instead it is meant to show us these glories in light of an infinite God. The philosopher Søren Kierkegaard explains:

When people or when a generation live merely for finite ends, life becomes a whirlpool, meaninglessness, and either a despairing arrogance or a despairing anguish. There must be weight—just as the clock or the clock’s works need a heavy weight in order to run properly and the ship needs ballast. Christianity furnishes this weight, this regulating weight, by making it every individual’s life-meaning.

Christianity puts eternity at stake. Into the middle of all these finite goals Christianity introduces weight, and this weight is intended to regulate temporal life, both its good days and its bad days. And because the weight has vanished—the clock cannot run, the ship steers wildly—human life is a whirlpool.

What I’m really searching for cannot be found in the glow of a screen. Truth be told, it cannot even be given in systematic theology. Psalm 119 draws our attention here—the psalmist loves God’s word because it is God’s—through it he finds the intimacy, fulfillment, and transcendence for which we all long.

The invitation is not to let go of dust, but to find something more worthy to cling to. So we join with Kierkegaard in praying:

Oh God, forgive me for seeking excitement and enjoyment in the allurements of the world which are never truly satisfying. If like the prodigal son, I have gone in search of the wonders of the transient world, forgive me, and receive me back again into your encircling arms of love.

Today’s Reading
Daniel 11 (Listen – 8:13)
Psalms 119.25-48 (Listen – 15:14)

 

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Awe and Devotion

You have commanded your precepts to be kept diligently. Oh that my ways may be steadfast in keeping your statutes! — Psalm 119.4-5

How little time I spend praising God for Scripture. Somehow modernism reduced the sacred word to “the text”— an inanimate printed copy of something that at one time was important. Psalm 119 is significant not only because of its length (it is the largest prayer in Scripture), but because of its unrelenting focus on the glory of God’s word. The Psalmist pleads:

Open my eyes, that I may behold
wondrous things out of your law.

I am a sojourner on the earth;
hide not your commandments from me!

My soul is consumed with longing
for your rules at all times.

Modernism has flooded Christians with a desire to prove, explain, expound, justify, and defend Scripture. Add in evangelicalism’s fatuous mimicry of the entertainment industry and we want to “make it relevant,” and “engaging” through summaries, media, and topical studies. Praise, contemplation, and response have been eclipsed by study, systemization, and rote memorization.

This is, of course, the natural compensatory mechanism that kicks in when sinful people approach a holy God through the living word. Perhaps no one has summed this up as succinctly as Søren Kierkegaard:

The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to under­stand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand we are obliged to act accord­ingly.

Take any words in the New Testament and forget every­thing except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world?

Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend it­self against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Oh, priceless scholarship, what would we do without you?

Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament.

Psalm 119 is an invitation to experience the joy, intimacy, and power of God’s living and active word. The prayer is a model of what life could be when we allow study to take its proper place, behind awe and devotion.

Today’s Reading
Daniel 10 (Listen – 3:18)
Psalms 119.1-24 (Listen – 15:14)