When I read the tag line to With (Reimaging the Way You Relate To God), I knew that I wanted to read it. Jethani's premise is simple: there are five ways of relating to God--under, over, from, for, and with. These are not just Christian ways of relating to God for, as Jethani demonstrates, all religions or non-religions relate in one of these ways. He begins his book with a look at what happened with people's relationships with God "After the Fall" (ch 1). The next four chapters examine each of the other prepositions (under, over, from, and for) in detail. Then for the latter half of the book he discusses "life with God", using 1 Corinthians 13 as a model.
I liked this book and read about half of it in one sitting. Jethani does a great job of keeping his readers engaged through illustrations (literally drawings) and stories. The writing is as readable as Max Lucado or Donald Miller, but the thoughts are deeper. There were a few times that I thought he could have said what he was saying with fewer words. "Yeah, yeah. I get it already." But overall I found this book to be highly readable, learned, and useful for Christians or not-yet-Christians. If you are one of those people that is looking for a quick-fix or how-to book, this is not the book for you. With is more about changing your perseption of relating to God, than it is about how to do it. Jethani does offer some suggestions in the appendix, though, and I for one am glad I read appendix A. Overall, I give it 4 stars.
Christians have a history of neglecting to read the books of the law--Torah. We use the first eleven chapters of Genesis for debate over creation and anthropology, and then perhaps enjoy the stories of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph and the exodus. Then we get bogged down in formulas and lists in the second half of Exodus through the end of Deuteronomy, leaving our Western minds to check out. However, the writers of the NT quote from and allude to the first five books of the Bible so often that we will be lost as to what is really being said if we are not familiar with them as well. We will be like children watching a Disney cartoon--we get something out of it to be sure, but the parents are getting so much more.
As I was listening to the Exodus story on CD this week (incidently the Word of Promise by Thomas Nelson Publishers makes this experience very enjoyable) I caught a phrase that reminded me of something Jesus said.
14 Jesus was driving out a demon that was mute. When the demon left, the man who had been mute spoke, and the crowd was amazed. 15 But some of them said, “By Beelzebul, the prince of demons, he is driving out demons.” 16 Others tested him by asking for a sign from heaven. 17 Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them: “Any kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and a house divided against itself will fall. 18 If Satan is divided against himself, how can his kingdom stand? I say this because you claim that I drive out demons by Beelzebul. 19 Now if I drive out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your followers drive them out? So then, they will be your judges. 20 But if I drive out demons by the finger of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. (Luke 11:14-20, emphasis mine)
As I listened to the story of Moses confronting Pharoah, I heard this:
16 Then the LORD said to Moses, “Tell Aaron, ‘Stretch out your staff and strike the dust of the ground,’ and throughout the land of Egypt the dust will become gnats.” 17 They did this, and when Aaron stretched out his hand with the staff and struck the dust of the ground, gnats came on people and animals. All the dust throughout the land of Egypt became gnats. 18 But when the magicians tried to produce gnats by their secret arts, they could not. Since the gnats were on people and animals everywhere, 19 the magicians said to Pharaoh, “This is the finger of God.” But Pharaoh’s heart was hard and he would not listen, just as the LORD had said. (Exodus 8:16-19)
Is Jesus pointing back to this story and comparing the sign demanding crowds to Pharoah's court? I have to admit that I am not finished studying this topic, but it is a good example of how this works. As we become familiar with the Bible, both Old and New testaments, we will begin to pick up on more of the interplay between them. But not only will we understand the NT better if we read and study the "Books of Moses", we will also understand more in Psalms or the prophets. For example you may be reading Psalm 67 which begins with:
1 May God be gracious to us and bless us
and make his face shine on us—
2 so that your ways may be known on earth,
your salvation among all nations.
If you are familiar with the book of Numbers, you may recognize that the first line of this psalm is appropriating the Aaronic Blessing:
22 The LORD said to Moses, 23 “Tell Aaron and his sons, ‘This is how you are to bless the Israelites. Say to them: 24 “‘“The LORD bless you
and keep you;
25 the LORD make his face shine on you
and be gracious to you;
26 the LORD turn his face toward you
and give you peace.”’
27 “So they will put my name on the Israelites, and I will bless them.”
These are just two minor examples that come to mind. There are many rich images from Torah that are picked up again and again in the NT--the call of Abraham (Gen 12), the Covenant with Abraham (Gen 15, 17), Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen 19), the sacrifice of Isaac (Gen 22), I AM (Exod. 3), the parting of the Red Sea (Exod 14), Mt. Sinai and the 10 Commandments (Exod 19 & 20), the golden calf incident and the new stone tablets (Exod 32-34), the Day of Atonement (Lev. 16), Holiness laws (Lev. 19), Jubilee (Lev. 25), the Nazirite Vow and Aaronic Blessing (Num. 6), water from a rock (Num. 20), Balaam (Num. 22-24), the Covenant (Deut. 27-30), and much, much more.
I would encourage you to go through Stephen's address to the Sanhedrin in Acts 7 and trace the Biblical stories and quotations. If necessary, reread the stories and passages he cites. Then ask yourself why he uses these and what do they mean. It is a very rich experience.
Have you noticed any images or concepts from the Torah that clarified a NT passage? If so, please share what insights you have gleaned.
Last night I finished reading a new book by Alister McGrath called Why God Won't Go Away. After watching several debates between Christians and atheists on line, I was ready to learn more on the subject of the "New Atheist Movement." First, McGrath introduces the reader to how the "new" atheist movement started and what it is, giving brief but informative introductions to each of the "four horsemen." Secondly, he tackles three major challenges that new atheists pose to theists (violence, reason, and science), showing the deficiencies in these arguments. Finally, he assesses the future for the new atheist movement...and not to spoil the surprise, but the future is not "Bright."
How can a book of this nature be a "page-turner"? I'm not really sure how McGrath pulled it off, but I could not stop reading this book. As someone who is relatively new to understanding the "New Atheist" movement and philosophical debates, I found McGrath to be a capable and entertaining guide. His prose is easy yet thought provoking. He has an excellent command of the subject matter, equally at home in science or the history of philosophy. Most importantly, I feel better equipped to discuss these issues with atheist or agnostics after having read this short volume. I would highly recommend this book to anyone wanting to engage our culture.
So, why won't God go away? Read the book and find out.
How do we go about examining the "images" in this pool? It's not as if there is one particular place in the Old Testament (OT) that has all the images in easy to recognize forms. Ideally, we would all be so saturated in the OT that, when the NT used such images, bells and whistles would go off in our minds. But, alas, we are too busy keeping up with our Facebook accounts, celebrity gossip, or running around with too many irons in the fire to slow down and read something as crusty and "irrelevant" as Exodus, Leviticus, or Deuteronomy...right? After all, we are a New Testament/New Covenant Church right?
Writing to Timothy, Paul said, "All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness" (2 Tim 3:16). When he wrote this there was no such thing as a New Testament. He was speaking about the Scriptures that he had grown up studying--Christians call it the Old Testament and Jews call it TaNaKh: Torah ("the Teaching" we know this as the Pentateuch: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy), Nevi'im ("Prophets"--Joshua, Judges, 1 & 2 Samuel, 1 & 2 Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obediah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi), and Ketavim ("Writings"--Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes [this the Latin term while the Hebrew is Qohelet], Esther, Daniel, Ezra-Nehemiah, 1 & 2 Chronicles. So Paul is saying that the OT is useful and important.
So, back to the original question: How do we go about examining the "images" in this pool? The answer is that we have to go about it two ways simultaneously--we have to study the OT and we have look for possible OT images/references while reading the NT. The first of these we will have to do on our own (sorry...no short cuts here). The second one we can start to look at together by examining certain passages to see what images we may find and what they may signify.
We will start with a passage many of us know well. In the Fourth Gospel Jesus says,
"I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned" (Jn 15:1-6)
This image of the vine is just a standard parable right? Or could this be something more when we look at how the image of the vine is used throughout the OT?
Psalm 80: 8-16--
You brought a vine out of Egypt;
you drove out the nations and planted it.
You cleared the ground for it;
it took deep root and filled the land.
The mountains were covered with its shade,
the mighty cedars with its branches.
It sent out its branches to the sea
and its shoots to the River.
Why then have you broken down its walls,
so that all who pass along the way pluck its fruit?
The boar from the forest ravages it,
and all that move in the field feed on it.
Turn again, O God of hosts!
Look down from heaven, and see;
have regard for this vine,
the stock that your right hand planted,
and for the son whom you made strong for yourself.
They have burned it with fire; they have cut it down;
may they perish at the rebuke of your face!
[Here the psalmist is using the vine as a metaphor for Israel.]
The whole of Isaiah 5 depicts Israel as God's vineyard.
Jeremiah 2:20-22--
20"For long ago I broke your yoke
and burst your bonds;
but you said, 'I will not serve.'
Yes, on every high hill
and under every green tree
you bowed down like a whore.
Yet I planted you a choice vine,
wholly of pure seed.
How then have you turned degenerate
and become a wild vine?
Though you wash yourself with lye
and use much soap,
the stain of your guilt is still before me,
declares the Lord GOD.
[Again the vine is being used as a symbol for the nation of Israel.]
Ezekiel 15 visualizes Jerusalem (the capital city of Israel) as a useless, dried up vine.
Though Ezekiel 17 is a parable that seems complicated and confusing, it too envisions Israel as a vine that wanders from where it's planted.
Ezekiel 19:10-14--
Your mother was like a vine in a vineyard
planted by the water,
fruitful and full of branches
by reason of abundant water.
Its strong stems became
rulers’ scepters;
it towered aloft
among the thick boughs;
it was seen in its height
with the mass of its branches.
But the vine was plucked up in fury,
cast down to the ground;
the east wind dried up its fruit;
they were stripped off and withered.
As for its strong stem,
fire consumed it.
Now it is planted in the wilderness,
in a dry and thirsty land.
And fire has gone out from the stem of its shoots,
has consumed its fruit,
so that there remains in it no strong stem,
no scepter for ruling.
[This lament is directed to the princes of Israel, which means that the mother/vine is Israel...see a theme here?]
Hosea 10:1--
Israel is a luxuriant vine
that yields its fruit.
The more his fruit increased,
the more altars he built;
as his country improved,
he improved his pillars.
It is evident that throughout the OT the vine is used as a symbol for Israel. Now that we see this, we can understand that Jesus is claiming to be the one true Israel. If you are skeptical about this point, Matthew 2:15 cites "Out of Egypt I called my son" to refer to Jesus while the original context of the citation, Hosea 11:1, says, "When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son."
To understand the full implications of this we would have to examine Israel's calling and mission in the world, but we do not have time for that discussion here. N.T. Wright has provided an excellent treatment of this concept of Jesus as the true Israel in his works such as Simply Christian, The Challenge of Jesus, and The Climax of the Covenant.
If we begin to see Israel as the vine and Jesus as the one true Israel, then what new insights might this begin to yield for our study of John 15? Exactly what is Jesus saying to his disciples? And why might it matter for us today? I would love to hear your thoughts.
In the previous post I mentioned something that my New Testament professor, Dr. M. Robert Mulholland Jr. called a "Jewish pool of images." What is a "Jewish pool of images?" you might ask. To help us understand this concept, Mulholland used a couple of pictures to demonstrate this concept with an American pool of Images, including the one on the left. Can you understand what is being said there?
This is a set of images that people in the United States can understand. An elephant represents republicans, while a donkey depicts democrats. Once we know that interpreting the cover of Time magazine becomes fairly easy.
What about this one? What ideas or concepts do you associate with this white haired man in a star rimmed top hat? Why is he pointing?
The concept of a pool of images need not be relegated to visuals only. For instance, what if I told you that a person I know has horns, a tail, a pitch fork, and was red? What would you think of? Would you associate that person with good qualities? Would you want to trust that person?
If you asked me what car insurance someone has and I answered with, "the one with the green lizard" would you know what I was talking about? How about if I said I was hungry and wanted to eat at the golden arches? Would you understand what I meant?
This is what we mean by a pool of images. Each culture has a common pool of images (visual/or verbal) from which to draw.
The second commandment forbid the Israelites from making graven images, so rather than becoming a visual arts culture they became a language arts culture. In the following posts, I will explore some of the images floating around in the Jewish Pool, looking at where they came from and how we can better understand the Bible by understanding its imagery.
The more I read and study the Bible, the more I realize that it is a cross-cultural experience. The Scriptures were not written by 21st century Americans. God inspired 9th Century B.C. shepherds and 6th. century B.C. prophets and 1st century A.D. extremist rabbis, etc. to write to His people at a specific time in history for a specific occasion or purpose. It is still God's word for us today, but to hear it correctly we have to remember that God was delivering a message, firstly, to Israel (OT) then to Jews/Greek-speaking people throughout the Mediterranean basin (NT). As I have said before, for 1st century Jews the Scriptures were their "pop culture." We know song lyrics, lines from literature, movie quotes, snatches of wisdom--thousands and thousands of word pictures. The people of the Bible were the same way.
Lately, I have been reading Richard B. Hays' Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul. His purpose is specific--he examines how Paul uses Scripture in his own writings (how he quotes, alludes to, and echoes what we know as the Old Testament). It has been an interest of mine for several years to examine how the NT uses the Old. In my work with Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Acts, I found many of the OT allusions or quotes to add fascinating depth to the passage when I examined the text being quoted or alluded to in its original context. Sometimes these allusions go right over our heads because the original authors assumed that their readers would be biblically literate. Hays fascinatingly walks the reader through Romans and bits of his other letters, showing that Paul was so steeped in the words of Scripture that he would often consciously allude to an OT passage (expecting the reader to know to what he was referring) but other times he may not have been so intentional yet the concepts, stories, words, etc were rolling around in his mind and came out (an echo). A somewhat modern example of this phenomenon may be Don McLean's American Pie: the more you know about rock 'n roll history the more you can pick out allusions.
My wife has a friend who is known for using quotes in the wrong way. One day they were discussing a complicated situation when she said, "Oh what a tangled web we weave." My wife was confused by the reference to deception and asked, "When first we practice to deceive?" The friend said, "Oh is that the rest of the phrase?" But often people may use only part of a quote or phrase to refer to the whole when they know that the other person or persons they are talking to will know the rest. The writers of the Bible often did this too. The catch is that many of us fail to understand the full meaning of what is being stated because we are not as immersed in the world of the Scriptures as we could be.
One of the helps to this is becoming more familiar with what my NT professor, Dr. M. Robert Mulholland, called the "Jewish Pool of Images." Next time, we will begin to examine what this "Jewish Pool of Images" might be and how it may become our pool as well.
In a recent Church History class my professor, Dr. Ken Collins, asked us to discuss a question: In light of what you know of history and the current culture, what do you see will be the major stumbling blocks to the Christian faith in the 21st century? We split into groups of four and five and discussed the topic for half an hour. When we all came back together to share, one topic came up again and again--post-modernism.
Without having the time to go into a full description of post-modernism at this point, let me say that it is one of the premiere underlying worldviews of our day. It involves a skepticism concerning what we can know as factual or whether or not there are any truth claim (such as Christianity) that can be understood to be universal. I believe this is a very real problem in our culture and in the world at large. I hope to write more extensively on the topic soon, but if you are someone who is reading this and wondering what in the world I am talking about, you should know that it affects you more than you know. If the old saying is true that "knowing is half the battle," then make sure to read up on the subject so that you can have some intellectual power for the coming battle.
Some of the other things listed were:
--The New Atheists (Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, Dennet)
--The rapid pace of life keeping people too busy to have true fellowship and community for the Christian life.
--Lack of unity among believers
If these really are stumbling blocks for people, what can we, as Christians, do to have a learned response such issues? Besides reading I would highly encourage you to check out William Lane Craig's books or what some of his debates on Youtube, or one of my favorite intellects of our time--Ravi Zacharias. He has published numerous books on these very subjects and has two excellent podcasts: Let My People Think and Just Thinking.
Can you think of any more stumbling blocks? If so, please leave a comment.
When I read the tag line to With (Reimaging the Way You Relate To God), I knew that I wanted to read it. Jethani's premise is simple: there are five ways of relating to God--under, over, from, for, and with. These are not just Christian ways of relating to God for, as Jethani demonstrates, all religions or non-religions relate in one of these ways. He begins his book with a look at what happened with people's relationships with God "After the Fall" (ch 1). The next four chapters examine each of the other prepositions (under, over, from, and for) in detail. Then for the latter half of the book he discusses "life with God", using 1 Corinthians 13 as a model. 
