Joining God's Mission, 2

As we noticed last time in this space God has called his covenant people to be a blessing to his creation. God used Abraham to spread his good favor to those he came in contact with throughout his life. He sometimes brought hurt as well (cf. Gen 20).

The descendants of Abraham, Israel, were also to be a blessing to all creation. They were to bless the lives of each other by being truthful and merciful to each other, respecting property and the integrity of each individual and honoring the covenant of marriage. But more than that they were to be a blessing by witnessing to the awesome love and majesty of Yahweh himself to his rebellious human imagers.

According to the prophet, God intended Israel not only to bless her own citizens but the “Gentiles” too (Isaiah 49.6b). The nation of Israel had been given a mission to be the light of the world and the salt of the earth. But she failed. She interpreted God’s grace to mean that she was better than the rest of the nations. To Israel being chosen was something that was somehow deserved. The privilege was not matched with humility and obedience. 

But Moses destroyed the former notion (cf. Deut 7.7-9). Isaiah smashes the elitist attitude of the second. Israel was chosen to be a blessing to and for the world. Not just so she could keep Yahweh’s grace to herself. She was kingdom of priests not for her own sake but for the sake of the world. Some scholars look at Jonah and believe he is the personification of the reluctant servant of God called Israel. God dragged Jonah/Israel kicking and screaming to be a blessing to the Gentiles of Ninevah.

The Prophet, however, calls Israel God’s “servant” (49.3). Israel has been graciously chosen by God to be his instrument of blessing to all creation—but she refused.

Today Yahweh, the Father of Jesus, continues to call Israel to be his servant. Luke quotes Isaiah 49.6 in Acts 13.47 and says that we are still to be God’s blessing. God has called Christians by his grace to be exactly what Israel was in the Hebrew Bible—a blessing from God to and for the world. That is our purpose for existing as a covenant people.

We sing “how beautiful the feet that bring the sound of good news and the love of the King” because it is true. Those who want to share God’s amazing grace with others are a blessing to the nations.

Are you a blessing? Are we? God has called PaLO VErde to be a blessing in Tucson, Arizona, the USA, and the world. He delights to give us grace (Micah 7.18-19) but he desires that we freely share what we have freely received. Let's continue to join the mission of God.

Shalom,

Bobby Valentine

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Joining God's Mission, 1

In Genesis 12.1-3 we read of the beginning of God’s reclamation project—the promises made to Abram. God told Abram to go to a far country; he said Abram would be a blessing and that God would bless all creation through him.

By singling Abram out from every other person God acted in pure grace, but that grace was not intended for Abram alone. God had chosen Abram for a special mission—a mission of embodying the blessing of God to earth. He was to be God’s “blessed” man through whom Yahweh would spread the aroma of shalom to others. This same mission of being a blessing is given to Abram’s descendants (cf. Ps 136.21-22; Isa 49.6; etc).

As we read through the Torah we notice Yahweh making Abram into a blessing for those around him. Lot was blessed by his association with Abram. When the Five Kings of the East invaded, Abraham came to the rescue and he declined the booty for his exploits (Gen 14.21-24). The destruction of Sodom was delayed because of the promise to Abraham (Gen 18.18). Where Abraham and his descendants are found, God’s bountiful blessings come as well. Even Moab and Ammon who came from Lot (Gen 19.37-38) were to be blessed by their relationship with Israel (Deut 2.9, 19). 

God’s original intent was that his people be a blessing. He states bluntly to Abram “you will be a blessing.” Abram, Isaac, Joseph, Israel, and the Church are to be a blessing to those around them. We are a blessing because we bring kingdom values to our communities; thus, we honor our promises and treat others with dignity and respect.

Not only are God’s people a blessing in the "physical" sense but also in a "spiritual" sense. We are to be a blessing to those around us by pointing them to the God of all blessing. We point them to the Cross of Jesus, so they too can share in God’s salvation from sin and ultimate death. We are to invite them to join God’s mission of blessing all creation.

Yes, from the very beginning, it was God’s plan that his people look beyond themselves and see it as their mission to be a blessing. Like Abraham we sometimes fail due to a lack of trust/faith (Gen 12.10-20; 20.1-18). However, God gives us grace so we can become yet a greater blessing to the world around us. Are we living up to our calling?

Shalom,
Bobby Valentine

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Bob Marley

Ok, Ok, Ok. I thought I would do something for my elder Bob. I asked myself what would he like ... it came to me JOHN DENVER. I searched YouTube and found him. But then I just couldn't bring myself to put Country Road on Stoned-Campbell ... so I said "Surely Bob has One Love for BOB Marley!" ;-) For you Bob

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Stoned Pictures



Me and the greatest of girls ... one lucky dad



Taking in the beauty of Mt. Lemmon on a bright sunny day ...



Standing on the edge next to the tree that can survive ...

Stoned seeking shalom one day at a time.

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WORDS

“Pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones” (Proverbs 16.24). Words, aren’t they something! Stop and think for a moment about the ability that we enjoy of communicating verbally with one another.

There is a connection between the gift of speech and the image of God reflected in every human life. The Prologue of John’s Gospel describes the Word of God in all its power, love, light and finally its humanness. God’s most complete exposure of himself to us took the form of a Word—a word made human. Words are indeed the stuff of life.

Satan, however, often turns words into the poison of death. Have you noticed that nearly every time God speaks, the Adversary is there to counter with a different word? Just as God communicates through us, Satan can also use our mouths as megaphones for his message, his hate, his destruction—his words.

Words are powerful. Words spear, cut, slice, and lance. Words infect. Words destroy. Words burn. Words divide. Words lead to war. Words kill!

Words. God’s gifts which supply hope, healing, friendship, and redemption. Words. Satan’s most trustworthy tools for undoing the bond of love that binds God’s people.

A choice faces us as we enter each day. Our words—to whom do they belong? Our speech—who owns it through our lives? Our Lord—or someone else?

“Let no bad words come out of your mouth, but only those which strengthen our build up as the occasion requires, so that grace might be given to those who hear you.” (Ephesians 4.29, NCV).

Think About it,
Bobby Valentine

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Third Day - Cry Out to Jesus

One of my favorite groups

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Trying a New Look

I have been tinkering with blogger this morning and look what happened!!

Back to the drawing boards...

Seeking Shalom,
Bobby Valentine

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Unity, Freedom of Inquiry, and Humility Or ... Of Gnats and Camel Swallowing. A Look in the Rear View Mirror for Today's Church

Quotable Quotes
“There is a great need to stress the importance of maintaining freedom of speech in the kingdom of God. Intolerance is dangerous to the future growth of the church . . . All progress of truth – scientific truth, political truth, or religious truth – all truth - has always depended on free speech and progressive teachers who were not afraid to teach their honest convictions.” (J. N. Armstrong, For Freedom)

"The fatal error of all reformers, has been that they have too hastily concluded that they knew the whole truth, and have settled back upon the same principles of proscription, intolerance and persecution, against which they so strongly remonstrated.” (John Rogers, Christian Messenger, 1830)

Stoned-Campbell Thoughts in the Rear View Mirror

It seems certain to me that one of the biggest hindrances to shalom in God's church is the notion that we have arrived at an infallible understanding of truth ... even "revealed" truth. Comments on my recent blog post, Of Popes in the Belly" point to a considerable rift in attitudes toward each other and the text and thus serves as the inspiration for this particular post. I argued in my book with John Mark Hicks, Kingdom Come: Embracing the Spiritual Legacy of David Lipscomb and James Harding that freedom is a gift from God to his children and it flows in our veins and DNA through the Stone-Campbell tradition ... especially the Nashville Bible School Tradition. Spiritual arrogance breeds war, disunity and kills the desire to learn. This plea surfaces a number of times from various writers within the sphere of the NBST. I thought I would share, briefly, three more this morning.

The first comes again from the pen of J. N. Armstrong. On July 9, 1914 in the Gospel Herald (pp. 3-4). Armstrong penned a piece called "Gnat-Strainers and Camel Swallowers." The opening paragraph is a "mouthful" to say the least:

"A man may be very correct in his doctrine, may teach a perfect gospel, may dot every 'i' and cross every 't' in his faithfulness in teaching what is written: he may be a good man and be able to say as the rich young ruler: 'All these I have kept from my youth up,' and still not be the Lord's servant."

How could this be? Well Armstrong argues that biblical Christianity is not simply about getting forms correct and observance of ordinances. There is a "spirit that must permeate and saturate the lives of those keeping the forms, lest the keeping be an abomination in our Master's sight."

With a lengthy review of the history of Israel, with emphasis given to such passages as Isaiah 1.11-15 and 29.13,24 and Hosea 6.6 and finally Mt 23.23, Armstrong believes we need to heed the warning. He says

"I wonder if we are not repeating the sins of Israel. Are we neglecting the 'weightier matters.' Have we gone and learned what God meant when he said: 'I desire goodness and not sacrifice?' (Hosea 6:6). How many of us are straining out the gnat and swallowing the camel? How many of us have been guilty of gagging over a gnat until we have destroyed the comfort and peace of the whole congregation, while at the same time we were gulping down camels? Let us not forget that there are small and large, lighter and weightier matters of the law."

Another voice is that of Samuel Parker Pittman. Pittman was first a student at the NBS and then, like Boll, became an instructor. Indeed Harding baptized Pittman in 1886. S.P.P became a quiet channel for the NBST as the 20th century progressed. Pittman rarely crossed swords but in 1919 he did register a protest about the way some things were going in the Churches of Christ. He wrote a piece called "What's the Matter?" for the May 22 GA. He begins the essay with a review of the degeneration of the church into centralization of power in the Roman papacy. He praises Luther for his courage in speaking up. He thanks the "learned" John Calvin and the dissenters in the English Reformation. He then states:

"The caption of this article is, 'What's the Matter?' What is the matter with what? With the movement started so auspiciously by the Campbells and others? Why, the trouble is not in the movement, nor in the men who inaugurated it. The trouble has been with us, who have espoused the movement, while refusing to wear the name of this great reformer and while denying that we are his followers (it would be better if some did follow him more scrupulously than they do)." 

So what is wrong with the generation Pittman is addressing? He explains:

"In our belief that 'we are right,' that we occupy 'infallibly safe grounds,' we are prone to become (have become) narrow, bigoted, intolerant. It is not the novice alone who is this; it is the more experienced brother, whose life and influence should be a benediction. I deplore the attitude of our older brethren who feel that they are the arbiters of the faith of the younger, who feel called upon to condemn in bitter terms the mistakes they may make, and who are ready to ostracize those who cry for a deepr spirituality, because they are guilty of some doctrinal irregularity."

Since my post has grown considerably I will perhaps add the letter from a "Young Preacher" later. It is a fascinating letter though.

Shalom,

Bobby Valentine

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Of Popes in the Belly

I have been reading Barton Stone's writings. This is not my first journey through his writings but I think I have gained more understanding than previously . . . or at least I see things now that I did not before. Stone began publishing his journal, The Christian Messenger, in November of 1826. The very first article, which is untitled, covers the first four pages of the journal . . . it is on barriers to Christian union which Stone relates to personal spiritual growth.

Since this is the first article in Stone's journal it seems that he places some importance on its content. Freedom is essential to both Christian growth and unity. Stone had witnessed first hand the intolerance of those who would cast one out as a heretic for simply studying the Bible and coming to his own conclusion that may differ from one traditionally held. Freedom is a sword that cuts both ways however. If I truly grant it I allow for the possibility one will come away with a different understanding on some things than me. How do we handle this in others and in ourselves? In practice we have a tendency to assume a position of infallibility. Hear Stone:

"We must be fully persuaded, that all uninspired men are fallible, and therefore liable to err . . . Luther, in a coarse manner, said that every man was born with a Pope in his belly. By which I suppose he meant, that every man deemed himself infallible . . . If the present generation remain under the influence of this principle, the consequences must be that the spirit of free inquiry will die -- our liberty lie prostrated at the feet of ecclesiastical demagogues." (Christian Messenger 1 (November 1826), 2)

Do we not suffer from this malady today? Do Christians have a "Pope in the belly?" Why is it that when a brother or sister disagrees with a position we take we assume that they disagree with God . . . when all they disagree with is our interpretation.

I survey the doctrinal war zone of the Churches of Christ. In many ways it looks like the wasteland of Verdun . . . congregations alienated, bodies of brethren who are casualties, armies exhausted from the bloodshed, no one is a victor . . . except Satan. The issues range from cups, to singing groups, to marriage and divorce, to (fill in the blank).

Just as in the religious wars of the Seventeenth Century, rooted in Pope in the Belly malady, so our divisions testify that it is still around. We have nothing to fear from the freedom to think and study and learn . . . and even change our minds. The first step, Stone says, of defeating the Pope in the Belly is being able to see the need to GROW. If I admit that I have not yet arrived . . . there is hope. I admit that I, at times, suffer from this cancerous blight.

Seeking Shalom,

Bobby Valentine

Ut omnes unum sint (John 17.21, Vulgate, 'that they may all be one')

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Marcionism & Churches of Christ: What Value, REALLY, is the "Old Testament?" #5: The Loss of the Hebrew Bible

In previous essays under the working title "Marcionism & Churches of Christ" we have asked basically why are we here. Now I want to explore what happens when we actually "loose" the Hebrew Bible as a shaping/grounding source for "sound doctrine" (a phrase btw that cannot be reduced to the "marks of the church" as is so frequently done).

A word on the word "loss." By "loss" I do not mean to say a preacher never does a character study of a person which is one of the more frequent uses of the Hebrew Bible or quotes from it from time to time. By "loss" I mean the doctrine/theology of the Hebrew Bible that formed and shaped Israel, Jesus and the early church are no longer the primary "glasses" that we view all doctrine and life through. Are we shaped by the worldview that the "bible of Jesus" creates with its distinctive story of God?

First, a failure to take the Hebrew Bible seriously causes us to fundamentally misread the New Testament itself. This is exhibited in a number of ways. The authors of Pagan Christianity, which is often a fine book, speak disparaging of how some "Christian" practices or ideas "reflect the thinking of other religions--primarily Judaism and paganism" (p. 10). I will be the first to admit that Christianity has often been a Chameleon. Yet the issue that bothers me most is the authors fail to realize that Christianity is in fact "Jewish." The "New Testament" is literally written on the soil and in the atmosphere of the "Old Testament." This anti-Jewish vein of thought that has a long pedigree in Christian anti-semiticism. This goes so far in some folks that they have actually denied the Jewishness of Jesus himself. Jesus cannot be understood apart from the Hebrew Bible, a point to which we will return.

Second, if it is true that the "NT" was birthed with the blood of the Hebrew Bible flowing through its veins then that should move us to step back and see what this means. One scholar who has helped me think some of these issues through is G. Ernest Wright. In the middle of the 20th century Wright published a book entitled God Who Acts: Biblical Theology as Recital (1952). The first chapter of that book (The Church's Need of the Old Testament) should be required reading for every potential theologian in the church ... and every preacher is a theologian (the only question is whether one is a good one or not). One of the most astonishing claims made by Wright is that the Hebrew Bible is a "bulwark against paganism" for the church (p. 19). And it was an "enlightened" paganism that made such a profound resurgence in Modernism and has been embraced in the trappings of Christianity today.

How does the "OT" function in this regard? First through its doctrine of Creator and creation (the Bible has no theology of nature but only of creation). God is not part of creation though he is intimately involved with it, and creation has a purpose and goal. This may sound esoteric but it is not ... indeed it is of fundamental importance. The modern Christian cut loose from the Hebraic roots of faith reads the NT through a vaguely defined "spiritual" worldview. The knowledge of God is reduced to a feeling or an "experience." This spiritual experience is defined in radically individual terms (almost) completely separated from communal life and the program of God revealed in the narrative of Scripture. This "spirituality" instead emphasizes prayer (which is not bad btw) and the immortality of the soul. Wright states plainly, and correctly, "this represents the paganizing of the Gospel ... This Gospel is no scandal nor stumbling block" (p. 23). It is a reversion to "pagan normalcy."

The more carefully we study the Hebrew Bible the more clearly a distinctive view of God as Creator and Redeemer emerges and his relationship to his creation and humanity. This worldview is absolutely essential to biblical faith and is totally absorbed into the New Testament. The results of this loss are, in my view, the hyper individualism we see today and a neo-platonic spirituality that is alien to the entire Bible. The loss of the "bible" of Jesus births a Reader's Digest religion.

More to come.

Seeking Shalom,
Bobby Valentine

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A Good Cheerful Video

A good and cheerful video for a change. I love this song on lots of levels ... I offer it to God and my girls

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