The View from the West Mesa

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Remember You Were Slaves

In his essay "Mishpatim: Healing the Heart of Darkness*," Jonathan Sacks makes the argument that tribalism can, and usually does, give rise to acceptance, compassion, and social bonding but also to fear, hate, and demeaning others. Those in our group give and receive the former from us, those outside our group receive and often give the latter. We humans have the capacity of empathy toward those like us but we also, being finite beings, suffer from fear and that fear too often translates to hate of those not like us. Sacks then reminds us that Israel was told not to hate the outsider, the one who isn't in our group. He quotes two passages from Exodus: "You must not mistreat or oppress the stranger in any way. Remember, you yourselves were once strangers in the land of Egypt." (22.21) "You must not oppress strangers. You know what it feels like to be a stranger, for you yourselves were once strangers in the land of Egypt." (23.9) Sacks then...

Passover, The First Born, Abraham, and You

Israel has been in captivity in Egypt, Moses has completed his contests with Pharaoh, and the People of Israel have been expelled from Egypt. The death of Egyptian firstborn children and livestock has compelled their removal into the wilderness. At the end of Exodus 12, God institutes the Passover in remembrance of the Angel of Death passing by the homes of Jews on the night the Egyptian firstborn children were killed. Notably, they were spared if in a house with blood around the door. The Passover is established for Israel herself, including their slaves who have been circumcised. If a sojourner wants to celebrate the Passover with you, he can after he circumcises all males with him. I suspect that pretty much eliminated any visitors participating. In chapter 13, the protocols include redeeming Israel's firstborn. In this discussion, God says your firstborn belongs to God, and you must redeem your firstborn or you must kill it. God has redeemed Israel's firstborn by the blood...

Job Prays for His Friends

Overheard in class: God blesses Job after Job prays for his friends. This is an interesting observation about this text: And the Lord restored the fortunes of Job, when he had prayed for his friends. (Job 42.10a, ESV) Job has just revealed his contrition regarding why God would cause him such sorrow and God had lectured Job's friends for their misunderstandings about God and Job's situation. God then tells the friends to ask Job to pray for them, and they do. They bring sacrifices and they ask for Job's intercession on their behalf. Get this picture. Job is, presumably, still sitting in ashes, covered with sores that he scrapes with a potsherd. He has suffered the loss of his children and his physical wealth, and his wife has suggested that he should just curse God and die. He has just sat through 40-ish chapters of being lectured by these same friends and finally, challenged by God. ...and his friends show up with sacrifices for themselves, asking Job to pray for them. Put...

No One is Righteous

We have all heard the phrase “None is righteous, no not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God.” Many, including most Protestants, take this to be a universal, divine description of humanity. Well, it isn’t; at least not as either Paul or the writer he's quoting meant it. In our chapter 3 of Romans, Paul is speaking to Jewish disciples in Rome. He has recently eliminated any claim to the priority they might have presumed based on having the Law or circumcision as signs of being ‘in.’ Then he moves to a rhetorical question, ‘If we are God’s people, is he unjust to punish us?’ Paul’s answer is that God is not unjust to punish Israel or Jews. He even has to address a silly assertion that we will have seen multiple times. It is this, should we sin more so that God can show even more grace? Paul’s answer is an understandable ‘Nope!” Then we get the next question, ‘Are we Jews any better off – because we are Jews?’ Again the answer is ‘nope.’ Why is that? Paul is going to justify...

Faith to Faith

"For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, "The righteous shall live by faith." (Romans 1.16-17, ESV) There are various renderings and understandings of the phrase as it is used here, "faith for faith." Both words for faith derive from pistis, with the first being pisteos (genitive) and the second, pistin (accusative) . Faith, we are told, begins in faith and leads to faith. The import of this origin and fulfillment is found in the next sentence above, the righteous shall live by faith (genitive). We might word this as "already held or possessed faith will result in or lead to faith. As it is written, the one who has faith will parlay that faith into a salvific faith. Faith held by the believer will lead the believer to greater or more complete faith, resulting in her s...

Paul's Themes in Romans - Not What You Think

Introduction: Paul's letter to the Roman house churches has become so 'specialized' that many understandings of it are severely limited to only a few options. Perhaps the most popular understanding of the letter is as Paul's magnum opus of grace/faith versus works . A close second is the Reformed use of the letter to emphasize Divine sovereignty in salvation , specifically, unconditional election . Leaving aside whether these themes appear in the letter and in what forms, they tend to overly simplify the letter. As a result, our understanding of the letter is anemic and at least slightly wrong-headed. Situation : Paul has never been to Rome; he did not establish the church there. He does know some of the people in Rome, however, and has heard of their situation. The Jews had been evicted from Rome (AD 40-51?) but were now returning to the city (AD 54?) after their exile. During the Jewish disciples’ absence from Rome, Gentile disciples had led the house churches, a...