I am not a suburban dweller, and this reality was amplified tonight. I keep thinking, “what would it be like to live in the city and take a class at Harvard and go to the local coffee shop and read a provocative book?”
(provocative book being anything religiously oriented).
At Crossroads and Ellwood Thompsons there was no shortage of opportunities to engage with people. I wouldn’t even have to say anything and people would ask me about my studies.
His name is Emory- he only believes in this one gnostic gospel that emphasizes how we should be vegetarian (I promised I would look it up and read it- obviously I lied). I was reading a book for my Intro to Catholic Studies course and he sat down next to me with his multicolored sweater and asked me what I thought of the book considering the atrocities the Church has committed throughout history (he had a personal vendetta against Catholics). I told him it was fairing well. He was an orphan. His birth was the result of Hitler’s plot to create the great white race. After the war he was shipped over to America to some Catholic nuns. He had questions about evil. I showed him his sin in light of everyone elses. He was open to that- but he wanted me to read that damn gospel.
I miss the realness of engaging with people. I miss the postmodern approach many in Richmond engage in.
I don’t want to bring people to another Bible study.
I want to bring people Christ- not “Christianity”- I want to leave the baggage at home.
I don’t want to treat people as a seminary project- whereby my motivation for engagement is to add another notch to my belt, to be able to share it as a “praise” during group. I want to care about people because God cares about them.
Reading secular commentaries that implement “exegesis” remind me why I chose OT in the first place. I am currently reading a “Feminist Companion to the Bible” by Athalya Brenner. My prof last year in undergrad (who is an ordained Episcopal priest, like her husband), had us read the Women’s Bible Commentary which is has a pretty extreme feminist theology.
I’m surprised to say that this commentary I am reading on Judges is not extreme at all- in fact it is pretty balanced. Personally, I am really struggling in my Judges course as I find myself constantly questioning the hermenutic from which my prof exegetes the text in his lectures. I am also very concerned with the way in which I feel led to write on my exegesis paper (Judges 19:22-28). I want to do justice to both the text and the implications the text presents. My fear is that because I am a woman (who will obviously empathize with the women in this text) I will be labeled a “feminist.”
I want to avoid labels. Its hard enough that just because I am opinionated and outspoken it is assumed I’m hardcore egalitarian and want to be in the pulpit. This is the least of my desires. But it has become increasingly apparent in my time here that Evangelicals have made both the study of systematic theology and biblical theology a matter of apologetics- my professors came out of the height of the attack modernism posed through higher criticism. This is not something that only I have noticed, but other students have as well (and so, this at least, provides some relief).
I just know that my conclusions regarding this horrific passage in Judges will probably not be received well. But its time to let Scripture speak for itself instead of imposing on it out of our own fears.
This biblical social justice class is putting me through existential crisis after existential crisis. It is rather wonderful the things that God chooses to reveal to us by His Spirit- and I am so thankful for those things that God continues to bring up and cause me to deal with. One of the most beautiful things about the word salvation is that it is described as being active, not a completed action in the greek (or so I’ve heard). Certainly this is an allusion to the process of sanctification. Again, such a blessing that God chose to bring about wholeness.
as I look at the amount of Greek variants found within the six verses I chose for my exegesis paper I can’t help but feel like quitting. This whole semester has been one big “I feel like quitting” session- which is ridiculous. I’m not sure if its the professor I have, his hermeneutics, or I’m just not cut out for this. My work, thusfar, has been one big “suck.”
I don’t know how I’m going to write this paper- I don’t know how to write this paper. I don’t feel like I learned anything in the text crit/word study papers I wrote. How am I suppose to do OT if I don’t enjoy this?
On a side note, I am almost finished with all of my sys reading for the semester (this is more a result of my avoiding OT stuff). I hate my OT course. And I’ll probably get a C. So much for PhD.
Lord, if I am to arrive at that point in the spiritual life where neither man nor creature is to be an obstacle in my way, then I need a still greater grace. As long as there is anything that holds me down I cannot freely fly to You.
What man enjoys greater rest than the one whose sight is always directed on God? Who has greater freedom than the man who desires nothing on earth?
When a man’s mind is totally taken up with God he rises above creatures, completely forgets himself, and acknowledges that among creatures there is no equal to You, his Creator.
Unless a man is set loose from all creatures he cannot freely turn himself to divine things, and the reason why there are so few who devote themselves to the contemplative life is because only a few know how to separate themselves completely from creatures and transitory things.
We inquire about how a man might have accomplished in life but we never seek the motives that led him to act, whether he is a good writer, a pleasing singer, or an energetic worker, but we refrain from asking whether he is poor in spirit, meek and patient, or how devout he is.
Nature looks at man’s outward appearance, but grace views his inward reality; nature is, thus, frequently misguided but grace, since it trusts in God, is never deceived.
