The Rambling Disciple

In many modern American churches there is a tendency to ignore the Old Testament. Sometimes this is done because people believe that we don't need the Old Testament anymore. After all, God did give us the New Testament to replace  the Old, right? Still others ignore the Old Testament because they simply don't know what to do with it. It is written in a culture so far separated from our own that it can be difficult to understand what is going on. There are probably many other reasons why Christians today don't study the Old Testament. In any case, this habit we have of ignoring the first two thirds of the Bible hurts us more than we realize. The New Testament is not a stand alone collection of books. It is designed to build upon and follow the Old. When we don't know the Old Testament we then misconstrue or simply misunderstand the New. There is almost no better example than the book of Hebrews. Background The letter to the Hebrews is the only New Testament book t...

Betrayal is hard to deal with, especially when it comes from those you hold most dear. Most of us have dealt with a betrayal in some way or another. It is one of the worst experiences anyone can go through and it can be very hard to continue to show love and compassion towards the betrayer. By the time of writing 2 Corinthians, Paul has faced a betrayal. The church in Corinth, at some point, turned against him and his teaching. This occurred sometime between the writing of 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians. We see hints of this complicated history throughout 2 Corinthians, where Paul spends a great deal of time defending his role as an apostle. While at the time of writing 2 Corinthians a reconciliation had occurred, the wounds still ran deep and opponents of Paul remained. They were challenging his authority and the message he carried. The claimed that there was no way Paul was a Spirit-filled man because of all the suffering he endured. Surely if the Spirit were in Paul then Paul w...

All congregations have issues. They are, after all, made up of people who sin and don't always look like Jesus. In fact pretty much every church mentioned in the New Testament had issues. The church in Jerusalem had a race problem (they didn't like those pesky Gentiles following Jesus). The Roman church had some power struggles. We see in the church at Ephesus a steady progression throughout the New Testament towards Jesus's charge against them in Revelation that they have "forgotten their first love." They all might have issues, but none of them have the reputation as the church in Corinth. Background The letter of 1 Corinthians was written by the apostle Paul during his three year stay in Ephesus, around AD 52 - 54. The way the letter is written it is quite evident that Paul was responding to some very specific questions. 1 Corinthians seemingly jumps between topics without warning, so these were probably all issues the Christians there asked Paul about. ...

We're back! After illnesses, a very busy April, and a long semester of school the blog is back. Thank you to everyone for being so understanding about it. We should be back to normal now posting every Wednesday with our continued overview of the Bible. In a couple of weeks Historical Fridays will start up again too. This week we will be discussing something a little different than normal before we get back into over viewing the Bible. This is an observation about the culture we live in and how it might affect the way in which we read Scripture. We live in a culture of extremes. Everything is highly polarized. There is no middle ground, no room for compromise. It's Marvel comics versus DC comics, Star Wars versus Star Trek, Cubs versus Cardinals, liberals versus the conservatives, the Republicans versus the Democrats, the rich versus the poor, white people versus black people, the north versus the south, the USA versus the world. Everything in our culture nowadays is us vers...

There are several books in the Bible that make us feel uncomfortable. The most prominent of these is the Song of Songs, which we've already discussed on this blog. Another book that makes us uncomfortable is the book of Philemon. Background The book of Philemon was written by Paul to a man named Philemon. Now it usually assumed that Philemon was written while Paul was in prison in Rome, around AD 62. Some scholars, however, think that this was written earlier while Paul was in Ephesus.  Now the book of Acts does not say if Paul was ever imprisoned in Ephesus, but that doesn't mean it never happened. Paul did stay in the city a long time. It also makes sense that Paul would meet Onesimus in Ephesus as opposed to Rome. Onesimus was a slave that escaped from Colossae, which is in Turkey. Slaves were marked as slaves. It is very unlikely that he made it all the way to Rome without being apprehended.  Another thing to consider is Paul's promise to visit Philemon soo...

The Roman Empire was, in many ways, not so dissimilar from America. Much of our legal system is based on that of Rome. Our appetite for entertainment and sports is quite similar to the Romans. They loved their races and fights in the Colosseum, while we love movies and football.  One way that the Roman Empire was very different from America is how they viewed their leader. We are generally split right down the middle when it comes to the President of the USA. Some people like him, others don't. No one, however, would go so far as to claim that the President is God.  The people of the Roman Empire worshiped their Emperor as a God. While viewing a leader of a powerful nation as a god was not unusual in ancient times (the Pharoahs of Egypt, for example) few held to the notion so fiercely as the Romans. In fact the most common title for the Emperor's divinity was the Son of God. Background The book of Mark was written by John Mark, a travelling companion of Paul and t...

As we have done many times before, imagine that you are living during the mid-first century. You have just been converted to this new religion some are calling Christianity. You came to believe in Jesus because of the testimony of Christians living in your town. They recount how they heard the stories of Jesus from the likes of Peter, Paul, and others who actually met Jesus. They do their best to repeat the stories they have heard, trying not to forget any detail. Still, as they admit, there is nothing quite like hearing the story of Jesus from someone who was there. As you go about your life trying to tell others about Jesus, you realize that people are asking questions you genuinely don't know the answer to. After all you only heard about Jesus from some one who heard it from an eye witness. You search the couple of letters your congregation has from Paul and James, and while those provide some answers they are more concerned with how to live the Christian life than relaying fa...