The Rambling Disciple

We currently live in a world that is becoming increasingly hostile to Christianity. Western civilization is no longer nominally Christian. While I would argue that no culture on earth can claim to be truly Christian, for a long time the western world claimed Christianity and generally followed its morals. That is simply no longer the case. While we haven't seen any persecutions like what happens in other parts of the world we are seeing a type of social persecution take place. People who take time on Sundays to attend a local congregation often must sacrifice to do so. Their child may not make the best sports team or they may miss out on social events. Being a Christian is no longer seen as a respectable thing in a lot of places, but is instead seen as backwards and even bigoted at times. Our society, in general, tends to see Christians as simple-minded, reactionary bigots who want to impose their outdated morality and anti-scientific worldview on others. The first century Ch...

Imagine, if you will, living as a Jewish Christian in the first century. You grew up following the Mosaic Law and have studied the Old Testament backwards and forwards. The life of the synagogue, that shared community of faith, is precious to you. It was, for the longest time, the cohesive core of your walk of faith. You grew up waiting on the promises of God to be fulfilled. Now you've heard the good news you've been waiting for; the news the entire Jewish people have been waiting for. God has acted decisively! The covenant promises made to Abraham have at last been fulfilled! The Messiah has come! Eagerly you listen to those proclaiming the Messiah, a man named Jesus from the town of Nazareth. You listen and are astounded at his life and teaching. Truly this man was a great prophet, just as Moses promised. You listen in awe as your entire concept of royalty is turned on its head, as this Jesus assumed the throne as the promised king of Israel not by war or riches but by a...

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...