Do you ever get a block when preparing a Bible study, or trying to hear God in your personal Bible reading?
I do.
One thing I've found helpful to kick start constructive reflection (other than prayer!) is to ask three questions (nicked from someone else):
During a Christianity Explored training session, Rico Tice explained that we learn best if we are being taught in four different contexts:
I think it is obvious what the unique qualities of each context are. I am convinced that we should be reading the Bible and exploring what it means in all four contexts if we want it to seep deep into our hearts and lives.
I think this not only because this is a good principle for all learning (although I think it is, and it is striking how the College of Law balances all apart from one-to-one), but because it is particularly the case for the Gospel which is a proclamation of news but is already known and experienced by all Christians, and which is shared by a community but is also personal to each individual.
For the last 2 years I've been deliberately trying to balance all four in my life, and I am increasingly convinced of the worth of keeping that balance.
I should probably write a long post about the strengths and weaknesses of each, and describe how doing all four prevents the harm which would be caused by too much weight on one or the other. Its too late though so I'll leave you to think it through on your own!
Esther Meek, drawing on Michael Polanyi, argues that we know people and things as we focus on them by integrating particular clues into a pattern. For example we know God by connecting together numerous dots into the pattern of a person who we commit to in faith.
In apologetics the clues may be personal experience, arguments, historical evidence, and even the Scriptures itself, but the focus is God himself. In discussions about assurance of salvation the clues may be good works you have done, the promise in the sacraments, the words of absolution of a brother, but the focus is the cross and resurrection for your salvation. In leading bible studies the clues may be literary structure, historical details, personal experience, but the focus again must be Jesus.
Both the clues and the focus are important to our act of knowing, as can be seen when we examine doubts in particular.
Doubts arise when we focus on the clues, or fail to focus through the clues:
I think we can distinguish two doubt-producing movements in connection with the clues of our integrations. One is reverting to focus on the clues. The other, closely related one is feeling like, in our integration, that we are not in touch with our clues.
How we respond to the doubts depends on which mistake we are making.
There are two ways to respond to doubts, and those responses, on the surface appear to contradict each other. One is to try once more to look through the clues, reintegrate to the focus. The other is to take some time to look at the clues. In the end, I think that we cope by alternating these two movements, and that they are just the movements that make up good learning.
If we are obsessing with the clues, we may need our gaze lifting. To reintegrate the focus. We can help people do this by pointing out the beauty of Jesus, and relating to him in our daily life and worship.
First, we should try once more to look through the clues. We know enough about the act of knowing to see that it ought to feel uncomfortable to look back at the clues. When we look back at the particulars, we can feel that in themselves they don't account fully for the pattern we have seen in them. Of course they don't, for it wasn't looking at them in themselves that prompted our integration; it was living in them and looking through them. To look at them is not to see the things on which our pattern was based. We access truth, and can only properly assess it, as we live in the pieces of the pattern in our bodies. If looking at the pieces makes us feel doubtful, there is good reason for it: the pieces, without our living in them, aren't the starting point of our successful effort.
[...] So, one remedy for doubt is to stop looking at the clues, striving again to look through them, to get back inside them.
If we are feeling our focus on God is lacking connection to our thinking and experience we may need to examine these clues close to hand.
We are most familiar with this effort as plain old study and analysis, examining the underpinnings of our claims and actions to understand the what and the how of the whole thing. Analysis is not all there is to knowing - identifying knowing with analysis, I believe, has been the central mistake of the modern model of knowledge. Clue scrutiny is not an end in itself, nor can it or should it be lifted out of the context of the larger picture that is knowing: humans engaging the world through patterns. But seeing analysis as a key instrument for the sake of a larger reintegration to a focus actually reinstates it, no longer as master, but more helpfully as servant.
Why is studying the clues valuable and important, if real knowing is living them, not looking at them? The clues that make up our integrations, you might say, are liable to get their feelings hurt if you forget them. They are happy being subsidiary, but you ignore them or take them for granted to your peril. We vector through them, but we never leave them behind.
We can also see how knowing happens well by thinking about playing an instrument:
It happens on the piano bench. I've watched my [daughter begin] cranking out a Scott Joplin rag with her usual confidence [and then] she must have stopped and thought what she usually never though about: How do I figure out what the note is?
[...] Piano teachers have told my daughters: Don't stop thinking about what you are doing when you are practising. Plan for what to do if autopilot fails you under pressure. Scrutinize your fingers and your fingering carefully in problem passages. Then put it back together. [Mature musicians] have a well-developed connection between the artistic and analytical sides of their brain.
Good connections and continual movement is the key to a growth as a Christian. So in knowing "we move back and forth between both directions, from the clues, and to the clues... back and forth, back and forth". I would argue that this reflects much of what the Christian life is. A continual back and forth and building of connections until they meet completely in the cross and resurrection of Jesus where everything meets. Another example would be law and Gospel, repentance and faith, death and life, OT to NT.
(Quotations from pp. 169-172, Esther Lightcap Meek, Longing to Know: The philosophy of knowledge for ordinary people)
Sorry for the lack of posting recently.
For what it's worth here is a bible study I've written on the 5 verses of Colossians 4:2-6. I've tried to make a meal out of 82 words by bringing in the whole of chapter 1, and then through that bringing to mind all or Paul's ministry!
We'll see whether it works.
It took ages to write, mainly because it took me a while to figure out how to do the formatting in MS Word 2007.
[This a supposed to be a fairly short bible study on a rather big subject. The plan is to split into three or four groups and allocate one set of questions to each, and then get them to join back together to share. Any thoughts on the questions or bible passages would be helpful.]
"Prayer is talking to God" (Goldsworthy)
"through Christ we both have access to the Father by one Spirit" (Ephesians 2:18)
Praying to the Father... (Luke 11:1-13)
...through the Son... (Hebrews 4:14-16; 7:24-25; 10:19-23)
...by (or 'in') the Spirit (Romans 8:11-30; cf. Ephesians 6:17-18, Jude 19-20)
[ The Trinity talks (John 16:13-14, 17:6-21; cf. Genesis 1:26, Romans 8:26, 34)
Quite a short bible study. 4 verses, 20 minutes and enough follow-up questions in reserve to keep us there all day.
Since, then, you have been raised with Christ,
set your hearts on things above,
where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.
Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.
For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.
1. What is Paul's command to the Colossians, and to us, in these verses?
2. Paul doesn't give commands without reasons. Here he gives reasons based on the past, present and future realities of our lives.
Looking at the different tenses that Paul uses, what are these realities?
Past: "You have been raised", "you died"
Present: "Christ is seated at the right hand of God", "your life is now hidden with Christ in God"
Future: "When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory"
3. Will thinking about our past, present and future, and "setting our minds on things above", make any difference to our external lives? ... answer now, or wait for next week's exciting instalment to find out.
Listening to: Andrew Bird: Andrew Bird & the Mysterious Production of Eggs
Feedback welcome.
2My goal is that they may be encouraged in heart and united in love, so that they may have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely, Christ, 3 in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. 4 I tell you this so that no one may deceive you by fine-sounding arguments. 5 For though I am absent from you in body, I am present with you in spirit and delight to see how disciplined you are and how firm your faith in Christ is.
6 So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, 7 rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.
8 See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ.
9 For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, 10 and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. He is the head over every power and authority. 11 In him you were also circumcised with a circumcision not performed by human hands. Your sinful nature was put off when you were circumcised by Christ, 12 having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through your faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.
13 When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, 14 having cancelled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. 15 And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross. (TNIV)
This is my first draft of notes for a bible study on Galatians 3:18-4:11. Any feedback gratefully received. Please feel free to be brutal.
| Verses |
Paul's view of the law |
The false teachers view of the law |
| 3:18 |
Did not bring inheritance |
Brought the holy spirit/land |
| 3:19, 23, 25 | temporary |
permanent |
| 3:19 | mediated |
direct from God |
| 3:21-23 |
It imprisoned things under sin |
righteousness |
| 3:21; Rom 8:2 | death |
life |
| 3:29 | It did not determine who were descendants of Abraham |
It determined who were descendants of Abraham |
| 3:25; 4:1-3 | for the child | for the mature |
| 4:1, 7-9 | slavery That is to be a slave to 'the elemental spirits/principles of the world' (4:2; c.f. Col 2:8 - human/worldly). Connected to slavery to sin (3:22; Rom 6:6-20), and to those that are not gods (4:8). |
freedom |
[NOTE TO SELF: This was a bad bible study - too clever by half]
