MY BULLY

I only ever suffered one true bully during my years at Pearson Elementary School. But he was consistent. 

I was terrified of him and his big square head. I don't remember him doing anything to me in the presence of a teacher, but he made every recess and the minutes immediately before and after school miserable for me. 

If he had any friends, I was unaware of them. I'm not sure he wanted any friends - I don't know if he actually liked anyone. 

I recall that he hated our third grade teacher, Mrs. Kemper. (But we all did.) One day she suddenly left the classroom for some unknown reason and this kid took advantage of the opportunity by standing up, unzipping his pants, and leaving a small puddle of urine in the middle aisle between the columns of desks. When Mrs. Kemper returned a few minutes later, she stepped in the middle of it on her way back to her desk. 

She never gave the slightest indication that she noticed the puddle or knew what it was.

As for me, although my bully often threatened to beat me up, he never hit me. But it was enough to make his very presence intimidating to me day after day. 

One time as we walked to school, my older brother Spencer hit my bully with a metal lunch box in an effort to chase him off. It left a dent in the lunch box. The next day this kid's mom yelled at Spencer for bullying her baby boy. 

Spencer was my hero for while.

It's funny now to reflect on how pressing, urgent, scary, and traumatic the day to day events of childhood could be. 

Anyway, all this went through my head the other day when my bully's name popped up among all the people who wished me a happy 56th birthday on Facebook. 

I gave his birthday wish a "💗". 

I think he's an insurance salesman now. 

LIKE FICTION

Here's a line from Old Testament scholar Michael Heiser which I plan to hold onto:

"Read your Bible like it's fiction."

It's clever, meant to provoke a strong reaction - especially from those who claim to be the most serious about the Bible.

And those are the ones Heiser wants to challenge most.

Far too many evangelicals seem to believe that a "high view of Scripture" is one which requires reading the Bible as woodenly as possible, as if it were a divine textbook and their goal is to discern a handful of doctrines which will appear on the final exam. 

[Side note: Once these readers of wooden Bible verses discover these doctrines, they often use them to clobber each other over the head. Each is certain the doctrines they have discovered are exactly what will appear on the test.]

Heiser suggests a more fruitful approach: something akin to the way we read a good novel.

We seem to understand instinctively when we read fiction that exposition matters, that foreshadowing is meant to keep us guessing, that themes are developed slowly, that settings convey meaning, and that character and motivation need careful attention. 

Scripture is wonderfully rich and it is crafted for maximum impact. 

More impact than we are getting when we pluck verses from here and there to construct a "doctrine" of this or that - or even, I would dare say, merely to discover a "life application".

A GAMBLE

One of the biggest objections to the idea of the existence of God is the whole problem of evil. 

As I have been thinking about the creation account in Genesis recently, I can't help but wonder: Would it even be possible for God to create any other sentient beings with free wills - either spiritual beings or humankind - without the real risk of those beings introducing disobedience into the equation?

Why? Because God is perfect. And yet by definition, He cannot create another perfect being. Any being He creates is necessarily going to be lesser than He is and, thus, imperfect. 

An imperfect being is bound to exhibit imperfect obedience toward its Creator. Thus, sin - and suffering - are guaranteed. 

And that suffering is going to touch both the creature and its Creator.

Dr. Michael Heiser points out in his book Unseen Realms that God was at no risk of being directly harmed by His creatures, but "He can be grieved". 

The creature, on the other hand, is at risk of being harmed and being grieved as well as causing harm to others. 

It seems unavoidable to me. It's a gamble.

It also seems very much like the reality faced by a young couple when they decide to bring a baby into the world. 

PREACHING IS EXCITING

I can get stirred up sometimes on Saturday nights, in anticipation of preaching on Sunday mornings. 

A couple of things in particular get me excited:

#1 - Passing along whatever I have been learning recently about the Bible - which is an endlessly fascinating book. I know some pastors like to recycle old sermons whenever they are in a new context, but I would much rather be working with fresh insights. There's always more to discover.

#2 - The possibility that I could play a role in someone else's "lightbulb moment". You know those moments - while reading a book, or hearing a friend's perspective, or listening to a deep sermon - when an idea grabs you and you just know in that moment that somehow your view of reality has just shifted towards greater clarity? Sometimes it's a novel framework rushing at you out of left field but sometimes it's a familiar concept that grabs your imagination in a new way. Either one is welcome on a Sunday morning.

How exciting it is to stand and deliver a message which, on any particular Sunday morning, the Spirit may use to propel a lost soul into the Kingdom or to drive a saved soul into new depths of Truth!

There is nothing like it.

BACK HOME AGAIN

According to Google Memories, we have been back in our house in Columbus for four years now. 

What a mix of emotions. 

On the one hand, what a blessing it was to have a familiar place to "come home to" after leaving Haiti so unexpectedly, especially as Covid was turning everything upside down. (We had been renting the house out the entire time we were in Haiti. Our last tenant moved out for his own reasons just three days before we arrived back in town.)

But on the other hand, I never anticipated living here again. I don't want to sound ungrateful, but it's not a house I want to grow old in.

I miss Haiti. I miss the school. I miss working alongside my wife. I miss our Haitian friends and the community of missionaries. 

Strangely, I even miss the daily struggle of life in an impoverished country. 

LET US MAKE MAN IN OUR IMAGE

Genesis 1:26 -

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

As I am focused on Genesis 1:26-31 this week in preparation for Sunday morning, I am reminded of my freshman year at Wabash College and getting shot down by a professor in front of my classmates.

The class was called "Cultures and Traditions" and we were looking at the "creation myth" in the Old Testament. The professor could hardly wait to discuss verse 26 and the plural in "Let us make man in our image". 

"Considering Judaism is a famously monotheistic religion," she asked, "why would God speak in the plural here?"

Nobody responded, so I tentatively put my hand up and answered, "Maybe this is an early reference to the Trinity."

Dr. Butler scoffed. No, the concept of one God in three persons is completely foreign to the Old Testament, she explained.

(I didn't have the guts to point out the Spirit of God makes His first appearance hovering over the deep in the second verse of the book!)

What was her explanation? The plural was a remnant of the fact that Judaism had evolved - according to her - from polytheistic roots. 

Even as a timid college freshman, I knew that was a pretty dumb idea. So someone just forgot to go back and clean up a couple of random plural pronouns leftover from earlier polytheistic drafts? Really?

I have been looking over the matter this week and I find that scholars are not at all united on any particular theory about that plural. A few agree with my freshman self that it is an early sign of a trinitarian conception of God. 

But others have suggested  - and I find this theory interesting - that God is speaking to the earth itself. God forms a creature which is a combination of spirit and dirt, resulting in Adam being "in the image" of both. 

Some scholars also posit that the plural is simply a "royal 'we'" or that it is simply meant to illustrate great deliberation over this part of His creation. (I guess He's sort of talking to Himself in order to focus?)

One of the other leading candidates is that God employs the plural because He is holding council with the angels. 

Certainly, the passage does not specify that angels were present, but the existence of "the heavenly host" is acknowledged in Scripture elsewhere. And there's no reason to question their existence as having begun prior to the creation of man. 

Since this final theory has the advantage of lining up with the traditional Jewish interpretation of this crucial moment on the sixth day of creation, it carries a little more weight in my mind. After all, "Scripture was written for us but not to us", and so it does matter how the original audience would have understood this moment. 

FOSTERING FRIENDSHIPS

If there is one thing Covid brought home to me it is that I - even as an avowed introvert - NEED friendly physical human interaction. 

And even though "social distancing" is starting to pass into memory, when you stack our ongoing and ever-growing reliance on technology on top of the estrangement lingering from the days of pandemic and it feels like even the extroverts are starting to lose genuine connections to other people. 

(And half the population has a third strike against them: being males. We are just too often resigned to a daily life lacking in close friendships.)

Fortunately, I can report that I myself have been making gains in the friendship department this past year. I have made intentional effort to stay in weekly contact with a few of my closest friends who now live at a distance. Plus, my work with Mission Resource in Columbus and my role as pastor in Sardinia have both been forcing me out into the local community. 

And it's all good. 

I even found a surprising source of new friendships - a local chapter of Business Network International. 

BNI is a global organization designed to give business people an environment in which to foster trust and, subsequently, generate business referrals. 

I have represented Mission Resource at one of three BNI chapters here in Columbus for almost a year now and even though the meetings are at 7:00 Tuesday mornings, I can honestly say that I look forward to those gatherings every week.

Among other things, BNI encourages members to schedule one-to-one meetings with other chapter members on a weekly basis. We meet in each others' offices or go out for lunch or coffee, and we talk.

We talk about life and business and kids and the state of the world and - sometimes - even faith. 

And, slowly, new friendships are forming for me. 

It has reminded me that it is up to each of us to prioritize reaching out in search of friendly connections. This culture desperately needs us to make the effort.

Here's a great little article from Joshua Becker at the Becoming Minimalist website that points us in the right direction if we want to foster more friendships.