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Category: Torah (page 2 of 2)

3 Tools of Fundamental Coherence in Richard Hooker

February 17, 2014 / Doug Floyd / 0 Comments

In “Richard Hooker and the Vision of God,” Charles Millers suggests that a “fundamental coherence” may be better language than “system” when referring to Richard Hooker’s thought in “Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity.”

Instead of a formal system, Hooker works out a “constellation of fundamental ideas,” according to Olivier Loyer (cited by Miller). Working from this core, Hooker has a set of tools that help him explore a range of questions. These tools include rationality, hierarchy, and participation.

Drawing upon a vision of God’s creation as rooted in His divine order, Hooker sees the world as pervaded by “a sense of the rational character of law” and “the human mind’s rational capacity is fulfilled in apprehending and coordinating itself to such laws.” Continue reading

Walking By the Light of the Son

January 17, 2014 / Doug Floyd / 0 Comments

The sun shall be no more
your light by day,
nor for brightness shall the moon
give you light;
but the Lord will be your everlasting light,
and your God will be your glory. Isaiah 60:19 [1]

Exiled into Babylon, Assyria and the nations, the people of God groped in darkness. In Torah, darkness is often a sign of walking outside the way of Torah. In Proverbs 4:18-19, we read that

[T]he path of the righteous is like the light of dawn,
which shines brighter and brighter until full day.
The way of the wicked is like deep darkness;
they do not know over what they stumble.

In the land of darkness, humanity is turned away from the light of the Lord. Humanity descends further and further into dark words and dark acts. And yet, all humanity lives by the light of the sun and the brightness of the moon. In the land of darkness, the sun still shines. In fact, the sun and moon and the stars govern the earth.

14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. 16 And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. 17 And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, 18 to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. (Ge 1:14–18)

These great lights mark our days, our months, our seasons. They tell us when to sleep, when to rise, when to plant, when to harvest. For many cultures, these great lights are the only true rulers. The land of darkness lives under the rule of heavenly movements. From astrology to Baalism to Egypt’s cult of the nile (and the heavenly lights), humanity lived and died by the rule of these lights.

Power for survival comes from seeking to manipulate or control the heavens, the gods, or the nations. For some cultures, this took the shape of human sacrifice. For others, it took the form of slavery. For Assyria and Babylon it took the form of endless war. To live only by the light of the sun and moon and starts is live under the spell of idolatry. Idol worship is not about whether humans believe or rejects the supernatural, the gods or the divine. Rather, it is ultimately about wielding power for survival.

When the people of God were sent into exile, it was a sign that they were already wandering in darkness like the surrounding nations. To walk in the light of Torah is to be able to say “No” to the slavery of Egypt, to human sacrifice of Baalism, to the oppressive wars of Assyria and Babylon. This “No” was a divine reigning down from the heavens (above the sun and moon and stars). It was a “No” to the creatures acting like the Creator.

In the cult of Israel, we hear a “No” against all cults living under the sun and moon and stars. In his essay on “Hitler and Israel,” Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy explains,

Israel built a temple, it is true, but they added that God did not dwell in it, as the gods of all other temples did: Israel voided the Temple. Israel circumcised her young men, it is true; but they did it to the child in the cradle, not to the initiate novice of the fertility orgies: Israel voided the rites. Israel wrote “poems,” but she denied that she “wrote” them lest man-made “poems” became idols. She insisted that she was told and that she replied: Israel voided the arts. In these three acts she emptied the three great “speeches” of the heathen, the tribal, the templar, and the artistic, of their lure and spell and charm. [2]

Israel becomes the “No” to all man’s creaturely religions (including atheism).

In listening to God’s “No,” Israel recognized herself as God’s servant, merely a man in the face of God’s majesty. In this “No” all merely human desires are burned out, and our notion of God’s will is cleansed. “Revelation” is a knowledge of God’s will, after his “No” to our will has become known. Only then is God pure future, pure act – only when all his former creations stand exposed as non-gods, as mere artifacts. To have revealed what is not God is the condition for all our understanding of God. On this basis the Jews became prayer. Israel is neither a nation nor a state nor a race, but it is prayer.

This “No” frees humanity from the spellbinders who live under the sun and wield power under the sun. Israel’s “No” frees humanity from the Pharoahs and Herods and Hitlers. The world always lives under the threat of humans who stumble in darkness and leads others to stumble in that darkness. By equating their will and God’s will or by denying God and establishing their will, their insights, their wisdom as supreme, they control and destroy and threaten the future. Rosenstock-Huessy’s words continue to echo,

And immediately, we see the rise of world-wide spellbinders and race-worshipers, of dictatorships, and super states that un-repentingly identify their will and God’s will, their world and the real world. No separation of Caesar and Christ is recognized. Hence mankind stays forever in need of both testaments – in need of both the “No” of the Old Testament and the “Yes” of the New.

In Isaiah’s song, we hear the hope that the people of God sitting in exile were not forsaken by God. They passed through the death of man’s darkness and were restored to the land. From them, a conquering king would come, the Messiah. His rule was not “under the heavens” and rooted in wielding power like the kings of the earth (Psalm 2). His rule reveals the light that is brighter than the noonday sun. This light is greater than the sun or moon. This light says “No” to the exaltation of the creature over the Creator. This light reveals and restores humanity into the shape of living, loving relations with God, one another and all creation. This light fulfills Torah, embodies Torah. Jesus Christ the True Light of the World leads his people us to become truly human images of the Creator.

Even now, we are learning to walk in the light of the Son.

Image used by permission. Some rights reserved by MyDigitalSLR

[1] All Bible references from The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2001). Wheaton: Standard Bible Society.
[2] All quotes from Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy comes from his essay, “Hitler and Israel, or on Prayer.” From Judaism Despite Christianity. Reprinted by University of Chicago Press, 2011.

Singing in the House of Sojourn

May 17, 2013 / Doug Floyd / 1 Comment

“Your statutes have been my songs
in the house of my sojourning.” (Psalm 119:54)

My restless tongue intones the hope of home in the echo of the Psalms. Praise is the language of my people, my homeland, but I sojourn so far from home. I long for the land of harmony, but wander through valleys of dissonance. A wayward tongue blinds the eye to beauty, sounding complaint, frustration and disgust instead.

James writes that blessing and cursing gush from the same mouth. It ought not be, but is. I am an imperfect witness. Sometimes sounding praise, sometimes cursing the ground on which I stand.

Words pound the pavement with anger. News blares sounds of strife and struggle, neverending dispute. The unpeaceable kingdoms of this world sound the drums of dissatisfaction, distortion and destruction.

Oh, to speak one true word in a world where so many sounds collide and crash and dissipate. “To find my home in one sentence, concise, as if hammered in metal,” writes Czeslaw Milosz. “Not to enchant anybody. Not to earn a lasting name in posterity. An unnamed need for order, for rhythm, for form, which three words are opposed to chaos and nothingness.”

He knows the chaos and nothingness of sound without fire, words without life, clouds without rain. So many words flash and fade, undoing the family, the community, the nation. The furies of strife usher a deluge of destruction.

When the Lord instructs, “you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor” (Deut 5: 20), He guides in the way of Life. He also reveals the way of creation. His Torah undergirds the very structure of creation. As Abraham Joshua Heschel once wrote, “The Torah determines both the essence and the existence of the universe.”

His words echo Wisdom’s voice in Proverbs 8,
“The Lord possessed me at the beginning of his work,
the first of his acts of old.
Ages ago I was set up,
at the first, before the beginning of the earth.
When there were no depths I was brought forth,
when there were no springs abounding with water.
Before the mountains had been shaped,
before the hills, I was brought forth,
before he had made the earth with its fields,
or the first of the dust of the world.
When he established the heavens, I was there;
when he drew a circle on the face of the deep,
when he made firm the skies above,
when he established the fountains of the deep,
when he assigned to the sea its limit,
so that the waters might not transgress his command,
when he marked out the foundations of the earth,
then I was beside him, like a master workman,
and I was daily his delight,
rejoicing before him always,
rejoicing in his inhabited world
and delighting in the children of man. (Proverbs 8:22-31)

Bearing witness is not an arbitrary rule but the shape of this ordered world. All things bear witness. The grass, the trees, the sun and the stars all bear witness. Day after day, they silently proclaim the Glory of God. Even as the tree bears witness to God’s glory, it silently bears witness to itself. The Dogwood tree in front of my house reveals the wonder of a Dogwood. In silence, I behold a symphony of shape and color and motion through all seasons of the year. The Dogwood tree gives witness of itself while witnessing to the Glory of God at the same time. And it also silently witnesses to the creation around it.

To adapt the words of John Donne, the Dogwood is not “an island entire of itself.” This little tree lives in mutuality with the soil below and the air above. Even as I behold the Dogwood, I behold the fiery Cardinal alighting on it’s crooked limb. The limb provides a place for revealing the Cardinal in all it’s splendor. In some way, the Cardinal reveals the Dogwood even as the Dogwood reveals the Cardinal. The sun above gives witness to Dogwood and Cardinal since without the light, I could not behold the wonder of each. At some level, every particular thing in this vast creation is giving witness to the Glory of God, the glory of it’s own unique form, and the glory of the world around it.

Into the midst of this wordless pageant, a voice speaks. I am the articulate voice. You are the articulate voice. We alone echo the Voice of God by speaking and singing into this world of glory. The Psalmist tunes my tongue and my ear to the sound of a true word. Even as the Psalmist sings the statutes of God in the house of sojourning, he anticipates the One True Word Enfleshed.

Jesus, the Word become Flesh is the True Witness of the Father, the World, and the person. In Him and by His Spirit, I behold the fullness of glory. Even as Jesus reveals the Father, He reveals my call as True Witness. “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer” (Psalm 19:14). The music of creation pulses in my heart, as the Word shapes my lips into songs of praise.

We play the honored role as articulate witnesses. Life and death are in the power of our tongues (Proverbs 18:21). We are learning to become who we are by the wisdom of Christ. His Word shapes our ears, and eyes and tongues. Like the Psalmist, we learn to sing His Word in our house of sojourning. May Jesus, the Word made Flesh, make our flesh the echo His Word. May our frail and muttering tongues give witness to the glory of God, the wonder of His creation, and the beautiful beloved people who people this world.

“O all ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord praise him and magnify him for ever.”

* Image by Funchye on flickr. Used by permission via Creative Commons.

Knowledge as Call and Response

April 23, 2013 / dougfloyd / 1 Comment

Last week, I wrote about “Bearing Witness” and described a range of witnesses that inform our knowing: personal experience, the experience of others, the world around us, and the Triune God. I’d like to explore these further but from a different angle. I want to think about knowing through the lens of Torah. As a reminder, Torah means the instruction of the Lord (see Proverbs 1:1-17). It also refers to the first five books of the Bible (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy). Additionally, it refers to all of Scripture and to the teaching within the community of God’s people.

If I take Torah on it’s own terms, what might I discover in it about ways of human knowing? Let me briefly think “out loud” about that question. This is a quick list of ideas and is limited to my initial process of discovery. But it might help others think “out loud” with me.

Genesis, which literally means “beginning” opens the canon of instruction with a focus on the beginning of language, the beginning of the cosmos, the beginning of humans, the beginning of corruption in humans, and the beginning of family. Actually, there are many more stories of beginning in Genesis, but this gets us started. In Genesis, Torah places value upon knowing our beginning. Like the head of a spring, this beginning opens ideas that keep developing all throughout Scripture. Here are some of aspects of knowing that stand out to me:

a. Knowledge is formed in the midst of the world. The first words of Genesis point to God creating the heavens and the earth. Humans are created within this world. So we are live in the midst of the world we come to know. We learn within the limitations of time and space.

b. Knowledge points beyond the world. God creates man in his image and likeness. Though humans are created within the world, something about us images someone beyond the world. As images of God, we carry a sense of knowing something more than we know, something beyond. This knowing might be connected with the idea of “call and response.” The Lord calls us into being, and we respond.

c. Knowledge of creation is trustworthy. This story of origins differs with many creation stories in that the world is created intentionally , is good, and is created by the word of God. In other words, there is no “cosmic stuff” that preceded creation. The stars are created as stars. So a human can know them as stars as opposed to some illusion or shadow. Creation is not allegory, but material and real and particular.

d. Knowledge develops in discovery. In Genesis 1 and 2, we see the possibility for humans to grow in knowledge and for creation to develop and be discovered. Adam is called upon to name the animals. He observes, discovers and categorizes them by names. The animals have a specific reality outside his naming and yet, somehow his naming, his discovering points to something real about the animals. Additionally, as man engages the animals, he discovers something about himself: he is alone.

e. Knowledge and language are bound up together. God speaks creation. Language is not introduced as a development of man but as God’s mode of creating and communicating with man. Speaking and hearing become the primary way of knowing that develops all through Torah.

e. Knowledge develops in relationship. God creates a second human as a pair for Adam. Now Adam names the other human, but he also sings to her.* While words are at the heart of his knowing, Genesis points to a knowing beyond words. So learning in relation is rooted in language but also develops physically on multiple levels at once.

f. Knowledge has limits. In Genesis 2, man is free to discover all creation, but he is not to eat the fruit of one tree. This limitation indicates that he cannot know the tree by taste, by consuming it. In Genesis 3, Adam and Eve are seduced by serpent to eat the fruit. While the source of evil is not explained, we discover the impact of this knowledge corrupts other knowledge causing a breach between Adam and God as well as Adam and Eve.

g. Knowledge is corrupted at some level. The violation of Genesis 3 introduces the problem of knowledge that breaks relation which in turn corrupts knowing between persons. This type of knowledge ends in death: Cain kills Abel. This corrupting knowledge is not limited to an abstract idea level but is material, so it sows corruption at all levels of creation, leading the destruction of the world in the flood.

h. There is a connection between knowledge and love. Just as the corrupt knowledge separates and violates relational knowledge at some level, there is a knowledge that reverse this corruption. Deuteronomy will connect knowing Torah with loving God and man. In some sense, true knowing leads is expressed in love.

i. Knowledge is founded and shaped in family. In Genesis and throughout Torah, genealogies form a key aspect of instruction. Additionally, Deuteronomy instructs the parents to teach the children in a way that seems to echo the Lord instructing his people. Thus, the family is a fundamental place of knowing. This has a range of implications, but should always remind us of our need to learn from those around us. Family knowing seems to contrast with the knowing that splits family and moves toward isolation.

j. Knowledge is revealed. Just as humans learn in relation and by discovering the world around them, Torah also shows knowledge coming from outside the world. God speaks to Israel from Mt. Sinai. God speaks to Abraham, Izaak, Jacob and Joseph in dreams and encounters. This revealed knowledge appears to be like a parent correcting the child, clarifying, reordering, and leading the child forward. This type of knowing at times seems to look like letting go of our understanding. Abraham has to follow without knowing exactly where he is going. This knowing is a knowing rooted in trust. In Torah, this knowing is not against the knowing by discovery but does challenge the corrupting knowledge the separates, enslaves, destroys.

k. Knowledge is rehearsed through active remembering. Israel remembers the Word by enfleshing it in obedience. If Israel forgets the Word, she falls back into the corrupting, oppressing, destroying knowledge.

l. Knowledge flows from and forms the whole person. Knowledge cannot be isolated from the emotions, the body, and the community. Torah uses the language of heart as the center of the person and in some ways representative of the whole person. If the heart or the very essence of the person is corrupted, this shapes his words, actions, memories, and feeling. Ultimately, Torah points toward the hope of the Lord writing His Wisdom, His Knowledge, His vital life into the very heart of person.

* – This is if we except Genesis 2:23 as a song.

Image by Massimo Valiani on Flickr. Used by permission via Creative Commons.

Bearing Witness

“And you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.” (Deuteronomy 5:20)

I remember growing up in churches where the old preacher would pause on the midst of his sermon, intoning “Can I get a witness?” Shouts would rise from the congregation and echo across the ceiling. “Preach it brother!” “Truth!” “Amen!” “Glory!” The robust call and response between preacher and audience taps into a deeply biblical rhythm of bearing witness.

The prohibition in the ninth commandment is based on the possibility of bearing true witness. Torah talks about this phrase as a legal speech-act:

“Only on the evidence of two witnesses or of three witnesses shall a charge be established.” (Deuteronomy 19:15).

If someone is accused of a crime, it requires two or three people to establish a charge. In the case of a capital crime, these people must act out their accusation by literally throwing the first stone. To bear false witness is a serious act because it could mean killing someone on the basis of deception. The Stoning of Soraya M.: A True Story tells the horrific story of an entire village bearing false witness against a woman by stoning her to death. If a person is exposed for bearing false witness, they must bear the penalty that related to the specific accusation.

True Witness is not simply a legal action, but is at the heart of all knowledge. We know what we know based on some form of witness. There are a range of witnesses to knowledge including personal experience, the experience of others, the world around us, and the Triune God. For now, I simply want to mention each of these categories. I’ll discuss them in more depth later.

Personal Experience – Each person develops personal knowledge of the world as a whole person. We hear, see, smell, taste and touch the world around us. We think, feel, talk, and engage the world around us. The mystery of our own consciousness is a witness.

Other People – Even as we are immersed into the world we are perceiving, we interact with our people who witness in word and act. From experts telling us to exercise, to our wives telling us to buy more bread, we rely on the witness of other humans to live in this world. This witness can be face to face discussion but it can also be text: witness recorded. This implies some form of text. As humans we rely primarily on language, but witness can also be recorded in pictures, music, buildings and more.

The World – While only humans offer us an articulate voice we can understand, all creation is witnessing at some level. This might be called a passive witness. While the tree may not communicate in a common language, I can learn from watching the tree. I must adapt and the let the tree reveal itself to me “so to speak.” This is not some form of mystic application to creation rather it is the discipline of letting go of my assumptions about what I am observing and learning how to observe it. More on this later.

The Triune God – We encounter this unseen witness through the witnesses above and in a distinctive breaking in as “inner witness.” As a Christian, I would consider this a fundamental witness, but it is also the most challenging because it is not bound by the world. In one sense, the world includes ourselves, other people and the world around us. The Triune witness of Father, Son and Spirit is not contained by the world and may seem to be invisible in the world.

Each of categories require more space to discuss, so I’ll spend more time on that in the future. For now, I’ll simply suggest that witness as knowing may help us to see how knowledge requires some form of trust, relationship, engagement, and adaptation. Since some form of witness is so primary to knowing, false witness threatens to unravel all knowing.

* Image by thebristolkid on Flickr (used by permission via Creative Commons)

Singing Peace to the Neighborhood

April 6, 2013 / Doug Floyd / 3 Comments

Los Lobos

Released in 1990, Los Lobos’ album “The Neighborhood” continues to sing peace into the community.The themes that highlight this album have resounded across the 40 year span that Los Lobos has been singing, performing and producing albums. They sing about living in a family, a community, a culture. Though considered a Chicano rock band, their music draws sounds from folk, rock, rhythm & blues, bayou, country, and soul not to mention Spanish and Mexican sounds. Their sound and their words bring together a rang of characters and sounds in a common celebration.

For the last several months, I’ve been listening to “The Neighborhood” almost every day as I walk through my neighborhood. The music still sounds as fresh as the day I first heard in the early 1990s. And the words still provoke my heart to pray that the Lord will “bring peace to the neighborhood.” The title sounds repeats the refrain as a litany,

Thank you Lord for another day
Help my brother along his way
And please bring peace to the Neighborhood

This prayer appears in a song that highlights the pain and brokenness of the neighborhood. The songs finds a brother looking for trouble, a sister rocking her new baby, a father drinking whiskey in his chair, and a mother working nine to five and hardly “making enough to keep alive,” but praying with tears in her eyes,

Thank you Lord for another day
Help my brother along his way
And please bring peace to the Neighborhood
Grant us all peace and serenity
They’re just songs sung on a dirty street
Echoes of hope lie beneath their feet
Struggling hard to make ends meet

These prayers, these songs echo hope in the midst of a messy and broken world. I cannot but help think of the people of God revealed in the Torah praying for and bringing blessing to the world around them. If we follow the story of Abraham, Izaak, Jacob and Joseph, we see each of these men contributing to the flourishing of their surrounding cultures. They bring blessings. Their blessings are not limited to their ethnic group, they bring blessing to the world around them.

The Lord tells Abraham that through him all the families of the earth will be blessed. Abraham even prays for mercy over Sodom and Gomorrah when judgment is at hand. Joseph acts to bless Potiphar’s house and later to bless Pharaoh’s house and all of Egypt. Later Moses commands Israel to care for the sojourner and the stranger at the gate. Hospitality is celebrated all through the Old and New Testament.

This takes me back to Los Lobos. They direct our eyes to the people living in the community. In “The Neighborhood” they sing about families, young lovers, parties, troubled hearts, those struggling with depression, broken relationships, struggle and joy. They sing a song of praise about a boy with limitations, calling him “Little John of God.” In their songs, I hear a reminder that echoes back from ancient Israel: bless the world around you, be present to the world around you, offer yourself in love to serve the world around you, and ask God’s blessings upon the world around you. Their song “The Giving Tree” captures this spirit of love and grace that permeates the music:

A warm wind is blowing through the valleys and the mountain tops
Down the road to a place we know so well
The children are running with ribbons in their baby hands
While we all gather ’round the Giving Tree

Let’s go sing songs, the blue ones
Let’s go sing about the Lord above
And thank the old sun for all we have
The sad times, the glad times
The babies swinging in our arms
Just don’t seem like much like rain ’round the Giving Tree

Like the shedherds once followed a star bright up in the sky
We’ve come to say, come be with us know
Come give us a good one
Come give us a happy time
While we all here dance ’round the Giving Tree

Image by Dena Flows (used by Creative Commons Permission via Flickr)

The Beautiful Beloved

April 2, 2013 / Doug Floyd / 1 Comment

“There is the great lesson of ‘Beauty and the Beast,’ that a thing must be loved before it is lovable.”
― G.K. Chesterton

Chesterton articulates a Gospel-shaped wisdom: love makes lovable. The Lord loved us even when we were enemies (Romans 5:8). His love transforms us into friends (John 15:15) and then to lovers (1 John 4:11). God’s love toward us in Christ is what makes us beloved. We are beautiful because we are loved by the true lover. In the opening pages of Genesis, we hear the Creator repeatedly proclaim over His creation, “It is good!”

We live in an age when the word “good” seems a bit devalued. To help us get a sense of its richness, we might consider the implications of the Hebrew word (towb) for good used in Genesis 1. “Towb” can mean good, merry, prosperous, precious, beautiful, favored, and more. The Lord delights in His good creation. After sin has scarred the world, He loves His creation so completely that the He overcomes the corruption of sin in and through His Son Jesus Christ. This is the same love of Christ that is transforming us into His image.

Even as we speak of becoming His image, we hear His call, “Love one another as I have loved you.” In this new command, we see a fulfilling of the old commands: honor your father and mother, do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not kill, do not steal, do not bear false witness, do not covet. Each of these commands are rooted in proper love to parent, sibling/neighbor, and spouse. As Christ restores His image in us, we are reordered to love properly. In turn, the object of love becomes lovable.

Humans struggle to love enemy and family alike. We fail to love those close to us because we no longer see their loveliness: many adult children disrespect their aging parents, many spouses fail to see the beauty of their once beloved. In Christ, the command to love precedes the vision of beauty. We love first, then we behold the lovely. This act of loving changes us. As C.S. Lewis writes,

“Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him.”
― C.S. Lewis

We act in love, trusting that the vision of love and the affection of love will follow. We follow Christ and by His Spirit we honor our parents, our spouses, our neighbors. In His love, we begin to see again, and though the people surrounding us are still imperfect, we learn to see the mystery and wonder and goodness of His creation in them.

* Image by Vinoth Chandar. Used by permission via Creative Commons.

Hearing Stories in Torah

April 1, 2013 / dougfloyd / 1 Comment

Stories are an irreducible part of the way we understand and talk about our world. We are all natural storytellers, story-thinkers, story-actors, and story-listeners. Stories are one of the ways that the Lord addresses us and calls us to respond.

The Lord created humans with the ability to hear, see, smell, taste, and touch. Corresponding with these outward physical senses, we also think, imagine, feel emotions, and decide. He addresses us and calls us to respond on all levels. Thus when the Lord addresses each of us, He addresses the whole person. As Hans Urs Von Balthasar writes,

“For man in the Old Testament, the only possible encounter with God is one which involves the whole person. The Jew does not distinguish here between spirit and sensibility, soul and body. He is approached and summoned by God as a whole person, and it is as a whole person that he must answer.”[1]

When we reading the opening texts of the Bible, we encounter songs, stories, laws, genealogies, and more. We are invited into a multi-dimensional world that requires us to listen and respond with our whole person. In Ralph Smith’s helpful article on meditation, he discusses the role of story in this rich Biblical world. Smith writes,

Our worldviews, in other words, are story-haunted. Stories are lurking beneath the surface and behind the scenes of every event and action in our lives, even every word we speak. In the nature of the case, this is no less true for ancient Israelites than for modern men. Thus, the narrative approach to worldview questions that characterized Paul was not original with him. It is typical of all the authors of Scripture beginning with Moses. What this means for Torah is obvious. Moses wrote laws and history that are haunted by the stories that preceded them. Virtually every law in the book of Deuteronomy presupposes, alludes to, recalls, reflects on, or inescapably reminds readers of stories in Genesis to Numbers.[2]

As we read Scripture, we should take time to soak in the stories. Read and read stories. Follow the stories throughout the whole Scripture. For instance, if I am reading the creation story in Genesis 1 and 2, it might help me to reflect on the rhythms of Genesis 1 and 2 by reading how the rest of Scripture references this vital story. The book of Hebrews present God as a Masterbuilder of Creation. In Job, the Lord points to wonders of His creation to challenge Job’s limited view of him. In Jeremiah, the Lord reminds the lamenting prophet that He is creator and sustainer of the world.

As you read, pause and listen. Soak in the story. Let it fill your imagination. Use your sense if possible. Ask questions of the text. Look for patterns that repeat in various stories. Through His Word, the Lord is training our whole person to be attuned to His instruction and His faithful love.

[1] Hans Urs Von Balthasar. The Glory of the Lord, a Theological Aesthetics I: Seeing the Form. Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 2009 (p. 253).
[2] Ralph Smith. “Law and History: How to Read the Law of Moses.” Trinity House Institute, 3/11/13 <http://trinityhouseinstitute.com/law-and-history-how-to-read-the-law-of-moses/>

Curses into Blessings

March 13, 2013 / Doug Floyd / 3 Comments

⁹ The sons of Eliab were Nemuel, Dathan, and Abiram. These are the Dathan and Abiram, representatives of the congregation, who contended against Moses and Aaron in the company of Korah, when they contended against the Lord; ¹⁰ and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up together with Korah when that company died, when the fire devoured two hundred and fifty men; and they became a sign. ¹¹ Nevertheless the children of Korah did not die. (Numbers 26:9-11)

This little passage appears in a larger passage listing the various names of fathers and sons in various tribes. In the middle of the extensive list, a reference appears to the rebellion against Moses in Numbers 16:

Now Korah the son of Izhar, the son of Kohath, the son of Levi, with Dathan and Abiram the sons of Eliab, and On the son of Peleth, sons of Reuben, took men; ² and they rose up before Moses with some of the children of Israel, two hundred and fifty leaders of the congregation, representatives of the congregation, men of renown. (Numbers 16:1-2)

In the end of the story, God brings judgment upon the families and the earth swallows them:

³¹ Now it came to pass, as he finished speaking all these words, that the ground split apart under them, ³² and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up, with their households and all the men with Korah, with all their goods. ³³ So they and all those with them went down alive into the pit; the earth closed over them, and they perished from among the assembly. ³⁴ Then all Israel who were around them fled at their cry, for they said, “Lest the earth swallow us up also!” ³⁵ And a fire came out from the Lord and consumed the two hundred and fifty men who were offering incense. (Number 16:31-35)

Now we learn in Numbers 26 that God had mercy on them and didn’t remove their family line from the earth. (¹¹ Nevertheless the children of Korah did not die. Numbers 26:11). Later in the Psalms, we’ll discover a range of Psalms attributed to the sons of Korah (Psalms 42–49; 84; 85; 87; 88). What began as a curse later becomes a blessings and the sons of Korah (the sons of rebellion) become singers in the house of the Lord.

This reversal from curse to blessing is similar to a reversal of Jacob’s curse upon Reuben:

“Reuben, you are my firstborn,
My might and the beginning of my strength,
The excellency of dignity and the excellency of power.
Unstable as water, you shall not excel,
Because you went up to your father’s bed;
Then you defiled it—
He went up to my couch. (Genesis 49:3-4)

But centuries later, Moses will offer God’s blessing upon Reuben:

⁶ “Let Reuben live, and not die,
Nor let his men be few.” (Deuteronomy 33:6)

Some of the rebels mentioned in Numbers 16 (Dathan and Abiram the sons of Eliab) were sons of Reuben. God in his mercy does not blot out Reuben’s line, but pronounces life and not death.

Mercy and grace appear all through Torah. Though men and women break God’s law and come under curses, again and again and again, we behold the Lord showing “hesed” and turning curses into blessings.

* Image by Anthony Posey used by permission (per Creative Commons)

Pilgrim Notes

Reflections along the way.