Theology for the Masses

Jake Malloy was another person who prayed at the Parkade Baptist Church “Battle for America” Concert of Prayer.  He prayed a prayer of repentance, one that was modeled after the fruits of the spirit.  Here is a taste:

I apologize that the commandment of love You set above all others we have treated so lightly, Forgive us, please, for not loving You with all our hearts because our earthly treasures consume us. Forgive us for not loving with all our souls because we corrupt them and treat our and others’ souls as if they were not eternal. Forgive us our unloving minds that spend little time studying who You are. We repent of using our strength to serve ourselves rather than serving others with the strength You provide. Forgive us, Father, for creating a structure where Christians are expected to be consumers rather than productive servants.

I encourage you to read and pray the rest here.

My church hosted a community-wide prayer meeting. I was asked to deliver the prayer for the least of these. Here’s what I prayed:

God, our Father, we thank you that you are also Adonai Jireh, our provider. We thank you that you have been so good to us, that portion of your people who live in America. We thank you for our seemingly limitless resources, for safety as we go about our daily lives, and for a government that lets us follow you as you command. We thank you for all of these blessings and many more, and we pause to acknowledge that you and you alone are worthy of our love and allegiance.

But we cannot think on our blessings without recalling also those times when we’ve not been so blessed. We remember Egypt. We remember when we came there as immigrants. We also remember when Egypt made us to work as slaves. We remember how your mighty hand led us out from that place of slavery, and how you took us into the wilderness, where we learned that every good and perfect gift comes from you, that you are our source of all things – of security, of shelter, of food and drink. We remember how you led us into our Promised Land, and how you continued to provide for us even there.

We remember these things now, Adonai Jireh, God our Provider, because we must confess that we have often forgotten them. And so as we recount the ways in which you have blessed us, let us remember those in our community and in our world who do not experience the blessings you’ve given us. Let us remember that many around the world still groan under slavery to the power of Sin and Death; we remember that we must teach them how they may be free. Let us remember the poor among us: the homeless, the drug addict, the drug dealer, those trapped in generational cycles of poverty. Remind us that they do not have to earn our compassion or our mercy, just as we did not – indeed could not – earn yours. Let us not give with a spirit of patronage and paternalism, but with a spirit of love, of identification and gratitude. For we believe you when you tell us that by sharing with them, we are sharing with you. Thank you for allowing us to bless you, even as you have blessed us.

Let us remember the strangers among us, too. We remember when we were strangers in Egypt, and we recognize that, as your children, we are all strangers in this world. We confess that we have not shown the hospitality you’ve commanded to those among us whom we perceive to be different. We’ve sought to legislate against the immigrant because he doesn’t look like us. We have mocked the immigrant because she doesn’t sound like us. We have ignored that today, more of your most precious creations, those created in your image are in slavery than at any time in history, and many of them are children. Teach us to love the stranger among us even as you loved us when we were strangers to you.

We thank you for those among us who are involved in caring for the needy in our midst. We ask that you bless Morningstar Counseling, who provides affordable mental health for our community. We remember the Shepherd’s Basket and Central Missouri Food Bank, who share such basic necessities with the families of our community. Bless Open Arms, who ministers to women who are struggling to birth and raise the next generation. Bless Loaves & Fishes and the St. Francis House, who work to redeem the homeless our city ignores. Bless the Intersection and Urban Empowerment, who are committed to reach that part of town many of us fear and most of us pretend doesn’t exist. Teach all of us how to work alongside our brothers and sisters in these ministries. Give us eyes to see how we can get involved with them, and to see how we can love those our society has deemed unlovable.

Finally, teach us to be generous. We live in a world where over 2 billion persons live on less than $1 per day. Teach us to see that solutions the problems of this world are not beyond your people’s reach. Teach us to recycle. Teach us to live simply. Teach us to open our eyes to the poor around us. Teach us to use less and to give more. Teach us to be free from our lifestyle of consumption. We know that you are the God who suffers with the poor. We ask that you would teach your body to suffer with them as well. You have blessed us richly, so that we may be a blessing to the world. We ask that you would consume us, that your heart for our world and for your beloved creations would become our heart as well. Give us eyes to see your work, that we might join you.

Amen.

As I am reading chapter 6 of In Memory of Her, Fiorenza is examining the titles and positions of women in the ministry of Paul.  I am double checking her claims and translations via BibleWorks in the ESV, NLT, NRSV, Young’s Literal, and both the BGT and BYZ Greek texts.  While I don’t have time to get into specifics [1] , the case is getting thiner and thiner for a lack of women in positions of power and leadership in the early Church that were endorsed by Paul.

As a side note, there is an inverse relationship between my hatred for Wisdom Ways and my love for In Memory of Her, both by Fiorenza.

1. I have another 75 pages and another article to go through and then come up with a presentation/discussion for class tommorow [↩]

What I find interesting in the following logical syllogism is that the Calvinist, in order to avoid being a universalist (5), has to to deny premise 1 or redefine God’s love – which is to deny premise 2. If Calvinists were honest about this, Calvinism would die out fairly quickly in churches because the denial of 1 or 2 goes against what most church people consider God’s fundamental attribute. In other words, complete openness on this subject would be the death of Calvinism.

P1.God truly loves all persons.

P2.To truly love someone is to desire their well being and to promote their true flourishing as much as you can.

P3.The true well being and true flourishing of all persons is to be found in a right relationship with God, a saving relationship in which we love and obey him.

P4.God could determine all persons freely to accept a right relationship with himself and be saved.

5.Therefore, all will be saved.

Check out The Fuerst Shall Be Last.  This guy has some fantastic insights on Trinitarian theology.

It’s an excellent starting point for some discussion.  And, I think, a cogent argument for the supremacy of Love over sovereignty as God’s defining attribute.

A while ago, the BBB had a poll running on headship and submission. Right now they are unpacking the poll and the issues surrounding the headship/submission issues. See part 1 and part 2. I really liked what Wyane had to say in the following quote. I think it is good to reflect how we view our Christianity especially in what parts were emphasize over other parts.
Better Bibles Blog :: head and submission poll results – post #3

From my own point of view, not enough biblical teaching has occurred on what it means for Christians to mutually submit to each other in comparison with how much teaching there has been on wives submitting to their husbands. The larger amount of teaching devoted to wives submitting to their husbands does not align with the fact that the first relationship Paul addresses in this section on submission is that of Christians to each other. That relationship is explicitly stated in Greek. It seems to me that other relationships of submission flow out of the teaching that mutual submission is God’s design for his children. I think that much of scripture tells us, in one way or another, how to submit to each other, and such submission would define what a wife’s submission to her husband should look like. Mutual submission surely involves love (John 13:35), honor, respect, deference, being like-minded, and being one in spirit (Phil. 2:2).

After I read that, I read his conclusions on chapter 5 of Ephesians:

So what does it mean for a man to be the head of his wife? Here is what the Bible explicitly says about this matter. In the Ephesians (chapter 5) context of teaching about the husband as head of his wife, the husband head is to love his wife. The husband head is to love his wife sacrificially, “giving himself for her” as Christ gave himself (died) for the church. As far as I know, this is all that the Bible explicitly teaches about what the husband head does for his wife. Everything else which is said on the matter is, I suggest, application or theological extrapolation. Is the husband to lead his wife? Perhaps, but the Bible does not explicitly say so. Does he have authority over her? Perhaps, but the Bible does not explicitly say so, other than when it refers to authority of one kind, mentioned in one passage which we will discuss below, concerning the statement “A husband has authority over his wife”. Is the husband a priest for his wife? The Bible does not teach this. Does a husband mediate between his wife and God. The Bible does not teach this either.

Update The Better Bibles Blog has now posted their fourth post in the series: head and submission poll results – post #4. The post sums up my thoughts on the subject quite well. Wayne looks at the difference between ὑποτασσω (a voluntary attitude of giving in, cooperating, assuming responsibility, and carrying a burden) in Eph 5:21-22 and Rom. 13:1 and contrasts it with ἐξουσιάζω (to have power or authority, use power) in such places as 1 Cor. 7:4.

Wayne then goes on to look at the Genesis account and comes to much the same conclusions that Dave and I did a while back.

Does God wants bond-slaves:

God does not want people to be “in love” with Him. This carnal phrase is a sick way to refer to our Lord. God desires bond-slaves who worship Him and adore Him as their sovereign Master, not who are in love with Him as one is with their lover.

or does God want “lovers?”

Yes, according to this post, God prefers slaves rather than people who are in love with Him. That would come as a surprise to Jesus, I guess, who in John 15:15 said,
“I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.”
It also misses the point of much of the Biblical narrative. It seems to me that even in the Old Testament, God was looking for people who loved them with all their hearts. When David wrote,
As the deer pants for streams of water,
so my soul pants for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When can I go and meet with God?
was it sickening to God? Too wishy-washy and touchy-feely?