Today’s Quote 3/21/09 Eugene Peterson

When we submit our lives to what we read in Scripture, we find that we are not being led to see God in our stories but our stories in God’s. God is the larger context and plot in which our stories find themselves…What we must never be encouraged to do, although all of us are guilty of it over and over, is to force scripture to fit our experience. Our experience is to small; it’s like trying to put the ocean into a thimble.   Eat This Book, p.44,69

Rethinking NT Wright’s version of Colossians 2:15

Sometimes something very obvious and not even to be questioned isn’t really that obvious and is to be questioned. This is a case in point. Here are a few word from the IVP post at Addenda & Errata about NT Wright’s version of Colossians 2:15.

The nub of the issue is the interpretation of apekdyomai in Colossians 2:15, where it appears in the form apekdysamenos (aorist middle participle, masculine singular nominative) in reference to an action performed (I will argue) by Christ on the cross.

Time after time you will find interpreters saying this speaks of God’s “disarming” the powers. In other words, they are reading it as a verb that is middle in form but active in meaning (which is legitimate—this happens in Greek). Now admittedly, part of their problem is that they perceive (from preceding verses) the subject to be God rather than Christ. There is an admirable consistency, if inflexibility, in this judgment.

But then the commentator’s tune changes when this rare word shows up only seventeen verses later in Colossians 3:9—same form, only plural rather than singular. The subject there is believers. No question about that. And now, they maintain, the middle form is indeed middle in meaning, believers have “stripped/put off the old man with his practices.” Well, their translation/interpretation here is correct. Anyone would agree. But why has it not led them to rethink apekdysamenos in Colossians 2:15? Perhaps there Paul actually is saying that Christ stripped himself of something on the cross.

The point is that anytime one verse or one word in a verse is made to bear so much weight, you had better take another look. Don’t assume that it all so clear.

The Question: Will you put your mind to it?

From the Dilbert cartoon strip:

“Wally, if I give you an assignment, what are the odds that you will actually do it right?”

“If I put my mind to a task, I do it well.”

“Will you put your mind to it?”

“Wow. Good follow-up question.

Looking back over the years of ministry, I see that a significant part of any of the “failures” were due to finding out that some key players didn’t care enough to put their mind to it. Actually some of these people can be very helpful – as long as they are not in a key position. They can make a contribution, but they don’t generally help other people make a contribution. They do what they do, and then they go home and watch TV.  My mistake was asking them to play a role they never meant to play.

ACORN’s Food Stamp Mortgages

We are too close to the current economic meltdown to dig as deep as we will need to do in order to understand what happened to us. But in the root system of this crisis the likes of ACORN and its goal to get around “middle class credit standards” will figure prominently. See a fuller article here. It will give you a reason to get mad at Jimmy Carter all over again. I still can’t erase the memory of the Carter years in the White House. The man had a knack for making things look hopeless.