Intermission

I am consistently awed by the aptitude of my fellow grad-mates. As I listen to them in class and speak with them outside of class, I constantly come to the same conclusion: they are all at least as smart as me.
This is quite a shock, as I am accustomed to being the biggest head in the room. I'll just have to be more pious and humble than them. That'll show 'em.

P.S. I have heard your requests and am currently working on a "Brett On Demand" set of posts, in which I will attempt a re-telling of a Greek myth as well as articulate my thoughts on politics, particularly in regard to conspiracies. I will have these finished sometime in the next decade. Cheers!

With All The Whistles

I have for a while teetered dangerously on the edge of becoming a maverick Christian. I have somehow bought into the thought that if I hole myself up all alone and believe the company is good, then I can be happy. A happy hermit. I think I began to buy into this in California because I was supported by such great communities. My solitude was offset by the excellent dorm life I enjoyed, and later, by the amazing church family I had. I was like a man who had been given a Ferrari with all the whistles but wanted to trade it in for a Buick. There was no contentment. I thought I could be happy if I was alone.
The problem is that there are no joyful hermits. They are either solemnly and judiciously ensuring their vows stay met, or else they degenerate into cynical scotch-drinkers with a penchant for terrorizing neighborhood children. They simple cannot abide all that happiness happening on their front lawn. Changing one's environment doesn't produce happiness. If you're not content in Alaska, you won't be content in Texas, and that's because you are the problem, not the state. Wherever you go, there you are.
The upshot of being a hermit is that you don't have to deal with other people. The downside is that, if the presence of your own company isn't sufficient, loneliness gets pretty difficult to fend off. It becomes the shadow behind your back, looming larger and larger as your life waxes on. And I have become a bit lonely out here. No church family, no school family, no regular family anywhere near me.
It gets worse. You see, I'm a sucker for Rom-com theology. That "love-will-win-the-day, follow-your-heart, everyone-ends-up-married-and-happy" existential bullhockey. That kind of thinking is no safe retreat for the lonely-hearted. It's taking a shot of whiskey for a knife wound when you what you really need is some bandaging and someone with the know-how to dress it.
The real medicine for heart-hurt is in the Word:
"Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."
"With my voice I cry out to the LORD;
with my voice I plead for mercy to the LORD.
I pour out my complaint before him;
I tell my trouble before him.

When my spirit faints within me,
you know my way!
In the path where I walk
they have hidden a trap for me.
Look to the right and see:
there is none who takes notice of me;
no refuge remains to me;
no one cares for my soul.

I cry to you, O LORD;
I say, "You are my refuge,
my portion in the land of the living."

Open House

I've been stalling on what to write. I just can't bring myself to click "Publish Post."
Writer's block is not the issue. Writer incoherence is. I am wrestling and dueling with some wonderful ideas in an arena where wrong thinking is death. I will happily share those things if you want; it just seems to me that the spectator is not so interested in the gladiator's account of how he got his boo-boo. Or to put it another way, you may not want to hear the A/V geek ramble about his favorite motherboard setup.

So I'm positing my material to you. What do you want me to write about? What do you, my readers (the 3 of you that exist) want to talk about?

I will talk to anyone about anything.

Here

I don't know why, but my favorite part of class is consistently the roll call.

What's yours?

Perspicuity and Pickaxes

For anyone who doesn't know and reads this blog (a category I'm not sure actually exists), I am currently enrolled in a Master's of Biblical Exegesis program. The thrust of the program is intensive study of original, biblical languages and exegetical methods in order to access the meaning of biblical texts. Seems straightforward right? The time-honored, scholarly tradition of ink-dyed noses and library havens. The assumption in this program is that textual meaning is found after one is educated in how to find it. You can't mine gold until you've been given a pickaxe.
I am also currently attending a Bible study that reads a passage (in English), then inductively interprets and applies that passage using the communal observations of the whole group. The assumption, of course, is that the text has a plain meaning, accessible in a 1-hour time frame by a moderately intelligent group of college students representing various majors. The biology geek and the cartoonist from community college carry just as much weight there as the trained exegete.

I am fully aware of the irony of participating in both these activities. One seems to say that only the elite can interpret, while the other believes the lay man can get at the meaning. One requires education and tools, the other common sense and a kind of stubbornness to grasp meaning.

The elitism question is one I had trouble with, and it is significant. To mix metaphors, who is the king on the interpretive playground? We want to be intelligent in our approach to Scripture, but we also don't want meaning to be unattainable for, say, the janitor in the congregation.

And so, with the janitor problem in mind, one of my professors, Dr. Walton, has this to say about the problem of elitism (note: this is my notes from class and is a near verbatim representation of what he said, so take it as such. It is not meant to be a formal answer, but it is amazing to me that he rattled off this response on the fly in class):

"I think two points need to be made:

1. The bible has a great scope, a great range of depth; from the simplest truths that any child in grade school can understand to the most sophisticated depths of advanced thinking that most (if not all) of us will never fully grasp. God gave us a revelation of himself that is represented in this graduated scope of truth and understanding. We would not be happy with a representation of God that we could exhaust by the end of the fifth grade and lay it aside. Alternately, we would be frustrated if we could not understand the Bible without a graduate degree. The question is how far along that range can we penetrate. Some may have the mental ability to go far; some may have the mental ability but not the opportunity.
2. Secondly, this is where the body of Christ comes in. This is where we see the benefits of gifting. God gives some the ability, inclination and opportunity to contribute in this or that way. We each have what God has given us and we are expected to serve the body of Christ with that gift. We should not be jealous of the gifting (“How come you got this and I got that?”) and call it elitist. Elitism hoards, but the body of Christ should share. Some people, taking this gifting, can put things in the hand of the janitor that he would never have been able to have otherwise."

No Glory in Riches

"The glory of young men is their strength,
but the splendor of old men is their gray hair."

I am in a bullheaded, hard-nosed, lifelong warfare with myself to expend the first type of glory in obtaining the second type.

Kevin Bacon and Exegesis

"any modern reader dependent on a translation of the New Testament already stands at five degrees of separation from the New Testament authors and their messages: author, original autograph, copies in Greek, editions of the Greek text, translation, modern reader: Greek-reading students can reduce distance by at least one degree."

Richard J. Erickson, A Beginner's Guide to New Testament Exegesis, 34.