Thank you Dr. McGee from today's Through the Bible broadcast at TTB.org for talking about the sons of God sleeping with the daughters of men.
There are so many Bible readers who want to explore the first chapters of Genesis. But if you read the first chapters of Genesis through the rest of the Pentateuch you really need to reach one conclusion. God is more concerned about what you ate for breakfast today then in telling us the whole history of the world. If that sounds crazy to you, try putting the creation of the world into its context within the Hexateuch. If you still haven't figured that out, read the Tanakh (should be TNK I think) and tell me how you can't agree. If you still can't agree, consider the Gospels that spend more time and words on one week in so many ways and compare it to the first week in Chapter One of Genesis.
This is so obvious that it's been forgotten.
It's kind of like why are Americans so fat? Well, we eat too much.
The phrase "Son or sons of God" and the phrase "son or sons of Man" are used throughout the scriptures. You can think of either of them as a baby, a person, God Incarnate or whatever else you want to, and I'm not saying the Bible isn't full of mystery. If you want to open it up and find a mystery you certainly can. But let's start with the idea that maybe sons of God and daughters of men are people. Is that such a stretch, since we already know that daughters and sons are boys and girls and boys and girls grow up to have people? Look at that.
Genesis 6 mentions that there were giants back then. It's written as looking back. Somebody writing then wanted people to know that back in the day there were giants. Well, giant can mean many things. And giant isn't really that mysterious of a word. If you want to think there were 40 foot men back then I suppose you can. If you want to think that it's a big Book full of crap, you certainly won't get much argument from many people. But why take a normal word and make it mean something crazy? Do you have an agenda upon which you want to superimpose ridiculousness? Does it make you feel better to think that the culture from which you spring is built on fairy tales? Yes, you can find miracles in the Bible and you can pretend like your life right now isn't a miracle. But why are you doing that?
Today we have giant shrimp. We have giant-size colas. We have until recently been blessed with the presence of Andre the Giant. What is so strange about a word being used today that was also used in the Bible- from which a huge portion of our English words derive?
Nothing.
It's nothing. The Bible says that people used to be bigger. If you want to think that it says that people used to be 100 feet tall I'm not going to touch that with a 39 1/2 foot pole.
Science says that people used to be shorter. I don't disagree with that. The doors inside Mount Vernon were not built by idiots but they didn't need to be that high. What happened before that? Well, I guess you could read Genesis to find out. You could also find older skeletons. I'm fitting my facts into a framework upon which Western Civilization was built. Is this crazy? There were problems with Western Civilization now and then. There are problems with Western Civilization now- people think they get to choose whether or not they should have male or female plumbing- and there are problems then. There were many problems then. And there will always be problems.
If you want to think that Western Civilization was white and that white is bad, you can. But neither of those things is true. Civilization is a group of people. People are more complex than good or bad. I'm sorry that every fictional story you've read tries to tell you something simpler. I'm sorry if you think it's a bad story if you don't know who to root for. I'm sorry if you think movies that end with weddings are happy and movies that end with deaths are sad.
All lives end in death.
Are all lives sad?
Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. You can think that humanity is getting better because in some ways it is. You can also think that humanity is getting worse. I think we're getting taller. I don't think taller is better.
I also think that at some point in the past, people were bigger. They were giants.
You're a giant if you let yourself.
Thursday, April 28, 2016
That's Sick
The thought was expressed this morning.
There is a certain fact or an evidence for something- anything, and sometimes it's forgotten or explained away, but sometimes it becomes the basis for a whole new understanding. And once some idea is accepted, entire philosophies are spun around it. And most people growing up in that system of though just believe it. But isn't there evidence for anything at all?
There was a time when people did not believe in a microscopic world of bacteria, viruses or atoms. And now, everybody who reads just accepts these things. But what has changed? We can't see these little critters and for the most part we don't live differently even though we all would acknowledge, if we were asked, that they are there. We can't see the tiny bits of "table" that are spinning around each other. We just see table. And we just sit at it. On our chair.
Yesterday at work, a child was coughing and then a man joined in. It was a quiet place and I could feel the child's psychological need to fill the silence with her rather loud cough. If someone had asked her if she was just coughing on purpose. I'm sure she would have denied it. But that's mostly because she would want to defend her position, and instinctively believes in the right to defend any position, up to a certain point. But would there have not been a time when a child would have been expected to be silent? And she herself would have chosen to hold that cough in or leave the room or even ask for permission to let it out? But she is a child of today and she knows without thinking about it that she has the right to let it out, and the fact that she doesn't know that filling the silence; being heard and expressing herself is part of the reason why she kept it up is part of her childhood. Someday she will think about this; but not today in her childhood.
There was probably a time when a child would cough and all the adults around them would look on disapprovingly. Maybe self-control was more valued. I can picture this world because I have seen similar things in more quiet places- like a concert or a solemn ceremony. But would this not have been the expectation in other times- that a child should not make any noise when out and about, rather than in a nursery or maybe at home, or maybe outside.
The man didn't want to cough. He liked the silence and had chosen to be there. He was there with his laptop to get some work done and he didn't want to be distracted by coughing, but more importantly to him; he didn't want to call attention to himself, and more importantly than that, he didn't want to distract other people who were also there for the same thing that he wanted; which was silence. And behind that thought was his reluctance to give in to the cough so that he would then think that he was sick. He would rather not cough than to stay in bed for two days, admitting he was sick.
I don't know how people thought about illness, really, before the acceptance of germs. Surely illnesses passed from one to another and people must have thought that the illness transferred in some way and was some actual invisible thing. Maybe they didn't think of it as a combination of lots and lots of tiny invisible things, but they knew they couldn't see it. People thought demons could transfer from person to person.
Should there be the acceptance of the rule that no one should cough in public? I often thought at a workplace that if only the sick people would stay home, more work would be done and less people would get sick. But now I see the years I spent in negative thinking sickness as more destructive to me and the people around me than any two day cold. How many two day colds did I have in the years I spent coughing incessantly only on the inside, doing work I didn't want to do? There is something truly terrible about doing what you don't want to do but it is not as bad as not wanting to do what you're doing.
The man doesn't know when to cough. It's his choice, right? But he's erring on the side- or deciding on the side, of "less coughs are better." The girl doesn't know when to cough either. She's getting attention and he's getting attention. She kind of likes it and he doesn't like it at all. She's not thinking about illness. but if she did, she might consider a two day rest from school as a windfall. She is only in the library to study with a tutor, and she doesn't want to be there. He is thinking about missing productive time at his laptop and not wanting to give in to the germs.
I don't know what either of them think about the other. But I am fascinated thinking how either of these people might be acting differently now that the world accepts germ theory as opposed to how they would act if they didn't think that way.
I believe that people today would say "Cough whenever you need to. Just don't cough near someone else." Is that at all different than what people would have done before the world thought that spittle might or might not contain little particles of self-reproducing cough-making tiny monsters?
If someone decided somewhere that everyone in each country around the world should cough once on the hour throughout the workday, this would strike me as ludicrous. But if someone said it enough, with enough reason, it could certainly become an accepted norm. Look at all the things that have become accepted. The term workday didn't mean what it does now, only 150 years ago. And there are people who can read this, who probably never would, that wouldn't know that the term means one of five days in a row. We hear things and we accept them or reject them. So many things are unintentional and it's nice to get a handle on some of them.
I think I could start a movement within self-help and health; which both seem to be very profitable subjects, that one needs to cough a certain amount of times to get over a certain sickness. I can sell manuals that list tables of illnesses and numbers. That's what I did as an insurance adjuster, so maybe it could work here.
Slight runny nose, no other symptoms- cough four times quickly every half hour from 4:00 PM to 7:15
Then I could make more and more complicated charts and set up apps and computer programs to read them for people.
Then when others disagreed with me, I could argue my position based on further research and since more and more experts are getting into the argument, less and less people would question the underlying premise of the new cough industry.
There is a certain fact or an evidence for something- anything, and sometimes it's forgotten or explained away, but sometimes it becomes the basis for a whole new understanding. And once some idea is accepted, entire philosophies are spun around it. And most people growing up in that system of though just believe it. But isn't there evidence for anything at all?
There was a time when people did not believe in a microscopic world of bacteria, viruses or atoms. And now, everybody who reads just accepts these things. But what has changed? We can't see these little critters and for the most part we don't live differently even though we all would acknowledge, if we were asked, that they are there. We can't see the tiny bits of "table" that are spinning around each other. We just see table. And we just sit at it. On our chair.
Yesterday at work, a child was coughing and then a man joined in. It was a quiet place and I could feel the child's psychological need to fill the silence with her rather loud cough. If someone had asked her if she was just coughing on purpose. I'm sure she would have denied it. But that's mostly because she would want to defend her position, and instinctively believes in the right to defend any position, up to a certain point. But would there have not been a time when a child would have been expected to be silent? And she herself would have chosen to hold that cough in or leave the room or even ask for permission to let it out? But she is a child of today and she knows without thinking about it that she has the right to let it out, and the fact that she doesn't know that filling the silence; being heard and expressing herself is part of the reason why she kept it up is part of her childhood. Someday she will think about this; but not today in her childhood.
There was probably a time when a child would cough and all the adults around them would look on disapprovingly. Maybe self-control was more valued. I can picture this world because I have seen similar things in more quiet places- like a concert or a solemn ceremony. But would this not have been the expectation in other times- that a child should not make any noise when out and about, rather than in a nursery or maybe at home, or maybe outside.
The man didn't want to cough. He liked the silence and had chosen to be there. He was there with his laptop to get some work done and he didn't want to be distracted by coughing, but more importantly to him; he didn't want to call attention to himself, and more importantly than that, he didn't want to distract other people who were also there for the same thing that he wanted; which was silence. And behind that thought was his reluctance to give in to the cough so that he would then think that he was sick. He would rather not cough than to stay in bed for two days, admitting he was sick.
I don't know how people thought about illness, really, before the acceptance of germs. Surely illnesses passed from one to another and people must have thought that the illness transferred in some way and was some actual invisible thing. Maybe they didn't think of it as a combination of lots and lots of tiny invisible things, but they knew they couldn't see it. People thought demons could transfer from person to person.
Should there be the acceptance of the rule that no one should cough in public? I often thought at a workplace that if only the sick people would stay home, more work would be done and less people would get sick. But now I see the years I spent in negative thinking sickness as more destructive to me and the people around me than any two day cold. How many two day colds did I have in the years I spent coughing incessantly only on the inside, doing work I didn't want to do? There is something truly terrible about doing what you don't want to do but it is not as bad as not wanting to do what you're doing.
The man doesn't know when to cough. It's his choice, right? But he's erring on the side- or deciding on the side, of "less coughs are better." The girl doesn't know when to cough either. She's getting attention and he's getting attention. She kind of likes it and he doesn't like it at all. She's not thinking about illness. but if she did, she might consider a two day rest from school as a windfall. She is only in the library to study with a tutor, and she doesn't want to be there. He is thinking about missing productive time at his laptop and not wanting to give in to the germs.
I don't know what either of them think about the other. But I am fascinated thinking how either of these people might be acting differently now that the world accepts germ theory as opposed to how they would act if they didn't think that way.
I believe that people today would say "Cough whenever you need to. Just don't cough near someone else." Is that at all different than what people would have done before the world thought that spittle might or might not contain little particles of self-reproducing cough-making tiny monsters?
If someone decided somewhere that everyone in each country around the world should cough once on the hour throughout the workday, this would strike me as ludicrous. But if someone said it enough, with enough reason, it could certainly become an accepted norm. Look at all the things that have become accepted. The term workday didn't mean what it does now, only 150 years ago. And there are people who can read this, who probably never would, that wouldn't know that the term means one of five days in a row. We hear things and we accept them or reject them. So many things are unintentional and it's nice to get a handle on some of them.
I think I could start a movement within self-help and health; which both seem to be very profitable subjects, that one needs to cough a certain amount of times to get over a certain sickness. I can sell manuals that list tables of illnesses and numbers. That's what I did as an insurance adjuster, so maybe it could work here.
Slight runny nose, no other symptoms- cough four times quickly every half hour from 4:00 PM to 7:15
Then I could make more and more complicated charts and set up apps and computer programs to read them for people.
Then when others disagreed with me, I could argue my position based on further research and since more and more experts are getting into the argument, less and less people would question the underlying premise of the new cough industry.
Saturday, April 16, 2016
The Avalanche of Time
In his Genesis 1 commentary, and other places, J. Vernon McGee points out the way that the Bible tells time.
The first 11 chapters of Genesis cover a minimum of two thousand years. Yes people used to be dogmatic about that, but that was before the fields of mythology and astronomy existed. History was a field of endeavor but barely recognizable to us today, and physics and biology were in such a state as to be considered "quaint" today. I don't even have to squint to think that it would be extremely easy to say that Genesis 1-11 could cover several hundred thousand years. And it's even easier for me to say that it could cover any amount of time you might need to conceive of to help you sleep at night if you feel the need to collate something you've read there with some other belief system. I don't think it is at all a bastardization of the text to think of it in terms of eons. Eon is a nice Greek word that would not have been around in the Hebrew version of Genesis, but the idea of untold ages in certainly not out of the question in Genesis. It's not just a response to what Darwin; that important theologian thought- the text itself lends credence to those ideas.
Today at work I was talking with someone about the world before Adam and the world after The Last Adam; which is Jesus. There was no sun until the third day- or at least no sun mentioned. And in The New Jerusalem, Jesus will take His rightful place as the source of light and there will be no sun there. But there will also be no night. My friend was pointing out that our concept of time might be completely different when we're no longer revolving around the sun. Our time is sun-centric because that is where we are now.
The rest of Genesis, chapters 12 through 50, takes place over three hundred and fifty years. Chapter 1 – 11 takes place over a minimum of two thousand years, and that is just as long as the rest of the Bible in total. God spends more time and text talking about Abraham than talking about the entire physical universe. The avalanche continues at a breakneck speed.
Genesis is the first of the Bible's books. The gospels, which are only about one person, have 89 chapters in total and only four chapters cover the first 30 years of his life. Eighty five of the 89 chapters cover only three years and twenty seven chapters out of the 89 only cover about eight days.
Moses would be amused at theologian and scientist accounts of creation which is just a few preliminary facts. That’s not the story at all, but it's a great story. Creation is but the setting for a story about redemption.
The first 11 chapters of Genesis cover a minimum of two thousand years. Yes people used to be dogmatic about that, but that was before the fields of mythology and astronomy existed. History was a field of endeavor but barely recognizable to us today, and physics and biology were in such a state as to be considered "quaint" today. I don't even have to squint to think that it would be extremely easy to say that Genesis 1-11 could cover several hundred thousand years. And it's even easier for me to say that it could cover any amount of time you might need to conceive of to help you sleep at night if you feel the need to collate something you've read there with some other belief system. I don't think it is at all a bastardization of the text to think of it in terms of eons. Eon is a nice Greek word that would not have been around in the Hebrew version of Genesis, but the idea of untold ages in certainly not out of the question in Genesis. It's not just a response to what Darwin; that important theologian thought- the text itself lends credence to those ideas.
Today at work I was talking with someone about the world before Adam and the world after The Last Adam; which is Jesus. There was no sun until the third day- or at least no sun mentioned. And in The New Jerusalem, Jesus will take His rightful place as the source of light and there will be no sun there. But there will also be no night. My friend was pointing out that our concept of time might be completely different when we're no longer revolving around the sun. Our time is sun-centric because that is where we are now.
The rest of Genesis, chapters 12 through 50, takes place over three hundred and fifty years. Chapter 1 – 11 takes place over a minimum of two thousand years, and that is just as long as the rest of the Bible in total. God spends more time and text talking about Abraham than talking about the entire physical universe. The avalanche continues at a breakneck speed.
Genesis is the first of the Bible's books. The gospels, which are only about one person, have 89 chapters in total and only four chapters cover the first 30 years of his life. Eighty five of the 89 chapters cover only three years and twenty seven chapters out of the 89 only cover about eight days.
Moses would be amused at theologian and scientist accounts of creation which is just a few preliminary facts. That’s not the story at all, but it's a great story. Creation is but the setting for a story about redemption.
Thursday, April 14, 2016
TTB.org Notes on Guidelines #10
Notes on J. Vernon McGee's Guidelines #10 from Through the Bible Radio at TTB.org
In this installment which was the tenth, Mr. McGee wandered into dangerous territory when he spoke of some obvious dangers which tend to be completely ignored in Church. Devotion is a dangerous thing. We can get so wrapped up in something that we can no longer even see what it is. How many people read bumper sticker length sayings so often that they no longer know where they're from, what they're about or even what they really say? If I hear "I know the plans I have for you" or "I can do all things" put to mean "I can have anything I want" again, I'm going to scream.
He also spoke of the danger in false doctrines and the value of
commentaries like Dr. G. Campbell Morgan's. He warned us to give credit where credit is due, read everything but then put messages into our own words as one of his professors put it- we should graze on everybody’s pasture but then give your own milk.
Some read The Bible and some do it.
Second Corinthians in the third chapter states that we
are the epistle and we're read of all men. The letter now is written
not on tables of stone but tables of hearts.
Christianity is hurt more today
by church members than any other group. I agree with him there.
In a time when most people knew what The Bible said, there were plenty who didn't follow it, but the whole society spoke the same vocabulary and at least people knew what The Bible said. Rebellion on
the outside of the Church is a reflection of the rebellion against the establishment which is a product of the division inside
us. Church No, Jesus Yes. The world isn’t reading
the Bible now but they are reading us. We’re not a
very attractive advertisement.
The last guideline of the seven is to pass on the teaching one learns to others. Before we start in Genesis tomorrow on The Bible Bus, Dr. McGee went through the ten guidelines series about seven steps. Pray, read, study, read what others have written about it, meditate on it, obey it and share. When you reach a saturation point it’s
because you didn’t pass it on to others.
God won’t let you go further until you teach it. That is how learning is applied. I know how this works. Explaining computers to others has taught me much that I didn't know or care to know until it was time to explain it. If you can explain something to a five year old; you actually know it.
If you can't, you don't.
Genesis One, here we come.
Tuesday, April 12, 2016
Watergate and The Water Gate
When I was old enough to have very strong opinions about television shows but not old enough to note the difference between reality tv and non-reality tv, my Mom would watch something she called "Watergate." This was the most boring show I could imagine. I hadn't yet been introduced to 24/7 Headline News or sports news shows or televised golf.. at least not much of it, anyway.
I had no idea that this television show was a real trial. I just thought it was horrible television. And once I walked right up to the set and turned if off while my Mother was watching. Maybe she had looked away or maybe I wanted to flaunt the fact that I could tell it was garbage even if I thought she couldn't. I don't remember doing it but I do remember the aftermath. It was asked of me "How would you feel if someone turned off the tv during 'Wild Kingdom?' " Well, I suppose I'd just go turn it back on, I probably said and probably still would say. I used to love that show. I wonder how it would appear to me now. But I have no desire to watch more than five minutes of Watergate.
Today on J. Vernon McGee's Through the Bible broadcast at TTB.org it was mentioned that Ezra read the Bible at The Water Gate, in Jerusalem, that is. So I did a quick Google search to see if anyone pinpointed a connection between Nehemiah who I think was the ruler at the time, and Nixon.
I had no idea that this television show was a real trial. I just thought it was horrible television. And once I walked right up to the set and turned if off while my Mother was watching. Maybe she had looked away or maybe I wanted to flaunt the fact that I could tell it was garbage even if I thought she couldn't. I don't remember doing it but I do remember the aftermath. It was asked of me "How would you feel if someone turned off the tv during 'Wild Kingdom?' " Well, I suppose I'd just go turn it back on, I probably said and probably still would say. I used to love that show. I wonder how it would appear to me now. But I have no desire to watch more than five minutes of Watergate.
Today on J. Vernon McGee's Through the Bible broadcast at TTB.org it was mentioned that Ezra read the Bible at The Water Gate, in Jerusalem, that is. So I did a quick Google search to see if anyone pinpointed a connection between Nehemiah who I think was the ruler at the time, and Nixon.
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