Just A Thought: Bookaholics?
Comments
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Blessings Brother Gao Lu:
If you have a secure line, drop me a message:
Do you know what's been of Lu, BK, and the others?
I wish they were all on Christian Chat, lots of good posts about so many different topics. I think CD was better, but sometimes good things come to an end.
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Got you, thank you Denise.
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Denise said:Bruce Dunning said:Hamilton Ramos said:
Bookaholic? maybe not, responsible stewardship of available assets (info included) would be a better descriptor in my opinion.
"Responsible stewardship of available assets" is a good description. I often think of the fact that we are accountable for how we use everything we have, including our libraries.
You'll probably get mad at me. But at church, a friend complained her relatives questioned her nice house (7 figures). She replied, who are they to question God's gifts. I thought, well, sure, maybe. Then I was reminded who tried to gift Jesus. So, responsible stewardship from who? Well, gee, it was a strong lesson in the gospels.
Why would I get mad at you? What you say seems to make sense to me although, like Hamilton, I'm not sure that I fully understand your sort of cryptic references, although I think I get the gist.
Using adventure and community to challenge young people to continually say "yes" to God
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Hi Bruce.
At the beginning I did not get the connection, because gifted to me kind of sounded like and actual give away of a legit thing.
The devil tried to bribe Jesus with something stolen (not his in a way), and that to me is not gifting, but trying to bribe.
Later I understood that Denise was probably indicating the importance of checking legit source of gift, and proper way to steward (right intention, etc.), while also making sure that the stewarding agent is a wheat and not a tare.
Theoretically you can have a tare do right stewardship, but yet by the status of tare, the whole thing would not be valid Christian stewardship so to speak.
I tend to lay things out clearly within my language limitations (and do so because of my experience with misunderstandings with people from other countries in CD).
I would imagine someone like Denise, assumes that people here know a lot by their background, and tries to not point to the obvious (obvious for more advanced posters).
When I get the sense right, Denise really has a lot of good things to share, and makes me think a lot about important things.
My limitations get in the way, but she kindly elaborates when asked.
As far as getting mad, I learned that we should focus on the issue, and understand that there are a lot of angles to a topic, many of which we have not thought about.
So is better to research such and see what valid variables may be there before jumping the gun.
Like I usually say: Check all, retain what is good. [very rough paraphrase from a non-expert translation from a ES ver.] LOL.
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Hi again Graham:
You got me intrigued now. What are you trying to say? only English versions are authoritative?
The sense of a greek word is very clear: "To look at critically or searchingly, or in minute detail (wether genuine or not)."
Are you trying to say that contextually only applies to prophecies and not to the Scriptures and other theological / ministerial books?
Can you clarify please?
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Hi Hamilton
Hamilton Ramos said:You got me intrigued now. What are you trying to say? only English versions are authoritative?
No I'm not saying that - although English versions are the ones I can read most easily!
What I was actually exploring is that you were making a statement - in English - about a biblical quote and I couldn't find an English translation that used it. I assumed it was a paraphrase from 1 Thessalonians 5:21-22 but was intrigued and wanted to check
Hamilton Ramos said:Are you trying to say that contextually only applies to prophecies and not to the Scriptures and other theological / ministerial books?
Verse 20 - to which verses 21a (at least) refers - is speaking about prophecies.
As to whether it applies more widely gets into deeper theological discussions that are not the purpose of these forums. So I think I'll leave it there.
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Hi Graham:
And this take us to a key point:
What to do when different words or phrases refer actually to one same concept?
In all the different versions you have, the wording may differ. So in my Spanish versions.
And this is why I really dislike students of the Bible sticking to synchronic studies.
Let's look at the concept from a diachronic view:
Luke 10:26He said to him, What is written in the Law? How do you read it?
Is Jesus expecting us to search the scriptures to see what salvation is about? it seems so.
Acts 17:11 Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.
The Bereans checked the Scriptures to see if what Paul was saying was correct. So we have another principle: when we meet a suggested theological construct (no one had suggested one like the one Paul was up to that time), we need to see if it jibes with Scripture and that means the whole counsel of God not just one book.
Now was Paul talking about prophecies, or the whole real story as per God's reality that only Jesus being the perfect Lamb of God and only capable of taking sin away for good? Even though all was prophecized, the full bird's eye view of the concept with Jesus at the center was a theological construct beyond prophecies in the sense that required a special conceptual framework to interpret the particular historicity of the sacrifice for the eternal consequences in the lives of people.
Just one more:
Matthew 22:29 But Jesus answered them, You are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God.
Some tradition (Saducees) come to ask Jesus about a belief (it was a wrong belief). Jesus in short tells them that they do not know the Scriptures nor the power of God.
The Bible made patent that God was God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, etc. If there was no afterlife, those dead persons would be irrelevant, but they were not because of the way the expression was structured.
And even more, the topic pointed towards a reality in which is clear that God can do wonders at will (one of the key ones is give afterlife to dead humans).
So now we need to include experiences described in the Bible in the supernatural realm as valid for study and analysis too.
Jesus was referring about the power of God to do. So if someone suggest that we will eventually be godlike through some meditation, gnosis, or something like that (meaning own effort achieving eventually self-existence), we can tell that such notion is just out of whack in light of Scripture.
In 1 Tes 5:20 -21
"Test everything" has a wider connotation than if it said "testing them" (referring to prophecies) or "test everything about them prophecies".
And it points to a wider locust of inclusion because you obviously cannot hold on to what is good in prophecies, prophecies are either true or false, you cannot pick some, and probably cannot even test them other than sit and wait to see if happens.
I used a particular phrase that jibes with the rendering in my Spanish Bible. It points to a concept that is the same all the other versions point to from my view because of the clues we get from the stories above analyzed.
Now I do not treat the above conclusion of mine as absolute truth, but is the best conjecture I can arrive at with the information available.
If new evidence shows up, then I have to take that into consideration and see if the for now descriptive theological construct still applies.
Kind regards.
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Michael Childs said:
I am humbly grateful for this post. I feel so much more righteous with my mere 7,500 resource library. O, Lord, I thank Thee that I am not like other men! (or women, too.)
[:D] LOL, that was good.
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