TO THE SCHOLARS STANDING IN THE DOORWAY

I daydreamed a lot as a kid.  Sometimes I would zone out so completely that I literally stopped in my tracks.    

One day I got lost in thought as I was walking into the house.  I was standing in the doorway, one hand on the handle, one foot in the house, the other foot on the other side of the threshold on the porch.  I don’t know how long I stood there thinking,  but I remember how Pops brought me back to reality.

“Boy!” he bellowed, “You ain’t in the  d***house yet!”

In scholarly study of the Bible we ask questions like "Why would Luke write this?" or "Why did Paul say such and such?" or "For what reason did the author of this text add this particular detail?"

Those are good questions that we should ask.

But I see theologians concentrate so much on those questions that they never get around to asking:

Why did God have this written?

Why did the Holy Spirit say such and such?

What is the Divine reason for including this particular detail in the text?

 

If we analyze literary structure and the human writer but we never get to God, we’ve opened a wide door of knowledge, but we ain’t in the d*** house yet.

Jesus said: You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me.  (John 5:39)

The  whole point of engaging Biblical texts is to engage with God.   All of these books and papers are supposed to bring us into a deeper understanding of the living God.

Sadly though, I see a lot of highly educated religious people who have have lost themselves in scholarly thought, who appear to have quite impressively ”arrived,” but they  are really only standing, lost and  spiritually powerless, in the doorway.

always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. (2 Timothy 3:7)

Remember why you started this journey.  Remember Who started you on it.

Take your knowledge and go all the way in ---- to God.

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama;  executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO);  and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

Subscribe to my personal blog  www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com .

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P O Box 132

Fairfield, Al 35064

IDK WHAT HAPPENED TO THE LOVE

I was having a conversation with a teacher friend and I realized something.  We have texting acronyms to express humor, sarcasm, anger, and sexual innuendo, but not for compassion or shared grief.  (None that I’ve seen)

If you wreck your car,  I might LOL or SMDH.  But  I don't FBFU (feel bad for you) or HURA (hope you're all right).

Our communication lacks the language of empathy.

If you wreck your car,  I might LOL or SMDH.  But  I don't FBFU (feel bad for you) or HURA (hope you're all right).

Our communication lacks the language of empathy.

As a society we’re training our hands and lips to be mean and nothing else.  We’re teaching ourselves, especially our children, to interpret every event as something to be laughed at or scoffed at.

What are we making of our children, of ourselves?

David described the product of such grammatical manufacturing. 

Pride serves as their necklace;

Violence covers them like a garment.

Their eyes bulge with abundance;

They have more than heart could wish.

They scoff and speak wickedly concerning oppression;

They speak loftily.

They set their mouth against the heavens, (Psalm 73: 6-9)

Verse 9 prophetically describes the range of this kind of communication. 

And their tongue walks through the earth.  

Worldwide 

WWW dot

Hashtag

No filter

Think about it.  When's the last time you saw a funeral broadcast on tv that didn't include some kind of snarky commentary or supposed controversy?

When's the last time that a tragedy was just a tragedy and not also a scandal?

What does it mean when the most important word in the last year was “selfie”?

SELFie.

Most daily communication is devoid of any emotion that cannot be expressed in a picture I took of me.

I of ME.

Culturally, we don’t talk anymore about loving our neighbors.  It takes too long, so we only talk about loving ourselves.

We're losing the language of empathy and replacing it with the vocabulary of pandemic narcissism.

Linguistic history teaches that when a society loses the words for a thing, the thing itself disappears.

What does that look like?  Again, the ancient Book describes it well.

But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come:   For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.  (2 Timothy 3: 1-4)

Any of this sounding the least bit familiar?

Solomon said: Death and life are in the power of the tongue (Proverbs 18: 21).

Perhaps we should add a footnote saying, “and in the power of the text, too.”

And if that’s true, then what are we doing by what we are saying?

What are we losing by what we aren’t texting?

By what we have no acronyms to depict?

We have abbreviations for hate and lust and mockery, but we are losing the language of genuine love.

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Hall Memorial CME Church in Montgomery, Alabama, executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO) and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

Email atgravestwo2@aol.com

Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

To listen to sermons and learn more about the ministry at Hall Memorial CME Church, visit www.hallmemorialcme.blogspot.com .

You can help support this ministry by clicking the DONATE button on the right-hand sidebar.

Support by check or money order may be mailed to

Hall Memorial CME Church

541 Seibles Road

Montgomery, AL 36116

A WORD TO THE WISE. Proverbs 29: 20

Proverbs 29: 20     Do you see a man hasty in his words? There is more hope for a fool than for him.

Proverbs 29: 20.  At some point, someone is going to confront you and ask for your reaction to something that you know little or nothing about.  The demand may be from a reporter shoving a microphone in your face, or a pushy bystander holding a camera-phone, or a peer with hand on hip saying, “Well, So-and-so said that they heard that you said......”

However the query comes, your interrogator will demand that you give an immediate answer.

The Bible calls it a hasty answer, and reflects upon the mentality of those people develop the  habit of giving hasty answers.  Proverbs 29:20 calls such people worse-than-stupid.

The endless cycle of news and the endless supply of supposedly-expert testimony-givers creates pressure to post/text/tweet/blog/give an answer as hastily as possible.  Everyone else has something to say, so you also feel compelled to say------ something. 

The problem is that you cannot speak intelligently when you don’t have the intelligence (in the military sense of “information”) to speak from.  Therefore, to answer hastily is always to answer un-intelligently.  Unintelligent=foolish=stupid.  Once you’ve said/tweeted/posted/ blogged something stupid------ it follows you forever.

The same people who pressured you to give a hasty answer will crucify you for giving a stupid answer.

If you don’t believe me, ask the University of North Alabama football player who got kicked off the team for a hasty (and racist) tweet posted when the President’s speech pre-empted a football game.

Ask Ambassador Susan Rice, who missed out on the nomination for Secretary of State because of a hastily prepared interview about an attack at an embassy.

Ask the kid who will get suspended today for a fight that started when he told her that he would kick his butt after she told him that she heard that he was scared of him and she just wanted to know if he was really scared and all she did was tell him what he said.

If you don’t know the necessary facts, the only intelligent answer is, “I don’t know------ yet.”

“Better to be silent and thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.” --- Abraham Lincoln

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Hall Memorial CME Church in Montgomery, Alabama.

Call  334-288-0577
Email atgravestwo2@aol.com
Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves
To hear sermons, read devotions, and learn more about the ministry at Hall Memorial CME Church, visit www.hallmemorialcme@blogspotcom.

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