When it comes to the definition of holy it is important to understand the meaning of each option on a common sense level or slightly higher level at most. This has been largely overlooked in some of the quirky distinctions of definition on the part of some writers on the topic. The most comical in my mind is the distinction between whether one is separated from something or separated to something. I doubt very much that qadosh in Hebrew communicates such a subtle point. It shows the great lengths some will go to in trying to fix obvious problems with a definition. I find it much better to try to simplify definitions rather than complicate them.
For me, there are five fairly basic classes that words fall into. They are:
1) Amounts,
2) Relationships,
3) Wholes
4) Actions
5) Things
In following the idea of set apart, the distinction is usually that of relationships. Sometimes it is also seen as a separate thing from sin.
[Sorry the day has gotten late and it is time for me to conclude. I hope to be able to revisit this post next week based on a change in my writing schedule. My new goal is to now write on week for each of 5 days and then return the next week to tidy up any writing that was left incomplete.]
In Christ,
Jon
Saturday, April 26, 2014
Friday, April 25, 2014
Blessed and Holy: Understanding Them Better Through Luke 10:25-28 (Action - Part 4 of 5)
OPENING OF ACTION
I love this quote that I heard from a friend of mine yesterday: "Where there is a why, there is a how". It sounds a lot like "Where there is a will, there is a way", doesn't it? The first quote fits extremely well with the training that I hope to accomplish today from Luke 10:25-28. Today the goal is to be immensely practical. From the Greatest Commandment, which includes the 1st and the 2nd, everyone can learn a great deal about the why and the how of action.
Amount of action
At the core of training are two aspects, both the level of focus and the level of effort required, when taking action. In this case, it is important to answer two basic questions:
1) How many? for a) 1st commandment, and for b) 2nd commandment
2) How much? for a) 1st commandment, and for b) 2nd commandment
So what things in our text indicate the answer to the first question? I found these things to be very good answer to very good question:
1) a) one by four, b) two by self
What does one by four mean in this answer? It means that there is "one" God and that there are four parts of ourselves, "heart", "soul", "strength" and "mind", that are supposed to love Yahweh God. There is one God for all four parts of ourselves, rather than one god for each one of the four parts or some other combinations of one and four.
What does "two by self" mean in my answer? It means that there are two people who both are selves. There is yourself and myself, making two.
So what things in our text indicate the answer to the second question? I found these things to be a very good answer to a very good question:
2) a) with whole, b) as much as
What does "with whole" mean in this answer? It means that we are to love God with the whole of each of four parts. Notice the same level or quality for each one. (I curiously had never thought of this quite this way until today.) There is no preference for either the heart, the soul, the strength, or the mind. They are treated as equal in quality though somewhat distinct in order.
So how does this all translate to us in determining the how and the why? Action like love needs to be focused on one God, even if we ourselves have four parts. Likewise the quality from each part needs to be equal. This is the clarity and the meaningfulness that we need today.
In our day, that appears that a lack of favoritism is a big problem as denominations tend to favor their one part over the others. From both my personal experience (which is worth more) and my reading (which is worth less), I have noted that seldom do denominations notice their favoritism for one part over another part due to their historically different questions. To mention just one example, Luther asked as his primary question, "How much?" is enough to satisfy an angry God. He responded with justification being primary. Calvin, while not against Luther on his question, asked a different primary question, "When" as in who precedes the other. He responded with humility being primary, since humanity follows after divinity. It would seem that the danger for each is favoring the heart in the first case and the soul in the second. The rule of action here is that they are to be equal without favoritism. With the loss of their understanding of holiness, it appears that favoritism has gotten worse not better.
Relationship of action
At the core of training are two other aspects, both the location and the timing required, when taking action. In this case, it is important to answer two basic questions:
1) Where? for a) 1st commandment, and for b) 2nd commandment
2) When? for a) 1st commandment, and for b) 2nd commandment
So what things in our text indicate the answer to question of location? I found these things to be very good answer to very good question:
1) a) Israel, b) neighbor (lit. "near wiling")
What does Israel mean in this answer? What does it say about location. It means that those in the location of a nation are being addressed and not just the location of one household. This would also explain the expanded location to all nations being discussed in passages where there is mention of the "Jew first and also the Gentiles (Nations). This rule is not limited to inside some narrow place. There is one God for all Israel and by implication then all other nations rather than one god for each narrow household. This God who ought to reign over one nation and goes beyond just narrow locations should also be the God of all locations.
What does neighbor mean in my answer? It means that there are people near us by their willing to be there. They as free people chose to live in the house next door. They have chosen to pass down the path we are passing also. There are many ways that people come near to us versus pass far from us. But by rule, when the come near to us, they are now our neighbors. There are ourselves and them in the same close proximity.
So what things in our text indicate the answer to the second question of time? I found these things to be a very good answer to a very good question:
2) a) Moses' century BC, b) 1st century AD
What does Moses' century B.C." mean in this answer? It means that this rule that is greatest also has an historic past. It isn't just here and now, though it is that. It is also from the past, into the present, and so into the future a rule. Notice that the timing for this rule does not change with time. It perseveres with time. If it still applied in first century long after Moses, it would still apply now. There is no preference for either the the past, the present, or the future. All three times mean it is an acceptable time to live by the neighbor rule. These times are treated as equal in quality though very distinct in order.
So how does this all transfer to us in determining the how and the why? Action like love needs to be aimed at the there and before, the here and now, and the elsewhere and after. We cannot place everything into one place and time. Likewise the quality from place and time needs to be equal no matter where and when the rule is applied. This is the transfer of time and place we need today in our rules where time and place doesn't make the rule obsolete.
In our day, it appears that the elsewhere and future is all that matters over the there and past or here and present for others. For others it is all about the there and past to the neglect of the other two. For others it is all about living for the here and now. Rarely do you hear of the value of all three places and times as equal in their own place and time. Rather we here that here and now we are better or then and there they were better or here and now is better. Rarely is each seen as an acceptable place and time for its place and time. We try to put everything into our time limits of choice rather than each thing its rightful place and time. People forget that placement and timing are of the essence and that preference for one over the others is likely its own prejudice. Don't try to tell anyone that placement and timing isn't a problem. They will think you are nuts.
Whole of action
At the core of training are two aspects, both the issue of identity and the core issue of the wholeness required, when a person is taking action. In this case, it is important to answer two basic questions:
1) Who? for a) 1st commandment, and for b) 2nd commandment
2) Whole? for a) 1st commandment, and for b) 2nd commandment
At the core of training are two aspects, both the level of focus and the level of effort required, when taking action. In this case, it is important to answer two basic questions:
1) How many? for a) 1st commandment, and for b) 2nd commandment
2) How much? for a) 1st commandment, and for b) 2nd commandment
So what things in our text indicate the answer to the first question? I found these things to be very good answer to very good question:
1) a) one by four, b) two by self
What does one by four mean in this answer? It means that there is "one" God and that there are four parts of ourselves, "heart", "soul", "strength" and "mind", that are supposed to love Yahweh God. There is one God for all four parts of ourselves, rather than one god for each one of the four parts or some other combinations of one and four.
What does "two by self" mean in my answer? It means that there are two people who both are selves. There is yourself and myself, making two.
So what things in our text indicate the answer to the second question? I found these things to be a very good answer to a very good question:
2) a) with whole, b) as much as
What does "with whole" mean in this answer? It means that we are to love God with the whole of each of four parts. Notice the same level or quality for each one. (I curiously had never thought of this quite this way until today.) There is no preference for either the heart, the soul, the strength, or the mind. They are treated as equal in quality though somewhat distinct in order.
So how does this all translate to us in determining the how and the why? Action like love needs to be focused on one God, even if we ourselves have four parts. Likewise the quality from each part needs to be equal. This is the clarity and the meaningfulness that we need today.
In our day, that appears that a lack of favoritism is a big problem as denominations tend to favor their one part over the others. From both my personal experience (which is worth more) and my reading (which is worth less), I have noted that seldom do denominations notice their favoritism for one part over another part due to their historically different questions. To mention just one example, Luther asked as his primary question, "How much?" is enough to satisfy an angry God. He responded with justification being primary. Calvin, while not against Luther on his question, asked a different primary question, "When" as in who precedes the other. He responded with humility being primary, since humanity follows after divinity. It would seem that the danger for each is favoring the heart in the first case and the soul in the second. The rule of action here is that they are to be equal without favoritism. With the loss of their understanding of holiness, it appears that favoritism has gotten worse not better.
So what things in our text indicate the answer to the first question? I found these things to be very good answer to very good question:
1) a) Yahweh & Israel, and 2) another & self
What does "Yahweh and Israel" mean in this answer? Yahweh means that here is God with a personal rather than impersonal name. It also means that Israel (the name given to Jacob by God) that later became the name for a nation is being addressed by Yahweh. That is the "you" being referred to in this case. So the entire address is personal.
What does "another and self" mean in my answer? It means that there are two people who both can be referred to as a self or selves. There is another self and myself that are critical in this case for answering who is being referred to. This commandment leaves no person out in the sense that all of us are not an island all by ourselves. There is nowhere for a person to hide from responsibility for others as well as themselves.
So what things in our text indicate the answer to the second question? I found these things to be a very good answer to a very good question:
2) a) of heart, of soul, of strength, of mind (of yourself), b) of you (your)
What does "of heart, etc." mean in this answer? It means that we are to love God with the the four parts of ourselves. Each is undeniably part of who we are. Notice the same level for each one. (I curiously had never thought of this quite this way until today.) It isn't a heart of a soul , soul of strength, etc. where one is the part of the other. No each one is an equal part of who we are as a person. There is no preference for either the heart, the soul, the strength, or the mind. They are treated as equal parts though in a somewhat distinct order.
So how does this all total up for us in determining the how and the why? Actions like love need to be personal and regard the entire person rather than just one part of who people are. No training and all teaching means our strength gets weak while the mind prospers. All training and no teaching means the mind goes mindless. Likewise the treatment of each part needs to be equal. This personal and healthy touch we need in our actions. Impersonal and only a part of the job will not do.
Also in our day, it appears that a lack of being personal is growing with more and more focus on technology and its strength as a tool over the other parts that make up who we are. There also seems to be a kind of smugness coming over those who like the increased intelligence of the computer, but are ill-equipped to better train the brain. We could use some brain training equal to technological training.
Action of action
At the core of training are two aspects, both how to do something and why to do something. Without the how confidence wanes, without a why motivation wanes. In this case, it is important to answer two basic questions:
1) How? for a) 1st commandment, and for b) 2nd commandment
2) Why? for a) 1st commandment, and for b) 2nd commandment
So what things in our text indicate the answer to the first question? I found these things to be very good answer to very good question:
1) a) love, b) love
What does "love" mean in this answer? It means that love matters, because it is something that we do. If it is something that we do, then we need training in loving. We know to potty train a child, but do we know how to love train them and adults? Sure, we ought to love Yahweh God, but how do we love? How do we practice love? It is ironic that I have trained many athletes to do a wide assortment of skills, but I have never explicitly taught people how to love. Since the Bible points out a lot of hatred in this world (the failure to do for others), I would think love training is not optional.
What does the next "love" mean in my answer? Again, I think there are skilled lovers and then there are unskilled lovers (who are very close to haters). I think I need to start offering love workshops the more I reflect on love as the answer for the how. It like faith and hope is an action, but a different kind and the greatest action we can perform. So let's learn how to love to drive out any hatred that shows in us, when we ought to do the loving thing. .
So what things in our text indicate the answer to the second question? I found these things to be a very good answer to a very good question:
2) a) with the whole of , b) as much as
What does "with the whole of" mean in this answer? It means what the measure of our love toward God ought to be from the whole of each of four parts. Notice again the same level or quality for each one. How might love look different if it were done "with the whole" of each part of ourselves? So why love with such passion? Perhaps it is because He first loved us! Remember also that "He so loved ... that He gave his only begotten son. Again, why? Because so great a love deserves so great a response in return. He is your God, so love Him in a way somewhat equal to His love.
So how does this all train us in determining the how and the why? Actions of love need to be both skilled and motivated to a high degree. We need passion for our trade and passion toward a high degree. Likewise the quality of love on our part needs to be equal to love for ourselves. This is the loving measure that we need to communicate more effectively.
What does "as much as" mean in this answer? The typical translation reads "love your neighbor as yourself". I put in "as much as" in place of "as" to make the degree or measure more explicit and meaningful without changing the meaning. It makes me think more about the "why" behind my love when I realize that my neighbor is in that sense my equal and so deserves that kind of love.
So how is training in love going? In our day, it seems that love has become almost hatred, since it is one area that is seldom practiced to make the activity perfect, but rather is left in the arms of spontaneity or blind luck. I would argue we need to work on it like we work on a jump shot, like we work on a recipe, like we work in accounting, etc. Let's get to work, practice, and then love rather that hate.
Thing of action
At the core of training are two aspects, both the definition of what is love and which kind is it
, when taking action. In this case, it is important to answer two basic questions:
1) What? for a) 1st commandment, and for b) 2nd commandment
2) Which? for a) 1st commandment, and for b) 2nd commandment
So what things in our text indicate the answer to the first question? I found these things to be very good answer to very good question:
1) a) You , God, b) you and neighbor
What does "you and God" mean in this answer? It means you as in lawyer, disciples, and the people. It means the God for all as identified by the Jews for generations.
What does "two by self" mean in my answer? It means that there are two people who both are selves. There is yourself and myself, making two.
So what things in our text indicate the answer to the second question? I found these things to be a very good answer to a very good question:
2) a) , b) as much as
What does "with whole" mean in this answer? It means that we are to love God with the whole of each of four parts. Notice the same level or quality for each one. (I curiously had never thought of this quite this way until today.) There is no preference for either the heart, the soul, the strength, or the mind. They are treated as equal in quality though somewhat distinct in order.
So how does this all translate to us in determining the how and the why? Action like love needs to be focused on one God, even if we ourselves have four parts. Likewise the quality from each part needs to be equal. This is the clarity and the meaningfulness that we need today.
In our day, ....
what? lawyer, teacher, God, disciples, the people
which? 1st greater commandment, 2nd lesser commandment, greatest summary altogether
teach
CLOSING OF ACTION
[just a bit more to go]
In Christ,
Jon
I love this quote that I heard from a friend of mine yesterday: "Where there is a why, there is a how". It sounds a lot like "Where there is a will, there is a way", doesn't it? The first quote fits extremely well with the training that I hope to accomplish today from Luke 10:25-28. Today the goal is to be immensely practical. From the Greatest Commandment, which includes the 1st and the 2nd, everyone can learn a great deal about the why and the how of action.
Amount of action
At the core of training are two aspects, both the level of focus and the level of effort required, when taking action. In this case, it is important to answer two basic questions:
1) How many? for a) 1st commandment, and for b) 2nd commandment
2) How much? for a) 1st commandment, and for b) 2nd commandment
So what things in our text indicate the answer to the first question? I found these things to be very good answer to very good question:
1) a) one by four, b) two by self
What does one by four mean in this answer? It means that there is "one" God and that there are four parts of ourselves, "heart", "soul", "strength" and "mind", that are supposed to love Yahweh God. There is one God for all four parts of ourselves, rather than one god for each one of the four parts or some other combinations of one and four.
What does "two by self" mean in my answer? It means that there are two people who both are selves. There is yourself and myself, making two.
So what things in our text indicate the answer to the second question? I found these things to be a very good answer to a very good question:
What does "with whole" mean in this answer? It means that we are to love God with the whole of each of four parts. Notice the same level or quality for each one. (I curiously had never thought of this quite this way until today.) There is no preference for either the heart, the soul, the strength, or the mind. They are treated as equal in quality though somewhat distinct in order.
So how does this all translate to us in determining the how and the why? Action like love needs to be focused on one God, even if we ourselves have four parts. Likewise the quality from each part needs to be equal. This is the clarity and the meaningfulness that we need today.
In our day, that appears that a lack of favoritism is a big problem as denominations tend to favor their one part over the others. From both my personal experience (which is worth more) and my reading (which is worth less), I have noted that seldom do denominations notice their favoritism for one part over another part due to their historically different questions. To mention just one example, Luther asked as his primary question, "How much?" is enough to satisfy an angry God. He responded with justification being primary. Calvin, while not against Luther on his question, asked a different primary question, "When" as in who precedes the other. He responded with humility being primary, since humanity follows after divinity. It would seem that the danger for each is favoring the heart in the first case and the soul in the second. The rule of action here is that they are to be equal without favoritism. With the loss of their understanding of holiness, it appears that favoritism has gotten worse not better.
Relationship of action
At the core of training are two other aspects, both the location and the timing required, when taking action. In this case, it is important to answer two basic questions:
1) Where? for a) 1st commandment, and for b) 2nd commandment
2) When? for a) 1st commandment, and for b) 2nd commandment
So what things in our text indicate the answer to question of location? I found these things to be very good answer to very good question:
1) a) Israel, b) neighbor (lit. "near wiling")
What does Israel mean in this answer? What does it say about location. It means that those in the location of a nation are being addressed and not just the location of one household. This would also explain the expanded location to all nations being discussed in passages where there is mention of the "Jew first and also the Gentiles (Nations). This rule is not limited to inside some narrow place. There is one God for all Israel and by implication then all other nations rather than one god for each narrow household. This God who ought to reign over one nation and goes beyond just narrow locations should also be the God of all locations.
What does neighbor mean in my answer? It means that there are people near us by their willing to be there. They as free people chose to live in the house next door. They have chosen to pass down the path we are passing also. There are many ways that people come near to us versus pass far from us. But by rule, when the come near to us, they are now our neighbors. There are ourselves and them in the same close proximity.
So what things in our text indicate the answer to the second question of time? I found these things to be a very good answer to a very good question:
What does Moses' century B.C." mean in this answer? It means that this rule that is greatest also has an historic past. It isn't just here and now, though it is that. It is also from the past, into the present, and so into the future a rule. Notice that the timing for this rule does not change with time. It perseveres with time. If it still applied in first century long after Moses, it would still apply now. There is no preference for either the the past, the present, or the future. All three times mean it is an acceptable time to live by the neighbor rule. These times are treated as equal in quality though very distinct in order.
So how does this all transfer to us in determining the how and the why? Action like love needs to be aimed at the there and before, the here and now, and the elsewhere and after. We cannot place everything into one place and time. Likewise the quality from place and time needs to be equal no matter where and when the rule is applied. This is the transfer of time and place we need today in our rules where time and place doesn't make the rule obsolete.
In our day, it appears that the elsewhere and future is all that matters over the there and past or here and present for others. For others it is all about the there and past to the neglect of the other two. For others it is all about living for the here and now. Rarely do you hear of the value of all three places and times as equal in their own place and time. Rather we here that here and now we are better or then and there they were better or here and now is better. Rarely is each seen as an acceptable place and time for its place and time. We try to put everything into our time limits of choice rather than each thing its rightful place and time. People forget that placement and timing are of the essence and that preference for one over the others is likely its own prejudice. Don't try to tell anyone that placement and timing isn't a problem. They will think you are nuts.
At the core of training are two aspects, both the issue of identity and the core issue of the wholeness required, when a person is taking action. In this case, it is important to answer two basic questions:
1) Who? for a) 1st commandment, and for b) 2nd commandment
2) Whole? for a) 1st commandment, and for b) 2nd commandment
At the core of training are two aspects, both the level of focus and the level of effort required, when taking action. In this case, it is important to answer two basic questions:
1) How many? for a) 1st commandment, and for b) 2nd commandment
2) How much? for a) 1st commandment, and for b) 2nd commandment
So what things in our text indicate the answer to the first question? I found these things to be very good answer to very good question:
1) a) one by four, b) two by self
What does one by four mean in this answer? It means that there is "one" God and that there are four parts of ourselves, "heart", "soul", "strength" and "mind", that are supposed to love Yahweh God. There is one God for all four parts of ourselves, rather than one god for each one of the four parts or some other combinations of one and four.
What does "two by self" mean in my answer? It means that there are two people who both are selves. There is yourself and myself, making two.
So what things in our text indicate the answer to the second question? I found these things to be a very good answer to a very good question:
What does "with whole" mean in this answer? It means that we are to love God with the whole of each of four parts. Notice the same level or quality for each one. (I curiously had never thought of this quite this way until today.) There is no preference for either the heart, the soul, the strength, or the mind. They are treated as equal in quality though somewhat distinct in order.
So how does this all translate to us in determining the how and the why? Action like love needs to be focused on one God, even if we ourselves have four parts. Likewise the quality from each part needs to be equal. This is the clarity and the meaningfulness that we need today.
In our day, that appears that a lack of favoritism is a big problem as denominations tend to favor their one part over the others. From both my personal experience (which is worth more) and my reading (which is worth less), I have noted that seldom do denominations notice their favoritism for one part over another part due to their historically different questions. To mention just one example, Luther asked as his primary question, "How much?" is enough to satisfy an angry God. He responded with justification being primary. Calvin, while not against Luther on his question, asked a different primary question, "When" as in who precedes the other. He responded with humility being primary, since humanity follows after divinity. It would seem that the danger for each is favoring the heart in the first case and the soul in the second. The rule of action here is that they are to be equal without favoritism. With the loss of their understanding of holiness, it appears that favoritism has gotten worse not better.
So what things in our text indicate the answer to the first question? I found these things to be very good answer to very good question:
1) a) Yahweh & Israel, and 2) another & self
What does "Yahweh and Israel" mean in this answer? Yahweh means that here is God with a personal rather than impersonal name. It also means that Israel (the name given to Jacob by God) that later became the name for a nation is being addressed by Yahweh. That is the "you" being referred to in this case. So the entire address is personal.
What does "another and self" mean in my answer? It means that there are two people who both can be referred to as a self or selves. There is another self and myself that are critical in this case for answering who is being referred to. This commandment leaves no person out in the sense that all of us are not an island all by ourselves. There is nowhere for a person to hide from responsibility for others as well as themselves.
So what things in our text indicate the answer to the second question? I found these things to be a very good answer to a very good question:
What does "of heart, etc." mean in this answer? It means that we are to love God with the the four parts of ourselves. Each is undeniably part of who we are. Notice the same level for each one. (I curiously had never thought of this quite this way until today.) It isn't a heart of a soul , soul of strength, etc. where one is the part of the other. No each one is an equal part of who we are as a person. There is no preference for either the heart, the soul, the strength, or the mind. They are treated as equal parts though in a somewhat distinct order.
So how does this all total up for us in determining the how and the why? Actions like love need to be personal and regard the entire person rather than just one part of who people are. No training and all teaching means our strength gets weak while the mind prospers. All training and no teaching means the mind goes mindless. Likewise the treatment of each part needs to be equal. This personal and healthy touch we need in our actions. Impersonal and only a part of the job will not do.
Also in our day, it appears that a lack of being personal is growing with more and more focus on technology and its strength as a tool over the other parts that make up who we are. There also seems to be a kind of smugness coming over those who like the increased intelligence of the computer, but are ill-equipped to better train the brain. We could use some brain training equal to technological training.
Action of action
At the core of training are two aspects, both how to do something and why to do something. Without the how confidence wanes, without a why motivation wanes. In this case, it is important to answer two basic questions:
1) How? for a) 1st commandment, and for b) 2nd commandment
2) Why? for a) 1st commandment, and for b) 2nd commandment
So what things in our text indicate the answer to the first question? I found these things to be very good answer to very good question:
1) a) love, b) love
What does "love" mean in this answer? It means that love matters, because it is something that we do. If it is something that we do, then we need training in loving. We know to potty train a child, but do we know how to love train them and adults? Sure, we ought to love Yahweh God, but how do we love? How do we practice love? It is ironic that I have trained many athletes to do a wide assortment of skills, but I have never explicitly taught people how to love. Since the Bible points out a lot of hatred in this world (the failure to do for others), I would think love training is not optional.
What does the next "love" mean in my answer? Again, I think there are skilled lovers and then there are unskilled lovers (who are very close to haters). I think I need to start offering love workshops the more I reflect on love as the answer for the how. It like faith and hope is an action, but a different kind and the greatest action we can perform. So let's learn how to love to drive out any hatred that shows in us, when we ought to do the loving thing. .
So what things in our text indicate the answer to the second question? I found these things to be a very good answer to a very good question:
What does "with the whole of" mean in this answer? It means what the measure of our love toward God ought to be from the whole of each of four parts. Notice again the same level or quality for each one. How might love look different if it were done "with the whole" of each part of ourselves? So why love with such passion? Perhaps it is because He first loved us! Remember also that "He so loved ... that He gave his only begotten son. Again, why? Because so great a love deserves so great a response in return. He is your God, so love Him in a way somewhat equal to His love.
So how does this all train us in determining the how and the why? Actions of love need to be both skilled and motivated to a high degree. We need passion for our trade and passion toward a high degree. Likewise the quality of love on our part needs to be equal to love for ourselves. This is the loving measure that we need to communicate more effectively.
What does "as much as" mean in this answer? The typical translation reads "love your neighbor as yourself". I put in "as much as" in place of "as" to make the degree or measure more explicit and meaningful without changing the meaning. It makes me think more about the "why" behind my love when I realize that my neighbor is in that sense my equal and so deserves that kind of love.
So how is training in love going? In our day, it seems that love has become almost hatred, since it is one area that is seldom practiced to make the activity perfect, but rather is left in the arms of spontaneity or blind luck. I would argue we need to work on it like we work on a jump shot, like we work on a recipe, like we work in accounting, etc. Let's get to work, practice, and then love rather that hate.
Thing of action
At the core of training are two aspects, both the definition of what is love and which kind is it
, when taking action. In this case, it is important to answer two basic questions:
1) What? for a) 1st commandment, and for b) 2nd commandment
2) Which? for a) 1st commandment, and for b) 2nd commandment
So what things in our text indicate the answer to the first question? I found these things to be very good answer to very good question:
1) a) You , God, b) you and neighbor
What does "you and God" mean in this answer? It means you as in lawyer, disciples, and the people. It means the God for all as identified by the Jews for generations.
What does "two by self" mean in my answer? It means that there are two people who both are selves. There is yourself and myself, making two.
So what things in our text indicate the answer to the second question? I found these things to be a very good answer to a very good question:
What does "with whole" mean in this answer? It means that we are to love God with the whole of each of four parts. Notice the same level or quality for each one. (I curiously had never thought of this quite this way until today.) There is no preference for either the heart, the soul, the strength, or the mind. They are treated as equal in quality though somewhat distinct in order.
So how does this all translate to us in determining the how and the why? Action like love needs to be focused on one God, even if we ourselves have four parts. Likewise the quality from each part needs to be equal. This is the clarity and the meaningfulness that we need today.
In our day, ....
what? lawyer, teacher, God, disciples, the people
which? 1st greater commandment, 2nd lesser commandment, greatest summary altogether
teach
CLOSING OF ACTION
[just a bit more to go]
In Christ,
Jon
Thursday, April 24, 2014
Blessed and Holy: Understanding Them Better Through Luke 10:25-28 (Whole - Part 3 of 5)
OPENING: WHOLE
The difficulty with trying to understand the meaning of the Greatest Commandment relates mainly to the idea of a commandment or command. Here is what I mean. If you were to look up commandment in your concordance, then you would discover 4 other close cousins as part of what looks remarkably like a set. They are:
1) laws
2) judgments
3) testimonies
4) commandments (* already noted above)
5) statutes
You might even see two other words commonly in close proximity. They are:
1) charge (or burden)
2) covenant
The question I want to answer this time, which has implications especially for the meaning of holy, is how these fit together as a whole set (if they are a set).
Israel ... Yahweh
AMOUNT
Yahweh your God is one (AM1) (how many?)
love your neighbor as yourself (AM2) (how much?)
RELATIONSHIP
God - far (where?) neigh - near
neighbor (when?) bor - liberated
ACTION
hear (how?)
love (how?)
love (how?)
above yourself (why?)
equal to yourself (why?)
THING
"is" "is not" excuse
who is my neighbor
trying to excuse himself
avoiding accountability
"like" "not like" excuse
different kind
CLOSING: WHOLE
with whole of your heart,
with whole of your soul
with whole of your strength
with whole of your mind
[will continue later]
In Christ,
Jon
The difficulty with trying to understand the meaning of the Greatest Commandment relates mainly to the idea of a commandment or command. Here is what I mean. If you were to look up commandment in your concordance, then you would discover 4 other close cousins as part of what looks remarkably like a set. They are:
1) laws
2) judgments
3) testimonies
4) commandments (* already noted above)
5) statutes
You might even see two other words commonly in close proximity. They are:
1) charge (or burden)
2) covenant
The question I want to answer this time, which has implications especially for the meaning of holy, is how these fit together as a whole set (if they are a set).
Israel ... Yahweh
AMOUNT
Yahweh your God is one (AM1) (how many?)
love your neighbor as yourself (AM2) (how much?)
RELATIONSHIP
God - far (where?) neigh - near
neighbor (when?) bor - liberated
ACTION
hear (how?)
love (how?)
love (how?)
above yourself (why?)
equal to yourself (why?)
THING
"is" "is not" excuse
who is my neighbor
trying to excuse himself
avoiding accountability
"like" "not like" excuse
different kind
CLOSING: WHOLE
with whole of your heart,
with whole of your soul
with whole of your strength
with whole of your mind
[will continue later]
In Christ,
Jon
Tuesday, April 22, 2014
Blessed and Holy: Understanding Them Better Through Luke 10:25-28 (Relationship - Part 2 of 5)
RELATIONSHIP
There is no more important time to define holy correctly than RIGHT NOW. And the best people to have on your team to reach the correct definition are those who possess both common sense and a specialized sense. It is also good to have on your side commonly known passages like Luke 10:25-28 to make sure your point of view is well-supported. (More on this part later this week.) When it comes to understanding the definition of holy in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, surprisingly the biggest problem is not that people do not know Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. I still wish more did! The bigger problem is that the specialists who know Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek lack too often common sense in their own language.
When people lack common sense, they are undependable. That can leave us running scared. That is a very big problem. It can result in what are called "random catastrophic failures" by yourself and those who are around you. You need brains that don't have this problem. You need a brain that has common sense. It is like a computer with a dependable microprocessor. We have got computer integrated circuits that have overcome this issue, but do we have the brains too? These kinds of errors need to be taken care of and fast as learned in the computer industry years ago. Again, brains with those kinds of mistakes can leave people running scared.
Let me give you a concrete example. I once was coaching on a sideline, when the head coach sent into the quarterback a signal from the sidelines for the next play. The quarterback took the signal to mean that we wanted to do a quick kick. That wasn't nearly so bad until the rest of the team lined up with him and did just that. It made absolutely no sense whatsoever. We had time outs to use. It ended up costing us the game. We were driving at the time for a potential score. The quarterback had a great sense of his mechanics as a quarterback, which is a specialized knowledge that other players don't possess, but he also lacked common sense. That made him at a critical point in the game undependable. It was really costly. But that was only a game. In the case of holy, its wrong definition is much more costly. It can cost us our lives.
So how can "random catastrophic failures" be avoided? I think I know how. First, there has to be no opposition to continuing to grow in our specialized knowledge of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. That has to be a GIVEN right now. What is not a GIVEN is that those with this specialized knowledge are dependable.
The problem of their lack of dependability seems to keep growing. They keep pointing out what is not dependable (ex. James Barr), but they do a weak job of replacing what is not dependable with something that is dependable. I'm afraid that a major part of this problem goes back to the place where our schools that were designed to give us sense failed to do so.
Don't get me wrong, I am strongly in favor of schools. I believe in "sense and schools" as much as I believe in "rules and freedom". They are inseparable. But the point of schools is to provide sense and eliminate nonsense. Nonsense is what I believe is resulting in "random catastrophic failure". Something is wrong. Elimination of what is wrong is not happening frequently enough. We have got a problem right NOW.
What I would like to do is have everyone take a deep breath (in football we call this a "time out") and take some time to find out to text if they possess common sense. That goes for everyone who wants to know the meaning of holy or blessed or any biblical words for that matter. The problem is that there has not been a good test for common sense. (While there are a lot of tests for whether you know Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek).
Reading Thomas Paine's Common Sense won't do it. That is somewhat of a dead end. Common sense is something that you can't study for once you are asked, because then you are admitting you don't HAVE it. Relationally, you either HAVE or you DON'T' HAVE it, when you are asked the question. So here is the big test. By the way, I would have struggled to come up with the answer not that long ago myself. So don't feel bad, rather get yourself tested. That is the first step to getting it, if we don't have it already.
I want you to answer a simple essay question without any studying. I want to find out whether you have it right NOW (not later). I want everyone who is going to read my definition of holy or give me their definition of holy to at least possess common sense BEFORE they or I speak on the topic. (I have already given my definition in earlier posts, if you trust my common sense.)
To do this testing of common sense, I am offering a series of tests. It will have three parts over the remaining days of this week (the week starting Sunday, April 20, 2014). Remember to really prove you have common sense right now you have to avoid cheating. This is all based on a honesty system. I can't check all the cheaters at the door, but you can check yourself. By the way, God is checking you at the door (according to my mother).
I want you to post your answers in the comment sections below. You can write out the answer in as little as 5 to 10 words in a list or you can expand on it. The question is whether you are among the HAVES or the HAVE NOTS in the place and time you are RIGHT NOW. There is no better timing.
I will not be posting answers, until there is enough interacting with the question (100 + people), but I will let you know if you get 100 % as soon as I can without giving the answer away to everyone else. (I will be open to common sense suggestions on how to do this process better. I also have never done this process quiet like this before. You know what that means. )
So here is the question: "Tell me in as short of a manner as you can, the common sense words in your language?" Please time yourself and give yourself a full 15 minute time period, if needed. I hope you do well! Thank you for taking part.
Don't worry, I'll giving the definition of holy to all who possess common sense without "random catastrophic failures! Again, thank you for taking an active part.
Sincerely,
Jon
There is no more important time to define holy correctly than RIGHT NOW. And the best people to have on your team to reach the correct definition are those who possess both common sense and a specialized sense. It is also good to have on your side commonly known passages like Luke 10:25-28 to make sure your point of view is well-supported. (More on this part later this week.) When it comes to understanding the definition of holy in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, surprisingly the biggest problem is not that people do not know Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. I still wish more did! The bigger problem is that the specialists who know Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek lack too often common sense in their own language.
When people lack common sense, they are undependable. That can leave us running scared. That is a very big problem. It can result in what are called "random catastrophic failures" by yourself and those who are around you. You need brains that don't have this problem. You need a brain that has common sense. It is like a computer with a dependable microprocessor. We have got computer integrated circuits that have overcome this issue, but do we have the brains too? These kinds of errors need to be taken care of and fast as learned in the computer industry years ago. Again, brains with those kinds of mistakes can leave people running scared.
Let me give you a concrete example. I once was coaching on a sideline, when the head coach sent into the quarterback a signal from the sidelines for the next play. The quarterback took the signal to mean that we wanted to do a quick kick. That wasn't nearly so bad until the rest of the team lined up with him and did just that. It made absolutely no sense whatsoever. We had time outs to use. It ended up costing us the game. We were driving at the time for a potential score. The quarterback had a great sense of his mechanics as a quarterback, which is a specialized knowledge that other players don't possess, but he also lacked common sense. That made him at a critical point in the game undependable. It was really costly. But that was only a game. In the case of holy, its wrong definition is much more costly. It can cost us our lives.
So how can "random catastrophic failures" be avoided? I think I know how. First, there has to be no opposition to continuing to grow in our specialized knowledge of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. That has to be a GIVEN right now. What is not a GIVEN is that those with this specialized knowledge are dependable.
The problem of their lack of dependability seems to keep growing. They keep pointing out what is not dependable (ex. James Barr), but they do a weak job of replacing what is not dependable with something that is dependable. I'm afraid that a major part of this problem goes back to the place where our schools that were designed to give us sense failed to do so.
Don't get me wrong, I am strongly in favor of schools. I believe in "sense and schools" as much as I believe in "rules and freedom". They are inseparable. But the point of schools is to provide sense and eliminate nonsense. Nonsense is what I believe is resulting in "random catastrophic failure". Something is wrong. Elimination of what is wrong is not happening frequently enough. We have got a problem right NOW.
What I would like to do is have everyone take a deep breath (in football we call this a "time out") and take some time to find out to text if they possess common sense. That goes for everyone who wants to know the meaning of holy or blessed or any biblical words for that matter. The problem is that there has not been a good test for common sense. (While there are a lot of tests for whether you know Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek).
Reading Thomas Paine's Common Sense won't do it. That is somewhat of a dead end. Common sense is something that you can't study for once you are asked, because then you are admitting you don't HAVE it. Relationally, you either HAVE or you DON'T' HAVE it, when you are asked the question. So here is the big test. By the way, I would have struggled to come up with the answer not that long ago myself. So don't feel bad, rather get yourself tested. That is the first step to getting it, if we don't have it already.
I want you to answer a simple essay question without any studying. I want to find out whether you have it right NOW (not later). I want everyone who is going to read my definition of holy or give me their definition of holy to at least possess common sense BEFORE they or I speak on the topic. (I have already given my definition in earlier posts, if you trust my common sense.)
To do this testing of common sense, I am offering a series of tests. It will have three parts over the remaining days of this week (the week starting Sunday, April 20, 2014). Remember to really prove you have common sense right now you have to avoid cheating. This is all based on a honesty system. I can't check all the cheaters at the door, but you can check yourself. By the way, God is checking you at the door (according to my mother).
I want you to post your answers in the comment sections below. You can write out the answer in as little as 5 to 10 words in a list or you can expand on it. The question is whether you are among the HAVES or the HAVE NOTS in the place and time you are RIGHT NOW. There is no better timing.
I will not be posting answers, until there is enough interacting with the question (100 + people), but I will let you know if you get 100 % as soon as I can without giving the answer away to everyone else. (I will be open to common sense suggestions on how to do this process better. I also have never done this process quiet like this before. You know what that means. )
So here is the question: "Tell me in as short of a manner as you can, the common sense words in your language?" Please time yourself and give yourself a full 15 minute time period, if needed. I hope you do well! Thank you for taking part.
Don't worry, I'll giving the definition of holy to all who possess common sense without "random catastrophic failures! Again, thank you for taking an active part.
Sincerely,
Jon
Blessed and holy: Understanding Them Better Through Luke 10:25-28. (Amount - Part 1 of 5)
AMOUNTS
One of the great problems in education is rote learning. It is learning the answer to a question without knowing how to get the answer without having been first given the answer. Too much of education including some of what I do myself makes this mistake. A great example is that I used to interview coaches and I would tell them what I was looking for. Right there I gave them the answers and they quickly nodded their consent. I had their consent, but not their understanding or their knowledge. I needed to have put the bar higher. So that is what I am going to do here. I need to find out if people understand and not just consent, because then I can trust people to be accountable without my help.
So with the bar higher, I am not just going to give a definition for holy or blessed. I need people who understand these words, not mouth the definition from a dictionary. Do you know how to find their meaning in the Bible? That is a far better question. This may shock a few people, but many scholars only repeat the definition they learned in school but they don't know how to find the definition for themselves. They cheat and use a lexicon and call that scholarship.
I want to prove that today. Defining holy and defining blessed are only two examples, but there is one example that I find really glaring. Most students (including scholars) can tell me the words of the greatest commandment by quoting from one of the gospels. What they cannot do is explain to me is how the lawyer or Jesus knew this before their answer was recorded. They also cannot answer equally a number of related questions.
So here is my set of questions for you and them:
1) What is the greatest judgment in the Bible? How do you know this?
2) What is the greatest testimony in the Bible? How do you know this?
3) What is the greatest law in the Bible? How do you know this?
4) What is the greatest commandment in the Bible? How do you know this (beside quoting from a gospel writer)?
5) What is the greatest statute in the Bible? How do you know this?
Notice that if you can answer, "How to you know this?", then you can answer the rest of the questions and not just one of the questions. It is 5xs times more valuable to know how than what in this case. It could be though that is too conservative of a value. It might have exponential value instead which is much higher!
Here is another thing I would like to ask. I would like to ask "If, 'Do you for others what you would have them do for you', is the golden rule for the greatest commandment; then what is the corresponding golden values for the other greatest things listed above?"
1) What is the golden continuity in the Bible? (to go with the greatest law)
2) What is the golden bond in the Bible? (to go with the greatest testimony)
3) What is the greatest model in the Bible? (to go with the greatest law)
4) What is the greatest rule in the Bible? (obvious, to go with the greatest commandment)
5) What is the greatest sense in the Bible? (to go with the greatest statute)
This means being at least 5 times more understanding, if you can answer all of these. Please keep in mind, these would not be know just to lawyers and rabbis like Jesus. Golden things are the easy to understand dummy-level materials of the Bible. See the spirit that I say this in through the picture below. It is not a matter of insult. It is a matter of do we know or do we really understand. Understanding here is greater than rote learning.
I like as a teacher to create understanding students, who can move on to be teachers themselves. But if you want cheap answers, then I warn you that I won't be giving those out. I can tell you what holy means, but you need to see how easy it is found in the Bible. If you can answer my questions, then you will have little trouble defining it. Actually, you will have a lot less then scholars. Otherwise, you are going to be subject to deception. Do we want a Christianity (or a Judaism) that is buying things, because we are dumb enough to buy it?
You can try to answer these questions above through using the comments section below. I will grade you, but I will not give you the easy answers. You have to think on at least the easiest level. I want to make sure you understand and that you understand that you don't understand even the greatest commandment, if you don't know how a person knows this is the greatest.
Best of all, I can hope that you will learn more without the answers provided in advance. Let's test what we really know and understand before we ask for a teacher's help. I hope you do well and I look forward to your answers. Remember, every attempt to understand is moving toward understanding. An attempt is never wasted. It is the lack of an attempt that is wasted. May God bless your efforts and my teaching.
In Christ,
Jon
One of the great problems in education is rote learning. It is learning the answer to a question without knowing how to get the answer without having been first given the answer. Too much of education including some of what I do myself makes this mistake. A great example is that I used to interview coaches and I would tell them what I was looking for. Right there I gave them the answers and they quickly nodded their consent. I had their consent, but not their understanding or their knowledge. I needed to have put the bar higher. So that is what I am going to do here. I need to find out if people understand and not just consent, because then I can trust people to be accountable without my help.
So with the bar higher, I am not just going to give a definition for holy or blessed. I need people who understand these words, not mouth the definition from a dictionary. Do you know how to find their meaning in the Bible? That is a far better question. This may shock a few people, but many scholars only repeat the definition they learned in school but they don't know how to find the definition for themselves. They cheat and use a lexicon and call that scholarship.
I want to prove that today. Defining holy and defining blessed are only two examples, but there is one example that I find really glaring. Most students (including scholars) can tell me the words of the greatest commandment by quoting from one of the gospels. What they cannot do is explain to me is how the lawyer or Jesus knew this before their answer was recorded. They also cannot answer equally a number of related questions.
So here is my set of questions for you and them:
1) What is the greatest judgment in the Bible? How do you know this?
2) What is the greatest testimony in the Bible? How do you know this?
3) What is the greatest law in the Bible? How do you know this?
4) What is the greatest commandment in the Bible? How do you know this (beside quoting from a gospel writer)?
5) What is the greatest statute in the Bible? How do you know this?
Notice that if you can answer, "How to you know this?", then you can answer the rest of the questions and not just one of the questions. It is 5xs times more valuable to know how than what in this case. It could be though that is too conservative of a value. It might have exponential value instead which is much higher!
Here is another thing I would like to ask. I would like to ask "If, 'Do you for others what you would have them do for you', is the golden rule for the greatest commandment; then what is the corresponding golden values for the other greatest things listed above?"
1) What is the golden continuity in the Bible? (to go with the greatest law)
2) What is the golden bond in the Bible? (to go with the greatest testimony)
3) What is the greatest model in the Bible? (to go with the greatest law)
4) What is the greatest rule in the Bible? (obvious, to go with the greatest commandment)
5) What is the greatest sense in the Bible? (to go with the greatest statute)
This means being at least 5 times more understanding, if you can answer all of these. Please keep in mind, these would not be know just to lawyers and rabbis like Jesus. Golden things are the easy to understand dummy-level materials of the Bible. See the spirit that I say this in through the picture below. It is not a matter of insult. It is a matter of do we know or do we really understand. Understanding here is greater than rote learning.
I like as a teacher to create understanding students, who can move on to be teachers themselves. But if you want cheap answers, then I warn you that I won't be giving those out. I can tell you what holy means, but you need to see how easy it is found in the Bible. If you can answer my questions, then you will have little trouble defining it. Actually, you will have a lot less then scholars. Otherwise, you are going to be subject to deception. Do we want a Christianity (or a Judaism) that is buying things, because we are dumb enough to buy it?
You can try to answer these questions above through using the comments section below. I will grade you, but I will not give you the easy answers. You have to think on at least the easiest level. I want to make sure you understand and that you understand that you don't understand even the greatest commandment, if you don't know how a person knows this is the greatest.
Best of all, I can hope that you will learn more without the answers provided in advance. Let's test what we really know and understand before we ask for a teacher's help. I hope you do well and I look forward to your answers. Remember, every attempt to understand is moving toward understanding. An attempt is never wasted. It is the lack of an attempt that is wasted. May God bless your efforts and my teaching.
In Christ,
Jon
Saturday, April 19, 2014
Blessed and Holy: Understanding Them Better Through Isaiah 6 and Revelation 4 (Teach - Part 5 of 5)
INTRODUCTION
I just got off an exciting conversation with two guys, who I consider to be among the best friends that I have. They meet together with a group of guys once per month to discuss some of the more difficult and more valuable pieces of Christian writing, so I had a chance to have a phone conversation with both of them after their meeting this morning (4/19/14). They are both pretty smart. They gave me some sound advice.
Moses was pretty smart as well, but his father-in-law gave him some valuable smart advice: divide up this work load that you are carrying and handle only the intellectually more difficult cases yourself. He was advising Moses to limit his personal scope. This is certainly good advice. But it is easy to overlook what had to come first. Before you limit your scope, as I was advised this morning, you have to make sure the whole scope is seen and covered! It is through seeing the whole scope and seeing our own limitations that we can best follow Jethro's advice.
Christian education as well as public education are at a dismal place right now. Despite greater and greater dollars going into the system and some individual highlights, there is no program in education right now that is lighting up the score board except on a more local basis. It appears too that these sometimes great efforts are also reaching a fatigue state. Changing the curriculum every 5 years is not cutting it. What can we do about this?
I think we need to follow Jethro's advice in a 21st century way. So let's first figure out the B.C. advice he gave to Moses before converting it to A.D. advice to us. First, to bridge from one to the other, you need to buttress each end of the bridge. Let's start then with Exodus 18:
13 And so it was, on the next day, that
Moses sat to judge the people; and the people stood before Moses from morning
until evening. 14 So when Moses’ father-in-law saw all that he
did for the people, he said, “What is this thing that you are doing for
the people? Why do you alone sit, and all the people stand before you from
morning until evening?”15 And Moses said to his father-in-law,
“Because the people come to me to inquire of God. 16 When they
have a difficulty, they come to me, and I judge between one and another; and I
make known the statutes of God and His laws.”
I just got off an exciting conversation with two guys, who I consider to be among the best friends that I have. They meet together with a group of guys once per month to discuss some of the more difficult and more valuable pieces of Christian writing, so I had a chance to have a phone conversation with both of them after their meeting this morning (4/19/14). They are both pretty smart. They gave me some sound advice.
Moses was pretty smart as well, but his father-in-law gave him some valuable smart advice: divide up this work load that you are carrying and handle only the intellectually more difficult cases yourself. He was advising Moses to limit his personal scope. This is certainly good advice. But it is easy to overlook what had to come first. Before you limit your scope, as I was advised this morning, you have to make sure the whole scope is seen and covered! It is through seeing the whole scope and seeing our own limitations that we can best follow Jethro's advice.
Christian education as well as public education are at a dismal place right now. Despite greater and greater dollars going into the system and some individual highlights, there is no program in education right now that is lighting up the score board except on a more local basis. It appears too that these sometimes great efforts are also reaching a fatigue state. Changing the curriculum every 5 years is not cutting it. What can we do about this?
I think we need to follow Jethro's advice in a 21st century way. So let's first figure out the B.C. advice he gave to Moses before converting it to A.D. advice to us. First, to bridge from one to the other, you need to buttress each end of the bridge. Let's start then with Exodus 18:
13 And so it was, on the next day, that
Moses sat to judge the people; and the people stood before Moses from morning
until evening. 14 So when Moses’ father-in-law saw all that he
did for the people, he said, “What is this thing that you are doing for
the people? Why do you alone sit, and all the people stand before you from
morning until evening?”15 And Moses said to his father-in-law,
“Because the people come to me to inquire of God. 16 When they
have a difficulty, they come to me, and I judge between one and another; and I
make known the statutes of God and His laws.”
There are some critical statements in these instructions:
[I solved a major problem today through this post. The work I did only has to wait today due to my other job and due to my needing to do some technological stuff to get my materials displayed in a more professional manner. But this will end up being one of my best posts in terms of the common sense level.]
In Christ,
Jon
Friday, April 18, 2014
Blessed and Holy: Understanding Them Better Through Isaiah 6 and Revelation 4 (Train - Part 4 of 5)
INTRODUCTION
At the basic level, a person needs to ask themselves: "How do I intend to accomplish this goal or by what means will I accomplish this purpose? Today, I am addressing the training in our text. Training consists of answering two questions: 1) "How?" and 2) "Why?" So what are the actions that need to be performed? We want to learn how holiness is done or how to make something holy. That is my primary training task for today.
But there is another part of training that goes beyond just this text. It cuts all the way down to how we going to read or interpret this text and any other. So what is my method? (If you want to look at his more in-depth, simply click my communication blog link on the right side of this page.)
METHOD
So let me say a little (not a lot!) about my method of reading (a part of communication). Let me begin by saying that my method is both cutting edge and the most common sense. There needs to be a sense of both the edges of our world's global demands and of the core demands of small town and country life. We need a tool that is usable by both ends of that spectrum. I believe that the tool I use meets those demands on both ends of our world.
We today live in a world of not just European or American demands, but a world of worldwide or global demands. We also though need to make sure we do not lose sight of our local demands either. That must be a constant tension. I remember this quote from real estate magazine and a discussion with a world traveler that I met in California: "He who is most at home somewhere, is most at home everywhere". This quote captures part of the essence of my method.
In 1983, I was introduced to a method for everywhere, called the TEAR method. Its everywhere, from the latest #s (from 2009) that I am aware of, is to 6909 languages in the world (source: SIL). The TEAR method was designed as a universal tool to measure up to the demands of facing a multitude of languages. In biblical studies, the demands of language are between 5 and maybe 10 languages (ex. English, Latin, Greek, Aramaic, Hebrew ... Arabic, Akkadian, Ugaritic, etc.) So you can see that the method that I was introduced to in 1983 had a demand load of much higher proportions - 1000xs higher at least. The challenge and demands of more languages, I am convinced, were the mother of invention for the TEAR method. It was designed so that a missionary (a cutting edge global messenger) could be "most at home everywhere".
In 1983, I was also introduced to a method for somewhere, called the ARCing method. It's somewhere was going from Greek, Aramaic, or Hebrew to English. It was heavily immersed in the language of English. The demands were essentially making sure that our English translation was a good one from these original languages. The isolated somewhere was even more narrow than English, it was specifically American English. I think that sometimes the most elusive location is finding where in language we are "most at home somewhere". This is tremendously demanding too, because it says that we have to narrow that somewhere down to one place and not a multitude of places. It was designed for the demand that a preacher (a home schooled local messenger) could be "most at home somewhere".
My method for reading the text of Scripture with the goal of it speaking to me, came full circle in late 2013 and in early 2014, so that laying out the common sense level became a real passion for me. It also is one half of why a publisher is interested in publishing a book I hope to see published yet this year. I think that I have found that somewhere where you and I are most at home, when it comes to language and communication. The best thing about it is that it agrees with the idea of being most at home everywhere. In fact, I would say that both the TEAR method and the ARCing method essentially have not seen that "most at home" place as the most essential demand there is in our world right now that overnight became global. Too often the church is trying to keep up with the world without keeping up their home. So today you will get to see me use the most at home part of language to get at the definition and meaning of holy through Isaiah 6.
Isaiah 6
Remember he who is most at home somewhere is most at home everywhere.
Here is where I am most at home and I think you will find it is also where you are most at home. It is the place in language you frequent the most. That place must be our starting point before we can become most at home everywhere. So I will be doing my best to begin from there.
Revelation 4
[this piece will have to be revisited due to Good Friday and me having a shorter day to work on things as a result. That is my tradition and I'm sticking to it.]
In Christ,
Jon
At the basic level, a person needs to ask themselves: "How do I intend to accomplish this goal or by what means will I accomplish this purpose? Today, I am addressing the training in our text. Training consists of answering two questions: 1) "How?" and 2) "Why?" So what are the actions that need to be performed? We want to learn how holiness is done or how to make something holy. That is my primary training task for today.
But there is another part of training that goes beyond just this text. It cuts all the way down to how we going to read or interpret this text and any other. So what is my method? (If you want to look at his more in-depth, simply click my communication blog link on the right side of this page.)
METHOD
So let me say a little (not a lot!) about my method of reading (a part of communication). Let me begin by saying that my method is both cutting edge and the most common sense. There needs to be a sense of both the edges of our world's global demands and of the core demands of small town and country life. We need a tool that is usable by both ends of that spectrum. I believe that the tool I use meets those demands on both ends of our world.
We today live in a world of not just European or American demands, but a world of worldwide or global demands. We also though need to make sure we do not lose sight of our local demands either. That must be a constant tension. I remember this quote from real estate magazine and a discussion with a world traveler that I met in California: "He who is most at home somewhere, is most at home everywhere". This quote captures part of the essence of my method.
In 1983, I was introduced to a method for everywhere, called the TEAR method. Its everywhere, from the latest #s (from 2009) that I am aware of, is to 6909 languages in the world (source: SIL). The TEAR method was designed as a universal tool to measure up to the demands of facing a multitude of languages. In biblical studies, the demands of language are between 5 and maybe 10 languages (ex. English, Latin, Greek, Aramaic, Hebrew ... Arabic, Akkadian, Ugaritic, etc.) So you can see that the method that I was introduced to in 1983 had a demand load of much higher proportions - 1000xs higher at least. The challenge and demands of more languages, I am convinced, were the mother of invention for the TEAR method. It was designed so that a missionary (a cutting edge global messenger) could be "most at home everywhere".
In 1983, I was also introduced to a method for somewhere, called the ARCing method. It's somewhere was going from Greek, Aramaic, or Hebrew to English. It was heavily immersed in the language of English. The demands were essentially making sure that our English translation was a good one from these original languages. The isolated somewhere was even more narrow than English, it was specifically American English. I think that sometimes the most elusive location is finding where in language we are "most at home somewhere". This is tremendously demanding too, because it says that we have to narrow that somewhere down to one place and not a multitude of places. It was designed for the demand that a preacher (a home schooled local messenger) could be "most at home somewhere".
My method for reading the text of Scripture with the goal of it speaking to me, came full circle in late 2013 and in early 2014, so that laying out the common sense level became a real passion for me. It also is one half of why a publisher is interested in publishing a book I hope to see published yet this year. I think that I have found that somewhere where you and I are most at home, when it comes to language and communication. The best thing about it is that it agrees with the idea of being most at home everywhere. In fact, I would say that both the TEAR method and the ARCing method essentially have not seen that "most at home" place as the most essential demand there is in our world right now that overnight became global. Too often the church is trying to keep up with the world without keeping up their home. So today you will get to see me use the most at home part of language to get at the definition and meaning of holy through Isaiah 6.
Isaiah 6
Remember he who is most at home somewhere is most at home everywhere.
Here is where I am most at home and I think you will find it is also where you are most at home. It is the place in language you frequent the most. That place must be our starting point before we can become most at home everywhere. So I will be doing my best to begin from there.
Revelation 4
[this piece will have to be revisited due to Good Friday and me having a shorter day to work on things as a result. That is my tradition and I'm sticking to it.]
In Christ,
Jon
Thursday, April 17, 2014
Blessed and Holy: Understanding Them Both Better Through Isaiah 6 & Revelation 4 (Total - Part 3 of 5)
When it comes to language, it is important to realize that some words get used extremely frequently. Sometimes due to that frequency, we take them for granted. In reading the scholarly articles or books written about the Bible, you frequently find writers trying to find the next seldom used word that needs to be better defined. In the business world, they would call this looking for the unique rather than the common. I've come to the conclusion that sometimes we spend way too much time on the infrequently used words in the Bible text and way too little time on the frequently used ones. "Blessed" and "holy" are not themselves the most commonly found words in the biblical text, but does that have to mean we cannot ground their meanings in those that are the most common? I think that the correct answer is that we CAN ground the meaning of blessed and holy in common sense language. We just have to do it.
What this means is that I and many of us have to break some old habits in reading a text of Scripture. My tendency is to look for the key unique words in a text, but to ignore those that are more widely known or common. We see this too in an exhaustive concordance, where words like "and", "the", "but", "a" and many others like them are relegated to an appendix. We also see this in older lexicons (and maybe even some newer ones), where at one time in the history of their creation, only the less well-known words were included and the most commonly words were left out. The thinking was: "Why have a dictionary for those?". Even in a children's picture dictionary that I own, the word "strong" gets a picture dedicated to its definition, but the word "the" does not have a picture assigned to it. The authors seem to assume that a child will grasp the meaning of "the" from a couple of example sentences.
This situation reminds me of the Biblical principle that "the greatest shall be the least and the least shall be the greatest". It also reminds me of another principle where Jesus warned people that "what you have done to the least of these, you have done to me". These principles seem to apply only to people, but what if they also extend to our words? Are we paying a big price for not paying attention to the common words as much as the special words? Do those who read the Bible as scholars need a reprimand like the chiding Lincoln gave to the elite politicians that he understood the democratic principle to mean to pay attention to the common people, because there were so many of them? Do we need to do the same with the least of the words in the text that are so incredibly frequent? It is my view that we do.
Some very scholarly writing from a cutting edge linguistic model called "cognitive linguistics", in paraphrasing their point, says that the words we see or hear more frequently than others become more entrenched in our minds and tend to shape more our way of thinking more and even effect things more at the expense of the less frequent and therefore the less entrenched in our thinking. In other words, these least words are the words that are greater than the greatest words. The great words, the last heard at the spelling bee or the words hardest to define on the ACT or SAT are in fact the least when it comes to grounding or entrenching our views.
So what I am going to begin doing overall is looking at a text through this set of words in English:
the, a(n)
on, as (so)
and, but (not)
with, at
I (be), to (not)
of (have), had
by (do), use
for, said
this, that
or, each
So what I am going to begin doing overall is looking at a text through this set of words in Greek:
So what I am going to begin doing overall is looking at a text through this set of words in Aramaic:
So what I am going to begin doing overall is looking at a text through this set of words in Hebrew:
This is how I will be able to approach a biblical text in a way that is not only healthy, but also incredibly grounded or entrenched (in a good sense!). the good news in all of this is that this will make the common person and all of those above them in expertise to have a common ground from which to begin. Right now what happens is the expert is given the advantage and also the loopholes to escape accountability for their ways of thinking.
[this deserves a lot more work and it will get it and so will Isaiah 6 ]
In Christ,
Jon
What this means is that I and many of us have to break some old habits in reading a text of Scripture. My tendency is to look for the key unique words in a text, but to ignore those that are more widely known or common. We see this too in an exhaustive concordance, where words like "and", "the", "but", "a" and many others like them are relegated to an appendix. We also see this in older lexicons (and maybe even some newer ones), where at one time in the history of their creation, only the less well-known words were included and the most commonly words were left out. The thinking was: "Why have a dictionary for those?". Even in a children's picture dictionary that I own, the word "strong" gets a picture dedicated to its definition, but the word "the" does not have a picture assigned to it. The authors seem to assume that a child will grasp the meaning of "the" from a couple of example sentences.
This situation reminds me of the Biblical principle that "the greatest shall be the least and the least shall be the greatest". It also reminds me of another principle where Jesus warned people that "what you have done to the least of these, you have done to me". These principles seem to apply only to people, but what if they also extend to our words? Are we paying a big price for not paying attention to the common words as much as the special words? Do those who read the Bible as scholars need a reprimand like the chiding Lincoln gave to the elite politicians that he understood the democratic principle to mean to pay attention to the common people, because there were so many of them? Do we need to do the same with the least of the words in the text that are so incredibly frequent? It is my view that we do.
Some very scholarly writing from a cutting edge linguistic model called "cognitive linguistics", in paraphrasing their point, says that the words we see or hear more frequently than others become more entrenched in our minds and tend to shape more our way of thinking more and even effect things more at the expense of the less frequent and therefore the less entrenched in our thinking. In other words, these least words are the words that are greater than the greatest words. The great words, the last heard at the spelling bee or the words hardest to define on the ACT or SAT are in fact the least when it comes to grounding or entrenching our views.
So what I am going to begin doing overall is looking at a text through this set of words in English:
the, a(n)
on, as (so)
and, but (not)
with, at
I (be), to (not)
of (have), had
by (do), use
for, said
this, that
or, each
So what I am going to begin doing overall is looking at a text through this set of words in Greek:
So what I am going to begin doing overall is looking at a text through this set of words in Aramaic:
So what I am going to begin doing overall is looking at a text through this set of words in Hebrew:
This is how I will be able to approach a biblical text in a way that is not only healthy, but also incredibly grounded or entrenched (in a good sense!). the good news in all of this is that this will make the common person and all of those above them in expertise to have a common ground from which to begin. Right now what happens is the expert is given the advantage and also the loopholes to escape accountability for their ways of thinking.
[this deserves a lot more work and it will get it and so will Isaiah 6 ]
In Christ,
Jon
Wednesday, April 16, 2014
Blessed and Holy: Understanding Them Better Through Isaiah 6 plus Revelation 4 (Part 2 of 5)
There is only one set of words that get this kind of attention in the Bible: "Holy, Holy, Holy" is Yahweh God Almighty". It somehow is stronger and more dramatic than "Love, Love, Love" as sung by the Beatles. In fact, the contrast between the two statements of core "greats" may signal what is core problem: "Do Christians and Jews know their biblical core?"
"Love, Love, Love" is continuously brought up as that which can be used as foundational for everything. But this raises an interesting question in light of Isaiah 6. Why then does love not receive the attention of being repeated 3 times like holy?
The positive argument biblically for love being the Bible's core is usually promoted on the basis of the "Greatest Commandment" passages in the Gospels and Paul's reference to the summary of the law in Romans. It is implicit too that in Jewish tradition, it also held to the centrality of love in relation to the question of what is the greatest commandment. So let's look more closely at these in terms of their relationships to each other. Who is more central as a character trait? Is it love or is it holiness? Which one shows the most signs of being at the core?
One unique aspect of both "Holy, Holy, Holy" and "Love, Love, Love" is the close proximity of the same words to each other. The question has been what is that close proximity and repetition intended to signal. Here is a longer portion of Isaiah 6, to give us some wider perspective:
This repetition of holy, holy, holy in tight succession is not just found in Isaiah. It is also found in Revelation:
6 Before the throne there was[e] a sea of glass, like crystal. And in the midst of the throne, and around the throne, were four living creatures full of eyes in front and in back.7 The first living creature was like a lion, the second living creature like a calf, the third living creature had a face like a man, and the fourth living creature was like a flying eagle.8 The four living creatures, each having six wings, were full of eyes around and within. And they do not rest day or night, saying:
So the step we are going to take on the topic of which is more central - holy or love - is to look at the context of each. What is critical for "Holy, Holy, Holy" is the critical words included in the nearest context to its use.
Likewise when it comes to love, the important thing is to understand the context of commandment. Or in the case of another text like 1 Corinthians 13, what is the meaning that among faith, hope, and love that love is the greatest. People can forget that the context is very important. Jesus was not asked what is the greatest in the entire word, but what is greatest among the commandments. He also was not asked what is the greatest among the law, etc. So we must pay attention to those distinctions.
[What I need to do now is put in front of your eyes the outline of the passages in the text and then an outline that transfers the message of that time into our time. Then I will need to examine the set of words that surround holy and those that surround love and those that surround commandment.
He is an example of why all that work is required. If I were to ask who is the greatest player in baseball history or what is the greatest game in baseball history, then we all can see the importance of knowing how player and game relate to each other. The two comparisons are not the same though they both concern the broader set of words concerning baseball. ]
In Christ,
Jon
"Love, Love, Love" is continuously brought up as that which can be used as foundational for everything. But this raises an interesting question in light of Isaiah 6. Why then does love not receive the attention of being repeated 3 times like holy?
The positive argument biblically for love being the Bible's core is usually promoted on the basis of the "Greatest Commandment" passages in the Gospels and Paul's reference to the summary of the law in Romans. It is implicit too that in Jewish tradition, it also held to the centrality of love in relation to the question of what is the greatest commandment. So let's look more closely at these in terms of their relationships to each other. Who is more central as a character trait? Is it love or is it holiness? Which one shows the most signs of being at the core?
One unique aspect of both "Holy, Holy, Holy" and "Love, Love, Love" is the close proximity of the same words to each other. The question has been what is that close proximity and repetition intended to signal. Here is a longer portion of Isaiah 6, to give us some wider perspective:
Isaiah 6
New King James Version (NKJV)
Isaiah Called to Be a Prophet
6 In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple. 2 Above it stood seraphim; each one had six wings: with two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew.3 And one cried to another and said:
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
The whole earth is full of His glory!”
The whole earth is full of His glory!”
4 And the posts of the door were shaken by the voice of him who cried out, and the house was filled with smoke.
5 So I said:
“Woe is me, for I am undone!
Because I am a man of unclean lips,
And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips;
For my eyes have seen the King,
The Lord of hosts.”
Because I am a man of unclean lips,
And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips;
For my eyes have seen the King,
The Lord of hosts.”
6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a live coal which he had taken with the tongs from the altar. 7 And he touched my mouth with it, and said:
“Behold, this has touched your lips;
Your iniquity is taken away,
And your sin purged.”
Your iniquity is taken away,
And your sin purged.”
8 Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying:
“Whom shall I send,
And who will go for Us?”
And who will go for Us?”
Then I said, “Here am I! Send me.”
9 And He said, “Go, and tell this people:
‘Keep on hearing, but do not understand;
Keep on seeing, but do not perceive.’
Keep on seeing, but do not perceive.’
10 “Make the heart of this people dull,
And their ears heavy,
And shut their eyes;
Lest they see with their eyes,
And hear with their ears,
And understand with their heart,
And return and be healed.”
And their ears heavy,
And shut their eyes;
Lest they see with their eyes,
And hear with their ears,
And understand with their heart,
And return and be healed.”
11 Then I said, “Lord, how long?”
And He answered:
“Until the cities are laid waste and without inhabitant,
The houses are without a man,
The land is utterly desolate,
12 The Lord has removed men far away,
And the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land.
13 But yet a tenth will be in it,
And will return and be for consuming,
As a terebinth tree or as an oak,
Whose stump remains when it is cut down.
So the holy seed shall be its stump.”
The houses are without a man,
The land is utterly desolate,
12 The Lord has removed men far away,
And the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land.
13 But yet a tenth will be in it,
And will return and be for consuming,
As a terebinth tree or as an oak,
Whose stump remains when it is cut down.
So the holy seed shall be its stump.”
This repetition of holy, holy, holy in tight succession is not just found in Isaiah. It is also found in Revelation:
Revelation 4
New King James Version (NKJV)
The Throne Room of Heaven
4 After these things I looked, and behold, a door standing open in heaven. And the first voice which I heard was like a trumpet speaking with me, saying, “Come up here, and I will show you things which must take place after this.”
2 Immediately I was in the Spirit; and behold, a throne set in heaven, and One sat on the throne. 3 And He who sat there was[a] like a jasper and a sardius stone in appearance; andthere was a rainbow around the throne, in appearance like an emerald. 4 Around the throne were twenty-four thrones, and on the thrones I saw twenty-four elders sitting, clothed in white robes; and they had crowns[b] of gold on their heads. 5 And from the throne proceeded lightnings, thunderings, and voices.[c] Seven lamps of fire were burning before the throne, which are the[d] seven Spirits of God.6 Before the throne there was[e] a sea of glass, like crystal. And in the midst of the throne, and around the throne, were four living creatures full of eyes in front and in back.7 The first living creature was like a lion, the second living creature like a calf, the third living creature had a face like a man, and the fourth living creature was like a flying eagle.8 The four living creatures, each having six wings, were full of eyes around and within. And they do not rest day or night, saying:
9 Whenever the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to Him who sits on the throne, who lives forever and ever, 10 the twenty-four elders fall down before Him who sits on the throne and worship Him who lives forever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne, saying:
So the step we are going to take on the topic of which is more central - holy or love - is to look at the context of each. What is critical for "Holy, Holy, Holy" is the critical words included in the nearest context to its use.
Likewise when it comes to love, the important thing is to understand the context of commandment. Or in the case of another text like 1 Corinthians 13, what is the meaning that among faith, hope, and love that love is the greatest. People can forget that the context is very important. Jesus was not asked what is the greatest in the entire word, but what is greatest among the commandments. He also was not asked what is the greatest among the law, etc. So we must pay attention to those distinctions.
[What I need to do now is put in front of your eyes the outline of the passages in the text and then an outline that transfers the message of that time into our time. Then I will need to examine the set of words that surround holy and those that surround love and those that surround commandment.
He is an example of why all that work is required. If I were to ask who is the greatest player in baseball history or what is the greatest game in baseball history, then we all can see the importance of knowing how player and game relate to each other. The two comparisons are not the same though they both concern the broader set of words concerning baseball. ]
In Christ,
Jon
Monday, April 14, 2014
Blessed and Holy: Understanding Them Better Through (Translation - Part 1 of 5)
PREFACE
I know that people largely come to this site to find a definition of holy (blessed and holy are inseparable, if you want a good definition for either). So I do not want to let you or them down. First, my usual pattern will be dealing with a text of Scripture through a 5 step process or 5 day process from Monday through Saturday (skipping one day). I want the argument for the meaning of holy to be biblical above all else. I will occasionally also drop into this sequence shorter pieces. Second, in each blog post, I am going to start indicating levels of difficulty for understanding. I am going to answer in advance the question, "Is this written on a level that I can understand (and appreciate!)?" This way a reader can either decide to read the sections all the way up to their highest level or skip over levels to get to their own higher levels.
Indicating the steps of 1) translation, 2) transfer, 3) total, 4) train, and 5) teach over 5 days is one thing. That is not that difficult and I have explained these previously. But in order to label difficulty level, it is important to understand how those levels will be indicated and what is my basis for those levels. I am going to use two sources for this. One is the biblical basis of Exodus 18. This will provide the labels for each level and the biblical foundation for my viewpoint. The other source is mainly for application to today. It is the traditional bell curve for intelligence (IQ) rankings that will help me make Jethro's advice to Moses in Exodus 18 more specific to our understanding today. (I will mention that I will not go into the different kinds of intelligence, because that is another bunny trail.)
DEFINITION OF HOLY
Some readers simply want a quick definition, so before going into the difficulty levels, let me provide a short definition of holy as I have found in Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek. It's meaning (3 kinds) is:
1) by definition, moral wholeness (the parts are - just, humble, perfect, and great)
2) by implication, pure (because it is what it is and nothing else beyond what it is)
3) by significance, set apart (because there are many moral codes that are not morally whole, but only rise to the level of part of the Jewish and Christian moral code - justice only as one example).
In most cases that you look up the definition of holy, you will be given only one of these three as a definition of holy. I present instead the idea that meaning can actually bring all three of the greatest supposed definitions offered for biblical holiness into complete harmony. They do not have to be fully exclusive. Once the definition of holy as moral wholeness falls into place, the other two fall into their place without combating the first. That is all I can say quickly. I say this at much greater length in other posts.
DIFFICULTY LEVELS
My goal is to break things out as to difficulty level, so I think it is important to talk about intelligence levels and leadership levels. This is because many people both under-sell or over-sell themselves on the learning levels or on their leadership levels.
First, I point out something that used to caused me to stumble when it came to learning and leading. I used to think they were rather exclusive of one another. Now I realize that learning enhances leading and that it is one of four key components that results in: 1) bigger, 2) faster, 3) stronger, and 4) smarter leaders and organizations.
[insert leader learner photo here]
Exodus 18
rulers of 1s (priesthood of all believers easy cases only)
rulers of 10s
rulers of 50s
rulers of 100s
rulers of 1000s
rulers of 10,000s (Moses's role of difficult cases only)
leaders based on difficulty of law and statute levels - their intelligence level (among others traits they should possess as leaders
5 levels of leadership - Moses plus 4 levels of leaders (plus Luther's self-leadership)
general intelligence
general language studies
specialized intelligence
Hebrew language studies
I imagine at this point something like this:
Level 1) The Common Sense Level (like the Golden Rule)
"The Filter for Everything"
Level 2) The Greater Majority Level (like the Greatest Commandment)
"The Filter for Most Things"
Level 3) The Smaller Majority Level (like the Ten Commandments)
"The Filter for Some Things"
Level 4) The Specialized Level (all the other specific commandments)
"The Filter for Very Few Things"
[ save the following material for another post]
We live in a time when the loopholes that people find to make excuses seems to be expanding. There is a great way to minimize those objections: a return to the basics. Vince Lombardi, on one such occasion, had this to say the following week to his championship team; who had just lost to the college all-stars team: "Gentlemen, this is a football". To which Max McGee (always the joker) replied: "Slow down coach, you're going too fast". The problem right now is that schooling or education is going too fast. It is pursuing the far fringes of what we know and is by-passing the obvious. Common sense gets the short end of the stick. Specialized sense gets the long end of the stick.
[You can obviously see this post is still under construction. So are some of my others. Things are happening behind the scenes that will eventually make it possible for me to complete posts more regularly. Momentum is building, so please be patient. Thank you.]
In Christ,
Jon
I know that people largely come to this site to find a definition of holy (blessed and holy are inseparable, if you want a good definition for either). So I do not want to let you or them down. First, my usual pattern will be dealing with a text of Scripture through a 5 step process or 5 day process from Monday through Saturday (skipping one day). I want the argument for the meaning of holy to be biblical above all else. I will occasionally also drop into this sequence shorter pieces. Second, in each blog post, I am going to start indicating levels of difficulty for understanding. I am going to answer in advance the question, "Is this written on a level that I can understand (and appreciate!)?" This way a reader can either decide to read the sections all the way up to their highest level or skip over levels to get to their own higher levels.
Indicating the steps of 1) translation, 2) transfer, 3) total, 4) train, and 5) teach over 5 days is one thing. That is not that difficult and I have explained these previously. But in order to label difficulty level, it is important to understand how those levels will be indicated and what is my basis for those levels. I am going to use two sources for this. One is the biblical basis of Exodus 18. This will provide the labels for each level and the biblical foundation for my viewpoint. The other source is mainly for application to today. It is the traditional bell curve for intelligence (IQ) rankings that will help me make Jethro's advice to Moses in Exodus 18 more specific to our understanding today. (I will mention that I will not go into the different kinds of intelligence, because that is another bunny trail.)
DEFINITION OF HOLY
Some readers simply want a quick definition, so before going into the difficulty levels, let me provide a short definition of holy as I have found in Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek. It's meaning (3 kinds) is:
1) by definition, moral wholeness (the parts are - just, humble, perfect, and great)
2) by implication, pure (because it is what it is and nothing else beyond what it is)
3) by significance, set apart (because there are many moral codes that are not morally whole, but only rise to the level of part of the Jewish and Christian moral code - justice only as one example).
In most cases that you look up the definition of holy, you will be given only one of these three as a definition of holy. I present instead the idea that meaning can actually bring all three of the greatest supposed definitions offered for biblical holiness into complete harmony. They do not have to be fully exclusive. Once the definition of holy as moral wholeness falls into place, the other two fall into their place without combating the first. That is all I can say quickly. I say this at much greater length in other posts.
DIFFICULTY LEVELS
My goal is to break things out as to difficulty level, so I think it is important to talk about intelligence levels and leadership levels. This is because many people both under-sell or over-sell themselves on the learning levels or on their leadership levels.
First, I point out something that used to caused me to stumble when it came to learning and leading. I used to think they were rather exclusive of one another. Now I realize that learning enhances leading and that it is one of four key components that results in: 1) bigger, 2) faster, 3) stronger, and 4) smarter leaders and organizations.
[insert leader learner photo here]
Exodus 18
rulers of 1s (priesthood of all believers easy cases only)
rulers of 10s
rulers of 50s
rulers of 100s
rulers of 1000s
rulers of 10,000s (Moses's role of difficult cases only)
leaders based on difficulty of law and statute levels - their intelligence level (among others traits they should possess as leaders
5 levels of leadership - Moses plus 4 levels of leaders (plus Luther's self-leadership)
general intelligence
general language studies
specialized intelligence
Hebrew language studies
I imagine at this point something like this:
Level 1) The Common Sense Level (like the Golden Rule)
"The Filter for Everything"
Level 2) The Greater Majority Level (like the Greatest Commandment)
"The Filter for Most Things"
Level 3) The Smaller Majority Level (like the Ten Commandments)
"The Filter for Some Things"
Level 4) The Specialized Level (all the other specific commandments)
"The Filter for Very Few Things"
[ save the following material for another post]
We live in a time when the loopholes that people find to make excuses seems to be expanding. There is a great way to minimize those objections: a return to the basics. Vince Lombardi, on one such occasion, had this to say the following week to his championship team; who had just lost to the college all-stars team: "Gentlemen, this is a football". To which Max McGee (always the joker) replied: "Slow down coach, you're going too fast". The problem right now is that schooling or education is going too fast. It is pursuing the far fringes of what we know and is by-passing the obvious. Common sense gets the short end of the stick. Specialized sense gets the long end of the stick.
[You can obviously see this post is still under construction. So are some of my others. Things are happening behind the scenes that will eventually make it possible for me to complete posts more regularly. Momentum is building, so please be patient. Thank you.]
In Christ,
Jon
Saturday, April 12, 2014
Blessed and Holy: Understanding Them Better (Teach Things- Part 5 of 5)
PREFACE
One of the major requirements for this blog for dealing with the definition of holy is to make sure it sheds light rather than blocks light. When something blocks light, then it quite obviously stands in the way of light. That is a great way to discern the value of anything a person reads on the definition of holy. We always need to ask, "Did this source shed light on what I am trying to find or did they shed darkness on what I am trying to find?" In the end: "Did I find what I was looking for?" or are we like U2 saying: "Still haven't found what I'm looking for".
A major drive in people is to find what is lost, until it is found. You likely arrived as this sight as a result of a search engine looking for the definition or meaning of holy.
A coin has value while it is in our pocket, but when it is lost, its value grows just like an item's value increases from scarcity. A lot of times over the years, to find something, I just needed to turn on the lights or grab a flashlight. The light functioned like a search engine. It showed me what I was looking for. Make sure that what you read on the definition of holy sheds light!
The purpose of my blog is to shed light on the meaning of holy. I bring things out into the light that have been blocked from people's view. It is not that the definition of holy was not previously well-known. It is that its meaning got lost somewhere along the way, resulting in many differing definitions.
For me, one of the primary things that was blocked from my view, when I read my Bible before the last 10 years, was the definition of the biblical word that we translate as "holy" as "moral wholeness". When I first saw "wholly" listed as a definition for the Hebrew word qadosh alongside "holy" as a translation in a Bible dictionary, then I knew that I had not seen or heard of that definition ever before. None of my teachers, who had often helped me perceive things anew, had brought this to light for me before this time (that I could recall). I was at the time searching to find a word in the Bible that united a set of different kinds of major moral values like love and truth together.
An important tool for teaching is what I call the 5 C's Cascade. It is a great tool for classroom enlightenment or persuasion. The fundamental rule of it is that you must complete the full cascade for persuasion to really happen.
The cascade looks like a series of water falls. You could also use the analogy of a set of 5 dominos that if one falls the others must fall with it. The analogies are manifold. Let's stick to the water falls in this case, since cascade language fits best with that analogy.
Here are the 5 steps of teaching for persuasion or shedding light at the barest bone level:
1) challenge
2) connection
3) celebration
4) chance
5) choice
You could also word them this way with a bit more explanation:
1) challenge (to see)
2) connection (to see)
3) celebration (to see)
4) chance (to see)
5) choice (to see)
or you could amplify it even more this way:
1) challenge (to see an amount)
2) connection (to see a relationship)
3) celebrate (to see whole)
4) chance (to see action)
5) choice (to see a thing)
I have become convinced from my time as a teacher and as a coach or my other time as a teacher and a pastor that the problem with most teaching is that it does not challenge. It just floats along with the tide of darkness rather than reaching for the lights. Good teaching is supposed to enlighten or bring to light things otherwise previously not seen. School is supposed to function as a corrective to nonsense and darkness. But does it do so, when it settles for darkness? How is it that we don't challenge the darkness instead?
If there is no light in the classroom, then how can we say that there is a teacher in the room? One of the great things about Jesus was that he was a teacher (otherwise known as a rabbi). He challenged the status quo, if you haven't noticed. He also shed light while other teachers loved the darkness instead. His teaching skills might have been one of his biggest reasons for his opposition to oppose him.
Challenge
My greatest teachers all challenged me to see things that I previously wasn't seeing. I can remember many examples, but let me mention one that I remember extremely well when it comes to challenging me.
James Johnson, a professor of mine at Bethel College (now University) in St. Paul, MN called me in to explain what I needed to do with a paper that I had written. I had written a paper for his history class on the First Great Awakening that I thought was going to get a good grade. I didn't get even a good grade, but also instead of stopping there he challenged me to re-write the paper to see the history of not just Jonathan Edwards and his camp, but also see that of others in opposition to him. I realized then that I was to bring both sides to light, not just one side to light and to accurately represent history through a vivid comparison of both sides in full view. Only then was my paper shedding light on history rather than a mixture of darkness and light according to my own choosing. I needed to shed light and give people a legitimate choice of options. I learned a great deal that opened my eyes to see things that I had not previously seen.
Photo of Bethel History Faculty in '80s
James Johnson (far left)
Connection
But it was not just Dr. James Johnson's challenge to see a greater amount than just one side, it was also Dr. John S. Piper's and Tom Stellar's (Dr. Piper's right hand man, if any) teaching me to see connections. Dr. Piper introduced me to a method of arcing that his teacher, Dr. Daniel P. Fuller, had taught him at Fuller Theological Seminary. This method opened my eyes so many times to see things that I had not seen before that I decided later to study myself under Fuller. I still like to call Dr. Fuller every so often and thank him, when I see a new relationship in the text that I never saw before through my revised arcing method.
Dr. John S. Piper in 1979
Dr. Daniel Payton Fuller
Celebration
But it was not just Piper and Fuller, who were teachers who opened my eyes. While I had gone to Fuller to learn about church planting in the School of World Mission (now the School of Intercultural Studies) and exegesis (the scholarly name for reading the Bible itself) under Dr. Fuller, I also discovered two unexpected sightings while I was there. I saw a leadership program that tied into my training under Tentmaker's, Inc. and my own self-study of Dr. Peter F. Drucker (then at Claremont Graduate School) that would challenge me as a leader more than I would be challenged as a student of church planting. So I changed my concentration from church planting to leadership. I also found an opportunity to learn more about translation and language studies as a whole and to take my learning to a higher level than I had achieved at Bethel College (now University) under Dr. William A. Smalley, Dr. Don N. Larson, and Lois Malcolm (now a professor at Luther Northwestern in St. Paul, MN). I found Dr. Betty Sue Brewster,. Dr. P. Daniel Shaw and Catherine Rountree, who all helped me see the bigger picture of language and communication at its broadest level. It was then that I began to see and know that it was only a matter of time before a reason for celebration could happen. I just had to remind myself not to count all my chicks till all my chicks were hatched. That is the time to celebrate, but in the middle of progressing, it is good to be reminded to wait. This sense of celebration mainly came from learning the TEAR method of language study that helped me see best the larger picture of language and communication. To the best of my ability, it appears that the TEAR view of language came primarily from Eugene A. Nida.
Eugene Albert Nida
Chance
But there is something more about the TEAR view of language than meets the eye. It is also that it shows that there is a chance to make a difference in the area of method or technology. Dr. P. Daniel Shaw was my first teacher that taught me how to use the TEAR approach to language. I was finally made able to use it effectively when I read a Bible text or anything else for that matter. So what Dr. Shaw gave me that the others previously had not was to see the chance of getting things accomplished that previously had seemed impossible. I remember very well that once I grasped the action words in a passage that suddenly I also saw better the relationships in a passage and it solved a problem in Piper's and Fuller's method that they had not solved for me. I will always have to acknowledge Dr. Shaw for first letting me see in ready the Bible new chances and new possibilities.
Choices
So what teachers taught me to see other choices? Who opened my eyes to be smarter? Often the difference between a smart person and a person who is not as smart is knowing that the choices are more diversified than the less intelligent person realizes. Who most opened my eyes to this?
Ironically, John S. Piper needs a lot of credit here though he would not be on the same page as my philosophy professors and anthropology professors on a number of topics. His list of choices would be shorter than theirs. He is the one who told me to study philosophy. Another theologian here who deserves some credit before I talk more about philosophers and anthropologists is Dr. Robert H. Stein. He taught me how to find new choices among the German scholars that others ranked as of no value. In the end, one of his ideas in A Basic Guide to Reading the Bible, may end up to have given me a choice in understanding the words of Greek, Aramaic, and Hebrew that no one else even suggests. So he cannot be underrated, that is for sure.
There is a long list of those who taught me to see choices that others never have gotten the option to even see, let alone have the option to make those choices. I've got to acknowledge my philosophy professors from college, who helped me see when theologians made a choice based on a philosophical school rather than a biblical text. That opened up things to see other choices. Their names include Dr. Don Postema, Dr. Melville Stewart, Dr. Stanley Anderson, Dr. Paul Reasoner, and Dr. Niel Nielson. In anthropology, both Dr. Thomas Correll and Dr. Sperry (sp?). Alongside of them I was also introduced to Dr. Michael Rynewich (from Macalester) and Dr. David Rausch from the history department. All of them opened my eyes to seeing the many choices that others did not see.
This largely culminated in three major papers I wrote while at Fuller Theological Seminary. One was a paper where I summarized all the possible views on baptism looking at all the choices from a broad cultural view. Then I did later another paper that involved a ton of research where I suggested other choices for interpreting Paul's comments on singleness. I tried to turn over every rock of choices and then tried to discern which were good choices and which were not. But my advantage was that I had a lot of choices before deciding. This also led me to the Center for the Study of Biblical Research in Pasadena, CA where I learned more about Jewish culture or philosophy.
The big benefit from all of these choices is having more choices from which to choose, because I can see them while before I could not.
In all of this discussion, I have left out other names that also could be mentioned. I hope I have another time to give them their due. Already, my mind is beginning to catalog those who I have missed. The trade off in not mentioning them here is that my writing does not grow even longer. That is a good choice. Thank you.
[I will re-visit this and other writing as possible. thank you for your patience.]
In Christ,
Jon
One of the major requirements for this blog for dealing with the definition of holy is to make sure it sheds light rather than blocks light. When something blocks light, then it quite obviously stands in the way of light. That is a great way to discern the value of anything a person reads on the definition of holy. We always need to ask, "Did this source shed light on what I am trying to find or did they shed darkness on what I am trying to find?" In the end: "Did I find what I was looking for?" or are we like U2 saying: "Still haven't found what I'm looking for".
A major drive in people is to find what is lost, until it is found. You likely arrived as this sight as a result of a search engine looking for the definition or meaning of holy.
A coin has value while it is in our pocket, but when it is lost, its value grows just like an item's value increases from scarcity. A lot of times over the years, to find something, I just needed to turn on the lights or grab a flashlight. The light functioned like a search engine. It showed me what I was looking for. Make sure that what you read on the definition of holy sheds light!
The purpose of my blog is to shed light on the meaning of holy. I bring things out into the light that have been blocked from people's view. It is not that the definition of holy was not previously well-known. It is that its meaning got lost somewhere along the way, resulting in many differing definitions.
For me, one of the primary things that was blocked from my view, when I read my Bible before the last 10 years, was the definition of the biblical word that we translate as "holy" as "moral wholeness". When I first saw "wholly" listed as a definition for the Hebrew word qadosh alongside "holy" as a translation in a Bible dictionary, then I knew that I had not seen or heard of that definition ever before. None of my teachers, who had often helped me perceive things anew, had brought this to light for me before this time (that I could recall). I was at the time searching to find a word in the Bible that united a set of different kinds of major moral values like love and truth together.
An important tool for teaching is what I call the 5 C's Cascade. It is a great tool for classroom enlightenment or persuasion. The fundamental rule of it is that you must complete the full cascade for persuasion to really happen.
The cascade looks like a series of water falls. You could also use the analogy of a set of 5 dominos that if one falls the others must fall with it. The analogies are manifold. Let's stick to the water falls in this case, since cascade language fits best with that analogy.
Here are the 5 steps of teaching for persuasion or shedding light at the barest bone level:
1) challenge
2) connection
3) celebration
4) chance
5) choice
You could also word them this way with a bit more explanation:
1) challenge (to see)
2) connection (to see)
3) celebration (to see)
4) chance (to see)
5) choice (to see)
or you could amplify it even more this way:
1) challenge (to see an amount)
2) connection (to see a relationship)
3) celebrate (to see whole)
4) chance (to see action)
5) choice (to see a thing)
I have become convinced from my time as a teacher and as a coach or my other time as a teacher and a pastor that the problem with most teaching is that it does not challenge. It just floats along with the tide of darkness rather than reaching for the lights. Good teaching is supposed to enlighten or bring to light things otherwise previously not seen. School is supposed to function as a corrective to nonsense and darkness. But does it do so, when it settles for darkness? How is it that we don't challenge the darkness instead?
If there is no light in the classroom, then how can we say that there is a teacher in the room? One of the great things about Jesus was that he was a teacher (otherwise known as a rabbi). He challenged the status quo, if you haven't noticed. He also shed light while other teachers loved the darkness instead. His teaching skills might have been one of his biggest reasons for his opposition to oppose him.
Challenge
My greatest teachers all challenged me to see things that I previously wasn't seeing. I can remember many examples, but let me mention one that I remember extremely well when it comes to challenging me.
James Johnson, a professor of mine at Bethel College (now University) in St. Paul, MN called me in to explain what I needed to do with a paper that I had written. I had written a paper for his history class on the First Great Awakening that I thought was going to get a good grade. I didn't get even a good grade, but also instead of stopping there he challenged me to re-write the paper to see the history of not just Jonathan Edwards and his camp, but also see that of others in opposition to him. I realized then that I was to bring both sides to light, not just one side to light and to accurately represent history through a vivid comparison of both sides in full view. Only then was my paper shedding light on history rather than a mixture of darkness and light according to my own choosing. I needed to shed light and give people a legitimate choice of options. I learned a great deal that opened my eyes to see things that I had not previously seen.
Photo of Bethel History Faculty in '80s
James Johnson (far left)
Connection
But it was not just Dr. James Johnson's challenge to see a greater amount than just one side, it was also Dr. John S. Piper's and Tom Stellar's (Dr. Piper's right hand man, if any) teaching me to see connections. Dr. Piper introduced me to a method of arcing that his teacher, Dr. Daniel P. Fuller, had taught him at Fuller Theological Seminary. This method opened my eyes so many times to see things that I had not seen before that I decided later to study myself under Fuller. I still like to call Dr. Fuller every so often and thank him, when I see a new relationship in the text that I never saw before through my revised arcing method.
Dr. John S. Piper in 1979
Dr. Daniel Payton Fuller
Celebration
But it was not just Piper and Fuller, who were teachers who opened my eyes. While I had gone to Fuller to learn about church planting in the School of World Mission (now the School of Intercultural Studies) and exegesis (the scholarly name for reading the Bible itself) under Dr. Fuller, I also discovered two unexpected sightings while I was there. I saw a leadership program that tied into my training under Tentmaker's, Inc. and my own self-study of Dr. Peter F. Drucker (then at Claremont Graduate School) that would challenge me as a leader more than I would be challenged as a student of church planting. So I changed my concentration from church planting to leadership. I also found an opportunity to learn more about translation and language studies as a whole and to take my learning to a higher level than I had achieved at Bethel College (now University) under Dr. William A. Smalley, Dr. Don N. Larson, and Lois Malcolm (now a professor at Luther Northwestern in St. Paul, MN). I found Dr. Betty Sue Brewster,. Dr. P. Daniel Shaw and Catherine Rountree, who all helped me see the bigger picture of language and communication at its broadest level. It was then that I began to see and know that it was only a matter of time before a reason for celebration could happen. I just had to remind myself not to count all my chicks till all my chicks were hatched. That is the time to celebrate, but in the middle of progressing, it is good to be reminded to wait. This sense of celebration mainly came from learning the TEAR method of language study that helped me see best the larger picture of language and communication. To the best of my ability, it appears that the TEAR view of language came primarily from Eugene A. Nida.
Eugene Albert Nida
Chance
But there is something more about the TEAR view of language than meets the eye. It is also that it shows that there is a chance to make a difference in the area of method or technology. Dr. P. Daniel Shaw was my first teacher that taught me how to use the TEAR approach to language. I was finally made able to use it effectively when I read a Bible text or anything else for that matter. So what Dr. Shaw gave me that the others previously had not was to see the chance of getting things accomplished that previously had seemed impossible. I remember very well that once I grasped the action words in a passage that suddenly I also saw better the relationships in a passage and it solved a problem in Piper's and Fuller's method that they had not solved for me. I will always have to acknowledge Dr. Shaw for first letting me see in ready the Bible new chances and new possibilities.
Choices
So what teachers taught me to see other choices? Who opened my eyes to be smarter? Often the difference between a smart person and a person who is not as smart is knowing that the choices are more diversified than the less intelligent person realizes. Who most opened my eyes to this?
Ironically, John S. Piper needs a lot of credit here though he would not be on the same page as my philosophy professors and anthropology professors on a number of topics. His list of choices would be shorter than theirs. He is the one who told me to study philosophy. Another theologian here who deserves some credit before I talk more about philosophers and anthropologists is Dr. Robert H. Stein. He taught me how to find new choices among the German scholars that others ranked as of no value. In the end, one of his ideas in A Basic Guide to Reading the Bible, may end up to have given me a choice in understanding the words of Greek, Aramaic, and Hebrew that no one else even suggests. So he cannot be underrated, that is for sure.
There is a long list of those who taught me to see choices that others never have gotten the option to even see, let alone have the option to make those choices. I've got to acknowledge my philosophy professors from college, who helped me see when theologians made a choice based on a philosophical school rather than a biblical text. That opened up things to see other choices. Their names include Dr. Don Postema, Dr. Melville Stewart, Dr. Stanley Anderson, Dr. Paul Reasoner, and Dr. Niel Nielson. In anthropology, both Dr. Thomas Correll and Dr. Sperry (sp?). Alongside of them I was also introduced to Dr. Michael Rynewich (from Macalester) and Dr. David Rausch from the history department. All of them opened my eyes to seeing the many choices that others did not see.
This largely culminated in three major papers I wrote while at Fuller Theological Seminary. One was a paper where I summarized all the possible views on baptism looking at all the choices from a broad cultural view. Then I did later another paper that involved a ton of research where I suggested other choices for interpreting Paul's comments on singleness. I tried to turn over every rock of choices and then tried to discern which were good choices and which were not. But my advantage was that I had a lot of choices before deciding. This also led me to the Center for the Study of Biblical Research in Pasadena, CA where I learned more about Jewish culture or philosophy.
The big benefit from all of these choices is having more choices from which to choose, because I can see them while before I could not.
In all of this discussion, I have left out other names that also could be mentioned. I hope I have another time to give them their due. Already, my mind is beginning to catalog those who I have missed. The trade off in not mentioning them here is that my writing does not grow even longer. That is a good choice. Thank you.
[I will re-visit this and other writing as possible. thank you for your patience.]
In Christ,
Jon
Friday, April 11, 2014
Blessed and Holy: Understanding it Better Through Exodus 34 (Train Actions - Part 4 of 5)
PREFACE
We hear people sing "take time to be holy" and "bless you". Does anyone know what those 2 actions mean? Christians say, "hallowed be your name" in the Lord's Prayer over and over. Does anyone really know how to hallow or how to make holy a name? Does anyone know why to hallow or make holy should happen? I think those, who can answer one or both of these questions, are rare people. If you can get me their addresses and phone #s, then please do so. I'd like to sign them up for my ministry team! Can anyone train me in how to be holy? What does sanctified as an action look like? So based on what I think are the answers out there, it looks like we do need some training.
As a former coach of 5 different sports (and later an athletic director, as well), I cannot possibly overlook the need for the skill of training alongside other skills like teaching. While great coaches can also be great teachers, the one thing that they absolutely must be is an effective trainer. They must teach their players skills or know-how as well as offer motivations for those actions. I cannot imagine being a successful coach without being able to do both. In Scripture, we find both methods and purposes for actions. One simple example, "We love [how] him, because [why] he first loved [how] us". We even learned our training in love from his love of us. But when have we offered love classes? I don't remember that training? When both methods and purposes are taught well, then you find people eager to be trained and to act.
That is what I discovered as a coach. But I also learned a set of criteria for eagerness that was expressed in a real estate training magazine that I found, while I was a part-time real estate agent. It was my way of earning money to pay for studying at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, CA.
The Entrance to One of the Buildings at Fuller
In the business world, like in the sports world, you get paid for results. The score is kept differently with the currency of money rather than the play money of points, but the goal was still to win. When I ran across the article, I knew the article was a difference maker. It was different from any other training that I had been trained in as either an athlete or as a coach. I'd never even heard this set of words grouped together before like they were in this convenient set. I'd obviously heard them separately many times. Since first hearing the set then, I have repeatedly improved what I learned from the article and I have organized it to be a more effective training tool. If anything, I wish I used it more often.
As a coach, you want players who are eager to play or better yet to work with you and not work against you. As a real estate agent, you want clients who are eager to buy or better yet to work with you and not work against you. In real estate, the criteria for a strong prospect is as follows:
1) ready,
2) willing, and
3) able.
What all Sales People Ought to Know
Back in the early 90s, they were likely in that neat order. I have the article still among my things somewhere. But also the list lacked a critical fourth element. I'd learned to look for that fourth element following my training with Tentmakers, Inc. in Hopkins, MN. There I learned a number of practical tools, but also how to identify complete ones.
The Logo for the Tentmakers organization I am referring to
It took me a long time, but eventually in the last few years, I have added that a strong prospect is someone who is also aware or seeing. They can't be blind to what they are looking for in the process. A real estate prospect, who cannot envision or point to the kind of house they are looking for, could turn out to be a weaker prospect, even if they are ready, willing, and able. In selling, agents are not given much time to train prospects, except by the very best prospects, so they usually get impatient with customers who are not strong ones or who are not able to become strong ones. So I now say that a strong prospect consists of someone who is:
1) ready,
2) willing,
3) able, and
4) seeing.
That kind of prospect is a prime one, just as that kind of player is a prime player for a coach. Both are eager to take action. They are not there to study something more, but to act using the strength that they already possess. That is why they are eager. Strong people by nature are eager people. Weak people by nature are not eager people.
The next closest to these kinds would be those who possess 3 out of 4 of the criteria and are eager to seek the last criteria, the next would possess 2 out of 4 with eagerness too seek the other 2, etc. You get the idea.
I think Scripture also takes those who are eager and frees them for action or it trains those who cannot yet act on their own to act and to also act with a sense of motivation. This is where a second tool (that again, I wish I used more frequently) becomes very useful. It is a chart of pre-effect and post-effect with their respective non-action and action steps.
In Exodus, which is a great action book, by the way, there are a number of actions that can be described in terms of pre-action, pre-effect, during action, developing effect, post-action, and post-effect. I actually got this tool from a computer geek, who noticed how helpful this scheme was for breaking down computer processes. I wish I knew it years ago as a coach. (Since that wish is not possible, maybe I should just go back to coaching and do it better since that is possible.)
EXODUS: DIRECT APPLICATION
[This is being worked out and I will eventually be able to cut and paste to this entry a chart that lists each pre-effect, pre-action, etc. I hope it is not too long before I get it up. Much of what I am writing now is in a draft state, as is this piece, but still needs a little tweaking to even be a first draft.]
Sincerely,
Jon
We hear people sing "take time to be holy" and "bless you". Does anyone know what those 2 actions mean? Christians say, "hallowed be your name" in the Lord's Prayer over and over. Does anyone really know how to hallow or how to make holy a name? Does anyone know why to hallow or make holy should happen? I think those, who can answer one or both of these questions, are rare people. If you can get me their addresses and phone #s, then please do so. I'd like to sign them up for my ministry team! Can anyone train me in how to be holy? What does sanctified as an action look like? So based on what I think are the answers out there, it looks like we do need some training.
As a former coach of 5 different sports (and later an athletic director, as well), I cannot possibly overlook the need for the skill of training alongside other skills like teaching. While great coaches can also be great teachers, the one thing that they absolutely must be is an effective trainer. They must teach their players skills or know-how as well as offer motivations for those actions. I cannot imagine being a successful coach without being able to do both. In Scripture, we find both methods and purposes for actions. One simple example, "We love [how] him, because [why] he first loved [how] us". We even learned our training in love from his love of us. But when have we offered love classes? I don't remember that training? When both methods and purposes are taught well, then you find people eager to be trained and to act.
That is what I discovered as a coach. But I also learned a set of criteria for eagerness that was expressed in a real estate training magazine that I found, while I was a part-time real estate agent. It was my way of earning money to pay for studying at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, CA.
The Entrance to One of the Buildings at Fuller
In the business world, like in the sports world, you get paid for results. The score is kept differently with the currency of money rather than the play money of points, but the goal was still to win. When I ran across the article, I knew the article was a difference maker. It was different from any other training that I had been trained in as either an athlete or as a coach. I'd never even heard this set of words grouped together before like they were in this convenient set. I'd obviously heard them separately many times. Since first hearing the set then, I have repeatedly improved what I learned from the article and I have organized it to be a more effective training tool. If anything, I wish I used it more often.
As a coach, you want players who are eager to play or better yet to work with you and not work against you. As a real estate agent, you want clients who are eager to buy or better yet to work with you and not work against you. In real estate, the criteria for a strong prospect is as follows:
1) ready,
2) willing, and
3) able.
What all Sales People Ought to Know
Back in the early 90s, they were likely in that neat order. I have the article still among my things somewhere. But also the list lacked a critical fourth element. I'd learned to look for that fourth element following my training with Tentmakers, Inc. in Hopkins, MN. There I learned a number of practical tools, but also how to identify complete ones.
The Logo for the Tentmakers organization I am referring to
It took me a long time, but eventually in the last few years, I have added that a strong prospect is someone who is also aware or seeing. They can't be blind to what they are looking for in the process. A real estate prospect, who cannot envision or point to the kind of house they are looking for, could turn out to be a weaker prospect, even if they are ready, willing, and able. In selling, agents are not given much time to train prospects, except by the very best prospects, so they usually get impatient with customers who are not strong ones or who are not able to become strong ones. So I now say that a strong prospect consists of someone who is:
1) ready,
2) willing,
3) able, and
4) seeing.
That kind of prospect is a prime one, just as that kind of player is a prime player for a coach. Both are eager to take action. They are not there to study something more, but to act using the strength that they already possess. That is why they are eager. Strong people by nature are eager people. Weak people by nature are not eager people.
The next closest to these kinds would be those who possess 3 out of 4 of the criteria and are eager to seek the last criteria, the next would possess 2 out of 4 with eagerness too seek the other 2, etc. You get the idea.
I think Scripture also takes those who are eager and frees them for action or it trains those who cannot yet act on their own to act and to also act with a sense of motivation. This is where a second tool (that again, I wish I used more frequently) becomes very useful. It is a chart of pre-effect and post-effect with their respective non-action and action steps.
In Exodus, which is a great action book, by the way, there are a number of actions that can be described in terms of pre-action, pre-effect, during action, developing effect, post-action, and post-effect. I actually got this tool from a computer geek, who noticed how helpful this scheme was for breaking down computer processes. I wish I knew it years ago as a coach. (Since that wish is not possible, maybe I should just go back to coaching and do it better since that is possible.)
EXODUS: DIRECT APPLICATION
[This is being worked out and I will eventually be able to cut and paste to this entry a chart that lists each pre-effect, pre-action, etc. I hope it is not too long before I get it up. Much of what I am writing now is in a draft state, as is this piece, but still needs a little tweaking to even be a first draft.]
Sincerely,
Jon
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