12.16.24 ~ Ideas Have A History

Good morning!

The day of Thanksgiving is officially over (Thanks Master of the obvious :-),but the opportunity to give thanks is not (1 Thess. 5:18)! During this season of Thanksgiving, the hearts of many turn towards Christmas. As I was sharing with a pastor before his morning service yesterday, with everything in life, context is the key to good understanding.

Commercial: All in one spot...the last couple months of studies, blog, audio studies and videos

Because we live in the hear (Rom. 10:17) and now, too often we don't consider the context, the origin of something; but only what it means to me now. Why should we, right? After all, the past is the past and I live in the 'hear' and now.

Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God (Rom. 10;17)

Currently, the upcoming celebration of Christmas is no longer the Roman, pagan, violent, inhumane, celebration it once was. It no longer calls forth images of the birth of pagan deities. It’s just a Christian tradition now, one that has been usurped by the retailers and the party-goers so as to strip it of even the Christian claims.

As I was reflecting on Psalm 104:3 this morning. I thought to myself, is this just biblical poetry or is there more to the idea of God...

He lays the beams of His chambers in the waters!
He makes the clouds His chariot!
He walks upon the wings of the wind!

Whether it's the flat earth concept, the creation story, the global flood, the trinity theology, or any verse old or new, no verse, or any idea that we hold to today, not a single one, that comes to us without a cultural context.

The book we are currently studying, Genesis/Bereshit was written for a people who had been freed from bondage in Egypt. Its images and metaphors are filled with ancient Egyptian thinking and tribal identity.

The book of the 1 &2 Kings and 1 & 2 Chronicles comes with the culture of Israel in trouble with pagan worship and pagan empires. The story of Ruth can't be understood without a knowledge of Lot and Tamar (Gen. 19, 38). The truths concerning Jesus/Yeshua as Messiah can't be understood without the story of Joseph (Gen. 37-50). And the list could go on...:-)

The Psalms are no different. Whenever we turn to the words of God, we encounter the thoughts of men. God comes to us in human clothes and unless we understand the cultural perspective of the authors, we can't understand what they intended to communicate...no wonder we have over 42,000 different denominations in evangelical Christianity alone...confusing!?

A truth that I've shared over the years, in order to, hopefully, reduce confusion, is that you cannot read any Scripture as though it's written to you. Huh? Why not? Because, it wasn't written to you. The Spirit can give some thoughts of application, guidance, wisdom, direction, and answers to some tough life situations, but only diligent study is going to reveal the author's intent to the story line.

Consider David’s declaration! Where's he getting this imagery from; "beams of his upper chambers, clouds as chariots, walking on wings of the wind"? David's not giving us a scientific or a poetic view of God's spiritual domain, he's writing with the culture of his time.  It doesn’t mean it isn’t what God wanted. It just means that the text comes with a culture. All of the texts come this way. We'd experience much less confusion if we understood this.

Christmas, coming up in less than 2 weeks, is another cultural image of the day. It used to mean one thing, now it means something else. If you don’t know the history of the idea, you really don’t know much more than the family oriented tradition you've inherited. That’s perfectly alright, if that’s all you want to know. But it ignores the evidence, just as ignoring the mythology of David’s time distorts David’s words.

So today, as the world gets ready for Christmas, remember this: ideas have a history. To know what an idea really means, regardless of whether it's political, financial, spiritual, or relational, if I want to move forward with a good head on my shoulders, it's good to know the history and its cultural context. Once you know the context you can determine if it's something you want to identify with.

Simultaneously, Hanukkah is coming up. If we think it's only a Jewish celebration back to the Maccabees, we would end up ignoring the cultural truths of the burning bush (Ex. 3) or the historical precedence and instructions in Leviticus 23-24:4 (Gen. 1:14) or the prophetic statements in Haggai. The cultural context of that event is much deeper than celebrating a little oil lasting for eight days.

We all celebrate what we are informed about and, more times than not, criticize what we are not informed about. Yes, confirmation bias runs rampant and we believe what we want to believe.

May this winter season be one of light in more ways than one!
Have an amazing day in all you do!

Shalom!

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