Finals Began

This weekend my Regional Explorations class, made up of 9 Graduate students including myself, ventured up to the region of the Galilee to give our final Presentations. Each one of us was assigned a different region, road, or ridge. I conquered Jokneam Pass while others tackled Nazareth Ridge, Dothan Pass, Shimron Pass, Acco Plain, Megiddo Pass, Harod Pass, Kishon Pass, and Tabor Pass. We needed to research the Ins and Outs of our particular region... why was it named the way it was? What is the Hebrew, Canaanite, Arabic, and native name of the sight? Who has lived there since it was first established? Who fought for it and why? What kind of land made up the area? Was it easily conquered? Click on the Picture below to view all pictures:

Basically, we became experts on our region and taught our fellow students. We each chose sites to teach on that best represented our region. I chose an overlook... actually it is a hang-gliding spot in Zichron Ya'acov which overlooks the Mediterranean and the Coast, along with the pass itself. For my second location, we ventured to the Tel of Jokneam and climbed to the top to view the Jezreel Valley on the Eastern side, Mt Carmel to the North, The Pass to the Eastern side, and the Coastal Plain which traveled North and South. We had a great time traveling as one big happy family throughout the region! If I could picture what lots of brothers and sisters would be like on vacation... I think this would be close.... we had a great time!

I'm thankful for "bestest buds"

Ah, so... went to school today and I had a package slip waiting for me! One of my very close friends sent me, yet another package full of goodies wishing me a Happy Thanksgiving! She included Thanksgiving materials to make a good ol' fashion Turkey day meal with my favorite foods AND microwave recipes on how to make them (we don't have an oven). Ah, what a treat! She even remembered that this is my favorite holiday! Mom and I used to spend the entire day cooking and preparing a meal for the family who would gobble it down in just a few minutes... not even close to the time that it took to prepare it!

So all you "Bestest Buds" out there... I just want to say thanks. You make the world a happy place!

Most people work out... apparently, I cry

So... today I was at the gym riding a stationary bike... when this song came on my new mix...

She walked to the mailbox
On that bright summers day
Found a letter from her son
In a war far away

He spoke of the weather
And good friends that he'd made
Said I'd been thinking 'bout dad
And the life that he had
Thats why I'm here today
And that the end he said
You are what I'm fighting for
It was the first of the letters from war

She started writing
You're good and you're brave
What a father that you'll be someday
make it home
make it safe

She wrote every night as she prayed

Late in December
A day she'll not forget
Oh her tears stained the paper
With every word that she read

It said "I was up on a hill
I was out there alone
When the shots all rang out
And bombs were exploding
And thats when I saw him
He came back for me
And though he was captured
A man set me free
And that man was your son
He asked me to write to you
I told him i would, oh I swore"
It was the last of the letters from war

And she prayed he was living
Kept on believing
And wrote every night just to say

You are good
And you're brave
what a father that you'll be someday
Make it home
Make it safe
Still she kept writing each day

Then two years later
Autumn leaves all around
A car pulled in the driveway
And she fell to the ground
And out stepped a captain
Where her boy used to stand

He said "mom I'm following orders
From all of your letters
And I've come home again",
He ran into hold her
And dropped all his bags on the floor
Holding all of her letters from war

Bring him home
Bring him home
Bring him home

Yep, as I rode away on the bike that didn't move, tears popped out of my eyes. Ah, what a beautiful song. I really loved the picture of his mom loving him and waiting for him, all the while writing letters. Her love for him is real and you can almost feel it when listening to the song.

It also made me think about all the wars going on in the world... some in Iraq, some between cultures, and some in our cities. People are killing each other for various reasons- some are good reasons, and some don't even have a reason. The picture that is painted here about the young man going off to war to fight in order to protect his family who is awaiting his return just really moved me. He is fighting for protection- this is a good cause. Unfortunately there is a lot of the opposite going on in the world around as well.

Life is short. What I don't like is when people cause war simply because a culture breeds it. It hurts people deeply and causes unnecessary hatred to multiply. I think I'd rather get along with others. Didn't our moms always teach us to play nice with others? What happened?

Hedge or Peg?

Well, how is life over here in Israel? Busy! Between running to classes and writing numerous papers, there hasn't been much extra play time. My studies have been really good... intense but good. Professors here really challenge you to think for yourself and encourage you to draw conclusions that are well thought out and most importantly, are yours.

I heard an analogy the other day that I liked a lot... I'll share it with you. The topic was "How to approach faith." Straight forward and simple. The two main ways that we talked about were as follows:

One can draw a protective hedge around them as far as beliefs, ethics, laws, and codes surrounding what they believe. This would be a set of facts that you hold to be true. You hold them tightly within your box, or hedge.... for example, in today's evangelical world this plays out in cultural norms that our church society somewhere along the lines decided is right and wrong depending on interpretation of scripture at a particular time.

For me it has looked like drawing conclusions about particular ideas and holding them to be truth. Because of my conclusions, I place them within my hedge. Anytime a topic related to it comes up, I can refer back to my hedge, or box where my conclusions are kept and I can draw a new conclusion based on what is already there. Warning....I'm going to stereotype here.... for us Americans, in the church especially it can look like this: Drink, don't drink, drink a little, swear, don't swear, swear only if you have to, The bible is a nice moral story, The bible is 100% correct in all ways, The bible is a document inspired by God and has been written by man's hand.... all of these are assumptions or conclusions that have been drawn based on some other facts along the way, mostly from our interpretation of scripture. According to whatever conclusions we have drawn, we can place them within our hedge and whenever the topic comes up again, we already have an answer waiting. This is the approach that most people I have met, including myself tend to flock towards.

The other approach is to have 1 or 2 main ultimate truths. Shhh.....Relax, and continue reading.... For example: God is the all powerful God above any other thing. Jesus is his divine son who lived a life that encompassed God's picture for how our lives should look. These are two main truths that I know are absolutely correct. All other conclusions or questions should be checked against those two truths from here on out. These two truths are my funnel; any conclusion drawn needs to align with these two. I can now hammer a peg into the ground with the foundation being these two guiding principals. I then connect a rope to the peg and then to myself... this allows me to wander around pursuing God knowing that if things get too complicated, confusing, crazy... I can just draw myself back to the foundational peg where I am reminded of the truth that I started with. I am always connected to those truths no matter what. This is different than the hedge which I am free to run in, but I am inhibited by seeing over to the other side to see what other people are doing, or what other conclusions are being drawn; basically I'm left void of the freedom to explore.

Option #2 is a bit more free and less culturally driven then running around in a box full of assumptions or conclusions that have already been drawn. This isn't to say that there is no truth. It is simply saying that based off of two foundational truths, other thoughts can be drawn, but those thoughts can be drawn under the clause of there is a little bit of wiggle room. Example: In the bible it says,

1Cor. 11:6 For if a wife will not cover her head, then she should cut her hair short. But since it is disgraceful for a wife to cut off her hair or shave her head, let her cover her head.

Option 1 point of view- "This passage is only for a particular time. Your wife doesn't need to cover her head, or cut her hair short." Really, if you are drawing a conclusion that this was just for a particular time, then what other passages are just for a particular time and not for us? Furthermore, what authority do you have to make such a statement? You could also choose to say, "Wife, cover your head because the bible says so." It also says to treat your slave well.... does this mean you will go take a slave and treat them well? Probably not.

Option 2 point of view- Based on my two truths of "God is one, and Jesus is his divine son" I can draw many conclusions about this passage. Perhaps it was culturally correct for a woman to cover her head (Women over here still do this by the way). Perhaps it does have a message for us today about the covering of God over his people, like the "covering, or protection that a man gives over his wife and family." Maybe, our conclusion can have multiple answers. As long as they line up with my 2 truths then I am free to wander around looking for all possibilities. I am not confined to one correct answer.

The second option leaves a lot more room for God to work in ways that he is not confined to.... like a box or hedge. God can act in his divine nature in any way he chooses... I just think if we are looking for him in ways that only "fit within our box" we could miss Him. With both options there is a risk.... the first one- drawing conclusions that are really not true, or are based off of what someone else has told you. Once you put them in your limited box...your conclusions are drawn and you are stuck with an absolute answer, even if it is wrong. With the second approach, you run a risk of things becoming relative. "Whatever is right for you may not be right for the other person." However, even in early church days, didn't our church fathers draw conclusions about the text that culturally made sense to them? Today, we are still practicing the many rituals or traditions that they came up with. They, in a sense had to draw conclusions... I wonder if they exercised the tent peg technique or the hedge with walls?

Wrestling

Many of you know that I have been wrestling with big questions- all of which can be summed up in one. Who is God, really? I know, I know… we can’t answer that question. Well, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.

Questions started piling up when I spent some time in a Romanian orphanage with children who were born into pain and suffering. Babies just lay in their cribs; unwanted, in some cases due to deformity. Other children were abandoned because of disease, in which case, they just lay alone waiting for the disease to take their life. Other children were healthy from birth, but abandoned for other reasons. All these children had one thing in common: nobody was there to touch them, hold them; love them. Why would God create a child so that he can suffer? I reassured myself. God is beyond my understanding.

As life experience snuck in so did my questions… it became more of a dialogue ... I’d ask God why…I’d wait… then I’d wait some more until I would hear something or be ok with silence… either way, it sustained me until the next big question came.

Just a couple of weeks prior to visiting Turkey three Christian missionaries had been beheaded for their beliefs. Why? Wouldn’t they be the ones who are useful for God’s kingdom? Again, I was reassured knowing that their deaths would ignite many others.

Then death hit close to home for me…. It started with a couple of friends, then my step dad, and then my mom. This hurt.

2 ½ years ago I lay on the ground literally crying out to God, “Why are you doing this?” I remember the tears streaming down my face as mom lay in her bed next to me as the cancer overtook her. She was in so much pain. All I could hear was her groaning and trying to get comfortable in the night. Her breathing sounded like gurgling as liquid filled her lungs. This woman who loved helping people is now being punished. What was the point of all this suffering?

After she died, I as ok for a while… but then anger set in… again, God is bigger than my own understanding. I rested on scripture as I tried to get through the days that followed. It helped.

Luke 11:9 And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. John 14:13 Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.

Why does the bible say pray believing that what you are praying for will actually happen? Does it really happen? Not always. I have prayed for people I care about to come to know him in real and intimate ways…some have died before this happened. Why? How were these selfish prayers? I truly believed that He would restore these people who I’d been praying for, simply because His word said so. They weren’t flippant prayers either- fasting, meditating on his word, and waiting to see how he would bring these people to them. When it didn’t occur, I was left with… “But you said.”

Friends comforted me with, “You never know what happened right before they died.” If I agree with what most Christians say the afterlife is, I would be realizing that the 1000’s of prayers I said for these people to know God was trumped by them going and suffering in Hell instead, again, according to modern evangelical belief. I chalked that one up to, perhaps I don’t understand scripture, maybe I didn’t have enough faith, or perhaps some sort of reconciliation did happen.

Then I came here, to Israel. People are ready to die for what they believe in: Muslims, Jews, and Christians. I would say for a long time, I was clumped into that group; honoring God whatever the cost, even if it meant losing my life.

When you come to a place where the “heaviness” around you is masked by hate, war crimes, and shame it wears on you…. It also makes you think…

So, it sounds like I’m just asking “Why” over and over…and in a sense I am… but if I wanted answers to any of these, all I would have to do is go to the local Christian bookstore and buy the “When God doesn’t make sense” or “Why?” books. I can do that. My bigger questions are in the actual text itself.

You see, what allowed me to reconcile all of those bigger questions above was because what I knew in the bible was true and I knew I could rely on God no matter what, because of what He says.

Well, fast forward to the present. I have been studying subjects like geography and the history of the bible. These studies don’t occur without running into some roadblocks that produce more questions.

Currently we are identifying some of the holes that exist in how the bible came to be, in our modern way of thinking. In my last class we discussed how Jews explain the origin of the Old Testament. Major questions exist such as, “If the writer of Kings was writing over a 400 year period about information that was true for both the south and the north how did he get this information? If he used other sources, who wrote them? If the writings in Genesis were attributed to Moses, why does it talk about Moses’ death? Why are cities mentioned that didn’t exist until later? Were they corrections that the scribes made so we would know the locations? There are several hypotheses for all of these questions. Actually, the argument for why the Bible is in reality divine is strengthened by some of the conclusions in trying to prove why it isn’t… that is for another day.

We are putting the bible under the microscope and seeing its validity as a historical document. Is this fair to do? There is wisdom literature and prophecy, in addition to historical data in there. If we were to use it simply as a historical document without bringing faith into it, how does it stand? Do the unexplainable events that occur in the bible occur in other writings of the Ancient period?

This has kept my mind racing.

In a nutshell what I’m saying here is that the journey of trying to understand who God is is a process. The more we learn, the more we realize that there is so much more to the picture. Having faith is a good thing. More importantly, knowing what you have faith in is the key.

Yes, I have a lot of questions. I hope I will always have a lot of questions.

Having just enough faith during the times of the events mentioned above was just enough to get me to the next milestone. This doesn’t sustain me now. I want to go deeper. I strongly desire for the foundation for what I believe in to be something that did not come with ease. It actually shouldn’t come without careful examination. One could put faith in anything. I desire to test it, examine it, and make sure it is true. This shouldn’t be scary to anyone. If God is who He says He is, then there is nothing to worry about.

People say over and over, “Have faith.” Yes, exactly! Knowing what you have faith in makes all the difference in the world. At Easter I heard a sermon challenging people to put their faith in Jesus. What the Pastor failed to do was to tell us who Jesus was and why you would want to put your faith in him. I feel that this is a common problem with the church today. We are quick to say, “Have faith.” But, what is it exactly that we are having faith in?

Questions are good. Do not be threatened by them. If the God that we know is as powerful as everyone who has “faith” says he is, then He will reveal answers to us that will be sustaining. Life is going to get rocky. When we desire something/ someone to lean on… I’d rather be confident that what I’m leaning on is real and true, if it isn’t, then it will be easy to crumble along with whatever ideology went with it.