Mark Byron

Edifier du Jour: Philippians 4 10-13(NIV)

¹⁰ I rejoiced greatly in the Lord that at last you renewed your concern for me. Indeed, you were concerned, but you had no opportunity to show it. ¹¹ I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. ¹² I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. ¹³ I can do all this through him who gives me strength.

Paul went through all kinds of crud. Beatings, shipwrecks, jail. However, Paul says that he learned to be content, period. Full stop.

Where does he get that peace? Not the shoes. Gotta be the Messiah.

Edifier du Jour: Romans 10:1-4(NASB)

Brethren, my heart’s desire and my prayer to God for them is for their salvation. ² For I testify about them that they have a zeal for God, but not in accordance with knowledge. ³ For not knowing about God’s righteousness and seeking to establish their own, they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God. ⁴ For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.

I recall one scene from Love at First Bite where Dracula and Renfield are flying over to the US; Drac's down in the cargo bay while Renfield is in first class. Renfield sees the menu and exclaims "All those things are dead. Don't you have something that's alive and keeking?"

Paul's talking about the Jews of his era, who were following the defunct Mosaic law. They were following the rules God laid down rather than following a living God. That's not to say that those rules were bad, but they aren't going to save anyone. It's believing in and following Jesus and the rest of the Trinity that is salvific. 

Knowing the rules is nice, but if one focuses on the letter of the law, you can easily miss the Spirit of the law. The Holy Spirit is the one that's alive and keeking, not the rules that Moses wrote down eons ago.

The Charleston Sonics?

Interesting news that Boeing is starting back its 787 production line...in South Carolina. Metro Seattle is their home base and where most of their workforce is, but they're opting to go with their ununionized plant in this case.

South Carolina is about as conservative a state as they come, but it has also become a rather globalized industrial locale in the last quarter-century, not the textile-mill mecca of my youth. A friendlier business climate and a less-hostile political environment for a firm that is both symbolic of globalized econ and of fossil-fuel use makes since; an increasingly green and computer-centric Washington State might not be as interesting in Boeing as they used to be.

When Seattle got its basketball team a half-century ago, Boeing was working on the Super-Sonic Transport plane that was supposed to be the next big thing; hence, they got christened the Supersonics. The SST got shelved when the cost of production and pushback on sonic booms, leaving the supersonic field to the Anglo-French Concorde and a Soviet alternative that Aeroflot flew to select locales. Circa 1970 Seattle was so Boeing-centric, that naming the team the Sonics was like the Milwaukee Brewers or the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Seattle's has released the Kraken (their new NHL team) and may have started to release Boeing as well.

Edifier du Jour: Numbers 5:1-4(NASB)

Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, ² “Command the sons of Israel that they send away from the camp every leper and everyone having a discharge and everyone who is unclean because of a dead person. ³ You shall send away both male and female; you shall send them outside the camp so that they will not defile their camp where I dwell in their midst.” ⁴ The sons of Israel did so and sent them outside the camp; just as the Lord had spoken to Moses, thus the sons of Israel did.

This is an interesting read in the COVID era. When faced with an invisible and often-deadly virus, we wind up having to treat everybody as unclean. Everyone's a potential leper. For a time, everyone in Michigan and other states lived "outside the camp" (stay-at-home-save-for-necessities) to avoid spreading the disease.

The better analogy from this is the uncleanness from touching a dead person. In a pre-microscope era, they didn't have the knowledge of bacteria and viruses, but they were given instruction to quarantine folks who dealt with the dead; since there's a good chance that invisible "bugs" are at play with a corpse, that ritual uncleanness "superstition" might well have been a low-tech way to protect God's people. A number of the non-kosher foods like shellfish and pork products also tend to be toxin and disease-prone, so those superstitions might well have been put there as a protective measure by God.

Keep that in mind when you're tempted to look askance at some of God's commands. He's not a party-pooper unless the "party" is a lousy idea in the long run. 

  

 

 

Edifier du Jour: 1 Thessalonians 2:5-7(NASB)

⁵ For we never came with flattering speech, as you know, nor with a pretext for greed—God is witness— ⁶ nor did we seek glory from men, either from you or from others, even though as apostles of Christ we might have asserted our authority. ⁷ But we proved to be gentle among you, as a nursing mother tenderly cares for her own children.

I'm reminded of a line from Smokey and the Bandit-"...for the glory, for the money, and for the fun . . . mostly for the money." Paul and the Bandit aren't exactly on the same page.

Paul wasn't looking for glory (although he got it by being well-read by millions two millennia on), nor was he looking for money (he made tents for a living so he wasn't hitting up new converts for money) and getting beat up and run out of town wasn't exactly fun. 

What made Paul do it? Well, Jesus hitting you over the head with a 2-by-4 on the road to Damascus is a decent motivator. A face-to-face encounter with God incarnate (along with the guidance of the Holy Spirit) gave him the strength to  face goon squads from both Jews and pagans on a regular basis.

Paul was far from a shrinking violet, but he didn't pull rank or brow-beat the folks in Thessalonica into following him. Instead, he used the metaphor of gently treating them as a mom would a baby; try running that by an alt-right denizen. 

Edifier du Jour: Zechariah 3:6-10(NIV)

⁶ The angel of the Lord gave this charge to Joshua: ⁷ “This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘If you will walk in obedience to me and keep my requirements, then you will govern my house and have charge of my courts, and I will give you a place among these standing here.

⁸ “‘Listen, High Priest Joshua, you and your associates seated before you, who are men symbolic of things to come: I am going to bring my servant, the Branch. ⁹ See, the stone I have set in front of Joshua! There are seven eyes on that one stone, and I will engrave an inscription on it,’ says the Lord Almighty, ‘and I will remove the sin of this land in a single day.

¹⁰ “‘In that day each of you will invite your neighbor to sit under your vine and fig tree,’ declares the Lord Almighty.”

This seems to be a rather messianic passage. In verse 8, God wipes out sin in one day; that's Good Friday. Interestingly, the high priest in Zechariah's vision is named Joshua. Yeshua in Hebrew, which the lead character in the Gospels was called as well.

The first paragraph here draws question to the messianic take, for the angel cites God's charge to Joshua with a "If you will walk in obedience..." If this is the Messiah who will follow God's orders, then no "if" is needed; it's a "when" rather than an "if".

Edifier du Jour: James 3:13-18(NIV)

¹³ Who is wise and understanding among you? Let them show it by their good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. ¹⁴ But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. ¹⁵ Such “wisdom” does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. ¹⁶ For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice.

¹⁷ But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. ¹⁸ Peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness.

Jealousy and strife (the NASB goes with the former in lieu of envy and footnotes the latter as a swap-out for selfish ambition) versus wisdom and humility. Doesn't seem like much of a tag-team match.

It reminds me of a Star Trek episode where some aliens set up a good-versus-evil match with Kirk, Spock, Lincoln and Surak (the founder of the Vulcan logical ethic) match up with Genghis Khan and three villains of Federation lore. The bad guys were doing rather well; the Surak-sim's peace-making cost him his life and Lincoln fell pray to an ambush.

However, in the Star Trek universe, God's not in the mix. Nor is the "soft power" of righteous living factored into the 4-on-4 war game. 

We've got a lot of bad influences abroad today, where envy and division are prized. Being considerate and merciful sounds wimpy. However, it wins more friends than being divisive and works better in the long run. It also has the power of the Holy Spirit behind it behind it, something Gene Roddenberry didn't want to include a half-century ago in that G-vs-E episode. Certain Cretans of our current political scene don't seem to have it in their mix, either.