Hon. Cory A. Booker – Global Leadership Summit – Session Three

This is just a couple of notes and quotes taken from Cory A. Booker’s session at The Global Leadership Summit.

 

Everyone has the ability to share love, understanding and knowledge that you meet.

 

What does it mean to stand up for something?

You are born of a grand conspiracy of love. Will you grow drunk on someone else’s sacrifices, or will you stand up for something.

 

What will you do?

Everyone is born original, but sadly, most die copies – Abraham Lincoln

 

Tell me what you see around you. What You see in the outside world is only a reflection of what is on the inside.  Do you see hope, or despair?

 

If it is to be, it’s up to me.

 

You can accept circumstances, or you can take the responsibility to change them for the better.

 

“It’s not where you are the for the death of a youth, but where are you for their life.”

 

“We stood in humility.”

“When sticks are in a bundle they cannot be broken.”

Let us now stand up and tell the world a truth they are searching for.

We’ve Moved

Please join The Emerging Network at our new site,

www.theemergingnetwork.com

What Place Has History in the O.T. – Tracking the Debate Through Time

More notes from my O.T. History Class. This was a short outline for a presentation. This was the rough draft for my final project.

In 1651 Thomas Hobbes, in chapter 33 of Leviathan, marshaled a battery of passages such as Deut 34:6 (“no man knoweth of his sepulchre to this day,” implying an author living long after Moses’ death); Gen 12:6 (“and the Canaanite was then in the land,” implying an author living in a time when the Canaanite was no longer in the land); and Num 21:14 (referring to a previous book of Moses’ deeds), and concluded that none of these could be by Moses.

Hobbes thus begins by establishing that we cannot infallibly know another’s personal word to be divine revelation:

When God speaketh to man, it must be either immediately or by mediation of another man, to whom He had formerly spoken by Himself immediately. How God speaketh to a man immediately may be understood by those well enough to whom He hath so spoken; but how the same should be understood by another is hard, if not impossible, to know. For if a man pretend to me that God hath spoken to him supernaturally, and immediately, and I make doubt of it, I cannot easily perceive what argument he can produce to oblige me to believe it.

To Hobbes, it is manifest that none can know they are God’s word (though all true Christians believe it) but those to whom God Himself hath revealed it supernaturally. And therefore The question truly stated is: by what authority they are made law?

There is an enormous amount of biblical scholarship in this third part. However, once Hobbes’s initial argument is accepted (that no-one can know for sure anyone else’s divine revelation) his conclusion (the religious power is subordinate to the civil) follows from his logic. The very extensive discussions of the chapter were probably necessary for its time. The need (as Hobbes saw it) for the civil sovereign to be supreme arose partly from the many sects that arose around the civil war, and to quash the Pope of Rome’s challenge, to which Hobbes devotes an extensive section.

Hans W. Frei:

Long before the thought of ‘history of salvation’ became apart of historiography or theological inquiry the idea by those like Augustine was that the real world was formed by the sequences of biblical stories this covered creation to the final consumption that was to come, this included 1) man’s natural environment and 2) man’s secondary environment which is provided by himself (history or culture)

Three elements to traditional realistic interpretation of biblical stories:

Read Literal:

“The true historical reference of a story was a direct and natural concomitant of its making literal sense”

An event at this level in regards to being evidence has the best chance of becoming a reliable historical report

In a single world of one temporal sequence, there must in principle be one cumulative story to depict it

“the several biblical stories narrating sequential segments in time must fit together into one narrative.”

He sees figuration and typology as a natural extension of literal interpretation:

“Figuration was at once a literary and historical procedure, an interpretation of stories and their meanings by weaving them together into a common narrative referring to a single history and its patterns of meaning”

Must in principle embrace the experience of any present age or reader:

It is the reader’s duty to fit themselves into that world and they do this through figural interpretation

“He was to to see his disposition, his actions, and passions, the shape of his own life as well as that of his era’s events as figures of that storied world.”

His point was that such experiences, events, concepts were all ranged figurally into the smaller as well as the overarching story.  Biblical interpretation becomes an imperative need, but its direction was that of incorporating extra-biblical thought, experience, and reality into one real world detailed and made accessible by the biblical story – not the reverse.

Johannes Cocceius and Johann Albrecht Bengel:

“Tried to locate the events of their day vis a vis the narrative framework of biblical story and history, and to locate by means of biblical sayings the present stage of the actual events we experience and predict future stages as well as the end of actual history”

This was a sign of the breaking of literal meaning of the biblical narratives and the reference to actual events.  The narratives no longer provided an access to the events, they could now only verify them.

“Not only did an enormous amount of inquiry into factual truth (or falsity) of the biblical stories develop, but an intense concentration as well on their meaning and religious significance, whether factual or of some other sort”

Question becomes, Do the stories and whatever concepts may be drawn from them describe what we apprehended as the real world? Do they fit a more general framework of meaning than that of a single story?

Figural Reading:

1) Verbal or literal sense was now equated with the single meaning of statements, a logical and grammatical rule prevalent everywhere so that figural reading of the Bible seemed a senseless exception to it

2) The very attempt to read unity out of (or into) the Bible now appeared different from, if not incompatible with, the self-confinement of literal reading to specific texts

-no longer a persuasive instrument for unifying the canon

Realistic Reading:

- consists of matching the written description against the reconstruction of the probable historical sequence to which it referred.

- not only about history but also about specific historical sequences, so that they were not concerned with the unity of the canon

18th Century England:

- Relationship between revelation and theology and the problems in this concept are key

1) Rationality or credibility of the very idea of historical revelation

“Or is what is called revelation nothing more than a specific instantiation of what God had made known everywhere and all along, concerning truth and human happiness?”

“appeal to ‘mystery’ of revelation anything other than an admission that the idea itself is unintelligible, a token of that unwarranted intrusion of imagination or, worse yet, sheer ignorant superstition into matters religious which the new intellectual rigor must repel?”

2) How likely is it that such a thing has taken place?

“How authoritative, in short, how well attested are biblical accounts, especially those of miracles, since the natural presumption in a ‘scientific age’ is obviously against them?”

Debate was:

1) General credibility of miracles in a physical and historical world which was increasingly believed to be governed in accordance with natural law, conceived either prescriptively or descriptively

2) Credibility of the specific miracle accounts of the Bible, especially the NT including the claims to the fulfillment of prophecy

The plausibility of miracles both positive and negative was argued through external and independent evidence (i.e. geological evidence to explain a catastrophe over a large part of the earth for the Flood

18th Century Germany:

How and with the aid of what authority one settles the principles of biblical interpretation?

Reformation focused questions on authority and unity, Protestant questions on the detailing of the principles of textual interpretation

“The consequence of unity and universality in method of interpretation ensured unity of textual meaning also.”

The belief of a layered text such as literal, typological, spiritual, etc. was gone

Late 18th century with the help of Deism things changed,

“From now on, the harmony of historical fact, literal sense, and religious truth will at best have to be demonstrated; at worst, some explanation of the religious truth of the fact-like description will have to be given in the face of a negative verdict on its factual accuracy or veracity”

Unlike the external argument of the English the Germans was almost exclusively internal, they took a literary-historical approach

In his The Concept of Biblical Theology, Barr devotes a chapter to ‘story’ in which he notes that from the 1960s onwards he and others and others stressed the importance of story as a category in Old Testament studies. Story in this context is deliberately set against history, partly as a reaction to the emphasis on the acts of God in the Biblical Theology Movement (BTM). Story embraces material that is historical as well as that which includes myth and legend, and above all divine speech. Story focuses attention on the beginning, the progression and the culmination as more important than the historical realities behind the text. Barr notes that G. Ernest Wright and others in the BTM had already indicated the importance of story in biblical theology but he asserts that they made little of the actual story character of the Bible so that story functioned in their works more as an idea

Barr continues to see great value in approaching the Bible as story, as long as we don’t set this against historical criticism.

“That the story is a totality and to be read as such would seem to agree with the ‘holistic’ emphasis of many literary and canonical tendencies of today. But the fact that it is a totality does not mean that it has to be swallowed whole, uncritically.”

Barr,  defends taking the whole of the Bible as story. Making Genesis the starting point enables us to avoid past mistakes such as isolating the exodus from its broader narrative context. A story approach also connects with current understands of communal and personal identity.

Childs is less positive towards story and biblical theology than Barr. He discusses narrative under literary approaches to biblical theology. His major concern with narrative is that,

“The threat lies in divorcing the Bible when seen as literature from its theological reality to which scripture bears witness.”

Barr, by comparison, finds a story approach to the Bible helpful theologically in that it alerts us to the Bible as the raw data of theological reflection.

Brevard Childs levels this criticism against narrative approaches to biblical theology. In his Biblical Theology Childs includes narrative theology under ‘Literary Approaches to Biblical Theology. Referring to Barr and Frei, he says that

“initially the appeal to the subject matter of the Bible as ‘story’ served to shift the focus away from the perplexing problems of historical referentiality . . .”

Later he criticises this narrative approach because it also sidesteps theological issues: ‘many modern “narrative theologies” seek to avoid all dogmatic issues in the study of the Bible and seek ‘to render reality’ only by means of retelling the story.’  The problem can be seen, notes Childs, by the fact that liberals and conservatives agree on the centrality of narrative, but disagree on the nature of the Biblical story. Again he notes that ‘it has become increasingly evident that narrative theology, as often practised can also propagate a fully secular, non-theological reading of the Bible. The threat lies in divorcing the Bible when seen as literature from its theological reality to which scripture bears witness.

James Barr notes a shift in the paradigm of Biblical theology that moves from ‘revelation in history’ as the primary category to a ‘literary mode of reading.’ Story is then qualified in a literary way: narrative is a literary structure that creates a symbolic world. Or to put it another way, story is qualified in a linguistic way: the Bible offers a merely linguistically constructed narrative world. In this paradigm the historical and theological dimensions of the Biblical story are muted at best.

N.T. Wright:

In fact, the theological authority of the biblical story is tied up with its overarching narrative form. He offers a rich metaphor to explicate this authority. Imagine that a Shakespearian play is discovered for the first time but most of the fifth act is missing. The decision to stage the play is made. The first four acts and the remnant of the fifth act are given to well-trained and experienced Shakespearian actors who immerse themselves both in the first part of the play and in the culture and time of Shakespeare. They are told to work out the concluding fifth act for themselves.

This conclusion must be both consistent and innovative. It must be consistent with the first part of the play. The actors must immerse themselves in full sympathy in the unfinished drama. The first four acts would contain its own cumulative forward movement that would demand that the play be concluded in a way consistent and fitting with that impetus. Yet an appropriate conclusion would not mean a simple repetition or imitation of the earlier acts. The actors would carry forward the logic of the play in a creative improvisation. Such an improvisation would be an authentic conclusion if it were coherent with the earlier acts.

This metaphor provides a specific analogy for how the biblical story might function authoritatively to shape the life of the believing community. Wright sees the biblical story as consisting of four acts – creation, fall, Israel, Jesus – plus the first scene of the fifth act that narrates the beginning of the church’s mission. Furthermore this fifth act offers hints at how the play is to end. Thus the church’s life is lived out consistent with the forward impetus of the first acts and moving toward and anticipating the intended conclusion. The first scene of act five, the church’s story, begins to draw out and implement the significance of the first four acts, especially act four. The church continues today to do the same in fresh and creative ways in new cultural situations. This requires a patient examination and thorough immersion in what act four is all about, how act four is to be understood in light of acts one through three, and how the first scene of act five faithfully carries forward act four.

Theological interpretation will be as important as the literary or historical. Theology is concerned with claims about God embodied in a worldview – whether there is a God, his relation to the world, and whether or not he is acting to set the world right. The theological beliefs of the Biblical authors and its modern interpreters will be essential to Biblical scholarship: ‘ .  . . ‘theology’ highlights what we might call the god-dimension of a worldview. . . . As such it is a non- negotiable part of the study of literature and history, and hence of New Testament studies.’

The recovery of the Bible as one controlling story is important for Wright because that story provides the true worldview context for Biblical scholarship, allowing all dimensions of the Biblical text—theological, literary, and historical—to find full expression.

Exodus 34 – Review from O.T. Theology Class

These were some interesting tidbits I pulled from a study on Exodus 34. Thought I would share.

Stuart, Douglas K. Exodus. The New American commentary, v. 2. Nashville, Tenn: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2006.

34:1 – Moses supplying the tablets provides some assumptions 1) all new covenants would require human initiation “chisel out” in the imperative form could refer to Israel having to start the process of restoration. 2) By having Israel supply the tablets it is a physical reminder to them that it wont be so easy.

34;2 – The command of first thing in the morning refers to the belief that what one person does first thing in the morning is the most important.

34:3 – When the NIV refers to “in front of the mountain” should be translated as toward/in the vicinity of the mountain.”

34:4 How did the words get on the tablets? 1 Kings 5:18 suggests that even much later the Israelites were not skilled or renowned stone cutters.  However, the text makes no mention of this.

34:5 – Moses is able to perceive that a real personal being had come to him and not just in a concept, or a feeling.  As before he employed a cloud as the visible portion of his manifestation.  Yahweh’s self proclamation allows for Moses to know that Yahweh would be with him and Israel when they left Mt. Sinai.

34:6 – This delayed response  (the fulfillment of the promise made by God in 33:19 has been delayed until now) is one of the techniques of Moses’ narrative style.  Hebrew word hesed translated as love by the NIV connotes a long term, reliable loyalty of one member of a covenant relationship to another.

34:7 – God lets Israel know that they can not think that they would not be punished because He already punished an earlier generation.

34:29 – God’s presence was obviously there if Moses’ face was obviously reflecting it.  This shows that God had not withdrawn himself from Israel as He was still with Israel’s mediator.  W.H Propp argued that Moses’ face was disfigured and although it didn’t hurt Moses it was not pleasant to look at.  Another link has been placed in a link between the words ‘horns’ and ‘rays’ giving an allusion to the idolatry of the golden bull in Ch. 32.

34:30 – Hebrew verb qrn is not well understood, so there is an argument between the translation of ‘rays,’  ‘horns,’ or ‘radiant.’  The people understood that Moses had been with and was accepted by the God they needed to fear.  This answered their question as to where Moses went in verse 1.

34:31 – Moses ‘spoke to them’ indicates that he told Aaron and the others where he had been.  Aaron is mentioned and comes to Moses as well as the other leaders of the people indicates that they are confirming Moses leadership over them.

34:33-35 – There is no connection between the veil on Moses’ face and the veil of the Tabernacle.  The veil of the Tabernacle blocks out all visibility whereas Moses could see out and the veil lowered the intensity of his encounter with God.

The Akedah – Comparison Between NRSV and Genesis Rabbah

Here are some notes from my Old Testament Theology class last year. I found the words of the Genesis Rabbah to be very compelling and at times it allowed for some great discussion on translating text. Enjoy.

The chapter begins with ‘and it came to pass’ where the NRSV simply begins at ‘after these things’.  The JPS ads in ‘some time afterward.’  The ‘things’ are misgivings or second thoughts of Abraham (LV:IV)  It would be these thoughts that would bring Abraham to his limit.

Verse one has two key words ‘try’ and test’.  The words ‘banner’ and ‘test’ have the same consonants and ‘truth’ and ‘validate’ accompany this.  God’s test for Abraham was one of justice and was not off the cuff.  The author is going to focus on what man does as his centre point for the exegesis.

Psalm 11:5 states that God tests the righteous and in Deut. 6:16 says that no one is to test the Lord.  The conclusion made is that the testing of Abraham represents Israel and because of this places Israel in its own history as strong and holy based upon the conclusions made of Abraham.

Verse two shares a linking between the Moriah and the Temple (LV:VII:2).  ‘Moriah and ‘awe’ share the same consonants and Moriah can be explained as the place where awe enters the world (i.e. The Temple) There is also a strong linking between the binding and the consecration with the temple. The NRSV says that God will show Abraham the mountain whereas in this text Abraham will be told which mountain to go to (LV:VII:4).  The conversation between God and Abraham provides a stronger active God figure in the lives of his people.

Why does Abraham saddle his own ass in verse three when he has two servants with him?  The answer provided is that love disrupts the natural order (LV:VIII).  This idea can be connected back to verse one as it relates back to Abraham as being strong, humble and worthy of this test.

Verse four has Abraham ‘lifting his eyes up’ instead of ‘looking up’  as well as in verse 13 (NRSV).  The strong imagery found in three days deals with the fulfillment of prophecy in the scriptures and the redemption of Israel.

Gen. 22:6 “So they went both of them together,”  It sounds very much like they both knew what was to happen. They went together up the hill in knowledge and acceptance (LVI:III:3) Verse five also states that both will come back down from worshipping.

Verse 6 and 8 have ‘walked on together’ as the ending to the conversation.  Again, an illusion to the idea that both Issac and Abraham know what is to happen.

Verse 1 and 11 have Abraham answering God’s call in the same way, “Here I am”.  This is interesting because one is before the test and the other is after.  It shows that Abraham’s trust in God doesn’t falter.

Why is the name “the Lord will provide” in the future tense in verse 14?  The author places the future tense in conjunction with the future history of the Temple.

Verses 17 and 18 give a double blessing to both the father and the son.  The use of indeed bless is the Hebrew verb written twice and this is what indicates the double blessing.  There is a switch from multiply in this text and numerous in the NRSV.

Verse	Genesis Rabbah	NRSV/JPS
1	And it cam to pass… (add)
2  (Genesis Rabbah has this as verse three at some points?)	Take I Pray you… I shall tell you	Take your son …I shall show you
3	And…saddled his ass…and arose and went to… God had told him	So…saddled his donkey…set out…God shown
4	Lifted his eyes	Looked up
5	come again to you	We will come back to you
6	So they went both of them together	walked on together
8	God will provide himself the lamb	God himself will provide
9	God had told him	God had shown
10	slay his son	kill his son
12	Seeing you have not	Since you have not
13	Lifted his eyes	Looked up
14	Called the name of the place	called that place
16	done this thing	done this
17	multiply your descendants	offspring as numerous
18	earth bless themselves	earth gain blessing
19	dwelt at	lived at
20	And it cam to pass… (add) Behold (add)	Now…
22

Jacob and Christmas Blessings

Can two walk together, except they be agreed. Or, in other words “Do two people walk hand in hand if they are not going to the same place?” This sounds like a profound theologian or a new age life coach, not a statement from a minor prophet. However, that is indeed where we receive this amazing insight into how we should view our relationship with God. Amos 3:3 gives us insight into how God expects our relationship with him to work. The only way that we can gain the full potential of God’s blessing and promises of a life filled with hope, is to agree to meet him and walk side by side with him. We can only expect from God what we are willing to input into the relationship first.  In Genesis twenty eight, Jacob must, for the first time in his life, make a personal commitment to walk hand in hand with God. Jacob needed to allow his faith in God to grow, so that he could be filled and walk in the hope filled plan’s of God. It is what we can look forward to because of a relationship with God that we will study this morning through the story of Jacob’s ladder and the promises of the Nativity.

Speaking of Nativity, this morning marks the first Sunday in the Advent season. Many churches in the four Sunday’s leading up to Christmas will focus on a different theme or attribute of Jesus. Today, marks the first Sunday, so to follow a little bit of church history we will focus on the Hope that God promises us.

O.K. so I know what many people may be thinking, how does hope or even the nativity story relate to the dreams of a young man. Hopefully with a little understanding and open minds we can allow God to guide our words and thoughts this morning. Let’s get into the text shall we.

First, we read about a journey, a solitary journey to a certain place, (Luz), but to be honest the name is not important at the present moment of the story, but come the end the name will come back to us. The important part is that he tarried all night because we read that the sun is setting. The oddity at this point is that under Old Testament culture the locals should have offered up a resting place for Jacob. We read in Judges 19:17-20 that “only lodge not in the streets … Peace be with you.” Whenever a cultural norm is dismissed in the Biblical text, we as readers need to take note because more often then not a work or the will of God is about to be revealed. So, we have Jacob hopelessly alone, abandoned, scared and fleeing, he has also been ignored by the locals. Think of how Jacob must have been feeling. most of us hate when we are stuck feeling only one of these emotions, now add on five more negative feelings and you have most off us curled up in a corner thinking the world hates us and is against us. Now we can move on because we feel Jacob’s heart.

However, we have a great truth of God shown to us in the following verse. Jacob lies down and begins to dream, dream about a ladder to be more exact. Now this ladder is special because he sees angels using the ladder to ascend and descend from heaven – a two way street that leads from earth to heaven or heaven to earth depending on your outlook. Now, Orangeville has many two way streets, but get down to where Amy and I live in Toronto and we have many one way streets. These cause many headaches for many drivers, which leads to a vast array of horns, voices and aggravation. But, for Jacob he witnesses a flow that is uninterrupted from heaven itself, what a vision of hope! To make things even better Jacob witnesses God standing at the very top of the ladder as a witness to the work of the angels, and to allow Him access to the creation that he called good. Why is this such a vision of hope for Jacob? At his lowest, loneliest moment God shows himself to fill Jacob with a purpose, direction and of course hope for the future. God arrives to give Jacob more then a promise of hope, he is about to give him a covenant that will drastically change his life forever. This covenant is not going to be a regurgitation of a previous covenant, just fiddled with to suit Jacob, this is going to be an individual uplifting because that is how God works. That is the beautiful nature of our God and the beauty that is Jacob’s story, but more importantly for us, our story. Just like Jacob, we have been given hope as a gift from our God, a personal God that provides us with what we need as individuals partaking in his creation.

We need to be careful that when we think of our God that we do not box him into what we think his limits are. Our God is not prepackaged because he is God, his will, nature and existence beyond time is beyond our own understanding. God’s message of hope that is given to each of us is personalized to our own individual needs, just as our Christmas gifts are individualized to our loved ones.

How do we know our God is a personal God? Turn with me to verses thirteen through fifteen, as, in these verses, we can understand how God leads Jacob through his personal covenant. It also allows us to witness the amazing hope that God places in Jacob’s future. “And behold, the LORD stood above it, and said, I am the LORD God of Abraham thy father and the God of Isaac: The land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed; And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and the south; and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed. And, Behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places wither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land; for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of.” God gives Jacob four very distinct and personal messages of hope and fulfillment. The covenant that was once Abraham and Isaac’s has now been personalized to fit God’s will in Jacob’s life. God has now given Jacob what Jacob needs to thrive as a follower of God. Jacob has been filled with hope that God has a desire and need for him on earth.

The first personalized promise of God, is a promise of assurance. That God will be present in Jacob’s life, but it is more then that. God is not just present there in Jacob’s present dream-state, God will be with Jacob ALWAYS. This is God’s answer to Jacob’s feelings of desperation and hopelessness as Jacob was searching for companionship. “I am with thee and will keep thee.” This is important for Jacob, who grew up in his father’s house surrounded by a strong community of companions, but now he is alone, asleep and dreaming of companionship in the wilderness. When all is thought to be lost God comes to make Jacob aware that he will never be alone again. God gives Jacob a choice, not a command to follow and walk with Him. God allows Jacob the chance to live a life full of hope, all he needs to do is believe and make his own choice to follow him, just like we read earlier, can two walk together unless they choose to? That is the question God gives Jacob.

The second personal message from God to Jacob is the promise of land. “And will bring thee again into this land…” Jacob was rich, however in order to escape quickly and effectively he had to leave all his possessions behind, including as we can determine from the text, this included his pillow. This leaves us, the readers of the story to conclude and decipher that Jacob most have been filled with a feeling of impoverishment. Here, he is sleeping on the ground, surrounded by rocks, when he is used to nice five hundred thread count Egyptian sheets. Again, God shows up to give Jacob hope and a promise that he will once again be able to go back to his earthly dwelling place. There is more to the dream then Jacob being able to return to his earthly home, that two way ladder promises Jacob a home within heaven. Jacob will be welcomed into heaven by God and all those that love him also.

Thirdly, God gives Jacob the personal message of a hope through the promise that he no longer needs to live in shame. God tells Jacob that his shame will be lifted and that his ancestors will be like the dust, numerous and uncountable. “And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth.” Jacob receives a blessing that assures him and that can assure us, that no matter how much guilt and shame may be filling our lives, God has an answer, and that answer is life through Him. God is always willing and able to begin with us again, where we are, so that we can become agents of blessings onto others. The prophet, Jeremiah,  tells a story of a potter at his wheel working the clay even as it becomes blemished in Jeremiah 18:1-6. “And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter: so he made it again, another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it.” Key words here are as follows: “so he made it agian… as seemed good to the potter.” Just like in Jacob’s life we can take great hope in knowing that when we become marred, like the vessel, and Jacob, we can be reshaped through Jesus. We have to remember and take to heart the following lesson though. We do not become second hand. I will repeat, we do not become second hand. We are just as clean in the eyes of God, as we were, and as the vessel is to the potter, at first creation. Once we confess our sins and repent to God we become as white, unique and beautiful as the snowflakes that will fall this Christmas season.

The fourth and final individual message of hope for Jacob is that he will return home. Unlike the second assurance from God this is not about feeling impoverished, this is a promise of a hope filled future that goes beyond this world, into heaven. We can read about this promise in Matthew 28:20, as it tells us that “Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world, Amen.” God tells Jacob that even when he acts outside of His will God will still be there, watching, guiding and loving him. Even when we act outside the will of God, he is still there, watching over us, and it is through that kind of grace, the grace of mercy and promise, that should make us want to leave all sin behind.

When God encounters Jacob at Bethel (the name is now important, as it means house of God), Jacob grows spiritually, making the choice for the first time to personally follow God and accept full responsibility for his relationship with God. God’s promises came in the form of a dream, but Jacob’s response of worship as he built the alter to God, came in a state of waking-alertness. Jacob found that the dreamworld presented to him by God to be more convincing, more appealing and a world that was filled with hope more attractive than the world he fell asleep to. Jacob chooses promise over fear, love over guilt and hope filled future over uncertainty. We must all claim our promises from God ourselves, others cannot do it on our behalf. We need to personally step out in our faith and embrace our promise of a hope filled future. Faith is a wonderful thing, it believes that God is true, hope however, is looking ahead with anticipation for the day Christ reveals the truth. Faith believes that God is our father, hope is our anticipation and longing to be in the continued presence and revelation of God our father. Faith is knowing that we have eternal life, whereas hope is anticipating eternity. Faith is our foundation and hope nourishes this foundation and is the glue that keeps our faith together.

Just as God, the father was the source of Jacob’s hope, Jesus’ birth at nativity becomes our hope. This is the season that allows us to narrow in our focus and celebrate the birth and life of Jesus, the source of our eternal hope. We can read in John 1:45-51 of the influence of the events surrounding Jacob’s dream as Jesus talks to Nathaniel. “Jesus answered and said unto him, Because I said unto thee, I saw thee under the fig tree, believest thou? Thou shalt see greater than these. And he saith unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto you, hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.” Jesus is our ladder, our bridge, and the only bridge that allows us the ability to pass from earth into heaven.

Today we can close on one question. Why is the birth of Jesus and the story of Jacob’s ladder essential to our understanding of hope? In the large part we learn best through the examples of others. If we can see how God worked in Jacob’s life providing him with a personalized plan we can look into our own lives and see how we too, are blessed individually.

Another reason why these two stories are important is that as a fallen creation we are never able to grasp the complete nature of heaven. In order to understand we would have to pass through the gates and in our humanity this is not an option laid before us. Yet heaven is able to come to earth, in the form of a baby, the perfect gift. However, heaven itself cannot be poured out into a tainted creation, so there only becomes one viable solution. God comes to us, in a manger, as Jesus Christ. God had sent many prophets, many times, but now he would do something far more shocking. He would leave the throne of heaven and walk among His creation – a king in disguise – humbled as one of His own. Now we as humans can hear, feel and experience all that is important to Him. God entered our world through the doorway called Bethlehem and our world would be changed forever. John 1:14 says this, “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld of the father,) full of grace.”

As we look at the connections that are evident between Jacob, Jesus and the Nativity, I have one verse left up my sleeve. The Magi (or wise-men as they are commonly refereed to), as they followed the Star on their journey to see Jesus, would have carried the Law of Moses (the first five books of the Bible), with them. So, it is in Numbers that we read “I shall see him, but not now: I shall behold him, not nigh: there shall come a Star out of Jacob.” A star out of Jacob, Jesus lying among men, who would be one of the descendants of the personalized promise of hope that God gave Jacob in Genesis 28. It all fits together like a perfectly crafted puzzle that only a God, that could provide us with perfect hope could accomplish.

We may feel alone, impoverished, fearful and even be filled with despair, but as we go through the Advent Season let’s remember the lessons from a dream and the advice of Amos. We can only walk with our Savior once we agree to personally take His hand and enter into a two way relationship with Him. Once we do that the only thing left for us is to live a life that is filled with Hope. Amen

Cocktail Party Effect and Jr. High Students Part 4

Media Priority

When they are a young person’s primary activity, TV and videogames are the least multitasked media, while reading and computer activities such as IM, computer games and looking at websites are the most multitasked. Specifically, nearly two-thirds of the time young people spend reading, playing computer games or looking at websites, they are also doing something else at the same time (63% when playing computer games or looking at websites, 64% when IMing). But the same is true less than half the time they are watching TV (45%) or playing videogames (45%). Young people are more likely to focus their attention exclusively on TV than on reading: 55% of the time that they are watching TV as their primary activity they are doing nothing else, compared to only 38% of the time they are reading as their primary activity. (Foehr, 2006b)

81% of pre-teen and teenagers spend part of their media time multitasking, in an average week, but 19% of young people don’t media multitask at all over the course of a typical week. Factors that added to the possibility for young people to multitask were those who have a computer and can see a television from it, sensation seekers, those who are exposed to a highly TV-oriented household, and girls (more than boys) are all more likely to media multitask. (Foehr, 2006b)

Conclusions and Multi-Tasking Problems

Looking at the jr. high student and teenager multi-tasking seems to be evident in the majority of their everyday life with no outlook of change. The question then becomes what are they missing out on. Exposure to chat rooms, IM, email, Facebook and Twitter causes a breakdown in the traditional oral tradition of human nature. Media is causing the inability for true involvement in each others lives without a screen coming in between two individuals.

Cherry concluded that our ability to separate sounds from background noise is based on the characteristics of the sounds, such as the gender of the speaker, the direction from which the sound is coming, the pitch or the speaking speed. The cocktail party effect was based on audible sounds whereas today jr. high students focus in on multiple tasks in downtimes during IM, or by focusing in on perceptual grouping (when two channels are semantically consistent, for example audio and video on a t.v. screen allow viewers to process, attend and recall information easily. Perceptual grouping is just another form of transition probabilities (different pitch, voice, or tone) that Cherry proposed as a filter for the cocktail party effect.

Just like Cherry, Broadbent proposed his filter theory that directly explains multi-tasking. Jr. high students are provided with various stimuli and they filter what media is important at that moment and once they finish they can move on to the next stimuli that was stored in their memory, so they can attend to it at a latter time (i.e. finishing a text message and then going to do a homework question, while singing a song on the radio, and then replying to the pop up IM message on their computer screen.

The problem them becomes how to reach this age group if they are constantly switching their attention from media source to media source. If media multitasking becomes the norm for young people, advertisers and pro-social marketers have numerous problems coming at them. h When their media attention is divided, how can they be reached? The jr. high age bracket is in danger of becoming so media charged that they will find it difficult to pick up any positive message that is thrown their direction. The main danger is that they may not be able to be reached by any medium.

Review of Red Letters: Living A Faith That Bleeds

The following is a sample of my review of Tom Davis’ book Red Letters: Living a Faith That Bleeds. Follow the link to Think Youth Ministry at the bottom of the entry for the complete review. Thanks!

As a youth leader this book needs to be on hand as a continual reminder of how to live for Christ. In a job where this message is essential to not only our own personal relationships with Christ, but stands as a foundation to our calling to create disciples, Red Letters: Living A Faith That Bleeds succeeds in its attempt to show how the world would be a better place through both compassion and hope. We need to leave behind our fears and comfort and replace apathy and silence with action and care towards those that really need both hope and compassion. When reading Matthew 25:41-45, and taking in the words from Davis, there is a clear understanding that ignorance and apathy can no longer be acceptable answers to our stalling in the mission of God, which is to love God, love our neighbor, and to create disciples. In order to be a successful Christ Follower, or promote Christ’s teachings effectively, we need to do one thing correctly: To care for what God cares about.

Posted originally at ThinkYouthMinistry on Jan. 4/10

Cocktail Party Effect and Jr. High Students Part 3

Suggested Filters

Cherry’s suggested a few possible filters to help distinguish between conversations

1. The voices come from different directions

2. Lip-reading, gestures, and the like

3. Different speaking voices, mean pitches, mean speeds, male vs. female, and so forth

4. Different accents

5. Transition probabilities (based on subject matter, voice dynamics, syntax . . .) (Arons, 1992)

Jr. High Filters

Explanations for the ability to multi-task in jr. high students

1. Different media causes different reactions (i.e. listening to music while typing is two different tasks)

2. Audible sounds are coming from different directions

3. IM (Instant Message Screens) provide small moments of freedom to finish up other tasks

4. Perceptual grouping (when two channels are semantically consistent, for example audio and video on a t.v. screen allow viewers to process, attend and recall information easily (Bergen, L., Grimes, T., & Potter, D., 2005 and Foehr, 2006b)

As seen in Cherry’s original research the idea of multi tasking among teens does not strive far from the cocktail problem effect. Both need a varying stimulus in order to perceive more then one conversation, or media application.

Broadbent’t Filter Theory (Image 1.1) (Broadbent, 1958 & Smith, 2002)

The diagram shows how the flow of sensory information flows through a variation of processes, that would range from our left-right. The diagram also shows how stimulus received at the same time fight to make it through our selective filter. Our selective filter sorts through the received stimulus to decide how to further process or attend to only one of the imputing stimulus, which is passed along to the limited capacity channels, two substantially more advanced subsystems. The first, system for varying output until some input is secured, which is eventually in direct contact and

communication with our motor systems (effectors). That circulation is responsible for maintaining and initiating behavior towards a goal. The second subsystem is the store of conditional probabilities of past events, and is responsible, via the feedback pathway shown, for modulating the decisions being made by the filter towards those inputs which past experience indicates are associated with success at the goal in question (or similar goals). Another feedback pathway recycles material which is at risk of being lost due to the limited capacity of the filter and its channel back into

short term memory storage. (Broadbent, 1958 & Smith, 2002)

Broadbent’t Filter Theory in Regards to Multi-Tasking (Image 1.2) (Broadbent, 1958 & James, 2006)

This filter functions together with a buffer, and enables the subject to handle two kinds of stimuli, presented at the same time. One of the inputs is allowed through the filter, while the

other is waiting in in the buffer for later processing. The filter prevents overloading of the limited capacity mechanism beyond the filter, which is the short term memory. Most information processing theories suggest that there is a limit to what our brains can actually process ‘simultaneously’(Meyer, D.E., & Kieras, D.E.,1997, Pashler, H., 2000, S. Mansell & J.Driver, & Foehr, 2006b). Research shows that while we can perceive two stimuli in parallel, we cannot process them simultaneously.(Pashler, 2000, Mansell, 2000 & Foehr, 2006b). This phenomenon has been named the psychological refractory period (PRP). Messages A-D could be any multi-media source, whether IM, email, homework, or watching t.v., as the attention switches between tasks the older stimuli are retrieved from the long term memory store so that multi-tasking can continue. Each task goes through the selective filter at different times so that the teen can choose at their convenience what task to attend to at that moment. With the information and the Filter Theory as a plan young people are not processing non-complementary messages they are simply filtering different tasks just as Cherry proposed with the cocktail party theory suggests that different pitches, tones and direction of audible sounds aloud for easier pick up of multiple conversations.

Rob Bell on Youth Ministry

Check out Rob Bell’s thoughts on youth ministry. He addresses many key issues surrounding both the ministry as a whole and those that are working in it.

The dominant paradigm in churches is production, not discipleship. It’s about how to keep kids coming—how are the numbers? In the gospels, whenever there were large crowds, Jesus gave a difficult teaching that thinned out the crowd. Over and over, He chose those moments: John 6—Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood. Nice. Very accessible for kids. There is a certain pattern where He’s trying to find out who is serious. Youth workers are put in this position where their paychecks are based on how many people they can keep in the place. When they read the gospels, they realize this whole system seems to be going the other direction. Many youth pastors I’ve met are promoting something they don’t believe.

ht to youthworker.com