A brief introduction before the actual "gleaning" as to the purpose of these writings. I cannot pretend to be a Biblical scholar. I haven't the training or the background to make definitive pronouncements as to the meaning and theological implications of specific passages. However, I do love scripture and have been raised with a love of scripture, and I do enjoy reading it and trying to come to terms with what it has to say. There are as many purposes to reading the Bible as there are people doing the reading. For me the primary purpose is not to understand, extract, and deliver that abstract truths (theology) that can be found there, nor is it to understand the people and the times, or even to attempt to grasp the grand panorama of salvation history--all of those things are beyond my means. One of the reasons I read scripture is to come to know God and to love Him more. And the chief means of doing this for me is to look at the application scripture can and does have to my life now. Scripture is not carved in stone with a set permanent meaning that never changes. It is a fact that the truths laid down in scripture are Truth, revealed for all time to all people. But scripture is also a living document, speaking now to people as they live now. It is in denying this aspect of scripture that a great many people make mistaken judgments as to its applicability. On the other hand, it is in overemphasizing this aspect of scripture that other errors are made--there is a tendency to pick and choose the pieces we would most like to be true.
So, after that long preamble, these gleanings, if they continue past this point to be public, are simply my attempts to apply individual scripture passages and understandings, hopefully informed by a larger knowledge of the whole of scripture, to modern life. While they are personal reflections, I hope that their personality is not so pronounced as to make them inaccessible for others.
Sacred scripture is a living and beautiful thing. If we allow it to do so, it will speak to us today as it has spoken through the centuries to all the saints of God.
Gleanings: Titus 1:15-16
To the pure all things are pure, but to the corrupt and unbelieving nothing is pure; their very minds and consciences are corrupted. They profess to know God, but they deny him by their deeds; they are detestable, disobedient, unfit for any good deed. (RSV)
It would be easy enough to read this passage as suggesting that for the pure anything is acceptable and indeed, it is exactly this sort of misrepresentation of the thought that in the past led to heresies such as Gnosticism and Albigensianism. If to the pure all things are pure, then if one becomes pure, whatever one decides to do must be acceptable.
But it seems that St. Paul may have been attempting quite a different point. To the person transformed in Christ, the person whose life is lived in union with Him, the person who “is perfect as your heavenly father is perfect” all things are pure because that person has ceased to be his or her own judge of what is acceptable. Instead, they have accepted and embraced the gifts of the Holy Spirit, relying heavily upon Wisdom, Understanding, Knowledge, and Holy Fear. With these four serving as guides, it is not possible for the pure guided by the Holy Spirit to err in matters of the spirit.
However, as with all things, there are people who come to believe that they have achieved this purity who haven’t any idea of what this purity consists. They profess to know God and after a fashion, to be fair, they know OF Him, if they do not know Him. They understand some basics and then pride themselves on their understanding and knowledge. These people can end up denying God by their actions. They may begin to teach false gospels and spread their misunderstandings far and wide. They cannot be corrected; they become the sole interpreters of God’s will. They know that He intends happy married lives for homosexuals or that women should be priests as is only fair and right in the world. They refuse correction and so they wander further and further away from the truth—one error compounds and becomes an invincible armor of prideful ignorance which then becomes an agenda.
If we cannot surrender to those God has put in authority over us—priests first and then bishops, we probably partake in some part of those who profess to know God but deny Him. The first and most essential actions of those who know God are humility and obedience—obedience to God’s well as expressed in the authorities put over us. When God chooses, they will be moved or removed, but until then, we are bound.
But so long as we remain in this disobedience, we may as well align ourselves with those launching the worst assaults on God, because we are blind.
All healing of spiritual ills begins with humility, with the understanding that we cannot take the steps alone, even if we desire to do so. God must take each of us by the hand and lead him in the way we would go.
Gleanings: Titus 1:15-16
To the pure all things are pure, but to the corrupt and unbelieving nothing is pure; their very minds and consciences are corrupted. They profess to know God, but they deny him by their deeds; they are detestable, disobedient, unfit for any good deed. (RSV)
It would be easy enough to read this passage as suggesting that for the pure anything is acceptable and indeed, it is exactly this sort of misrepresentation of the thought that in the past led to heresies such as Gnosticism and Albigensianism. If to the pure all things are pure, then if one becomes pure, whatever one decides to do must be acceptable.
But it seems that St. Paul may have been attempting quite a different point. To the person transformed in Christ, the person whose life is lived in union with Him, the person who “is perfect as your heavenly father is perfect” all things are pure because that person has ceased to be his or her own judge of what is acceptable. Instead, they have accepted and embraced the gifts of the Holy Spirit, relying heavily upon Wisdom, Understanding, Knowledge, and Holy Fear. With these four serving as guides, it is not possible for the pure guided by the Holy Spirit to err in matters of the spirit.
However, as with all things, there are people who come to believe that they have achieved this purity who haven’t any idea of what this purity consists. They profess to know God and after a fashion, to be fair, they know OF Him, if they do not know Him. They understand some basics and then pride themselves on their understanding and knowledge. These people can end up denying God by their actions. They may begin to teach false gospels and spread their misunderstandings far and wide. They cannot be corrected; they become the sole interpreters of God’s will. They know that He intends happy married lives for homosexuals or that women should be priests as is only fair and right in the world. They refuse correction and so they wander further and further away from the truth—one error compounds and becomes an invincible armor of prideful ignorance which then becomes an agenda.
If we cannot surrender to those God has put in authority over us—priests first and then bishops, we probably partake in some part of those who profess to know God but deny Him. The first and most essential actions of those who know God are humility and obedience—obedience to God’s well as expressed in the authorities put over us. When God chooses, they will be moved or removed, but until then, we are bound.
But so long as we remain in this disobedience, we may as well align ourselves with those launching the worst assaults on God, because we are blind.
All healing of spiritual ills begins with humility, with the understanding that we cannot take the steps alone, even if we desire to do so. God must take each of us by the hand and lead him in the way we would go.
