I am really enjoying the book, though of course there are some points that I would disagree with. But here’s a quote that I really liked… He is talking about “The Self” and why Christians shouldn’t be concerned at the notion of a “constructed self” (a post-modern concept). He is essentially arguing this against the modernist motion that the self is autonomous (independent), and something to be discovered through reason:

First of all, a Christian need not be dismayed at the idea that she is shaped in very fundamental ways by her relations with others. That i, the bare fact that one’s self is, to one degree or another, constructed shouldn’t trouble us too much. It is a fundamental Christian idea that a relationship with one very important other person  - God himself – experts a singularly powerful transformative influence on a person, an influence that the Christian has every reason to embrace. That is a blow to modern dreams of autonomy, but it’s a keystone of a Christian worldview.

He further talks about how this Christian Self ought to be constructed… Something, that I know resonates in my church because… well it’s like pulling a tooth getting people involved in this way:

Believers in Jesus Christ are not supposed to operate freelance, hoisting themselves to spiritual heights using only their spiritual bootstraps. The church – the local congregation most immediately, but also the wider body of believers, including especially people in positions of spiritual leadership – is the community intended to shape and form that character, the self, of a developing Christian. The common name for this task is discipleship…

Absolutely! But why do so few Christians submit themselves to this kind of transformative discipleship? Bah… Because they are all individuals wanting autonomy. They have better things to do, I guess. And in this sense, Modernism is very much the enemy of Christianity.

• 2 days behind on my New Testament reading plan (through the NT in 15 days)
• 1 day behind on my Old Testament reading plan (through the OT in 45 days)
• 3 days behind on my regular reading plan

On that note, I made a mistake the other day when I was describing the plans… the OT is 45 days, not 30.. meaning in that one time through the OT, I’ll work my way through the NT 3 times. I know, typical North American Christian who doesn’t pay much attention to the OT. But! My Biblical Hebrew is much more advanced than my Greek, and so I’ll be translating the OT much sooner… so I figure that balances out for now.

The reasons why I am behind… and I know it’ll sound like excuses, but meh. First, I took out the wrong book from the Library. I forgot that the Prof of my Postmodernism & Theology class mis-listed the books so that the order on the sheet wasn’t the order we were going to read them. So the book I picked up, we weren’t supposed to read for another like 6 weeks. So that put me behind on the readings for that class, and I spent today making it up.

In addition to that, we just had a lot of stuff to do at work… my office (which I share with my boss) is going through a kind of renovation.. Then this morning, it was supposed to be a Pastors Team meeting only – but the new Senior Pastor decided at the last minute to include the Interns as well.. I appreciate it, and it was helpful for me to really grasp the vision of my church, but that was basically the time I was planning to spend catching up on my readings..

So anyway, hopefully I’ll be caught up by the weekend…

I’m doing this really intense Bible reading plan… I realized that I really should know the Bible much better, well, how else but read? So I’ve decided to do a really crazy thing this year – read through the Bible multiple times… I know! We struggle even with just once a year. But I’m gonna try!

In addition to my regular plan (the once-a-year plan) I’m doing several different ones that I can customize using my Logos software. For the month of January – that is, for 30 days starting yesterday, since school is going to be slower,  I plan to go through the Old Testament once and the New Testament twice.  After that I’m going to slow down some, because I’m going to have 2 major papers to write. So I’m going to switch to a 90-day-plan in which I’ll read the Old Testament once, and the New Testament 3 times.

Anyway, since I just restarted my plan, and I started this other plan too, I came across an interesting story twice… The story of Lot and his daughters in Genesis 19. I’m not going to explain it here, but let anyone who doesn’t know the story look it up themselves. But it is quite interesting, I’m sure.. Anyway, I was really wondering about it, so I decided to look it up in my new set of Calvin’s Commentaries… Unfortunately, the translators apparently didn’t think the story itself was worthwhile – enough to translate Calvin’s comments  on it! Bah…

I’m expecting the Word Biblical Commentary (electronic) set that I ordered on Boxing Day to come soon.. so I guess I’ll have to wait until then to read up another person’s theological take on it… Ah well.

He says “I’ve marked all of the exams and there’s probably really only one person who will be totally satisfied with their mark.” As a result he was “willing to give 20% bonus on the exam right away if you promise to do a bonus assignment to be handed in on the first day of class.”

LOL! Oh man. I knew that it wasn’t me – the only person who would be happy with his mark, that is. Because I looked up the verses we translated right after the exam (I forget what it is now) and I completely missed the aspect of one whole portion of the text. One part was supposed to be imperative (commands) but I translated it as simple past tense. Hahaha!

So I’m working on that translation project now… It “consists of translating all of Genesis 6.  The assignment must be typed on a computer and each verse must be placed on a separate line and be properly labelled.  Include footnotes for translations that are not obvious.” I’m done 3 verses already, and I have 2 more weeks to do it. But I’m working on it slowly…

Hahaha.

Coming up soon, the texts I’m using in both my Hebrew classes, and in my tutorials with Luis. I’m also going to be working on a syllabus for a course I’m designing for my church – to teach Hebrew to laypersons. That’s gonna be interesting!

Greek Grammar on Thursday… It was a 3 hour exam that I finished in 45 minutes (30 minutes of writing, 15 of reviewing). Not that I’m super amazing in Greek… just that I studied REALLY HARD for it. We covered the first 12 chapters of our text book (David Allan Black’s grammar). And I’m pretty sure I’ve read those chapters at least 4 times each.

Oh and not that I’m doing really well with my Greek. I’m still having a lot of difficulties with memorizing Vocabulary – which anyone who has ever learned another language knows is pretty much integral to the whole process. I really need to step it up that’s all, but doing Hebrew at the same time is really messing with me..

That brings me to my second exam, the one yesterday, which was Hebrew Syntax. That was a 3 hour exam too, but unlike the Greek I took the entire 3 hours to finish it. I’m pretty sure, in fact, that that was the only time I’ve ever used up an entire exam period (I’ve taken maybe 25 exams for my undergrad at UofT).

It was really funny – or sad, depending on how you look at it – but with about 30 minutes left on the exam, I was kind of chillin’, taking my sweet time translating what I thought was the last verse. Good thing the prof had to make a correction on the last page of the exam… yup, I actually had 2 more verses to translate! Man that was close! God is good eh? Keeping me from doing stupid things like forgetting to answer an entire page of the exam!

Anyway, I expect decent grades for these two classes… not amazing. But decent…

Coming soon, just some reflections about learning the Original Biblical Languages, and why I think pretty much every Christian who actually reads the Bible should learn even the basic grammars…