Faith...and imagination

We know that faith is "the evidence of things unseen and the substance of things hoped for." Let me give you an example of this from the Old Testament that was recently brought to my attention through Beth Moore's radio ministry.

But before I can do that, step back with me to the week of Spring Break. I've been very busy at work trying to make some things work that have...frankly...were delivered before they were ready.

Jen wanted to go to Austin and to Houston. She knew I was busy, so she went ahead and took the kids. It was the third or fourth time the situation at work has turned into giving up family time to try and help them through a problem of their own creation. Needless to say, I wasn't in a great mood.

But the Aggies had a great year, and they were playing in the first round of the NCAAs against Syracuse. So I packed up my laptop and headed home...I thought...in time to see the game.

Except the valve stem on one of my tires was worn and it let out the last dribble of air as the left front tire went flat. I pulled over to fix it...annoyed at the timing as I was now missing the tip off for the game.

The next morning I took the car into the NTB between home and work. They were running behind schedule, so when we got the car in the bay, I went ahead and had them check brakes and watched as they figured out the plan with the valve stem. I was out of there around 11:00 am...a full two hours after when I normally am on the way to work.

I've written before that I enjoy listening to Chuck Swindoll on the way to work. At this time, though, one of Jennifer's favorite bible study teachers was on. Jen has encouraged me several times to listen to Beth if I got the opportunity. So I took her up on it.

Beth was talking about things from a slightly different perspective than I was used to. She brings an authentic female voice to an in-depth Biblical presentation. She spoke of doctrinal issues I agree with. She said that belief is not based on emotion, but she warned her listeners not to let people talk you out of faith being an emotional experience. Since this is a gripe that I have had with our sometimes too logical faith presentations, she had my attention.

She continued by saying that faith is about belief, about emotion, and about imagination. As she said that, God's Spirit whispered in my ear: "that's true."

What did she mean by faith being about imagination? She went on to explain using a peculiar feature of the temple. Near the altar where the priests burn sacrifices, within the Court of Priests and in front of the entrance to a very important building, there is a place of cleansing that is usually called a laver. At the earthly temple, it is filled with water and each shift of priests ceremonially cleanses with that water.

The laver is made of bronze...not gold...not silver...bronze. It is very large and the only way that it can be used to fulfill its purpose is if it is refilled daily. So the first priest to come on duty for the day...the one that cleans the ashes off of the altar...also fills the laver.

Beth pointed out that in heaven there is a similar structure. In fact, if you research the Hebrew word that is used to refer to the laver, you get a hint of the heavenly analog--the container is called the molten sea.

What is the sea in heaven that I'm referring to?

^{Rev 4:6 (NIV)}Also before the throne there was what looked like a sea of glass, clear as crystal.

So what, you might be wondering. Let me give you the verse Beth offered to explain how the two "seas" are related:

^{Micah 7:19 (NIV)} You will again have compassion on us;
you will tread our sins underfoot
and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea.

Beth went on to point out that the picture from the temple is only a shadow of the reality in heaven. Essentially, God gives us very small glimpses through "a glass darkly" of what that future reality is like.

The rest of these things hoped for and these things unseen he leaves...through faith...to our imagination. Given the meticulous nature of the priests keeping the temple grounds, faithfully following the rituals that God gave them, can't you imagine how much greater heaven will be?

Hold onto that thought. We'll explore the concept of faith and imagination more in the upcoming weeks. I am convinced it is the key to understanding God.

P.S. I thank God for the flat tire.

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Getting together with friends

Jennifer and I had the opportunity to share an evening with some old friends of mine. David was a good friend when I attended 9th grade at Joint Embassy School (now Jakarta International School). Tina and I shared a class at JES, but we became friends when we renewed that acquaintance in Dr. Guzman's Math 151H and 152H Calculus for Engineers classes at A&M.

Tina and her husband got together with our family last August at Siciliano's A Taste of Italy in Garland. I mention the restaurant specifically because it is a very distinctive experience and uniquely Garland. (I have mentioned that the Fox network show "King of the Hill" is based in Arlen, TX which is modeled after Garland haven't I??) We had fun sharing, renewing the acquaintance, and meeting each others families.

This time Tina's husband wasn't available and we decided to just have the adults meet as we included David and his wife Theresa. As we sat around the table and talked about where folks had lived and how we met spouses and such, it struck me how much my time overseas shaped who I am as a person. It was only 3.5 years out of my (now) 45. But the impact has been enormous.

I felt very comfortable with each of them. I could tell that my wife and David's wife felt a little outside of the conversation as neither ever lived outside of the US. But the cameraderie between Tina, David, and myself was shared, understood, and instantaneous.

It turns out that all three of us were in Indonesia for different reasons. Tina's dad had worked with the UN on resettlement programs in Indonesia. Java has been traditionally very crowded and the outlying islands are much less densely populated. So the UN attempted to help Indonesians move off of Java and onto other islands. The effort didn't go well, she said, and I am aware that it caused some real problems on Kalimantan as it exacerbated religious tensions between Christians and Muslims by redistributing the demographics there.

David's parents were there doing petroleum work and his dad managed one of the fields on Kalimantan. The year we came on furlough in 1976, his family moved to the petroleum field and David moved from JES to an international school in Penang, Malaysia (which was closer than JES.) David's parents later worked in Saudia Arabia during David's college years. Remarkably, David's first year was also at A&M!

The unexpected surprise of the evening was the arrival of the pastor from our church who, coincidentally, is also an Aggie. That caused us all to smile broadly as we joked about how coincidences--more and more--don't seem very coincidental.

As the evening progressed, I very much enjoyed the gentleness and sincerity of the conversation. It was both intimate and considerate. We were able to include both David's wife and Jennifer. We remembered other close friends. As I write this I feel very happy about taking the time to get together with them.

And I also compare that time to how I think heaven will be. I think that as Christians we put too little emphasis on how the people we know and love is what will make heaven comfortable and familiar. Yes, I want to see Jesus there! Yes, I long to be face-to-face with my Creator! But I also long for relationships untainted by sin and all of its distorting influences.

Last night I think I got a glimpse of that. Gentle people gathered around a table for fellowship together. No pretense. Lots of love. It was heavenly.

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Quick comment on Scripture4All.org

I have a link to Scripture4All.org because it has two very intriguing documents. One is an interlinear for Hebrew and another is an interlinear for Greek. What makes each intriguing is the philosophy of the two interlinears. They are based on translations done by A.E. Knoch in a style that he calls "concordant versions."

The theory Knoch uses is that the Hebrew and Greek become significantly more approachable for non-linguists if every single word is consistently related to the same English word. He calls each of these consistent transliterations a "STANDARD" and it typically is represented in the interlinear in all caps.

But here's the problem that readers of the Salt Mill need to be aware of: Knoch is a unitarian/universalist and he pretty much denies the deity of Jesus and the one-ness between Jesus and God. So the interlinears have some potentially misleading translation work in them.

Why not just remove the links from the site?

Because in my Hebrew class at Southwestern, I developed a very strong appreciation for VERY literal transliterations. These transliterations do not give you the whole sense of a sentence, but it gives you an almost mathematical precision as a starting point for translation.

We tended to take Hebrew passages and diagram them in Hebrew and then do word-for-word transliterations when attempting a translation. From the transliteration we worked towards a sense of how to express it in English and then cross-checked our work against various English translations.

The word-for-word transliteration brings out many interesting language differences for both Hebrew to English and Greek to English renderings. For example, Hebrew verbs carry the subject gender, the subject plurality, the tense, the intensity, and sometimes the object gender and plurality. The subject typically is represented in English as a personal pronoun with an appositive to clarify the pronoun and provide the antecedent for it.

A good example of this is Genesis 1:1 which might be transliterated like this:

"In-the-beginning he--Elohim--created the-heavens and the-earth."

The verb "he created" is a single Hebrew particle which is a three-consonant stem with pointings in some Hebrew renderings (the pronunciation and the part of speech is apparent to the experienced reader of Hebrew without pointings--of which I am not one.) Elohim is represented in the appositive position qualifying the subject 'he'.

In-the-beginning is a single particle but has the prefix Bet which is a preposition meaning "in". The word "Elohim" and the word "heavens" are constructed as plurals. But the verb "he created" is constructed as a singular and the word "earth" is also singular. I show the two occurrences of the definite article "the" as connected to "heavens" and "earth" because the Hebrew definite article is "He-a" and is connected to the Hebrew particle like the preposition is.

The connecting of the prepositions and definite articles and the conjugation of verb forms can make Hebrew rather dense to take apart. So it is helpful to use an interlinear to assist in seeing the parts of speech.

Another interesting feature of Hebrew is that some of the verb tenses convey intensity. For example, the hithpael tense is rendered like this "you shall surely die". All of that is from a single Hebrew particle with NO helping verb (shall) or adverb (surely). In addition, the verb carries a reflexive sense meaning that the subject is both the cause and the object.

This is why the discussion between the serpent and Eve is very intense. She tells the serpent that if she touches or eats the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil "shall surely die". The serpent responds "not to die, shall surely die."

God's phrasing focused on eating and not touching (of course), but God also used the more intense construction of the infinitive "to die" followed by the hithpael "you shall surely die." Eve repeats just the "you shall surely die", but the serpent uses the particle Lo (not) to claim the negative of the EXACT words that God used in instructing Adam.

The fact that the verb stem is repeated is a Hebrew technique that shows extremely strong intensity plus the use of the hithpael indicates absolute certainty (especially since spoken by God.) This leaves the reader with the cognitive dissonance between God absolutely claiming one thing and the serpent absolutely claiming the opposite. Thus we see the essence of the strong enmity between the serpent (Satan) and God. God says one thing. Satan claims the opposite. Only one can be true. The law of the excluded middle is presaged by exactly opposite claims very early in written history.

Anyway, while I might not have done the concept of direct transliteration justice, my examples hopefully demonstrate why--despite it's genesis--I would leave up the link to a transliteration done by someone that I theologically disagree with. Sometimes intellectual honesty causes us to borrow the work of the people that we disagree with in order to strengthen our own understanding.

But please be careful if you use these tools and please be extra careful with the resources at Scripture4All.org. Their theology is in some cases imposed on Scripture rather than based on Scripture. I still find much of the work they have there to be useful--as I've researched the Greek their, for instance, I'm starting to recognize the declension of various tenses and voices--but some of their choices, including the use of the word "eonian" to translate the Greek "aion", are fraught with destructive misunderstanding.

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