This is the only possible solution to the problem of failure in self-knowledge, the problem of the locked room of delusion and self-deception: to be known by The Other, to invite and open oneself to the knowledge that only The Other has, but which The Other has offered to share.
Category Archives: Bible study
Fearing and not fearing (Psalm 56)
Fear is a fearful thing. It can cause blindness. It can undermine our rationality. It can make us shoot our wife or betray our country. It can be both a symptom and a cause of unfaithfulness to our God.
Follow the bulls: part 1, the banishment of the bulls (Psalm 50)
Psalm 50 is a psalm of judgment. When God’s people fall in with thieves and adulterers, God rejects their sacrifices.
My mouth filled with blessing: Psalm 34 as rule of life
What would it mean to take the first three verses of Psalm 34 as an individual and communal rule of life?
Jesus, the Lordists, and the flash flood (Luke 6:46–49)
We have lived in the beautiful foundationless house, and we have seen the flash flood. Now what?
The simplest psalm (Psalm 117)
St. Athanasius said that the Psalter contains in itself a perfect summary of every other part of the Bible. I think we could also say: Psalm 117—the shortest and simplest of the Psalms—sums up the entirety of the Psalter, and so in some sense the entirety of the Bible.
Jesus will always level with us (Luke 6)
In Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount, Jesus speaks to his followers, but in Luke’s Sermon on the Plain Jesus speaks to everyone—plainly.
Reading Psalm 102 on Inauguration Day
We are given another opportunity to love our neighbor as ourselves, which must in the final analysis from a godly, biblical perspective be the sole aim and justification for participating in politics.
Choosing leaders (Luke 6:12–16)
Luke, like Matthew and Mark, tells of Jesus’s selecting twelve of his disciples for a special roles in service-leadership. John doesn’t bother with the appointment of this dozen. (See Matthew 10:1–4; Mark 3:13–19.) Luke tells it a little differently than Matthew and Mark. Like Mark, he tells us that Jesus went up a mountain toContinue reading “Choosing leaders (Luke 6:12–16)”
Jesus and the Make Israel Holy Again movement
We keep rereading scripture (and other classic texts, but I’m especially interested in scripture) because they strike us differently as our own circumstances change. This morning Luke 6:6–11, which in some seasons has just been for me a Standard Bible Story, smacked me. There was a startling, then painful, recognition, not as in “Oh, IContinue reading “Jesus and the Make Israel Holy Again movement”
Verba Sparsa 