Two Legs And A Piece Of An Ear

The coyotes were thick that year. Paw prints around the chicken coop and their howls sounding just beyond the edges of the porch light were constant reminders that they were on the prowl, waiting for their next chance to kill. It was spring. With young pups in their dens, mamas were lean and hungry. Their normal reserve was wearing thin, and they were willing to take risks that ran contrary to their timid nature. We should have known it was only a matter of time before one of the cows would become vulnerable as they began dropping that year’s calves.

But the coyotes weren’t the only mamas lean and hungry. I was in my second year of seminary. Every week I spent nineteen hours on the road, to and from class. I juggled Greek and Hebrew vocabulary and grammar, the needs of my children, the obligations that came with living on the family farm, and the constant strain of simply trying to survive.

The first semester of grad school, I had tried working until my body rebelled. It seemed that I wasn’t super woman after all, and twenty hours of work combined with fifteen hours of class, homeschooling, that massive commute, and various other needs that had to be tended were more than I could take. Not that I would admit that. In my mind, failure just meant that I hadn’t tried hard enough, and I was livid when I was forced to “self-terminate” my job. Officially the paper work states it was due to lack of availability to work. The truth was I was terminated due to my lack of availability to the womanizing manager, thus beginning a downward spiral into student loan debt, but even then money was virtually nonexistent.

I could write a novel on the obstacles I had faced just trying to get by. My love life was a shambles. The church I attended underwent a major shift that led to me leaving, and not on good terms. I was living on cigarettes and coffee. Five hours of unbroken sleep was a luxury, and I was having to work double time to keep up with my classmates whose previous degrees had prepared them for the classes we now took. Even the most common terms tossed about by my profs were foreign to me, and I was looking up almost everything they said so I could understand the lectures – Reform Theology, Liberation Theology, documentary criticism, redaction, pericopes, types and shadows, all of it left me wondering if I really belonged here. My fellow students seemed to know I didn’t belong there and only a few were willing to be more than polite, and few weren’t even willing to do that.

Emotionally, mentally, and even in this place where one would expect to be fed spiritually, I was that the end of my rope. Don’t get me wrong. God provided in ways that defy explanation, but sometimes it is hard to see him at work when your world is crashing down around you.

“As a shepherd recuses from the mouth of the lion two legs or a piece of an ear, so shall the people of Israel who dwell in Samaria be rescued.” Amos 3:12

These words roused me from the open-eyed nap I had perfected for chapel, and I briefly tuned in to hear the rest of the speaker’s sermon. “Why in the world would anyone bother to save two legs and a piece of an ear?” I wondered, and then my sleep deprived mind turned grouchy. “You’d better hurry up,” I mentally told God, “or that’s going to be all that is left of me. And what good is that going to do you?”

That night after the kids were asleep, I sat on the front porch and dined on ramen noodles and steak sauce, and considered dropping out. What type of mother was I being to my children? How could I possibly get through this when I was constantly so lost on my assignments? Maybe I was never meant to fit in with all the people who had really been called to be in seminary, and I needed to come to grips with the fact that my pride had led me into an impossible situation. The coyotes screamed in the darkness, and on impulse I screamed back hoping to scare them away. Instead, they joined me filling the night with their song until it seemed as if everything dark and black hid hundreds of their kind. I laughed, wasn’t this how it always goes? Stand your ground only to learn that the enemy has you out numbered and surrounded?

The next day, one of the cows limped to the barn. That she had calved was obvious, but the baby was nowhere to be seen. I pulled on my boots and began searching the forty acres. In the far back corner, I found what the coyotes had left.

Two legs and a piece of an ear.

People claim that God doesn’t talk to us these days, but he spoke to on that one. I didn’t need words. It was spelled out in blood before me. Was my God any less loving or caring than me? Was he any less compassionate towards me than I was for this animal? And if I trudged through the heavy grass, to find what was hidden from me, would the God who saw everything miss my struggles? Here I was examining the aftermath of a vicious attack, but he swore to be there to reclaim what was his even from the mouth of the lion. Not to simply view the remains after the enemy had left.

In Exodus 22, we are told that if man gives livestock to another for safekeeping, and it is torn to bits that that the caretaker should gather the remains, and hand it over as proof that he was not a thief. As I walked away from the bloody bits of the calf wishing I could have done more and being confronted with the fact that I could not, I realized that while I had done all I could in the natural, I still had a job to do in the spiritual. I was not a thief. I had not neglected the gifts that had been given over to my care. My life may have been shredded by the teeth of an enemy who roams about like a lion seeking who he could devour, but I was still responsible to get those pieces back to the rightful owner. So that day, I gathered up the remains of my life and presented them to God.

I realized that in keeping those bits of my ravaged hopes and dreams, I was condemning myself as a thief. I was hanging onto what did not belong to me, and hiding the evidence of my own innocence in their demise. And I think this is where most of us miss a step. We see the death, and we see the gore, and so we walk away without completing the task set before us.

Some of us need to go back to the far corner of that field in our lives where our dreams died, we need to pick up the scattered pieces, and return them to the One who gave us that dream. They belong to him, not us, and we need to finish what we started. Walking away, leaving the remains on the ground, shouldn’t be an option. For as we march to God’s throne to offer up even these fragments, we are walking in defiance of our enemy, and bearing witness to the world of our God’s goodness and mercy. We are rejecting the lies of the one who devours, proclaiming that he does not have the final word, he does not get to define our reality, and we will not be branded a thief based on his actions. We are affirming that God sees through it all, he knows who bears the blame, and that we can trust him in our brokenness.

So get to walking, look for those pieces. Stop bearing the guilt that belongs to the one who destroys. Don’t entertain the shame for the deeds of the one who kills. Move in faith towards the King who surrounds us with love, and who never saw death – even the death of dreams – as final. Then stand back and watch what he can do with two legs and a piece of an ear.

So What If You Were Not Called To Seminary?

A few posts back, I shared with you that many of our seminaries are cutting their language requirements in many of their degree plans and why they have chosen to do so. I also briefly addressed why the knowledge of these languages is important to understanding our faith.

As I said at the end of that post, not everyone is called to spend their lives dissecting these languages. We all have different gifts, aptitudes, and callings that should be honored. For instance, I cannot begin to convey how grateful I am for those of you who staff church nurseries, because if it were left to me…well, let’s just say it isn’t my calling nor do I have the aptitude for it. We need everyone to play their part to have a functioning body, and a good elbow makes a horrible foot. (Trying to envision that, aren’t you?)

However, just because you haven’t been called to study dusty old texts doesn’t mean you can’t help keep them alive. Here is a practical list of things you can do to encourage and support those who have been called. Trust me, we need it!

1. The obvious – money. I hate to start out sounding crass, but this is just a reality. To learn this stuff you almost have to go to a private school, and private schools are expensive. Most students end up with tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of student loan debt, and to complicate things further, with the amount of time required for study even a part time job isn’t really an option. And if you have a family, forget it.

And I know what I am talking about on this one, I managed a semester and half of juggling work, school, and family before my body rebelled and I wound up in the ER. In the end, I lost my job because I was unavailable to work the required hours, and I was forced to take out more loans.

So consider sponsoring a seminary student, you have no idea what the price of a tank of gas could do for them. Or a roll of quarters, so they don’t have stare wistfully at the vending machine or they can experience the luxury of a turnpike! (For me, getting to take the turnpike meant thirty more minutes of sleep! Priceless!)

2. Speaking of sleep – if they have kids, babysitting so they can study or sleep is a blessing beyond compare. So often people think that if you aren’t in class then you must be lounging around at home, but the truth is you are *supposed* to study three hours for everyone hour in class. Of course, no one actually does this, but when you are wrestling with Greek verbs you are probably doing more so it evens out.

And if you have kids, when do you study? If you guessed when they are sleeping, you win. Prime study time for me was 9 pm to 3 am, and then it was up at 5 to be on the road by 5:30. God grants sleep to those he loves (Psalms 127:2), so share some of his love.

My mom says she deserves part of my degree as she watched my kids so often, but in reality if she hadn’t I would have never have made it through.

3. Food. Please notice I did not say ingredients. Things ready to eat, no prep, and preferably eaten with one hand so you can hold a book with the other. Carrot sticks, pre-cut broccoli and cauliflower, or prepackaged salads, and of course, chocolate!

Gift cards to restaurants close to their school are also a great choice, or stuff they can toss in a lunch bag and eat in the car like granola bars and trail mix.

4. And travel mugs? Yes, please! They may have a couple, but odds are they are in the car with yesterday’s cold coffee. They can always use another one.

5. Haircuts and manicures are another way you might be able to use your gift to help a seminary student. As I said money is tight, but everyone there is trying to make a good impression. Recruiters are constantly roaming the halls, and who knows which one of these people might wind up being your boss? But guess what the last thing a serious student is going to spend money on?

And work them in an appointment on Sunday afternoon, or 9 o’clock at night – they will love you forever.

6. Mow their yard. Seriously. I eventually just gave up on mine. My uncle wound up baling it.

7. A massage! I know this sounds decadent, but after hours slumped over a computer, the ache begins to wear at you. And a hand massage – dear, sweet, baby Jesus, I will still take one and I am not in seminary. Hands throb after hours of typing.

8. If you do any type of medical/dental/optical services, donating those to a student can make a huge difference in their lives. I don’t remember how many students I saw with throbbing teeth they didn’t have the money to fix, in need of new glasses, or walking around with sinus infections they couldn’t shake and with no money to get any of it taken care of.

9. If you want to be specific in meeting a financial need, commit to buying books for one or more of their classes. However, I should warn you a lot of these books can cost over $100 apiece and you may need three or more for a single class.

Don't have that much to give? A ream of paper, a pack of post-it notes, highlighters, notebooks, or their favorite pens says you care and is a major blessing! And we always need another printer cartridge.

Want to go big? A church collection for a laptop or printer can be the difference between staying in school or not.

10. Offer to type up papers for them. I always wrote mine long hand first and then typed them. A friend of mine typed up many of my papers for me during my years of college. I never would have graduated without her.

11. Good at English? A writer can always use another set of eyes, offer to proof read their work. You get a chance to learn something new, and you might save their grade.

12. Ask us to share what we are learning/have learned. Remind us of why we are doing this, and give us a taste of what it is like to share all this amazing stuff with someone new. It is easy to get discouraged, and a lot students drop out when faced with how hard it really is. There are days when you know that you are attempting the impossible, but then someone comes along, asks  about something you just learned, and you realize that you love it too much to give up. And that's how we get through it, because looking back, you will wonder how many miracles God did just so you could survive.

"Unless You Read Hebrew and Greek"

“There are so many translations of the Bible you really can’t know what it says unless you read Hebrew and Greek.”

And there it was, the conversational hand grenade designed to shut down any further dicussion. I don’t know how many times I had been blasted with it, but I was getting tired of picking shrapnel out of my skin. So I did the obvious, I went to seminary and I learned Hebrew and Greek.

Going to seminary was not the smart decision. The hours were long, and I was dividing my time between classes, work, two kids, and a 19 hour a week commute. Sleep was something I got to do in my car between classes, food was whatever the vending machine offered, and I got really good at studying vocabulary flash cards as I sped down the highway at 65 mph. As if the personal sacrifice was not enough, I was (and am) getting to pay for the privilege to the tune of over $100,000 dollars in student loan debt. Additionally, I got to do it all without one single hint of a clue as to what I was going to do with my degree once I finished.

Unlike most seminary students, I did not go with any hopes or intentions of pastoring a church. I never felt that calling, and frankly, I am glad as I have seen so many of my former classmates grow embittered when they were unable to find work in the field they studied so hard to enter. I had one goal – learn the Biblical languages.

Most churches today are not looking for full time pastors, and that is especially true in places like rural Oklahoma. Churches want someone who preach a sermon that will attract new members without offending the old ones. They want someone they can call at two in the morning because grandma is in the hospital, do the janitorial work, and building maintenance while holding down a full time job that actually pays their bills. In the meantime churches throw mere pittance to their bi-vocational pastors so they feel they have the right to grumble about how lazy their pastor is when the men’s toilets are leaking. And amazingly enough, so many of the men and women behind the pulpit still manage to actually love the people who put all these unrealistic demands on another human being. (Starting to see why I am glad I have never felt called to a *real* ministry position?)

The idea that ministers get a fancy degree so that they can live a life of luxury is one of the silliest myths ever foisted on the American public. Most of the men and women I know serving our body are working hard to provide for a family, spiritual and biological, while attempting to pay back all the student loans they took out so that they could teach with knowledge and integrity.

And I would be willing to wager that 98% of those glitzy preachers you see on TV have never darkened the doors of a seminary other than as a guest speaker. One of the sad truths of our day is people are more than willing to throw money at anyone who is willing to tickle their ears with unfounded promises passed off as Biblical. Charisma and blindingly white teeth gets you far more followers today than solid teaching. Boys and girls, that should scare and sadden you because that type of pseudo-Christianity always crumbles under the burdens of real life and that is all the world is going to remember about these charlatans when their day of reckoning comes – not that these men and women taught a false gospel, but that gospel is false.

Unfortunately, I am not the only one who knows that American church looking for slick packaging. The leaders of the second biggest money making Christian enterprise do too. Seminaries know that many of their perspective students want one thing, a degree that legitimizes their place behind a pulpit. They, like their students, know that hanging a diploma on one’s wall is all the validation most congregations will look for. So the answer? Cut the hard programs. Cut the subjects that require the most dedication and time to master. Offer classes that teach their students how to run the business of church, marketing courses, and retain just enough Bible classes to still warrant the title of Christian. Those are degrees that people will pay for, and that is what will allow seminaries to keep the doors open.

On the surface, it seems like a good plan. Seminaries are struggling to stay alive, and survival is only going to become more difficult when religious institutions lose their tax exempt status. By offering easier course material, they can attract more students. Cutting the hours required for a degree makes seminary an option for those unwilling or unable to devote years and thousands of dollars in getting an education. Lightening the educational load would save future pastors thousands of dollars and make entering the ministry less cumbersome, at least in the financial realm. Pastors might actually be able to make it on a pastor's salary if they didn't have to pay back a mountain of student loans, and going to school while pastoring a church might be an option if it didn't take up so much time. In some ways, it seems like dumbing down the curriculum is the lesser of two evils – people still get a Biblical education even if it is of a lesser quality than the education of previous generations and it beats shutting down all together. 

However, this is short sighted at best and fraudulent at worst. We need men and women who are willing to commit to doing whatever it takes to learn more about this amazing revelation of God we call the Bible. We need people who are willing to wrestle through the intricacies of Greek and try to pin down the abstractions of Hebrew. We need people who will stand against those who pervert God’s word for personal gain, and we need people who know a lie when they hear it because they have been so immersed in the text that any twisted message sends shivers down their spines like cat claws on a chalk board. But most of all, we need people who love the Word and want to share that love the Word with the world.

Sadly, by cutting the language requirements and offerings in seminary we deny these men and women the chance to learn and, in turn, teach about their passion. And this is not merely the problem of perspective students, this is problem that will ripple throughout the church as leaders are allowed to lead in ignorance while professing to have knowledge, congregations will not have access to the informed teaching. Perversion of Scripture will go unchecked, and there will be no one to hold the leaders of tomorrow’s church accountable for their handling of the Word. Christianity will simply continue its downward slide into pop psychology and arm chair philosophy, as we love only those whose teachings bring them pleasure.

And what happens one day, in the very near future, when someone spouts off, “Unless you know the Hebrew and Greek you have no idea what the Bible really says”? Will we just keep picking shrapnel out of our skin? Or will we have someone in our midst who can stand up and say, “I do. I know those languages, and I can testify to the integrity of God's Word”? 

*Not everyone is called to devote their lives to this type of study, but you can help those who are. I will be sharing some ideas in an upcoming post on how you can be a part of persevering our heritage of faith.

Photo from Photopin

"I Wish I Knew As Much About The Bible As You Do"

I have to admit that I am always flattered when people tell me that they wished they knew as much about the Bible as I do. After all, I am human, and I have an ego like everyone else. Not to mention, I worked hard to accumulate the bit of knowledge that I have collected along the way. It is nice to be recognized. However, once the initial rush wears off there is always a twinge of disappointment as I am forced to ask the question – why don’t more people know their Bible better?

Look, I know that not everyone is called to get an advanced degree in Biblical studies or languages, nor do I think it is necessary. Time, money, family obligations, and aptitude do not always allow us to pursue a formal education in this area, and it is certainly not a field that lends itself to the accumulation of wealth, at least not the monetary type. And although I teach in the Christian Ministries department of a local college, I would be the last person to encourage anyone to go to college unless they were entering a field that required academic credentials.

However, that is no reason why we should remain ignorant about our faith. Our generation has the greatest access to knowledge ever known to humanity, and it is all at our fingertips. Unfortunately, this massive influx of information often proves to be overwhelming instead of useful, leaving people wondering where to start, what to read, and who to trust. Instead of trying to filter through the noise most people give up and “leave it to the professionals” or “those of you with degrees” which leaves us with two problems: 1. Christians who are ignorant about the thing they claim to hold most precious, and 2. A very small pool of people to do the heavy lifting.

Not wanting to simply complain about a problem without offering some solutions, I thought I would make a few simple suggestions that everyone can enact to improve their education without stepping foot into classroom. Will these make you a Bible wiz? No, but they are a great place to start without any fear of drowning.

1. Buy a copy of an illustrated Bible for kids. The basic stories are there, and it has pictures! The language is simple and easy to comprehend. Knowing the foundational stories of our faith is the first key to unlocking the deeper truths in the Biblical texts.

2. Get a copy of the Bible that is reliable and is easy to read. I prefer the English Standard Version (ESV), but the NIV is also a good translation.

3. After you have read the kids version, look up that story in your Bible and see what the differences are. What did they leave out? Was there any major changes? Which details in the Bible stand out to you?

4. Start using a dictionary. If a word is new or puzzling, or even if you have the slightest doubt about its meaning, stop and look it up. Knowing the proper definition will help you understand the text more fully.

5. Make the right friends. Really, this is an important step. Find someone you can trust who has one of those fancy degrees and talk to us about what you are reading. Ask us the questions that arose in your study. Ask us for recommendations for further reading. Most of us love to share what we know and are thrilled when you do this! We want you learn more about the Bible and that is probably why we got a degree in the first place – to help others, so help us do our jobs.

6. Learn how to use a Bible commentary. For some people this seems like a huge obstacle, but it is actually quite simple. If you can find a verse in the Bible, you can look up information in a commentary. And you don’t have to buy a whole set of commentaries (which can get real expensive real quick). Just do what I did, if you are studying the Psalms just by a commentary over the Psalms. As your studies progress, your collection will grow.

7. Learn how to use a Strong’s Concordance. It is available online so you don’t even have to buy this one. The beauty of the Strong’s is that you can find all the places in the Bible where specific words are used and you can begin to see how the Bible is woven together in the most fascinating ways.

Take the word “thorn” for an example. If you look it up, you will find where thorns play an interesting part in the Sacrifice of Isaac, the Burning Bush, and the Crucifixion.

8. Don’t be afraid to ask questions of the Bible. It is when I ask questions that I am led to new and interesting discoveries about this book that affirm why I love to dig through its pages and why its author is worthy of praise.

To build on our example of thorns: Why is God including this detail in all these passages? Is this a deliberate link between these stories? How do the stories fit together? Do I understand one passage better after reading the others?

9. Practice, practice, practice. Studying the Bible, even just reading in general is a skill, and every skill becomes better when we practice. Just because it is difficult in the beginning does not mean that you are stupid or incapable of understanding, it just means you need more practice. God never decreed that we had to understand his word the very first time or even the tenth time we read it. He just told us that his word is a delight, and sometimes we have to work to discover how delightful it really is. And that is okay! Give yourself permission not to know it all, because no one does.

10. Make it a practice to look up any passages you hear from the pulpit, podcast, or television show. Read any verses cited and read the passage it was found in. Double check Bible teachers and make sure that we are giving you the whole story, not just the bits that might promote our agenda.

Many of my friends who are the most knowledgeable about the Bible are not people with seminary degrees.  They are simply people who wanted to know more, and who were willing to use the resources they had at hand to learn more about the Bible. There is no reason you cannot do the same thing, and anyone who tries to tell you that you aren’t smart enough to understand God’s word to you is lying and that includes that voice of self-doubt in your head. So don’t buy it, and if you get stuck, ask for some help. That’s what why I am here and that is what I do, and if I don’t know the answer, I will tell you but maybe we can look for them together.

Well, that’s a starting point. What suggestions do you have for learning more about the Bible? Leave them in the comments below!