We are participating in our weekly prayer time at 5pm EST. Check out the prayer request forum for some prayer topics, but feel free to lift up your own.

You may also fast. There's no obligation or guidelines to how you should do it, or if you should do it at all. Just fast as the Lord leads and speaks to your convictions.

These links have been added the library:

AI's Minion and Other Stories

The Shepherd's Household and Other Stories

Huzzah!

As before, if anyone buys these, please send photos of what they look like if you can!

There is one fundamental and radical difference between the Ancient Near East and the Greco-Roman culture: The former asserted that a separate spirit realm existed, whereas the latter asserted that this world is all there is. If you can get it through your head that there is an eternal realm separate and distinct from this world, then there are certain obvious logical consequences of that belief. Paul struggled against the Corinthian mental habits of their old pagan assumptions.

This passage begins with Paul restating an outline of the gospel message. This is the message that gives any church it's whole identity. The format of the message is rather like some of the Greek mythology, a story of some key figure who experienced and/or accomplished certain things. In this case, we have Christ who died as the sacrifice for the sins of humanity. It was prophesied long before in the Hebrew Scriptures. His body was buried and on the third day He rose again, also predicted in those same Scriptures. He appeared to Peter, and then the rest of the Twelve. Later, He appeared alive to a huge crowd of some 500 followers, most of whom were still living. The implication is that you could at that moment go back and interview them as to what they witnessed personally.

Next, Jesus appeared to His brother James, and some others who had become apostles. Lastly, as if Paul had been born at the wrong time, Jesus also appeared to him after He ascended. Jesus is still alive! Paul goes on to testify of his unworthiness, and how he had to play catch up by working harder than everyone else who knew Jesus in the flesh. But this gospel message became the standard, the core of what all the other apostles preached. Would they prefer to ignore Paul? Fine, any other Christian apostle would teach the same thing. This story was still being shared as factual, historical events, wherever one might find His followers.

So, how is it that some of the church members in Corinth still insisted that humans cannot rise from the dead? Note: Because the Greek language lacks actual words for the whole concept, Paul uses common Greek terms figuratively. The word for "resurrection" actually means to rise from sitting or lying down. But he's consistent, because he refers to believers who die as "asleep", instead of using the Greek term associated with passing into the mythical Underworld. However, he's quite blunt in saying that if dead bodies do not rise, then Christ is not risen and the whole gospel message is a lie.

There is no reason to continue as a church, and Paul can just go home and retire to an easy life.

But no, Christ is alive. He is the first fruit from the harvest of souls that have merely fallen asleep. Then Paul launches into symbolism playing the image of Adam off against Christ. Adam symbolizes our human fleshly existence, and Christ symbolizes our eternal spiritual destiny. Christ is then compared to an Ancient Near Eastern royal heir who went out to conquer and pacify the rebels in His Father's realm, and will then return triumphant with the tokens of their allegiance or destruction.

Don't miss the point here: This is a somewhat veiled reference to the rebellious angelic beings who have been leading mankind astray since the expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Once Jesus has humbled these beings through His army of followers, He will signal to His Father the completion of All Things. This, too, was prophesied, as Paul quotes Psalm 8.

This faithful Son will then surrender all things at His Father's feet, presenting to the Father a fully united realm under His authority. The last rebel to be brought to heel will be death itself. That is, the mere fact of human mortality will be ended. We will all be revealed in our true eternal natures.

Paul reminds the Corinthians of a ritual practice they had been observing -- "baptism for the dead". It shouldn't be a mystery. It's another element of the Old Testament that belongs in the New. Even today, Jews recognize the sacred duty to their dead kin in preparing their bodies for burial. Of course, this makes one ritually impure, requiring a ritual washing (Hebrew mikvah, Greek baptizo) in order to restore that purity. It's a very mystical thing in Judaism even now.

It was the same for early Christians. We still love them even if they are dead. The original doctrine in the Old Testament was that the body would be reused in the Resurrection. Christ didn't leave His body in the grave, nor will you and I. It will be reconstituted regardless of what happens to the remains. If we honor a fellow believer who died by handling their remains with respect for a body they'll need again, we should be willing to take a bath before coming back to church. Without a hope of resurrection, there's no point to such honor, nor ritual bathing. We could just toss the bodies out with the garbage and be done with it.

Paul then goes on to mention how he is at risk of being killed every day. If there is no resurrection, why bother? That fracas at Ephesus, where Paul felt like a gladiator facing wild beasts? He would reap none of the glory, nor any purse for his survivors. What would be the point if there was not at least some hope of eternal life?

Paul quotes a very popular philosophy in suggesting they all should just eat, drink and be merry, because they could die at any moment and that would be the end of it. This was apparently a big thing in Corinth. Skipping across a lot of thoughts that should be obvious in this context, Paul quotes a famous Greek poet (Menander) and warns that hanging out with that kind of people would destroy any hope for moral goodness in this life.

Too many members of the Corinthian church were dragging around their old philosophical assumptions, as if God had never touched their lives. They didn't seem to know Jehovah at all. It was not a utilitarian question of coming to church to feel good about yourself. If that's all you got from it, stay away. We are sacrificing this life, which is worth less than nothing, in favor of an eternal existence beyond words on the other side of the grave.

We are participating in our weekly prayer time at 5pm EST. Check out the prayer request forum for some prayer topics, but feel free to lift up your own.

You may also fast. There's no obligation or guidelines to how you should do it, or if you should do it at all. Just fast as the Lord leads and speaks to your convictions.

Let's remind ourselves once more that the earliest churches were all patterned on Jewish synagogues. That is, churches were simply Christian synagogues. The men sat down front and could interact with the speaker. Women sat in the back half of the audience, typically with the children. The church at Corinth was not small; it could not be an informal meeting as you might have with only a couple dozen present. Thus, the Corinthian church needed to understand what "formal" should look like in a Christian synagogue. Some of the guidance in this chapter reflects the needs of a formal meeting.

The anthropology of the Ancient Near East was uncommon in Asia Minor and Europe. The former believed that our spirits were trapped in fleshly bodies, whereas the latter typically denied the existence of eternal spirits. There's no doubt Paul had correctly taught them, but they still had mental reflexes toward the old pagan assumptions. The teaching in this chapter reemphasizes the Hebrew assumptions; what he writes here makes no sense otherwise.

You can learn self-sacrificing love, so pursue it consciously, but spiritual gifts are rooted outside the conscious awareness. The only thing you can learn is to rein in the flesh and compel it to submit to the process. The gift of prophecy requires the cooperation of the conscious mind, but it is aimed outside the mind. Praying in tongues bypasses the conscious mind, but stays inside yourself. You can turn it off, but you cannot inspect the contents at all. The Corinthians were all excited about this ecstatic utterance thing that gave such an emotional boost, but did no one else any good, for the most part. There's nothing wrong with praying in tongues, but prophets are much more useful to the rest of the church body.

Paul uses a parable of musical instruments to represent the tongue. If you don't know how to play one, all you make is noise. There is no skill in esoteric tongues. But a skillful player can make instruments speak, as it were. The same tongue in prophecy is a blessing to everyone. If tongues is all you have when you come to the church meeting, then pray that you or someone else can interpret so everyone gets to share the gift.

Nor is this an either/or kind of thing. Paul prayed and sang in tongues outside of his conscious control, and then prayed and sang with his conscious will. In the end, it's better to say just a few words of inspired prophecy than to natter all night in tongues. We keep coming back to the question of what the purpose of gathering at church meetings is. It's a family time together. Do we let the kids hog all the attention, yacking interminably about all the things special to them? No, we need some time for adults who will seek to build up each other.

Paul quotes from Isaiah 28. In that passage, the prophet warned the nation's leaders that they didn't somehow graduate from the Covenant. Any prophets who called for the nation to return were mocked as being childish. God said, "Since they won't hear my Word, would they prefer to hear invaders speaking a language they don't know at all?" How does that apply here?

The nation's leaders did not believe. The invading forces speaking in a foreign language were a sign, a warning from God for them. That's how God operates. Christians speaking in languages they could not have possibly learned would be impressive to unbelievers, but it should have been rather common in the church. Do that outside of the church meetings. Speaking a word of prophecy was God's love letter to those inclined to listen; it was not a gift for strangers' consumption. When the church gathers, don't act like excited children showing off new toys. Act like mature adults savoring the voice of God that they can understand.

When a seeker comes to the church meeting, they don't need a bunch of ecstatic demonstrations. They'll think you are on drugs. But if everyone testifies of God's Word, there is a much better chance they will hear something that touches them, because they'll understand the words. If the Lord is going to convict them, He'll do it through a message that hits them between the eyes to get to their hearts.

So, in the formal setting of the large Corinthian church, keep the demonstration of tongues to a minimum, and even then, only with an interpretation so everyone is blessed. Otherwise, keep your tongue in your mouth. If some would like to test their gifts of prophecy, keep it few, and let the mature evaluate. Don't let someone drone on and on. If someone is speaking a word and someone else gets a sudden inspiration, let the first one wrap it up and the new word can be shared.

Whatever they do, Corinth must conform to the standards. Women do not speak up in large church gatherings. It's not that they cannot share their gifts, but that they cannot jump up and ask questions during the teaching sessions. They can ask their male covering when they get home. Women cannot teach men, and in synagogue traditions, questions were often a means to making a teaching point. This restriction is explained elsewhere; it's from God, not from sentimental customs dreamed up by mere men.

Apparently the Corinthians balked at this. They kept forgetting they were being welcomed into a blessing that belonged first to the Hebrew people and was rooted in the ancient eastern world where God first revealed Himself. God chose that context and affirmed certain aspects of it as consistent with His divine nature. The gospel did not originate in Corinth with Corinthian customs. People who considered themselves spiritually mature should be the first to uphold this standard.

To sum up, Paul said they should pray for gifts of prophecy, yet not forbid anyone speaking in tongues at church. Just keep the meeting in good order.

We are participating in our weekly prayer time at 5pm EST. Check out the prayer request forum for some prayer topics, but feel free to lift up your own.

You may also fast. There's no obligation or guidelines to how you should do it, or if you should do it at all. Just fast as the Lord leads and speaks to your convictions.

One thing Paul never had to say to the church at Corinth was that they were free from the Law. This was probably the one teaching they understood best. Unfortunately, it became the excuse for an awful lot of extreme behavior. In the chapters leading up to this, he had been hammering them for taking their liberties too far. He wanted them to learn self-constraint for the sake of our witness. Thus, he gives them a motive they cannot ignore: sacrificial compassion. In this context, that's the meaning of the Greek word agape.

It should be obvious that the Corinthians got hung up on speaking in tongues, much as Charismatics do today. Thus, Paul starts off mentioning that gift, and notes that without sacrificial compassion, it's just noise. Also similar to our day, they made much of prophecy and words of wisdom and knowledge, and he even throws in miracles. Those gifts without compassion make you useless to the Kingdom of Heaven. Even people who really do understand that our lives in this world are not worth much can miss the point. Suffering and sacrifice itself is not a virtue; it has to come from compassion.

How do we recognize love? It puts up with a lot of crap, tries to be useful, and does not covet what God gives others. Love doesn't talk about itself or inflate its social reputation. It is not rude or defensive, and is not easily offended or resentful. It does not snicker at the misfortune of others but celebrates when someone finally figures things out. Compassion will do what it takes, covers the costs, trusts God to work through circumstances, and never quits.

Compassion outlasts human life. All those gifts of the Spirit will end with this world. The best we can hope for in this life is always lagging behind the potential. We will always struggle and come up short, but somewhere out there is a fully developed spiritual condition that we shoot for. It's as if we are children; there's only so much we can even understand, much less do. When the day of redemption comes, the Lord will make us spiritual adults. Or maybe it's like seeing God only through a mirror, looking around a corner. Someday, we will see Him face to face.

This life cannot measure up, nor can we. The whole point is to know the Lord as clearly as He surely knows us. In this life we have been granted faith, confidence and compassion to carry us through to The End. The most powerful gift is that loving self-sacrifice that nailed Christ to the Cross.

Brothers and Sisters: Over the past week or so, an idea has grown in my mind and heart. Instead of just riding around the state and bikepacking, do you suppose I could make it a project of visiting with people and interviewing them about their faith, so I could write it up on a blog?

Here’s the theme: “When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith?” I plan to answer that in the affirmative.

I’m thinking I can start contacting churches in a target small town, something about a full day’s ride somewhere, and asking them to identify someone who would testify of their individual faith, such that it carried them through some difficulty. Maybe more than one person. Then, hopefully, instead of having to lug around camping gear, I could persuade them to put me up overnight. That way I could travel light, and ride in colder weather than I might otherwise want to handle.

As you might expect, the toughest part of this would be the first one. At that point, I won’t have anything I can point to, so whomever I contact via a “cold call” (email, actually) would have to be receptive to the idea. Once I’ve got a few stories up, it would be easier to point to an established body of work to lend credibility to my subsequent requests.

I would avoid passing the hat, of course, and just accept whatever they might offer. Naturally, there would be no hint of challenging their church doctrine, just some talk about faith itself.

I’ve had a rather strong urging about trusting the Lord to work through His children to provide for my needs, as happened on my one previous attempt at bikepacking several years ago. Someone offered to let me sit in their restaurant until sunrise with a cup of hot herbal tea. The Lord has made that single moment from the whole trip rather prominent in my memory.

It would mean training a good bit before trying such a trip again. I’ve already started on that. Naturally, I’ll be taking pictures along the way of whatever interesting things I see. But instead of focusing on camping spots, I would select targets based on simply a day’s ride in distance, whatever direction I go. If this takes off, I’ll bundle up longer trips of multiple days.

Pray with me. I’d really love to interview random Christians about their faith and convictions. I think it would be a real blessing to write those stories and publish them. I’m thinking I’ll start another Substack blog just for this project; it would be more accessible to a wider audience.

We are participating in our weekly prayer time at 5pm EST. Check out the prayer request forum for some prayer topics, but feel free to lift up your own.

You may also fast. There's no obligation or guidelines to how you should do it, or if you should do it at all. Just fast as the Lord leads and speaks to your convictions.

Forrealone let us know the forum here was down for a bit. I don't know when it happened, but sometime within this morning up until noontime, maybe. One of the databases was damaged, which sounds insidious, but it does happen from time to time. The fix isn't difficult. I am surprised nothing like that happens more often.

Anyways, PM me here, or email jay@jaydinitto.com if you see something weird.