Hi everyone. And welcome to 40 minutes of faith. My name is Barbara Cox and I host this weekly podcast to explore God's word and our relationship with God.
Today I will be sharing details of the third semester seminary classes that are being wrapped up next week for the fall of 2020. The first class I'd like to tell you about today is Isaiah. You may have heard of the book of Isaiah in the Bible. It's substantial. And at about the halfway point of your Bible, if you'd like to take a look, I'm going to read a passage in Isaiah chapter 57, from the message version, starting at verse 15:
A Message from the high and towering God,
who lives in Eternity,
whose name is Holy:
“I live in the high and holy places,
but also with the low-spirited, the spirit-crushed,
And what I do is put new spirit in them,
get them up and on their feet again.
For I’m not going to haul people into court endlessly,
I’m not going to be angry forever.
Otherwise, people would lose heart.
These souls I created would tire out and give up.
I was angry, good and angry, because of Israel’s sins.
I struck him hard and turned away in anger,
while he kept at his stubborn, willful ways.
When I looked again and saw what he was doing,
I decided to heal him, lead him, and comfort him,
creating a new language of praise for the mourners.
Peace to the far-off, peace to the near-at-hand,” says God—
“and yes, I will heal them.
I learned many things about prophets in this class, as well as in another class that I took last year, Kings used to have prophets who would advise them sometimes giving warnings that were heeded or instructions that were ignored.
The prophets spoke, not only to the Kings, but also to the people about God's will and desire for the people. There are words of warning and admonition and also words of love and care. There's a few points that I'm eager to share with you today. And one of them is that the Bible text has been used, unfortunately, sometimes for humans to be awful to each other.
And so, for example, in this passage, the word Israel is being used, but this is not to say that we should be angry at the nation of Israel that exists today. And I'm not saying that any of you are feeling this, but just to give an example of there have been Bible passages that have been used to persecute people or to judge people.
So the context of this passage, as I understand it is that it's the nation. The people are disobeying God, and we still do that today. And at the same time, I'll be talking in another class, coming up about the message of reconciliation and love and grace and salvation. So not only in the book of Isaiah, but also in other prophets and other books of the Bible, you will hear and read messages of judgment, and then messages of forgiveness and grace and peace. I also got for myself this semester- I have an assortment of Bibles, you know that I like The Message. I have the new revised standard version, which is the official school translation and probably several other translations on the shelf. And I now have the inclusive Bible and one example that I wanted to just bring up is that there are gender neutral ways of saying things that I had never really thought of before, because for example here, what I just read, it says, I decided to heal him, lead him and comfort him and I'm not a him. I don't identify as a him and the inclusive Bible that I have here talks about in verse 17, I was enraged by your sinful greed. I punished you and withdrew my favor, but you maintained your willful ways. I know your ways, and I will heal you. I will lead you and comfort you, you and those among you who mourn, I will bring praise to your lips.
I will bring peace, and it keeps going. And so this is an example of if I self identified as male and was reading this, I will heal him. Lead him, comfort him. I would say, great. This might apply to me, but as female, what does it mean to me? When I hear the phrase, I decided to heal him, lead him and comfort him.
So I might think, well, hopefully it applies to me, but I'm not really sure. And I'm not getting any profit or anything like that from saying, Hey, listen, I have this new Bible translation, but when I read the word, you he'll, you, I will lead you and comfort you. Then I think for sure, that probably could apply to me, even though the actual text is referring to people a long time ago and not every single thing in the Bible is about me, but it's easier to sort of hear.
So I just wanted to point that out.
One assignment that I had to develop for this course was a weekend retreat based on an aspect of Isaiah, the students actually had a choice of assignments and I picked this one because I've attended retreats before and enjoyed them. And I thought, Hey, this is something that I might like to do in the future.
I selected the theme of remembering and forgetting in Isaiah. God remembers us and God forgets our sin. Do we sometimes forget God? According to human history, we sure do. Do we sometimes remember our sins and those of others, even though we don't need to? A concept that came up in the next class I'm going to describe is that we can advocate against injustice even if we forgive someone who has done something awful.
Someday, I look forward to being able to attend a weekend retreat in person. In the meantime, I'm thinking about how to use this retreat idea for a digital Bible study.
One significant theme in Isaiah and other prophets is that of justice and care for those who are oppressed. While the Lutheran faith does not believe that we do good deeds in order to get to heaven, we do them because it's the right thing to do. This is reflected in today's Bible passage from Isaiah 57. One way of looking at it is that we humans can serve as God's messengers with both uplifting words and physical actions to help our neighbors. This includes standing up to oppressive systems that keep people down in order to benefit others.
The next class, Lutheran confessions, sounds serious. And on the one hand it is, but the conversations were so real and relevant. Serious doesn't have to be a downer, is what I'm trying to say. Also, confessions might mean different things to different people. I attended a Catholic junior high school, even though I wasn't Catholic and have never been.
The private confession before attending worship service and receiving communion was something that I wasn't familiar with because in the Lutheran church, we say a confession, everybody together at the beginning of a church service. And we're all forgiven as a group. So for me, confession is part of the church service.
It's not something that I have to do separately and make a big deal of and make sure I do it before I go to church. In this case, What this class was about was that when I was in junior high in my church, I got a book that I still have, which is the short version of teachings by Martin Luther.
It's called the small catechism. And guess what? Along with it is a much longer book called the large catechism. I don't like to use fancy words when ordinary words will be clearer. So for your information, catechism means a summary of beliefs with questions and answers. For example, Martin Luther writes about the 10 commandments, the Lord's prayer and other important concepts by stating what they are and asking questions about what they mean in our lives.
And the reason that this was really important to me to do as an adult again, is that I did care about this stuff in junior high but I needed to basically get through the class in order to be confirmed, which is a confession in and of itself because I don't think that's why I was doing it, but on paper you have to go through this class to get confirmed. It was a good process, but I don't remember learning as much during that class.
And please no offense, in case the pastor who taught that confirmation class is listening, I don't mean it that way. I just mean you think differently later as a second career adult than you do as a junior high student. So I'm really glad I had a chance to go through this stuff again. The small catechism is sort of a basic outline with a few sentences on each topic.
And then the large catechism gets into much more detail with all of this stuff. I'd like to just give you a few examples so that you know what I'm talking about. And if you really have some time on your hands and would like to dig much more into Lutheran beliefs and all kinds of documents from history that are still informative today, there's a really big book called the Book of Concord, which is the confessions of the evangelical Lutheran church. It's absolutely massive. It's 700 pages long, and I'm not going to read all 700 pages to you today, or even telling you about all 700 pages, but there's some really interesting information. And most of the stuff is online also, which is pretty cool.
I don't mind having a paper book that I can dog ear and underline and write notes into, but I know some people just love having digital access, whether it's on a website or even on an app. So we have creeds, which is what we believe in, we have the small catechism and large catechism that I had mentioned.
And also in this book of Concord are other historical documents that came about during the reformation when Martin Luther and many of his colleagues were saying, Hey, this is what we believe. For example, when we attend a church service, we're not going to church to earn our way into heaven because a huge belief is that we can't do anything to earn our way into heaven, whether it's going to church or doing certain other good deeds.
So let's just be really clear about that, that we are going to church to attend, say a worship service to sing, to praise God, to pray, to receive communion in the case of the Lutheran folks to receive forgiveness after making a corporate confession, but that we're not earning anything by going to church.
And that's also important these days, in times of COVID because I miss going to church, I would like to physically be in church, but since I know that I'm not doing it to earn my way into heaven, as much as I miss it, I can still feel that there's great meaning and benefit from watching church services online or participating even in an online Bible study.
So anyway, back to the large catechism, the longer explanations of things were really helpful to me as an adult. And I had alluded to this in a previous episode as well. For example, the 10 commandments we think, wow, that's just a whole bunch of law. There are 10 laws, but they're pretty broad. And we have all these measures of how we're supposed to act. And again, knowing that it's impossible to keep them all, but also that there are nuances. And so what I appreciate is that Martin Luther wrote not only, you shall not do X, Y, and Z, these 10 things. You also on the flip side of that, then should say, for example, look, to take care of your neighbor, to make sure that your neighbor has what they need and if they need something that you help them.
And that you're supporting them actively and doing things proactively for society, that benefits individuals who might need things. Also the Lord's prayer is talked about in quite some detail, you know, what does this mean? Your kingdom come for example, is God's kingdom already on the earth now, is it somewhere way, far off in the future somehow?
How do we understand that? and how are we taking care of the planet in addition to each other as human beings?
And that's just really a five minute overview of this large textbook or online app that I would highly recommend that you take a look at either online for free or by getting a copy of the book. Another class that I took was called pastoral care and practical theology.
This class included topics that felt applicable to regular people. In my view, for example, our textbook by Pete ward addressed the concept that ordinary people can think and discuss important things about God. Without needing to go to school. Imagine that. So I absolutely love that because I've had the privilege of going to school for a really long time, but
some people think that you should have some book learning and understand sort of these complicated religious concepts, but on the other hand, Regular people who may not have had the opportunity to take all these classes can also have relationship with God. And I have a couple of quotes to read to you.
one talks about tradition. So I belong to a faith that has a lot of tradition and many church services have tradition during the services. Like how do we do things during a church service? And one of the things that this textbook that I mentioned talks about is that yes, we can quote, draw on the wisdom of the church over the ages.
And quote, but this doesn't mean that we have to always do things the same way all the time. And is there room for innovation and there wasn't any particular recommendations made here, but just to honor, if regular people can have a relationship with God through their understanding, then does this mean?
That there are certain people who are experts. And yes, on the one hand there are experts. But one of the quotes that I wanted to read to you is from the Reverend Dr. Joyce and Mercer, I read a chapter in a larger book that she wrote, and she said that there is not a separation. Between the sacred and human experiences.
So what that means to me is that our regular everyday lives can be about God, not just when we're in a church building, which is a good thing, because right now, most people can't be in church buildings because of the pandemic. But even before the pandemic, You know, I would go to church once a week, maybe twice a week or on rare occasion if I had a meeting or something like that, a third time in a week or choir rehearsal or whatever.
and yeah, maybe I can feel closer to God in that church building, but that we don't have to only think about God at certain times or in certain places. And the way I noticed this, I have one more quote from another author, is that over the years of attending women's Bible studies, which I've also talked about in other episodes, I noticed that sometimes women feel denigrated by being quote only.
A stay at home mom when their life circumstances show that to be the best option for their family, or there could be, it appears that there are no other options at the time for their family and the author, Bonnie Miller McLemore said. That daily chores in caring for family allows us to know about God.
So, wow. I don't particularly like doing household chores and I probably don't often think about God while I'm helping out around the home. And. I do value when I have a job outside of the home. And I feel like I'm making positive contributions, but it kind of blew my mind that these two women authors were talking about everyday lives and our relationship with God and that, you know, yeah.
If you can get to church and you like going to church and you have access to it and knowing that that's sometimes isn't possible and that we can feel close to God or learn about God or understand God just in our. Normal ordinary environments. I thought that was pretty amazing. So practical theology encompasses a lot of different ways of looking at the world.
And I got to hear from some of my classmates, in addition to the textbooks on all kinds of different chapters in there's, lots of books and articles and things that you can look at that, but, it talked. A lot about just the balance sort of between quote, regular people and quote theologians, you know, people who really study theology and God, and all this church stuff that we don't have to be separate.
I mean, we may be kind of physically separated, but it doesn't have to be either. Or, and I really liked that it doesn't have to be all this fancy complicated stuff. that God is with us, where we are in our everyday ordinary lives. And I really appreciated hearing about that. So I enjoyed this class and would recommend if you have some time to take a look at some other practical theology type matters.
I really liked a class called introduction to Islam. I was interested in learning more about a faith and a group of people who I didn't know too much about. And I often wonder if what we see or hear on the news is accurate. At this point, honestly, I would say probably not much of the time students were assigned many different readings and documentaries so that we could learn more about this ancient faith and diverse peoples.
I have two books to recommend. The first is by Todd green titled the fear of Islam and the second. Is by Mahmoud Ayoub and it's titled Islam, faith, and history. And like I had mentioned, in addition to these two books, we had lots of articles and documentaries to learn more. And for me, what was especially interesting was the foundation of Islam and how things have diversified over the centuries.
And honestly, I feel like that's. That similar concept also applies to other faiths. So one quote in the Todd green book is that there is one faith and many people, and I honestly feel that way even about Christianity, not everyone who is a Christian, right. Acts or talks the same way based on their faith beliefs, there's inclusivity, there's exclusivity.
There's people who believe that there's certain ways to do things that certain things are right. And certain things are wrong. So. What it made me realize is that we have stereotypes about many different types of people in the world. I think there are stereotypes about Christians. There are stereotypes about people on a faith basis, or even, perhaps ethnic where you're from.
What do you look like? That just aren't true. We assume things. And sometimes we assume the worst of each other and sometimes the worst news gets the biggest headlines. And that applies again to lots of different categories of people and places. So fear-mongering is real. And to me that means that. The headlines are often the very worst news and this one piece of news might be true, but if there's 10 other pieces of news that are different from this one, but we're just hearing this one really horrible one.
I don't mean to minimize any of the bad news. That is true, but there's lots of statistics, especially in the Todd green book, the fear of Islam, the talks about how are these statistics. Presented. So for example, I really hated taking statistics. I had to do it for my master's in social work, but now I'm really glad that I did.
And I had to take a research methods class as well, so that I could understand how is research that's being done presented. So when you hear according to researchers, statistics show or whatever, you might be thinking, okay, well, who paid for this research? First of all. So say a pharmaceutical company paid for the research.
Is it going to be a hundred percent objective and neutral? Well, gee, it would be great if it was, but that's really not guaranteed. So let's take, let's take a look at that. and then also, how, w how was the information gathered, say you're taking a poll or something like that? Are you taking a sample of convenience, which means like, I'll just ask these 10 people that I know, and then I'll say, okay, I did research and these were the 10 answers, or am I trying to get a broad perspective?
Do I even want to get a broad perspective? Do I want to be able to share what a bunch of different people think about this topic? And then how am I. Analyzing the data, blah, blah- this is not a podcast about statistics, but the reason I bring this up is that I learned some really interesting things about different cultures from this class that I didn't know.
And I'd actually really like to have on all of these classes that I've talked about so far and the next one coming up as well, do whole separate episodes on these topics and yeah. Bring in some guest speakers who know more about this than I do, or have a conversation about different aspects of this.
Because one thing that's really important to me is to make sure that people are being treated fairly. And wouldn't it be great if people could even be treated well? So one thing that I worry about is who is being mistreated, who is being oppressed. And is there anything that can be done to improve that situation of people?
And so my assumption has been based on what I've seen in the news, that many people in different cultures are oppressed for various different reasons. And there are some examples from this class that I have read the statistics that were presented to me in the books, articles and documentaries, but I have not had the chance to dig back all the way down to see, okay.
Are there other statistics that go against what this says? So I'm not prepared to read off a bunch of stuff right now, but I can say that my eyes were open to think, you know, What about women wearing a headscarf or avail or a face covering or a body covering? Now? I might think, Oh, wow. Is that okay? Are these women being mistreated?
Maybe on the surface, according to my way of living, that may be the case. And then what I also need to question is, is my way of living the only quote right, or best, or, you know, legitimate way of living. So I was brought up without wearing any kind of headscarf or head covering or anything like that. So to me, that's not customary, it's not necessary.
And I might not understand all of the reasons behind it, but reading books and articles, watching documentaries and learning more about it. What I'm thinking now is let me be open-minded let me learn. Let me talk to people. Let me find out if you are wearing a headscarf or a face covering or a body covering, do you feel like you are oppressed?
Is it true? Not just my opinion. You know, how would I feel if one day, all of a sudden I had to walk around with this covering over myself. Just because I might feel one way doesn't mean everybody else feels the same way. So I wanted to bring that up. And also education was another example that was listed whereby you know, I think, Oh, are, are women in different parts of the world sort of stock?
Are they. maybe trapped for lack of a better word. Are they able to feel fulfilled? Can they get the education that they want? Are girls allowed to go to school? And again, from I even even asking those questions in my mind is coming from a place of judgment because I think girls should be able to get an education.
Wouldn't it be great if everyone should feel fulfilled, not just, you know, women, the example that I'm just giving right now. And so I might think. Well, if women are being treated badly, say for example, they have to wear all these coverings that I'm not used to, which doesn't make it wrong or oppressive automatically, or women can't drive.
I am happy to have the freedom of driving. And also I have the economic position to be able to drive, which is a whole nother story. So in my mind, these things are wrongly bundled together. Well, if women have to wear these head coverings, does that mean they're being oppressed? If they're not allowed to drive.
Does that mean they're being oppressed and if girls aren't allowed to go to school, does that mean that all the women in this culture or in the society are being oppressed? And one example of a statistic that I saw about that is to show in which countries, women have a great deal of education and women have been leaders.
And even in the United States, women of different ethnicities and backgrounds, including faith backgrounds in this case do have a great deal of education and professional status. So that's not to say there's no oppression. Of course there's oppression going on, but it's not universal. It's not fair to say, Hey, everybody in this one category of people or countries or culture or faith are all in the same book.
Cause that's just not true. There's uniqueness. Even, like I said, at the beginning of their section there's uniqueness among Christianity, which I happen to know the best. or even in different areas of the United States, different regions, there's different beliefs sort of cultural norms, and possibly about women or about many other things.
So that's it for today on that class, but I would love to continue the conversation in much greater detail. The final class that I took this semester that I also really enjoyed is called rural ministry. We had several small textbooks assigned and the professor also had us view music videos each week that highlighted some of the stereotypes of country living as well as lifting up the beauty and the faith to be found.
Having lived in a relatively rural area in one part of Germany. And now in upstate New York, I can honestly say that I'd rather be in the country than in the city. That said I have a choice of grocery stores within 20 minutes of my house. So I'm definitely not in a true rural area, which I hadn't realized.
I thought just because I can see more grass and trees than houses, that means I'm in a rural area, but I'm not because I learned there's a really big difference between a really true rural area. I can get to a bunch of grocery stores in seven minutes and then even more within a 20 minute radius. I will include several titles of books on the podcast website, which is 40 minutes of faith.com.
And talk about two of them specifically just now and while the class focused on faith development in rural areas, we also learned about diverse cultures within the United States. One book pointed out that there is a class out there somewhere that people can take who live in cities. In order to better understand rural areas, particularly around faith issues, but there's no commensurate class for people to take, to learn about cities.
I appreciate that. Not all city living is glamorous and fun and also life in the countryside is not always boring and stifling. So it has been good. I'd like to think that I'm an open-minded person, but I learned a great deal from this class. And I wanted to just recommend two books in particular. One is called God land and the author is Lynn Lenz, and she did talk about some wonderful stories about faith development and the possibility of, you know, our churches dying in rural areas.
And please let me amend that to say, are white Christian churches dying? Because you did talk about some churches that had new interfaith ministries or the building was shared among people of diverse faiths and backgrounds as something that is changing. And she also talked about the role of women in many, in this particular case with this book, Christian faiths.
that was, that had been a painful experience for her and for some other people. So I would highly recommend that book and also another book called God's country by Brad wroth talking about, again, the question of church growth and church, perhaps dying. what happens when a church just has really fewer members?
And one of the things we talked about in this class together are the way we measure success is really arbitrary and just based on numbers. And that has to do with everything from our own personal lives. I believe to the lives of organized church groups. You know, what does the number on the scale have to say?
What does the number of years that you went to school have to say, what does the number in your bank account have to say? And then when it comes to churches, what about the number of people who were sitting in the pews or the number of people who went through a certain ceremony in your church? This year, say for example, in some churches they count baptisms or confirmations or marriages or funerals, or how many people took communion.
There's probably a bunch of other numbers that I'm not even thinking. And, and isn't it possible that there's so much more to life and to church or faith than just the numbers that we count. So you might look at a church building and say, wow, there's really not a lot of people who go to this service or something like that.
But is there still faith happening? These are God's people and there's some hard decisions. So the whole class wasn't about that, but that's just one example that I wanted to bring out just in support of the assumptions that we make, that my life, I don't want my life to be about the number on the scale or the number of years of school that I had, or the number in my bank counters, maybe some other numbers, the number of friends I have on Facebook and also not wanting.
To say, well, this church is just a goner. Now, maybe we need to do things differently when it comes to building maintenance and the use of the physical plant and, and things like that. Can we, you know, maybe have other groups also using this church building for different purposes or things of that nature, but yeah, if you would like to learn more, I would recommend those books.
And then, like I said, I'll also be putting other resources up on the podcast website. I want to just. Really think all of the faculty and the other students for bringing up really great examples and lessons and helping us to understand more about all of these different topics. I also learned more about agriculture in this class and rural doesn't always mean farming.
there's plenty of other. ways of looking at land and we actually talked in this class too about statistics and government and numbers and how many people live in a certain area. And I just am really grateful to have had a chance to learn more about this and to have a sense on the great diversity.
I'd like to think that I always knew that about especially the United States, now that I'm living here again. But just to know that. There's beauty to be found in many different ways. Maybe that's another different way that we measure things. So I'm grateful for having the chance to listen to a bunch of different kinds of music.
That's pretty unusual, not very many classes do that. I'm grateful to have had this learning opportunity. So that is it for the summary of my classes this fall altogether. I would say that it was a really interesting semester. I had a wide variety in all of the classes did talk about also the Bible and things like that.
I really highlighted it for the Isaiah class, but certainly the Lutheran confessions chapter was full of the Bible. Well, and really also in the Islam class, I learned about the Koran and also the concept of Abrahamic faiths. I felt like I had a really good diversity of. Understanding of not only the world, the local place, where I am when it comes to being possibly rural, and also different ways that people relate to creation to God, to their understanding of God and different ways of having faith journeys.
I am really appreciative of that and look forward to digging into much more detail at whenever possible.
Resources:
Isaiah 57:15 and following
The Inclusive Bible
Survival of Rural America by Richard Wood
God Land by Lyn Lenz
God’s Country by Brad Roth
The Fear of Islam by Todd Green
Islam: Faith and History by Mahmoud Ayoub
An Introduction to Practical Theology by Pete Ward
Luther’s Small Catechism by Martin Luther
Luther’s Large Catechism by Martin Luther
The Book of Concord