Barbara: 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's I'm going to be talking about second semester seminary classes. These took place earlier this year from February 2020 until May 2020. I have a few Bible verses and books to recommend as well as a poem to read.
My new Testament class was terrific and very helpful. I learned a bunch of new words and new concepts, some of which I'm going to be sharing with you today. I thought I had a pretty good vocabulary, but I did learn a very important new vocabulary word, which is polyvalence: it does not mean that I have a lot of curtains, although maybe some people think that I do.
It means that when each person reads the Bible, they can understand it in a different way, based on their own life experience and perspective. So to me, that sounds refreshing to hear. And at the same time, there's a concept known as eisegesis, whereby we can read the texts with our own biases, and that is not always helpful or accurate. So on the one hand, we can understand the Bible based on our own experiences. And on the other hand, we don't want only our experiences to be the sole factor in influencing how we understand what the Bible says. I would like to recommend a textbook, which is titled “Introducing the New Testament” by Mark Alan Powell.
One of the questions I will always remember from this course is “whose voice is missing?” So when we're reading different passages and stories, of course, it's important to see what's happening, but it's also helpful to notice is there someone whose voice we don't really hear and might there be more to understand when thinking about that person to the best of our abilities, based on what we've learned about the culture and things like that?
My favorite assignments for this course were comparing different Bible translations. I'm going to illustrate one of those assignments now. I'm going to be reading fragments of four different translations of Mark chapter four, verses 35 to 41, but I'm not going to read the entire passage in all four translations. Students were asked to find four different translations and take a look at them to see any similarities of note, differences of note, and then also to read some commentaries, to see what researchers and scholars have to say about these passages.
I selected the new revised standard version as my first translation, because that's the required version for our school. I also selected The Message. I read the passage in Spanish- I speak passable Spanish, not great, but enough to understand the basics, and also The Voice, which I had heard of before, but is a little bit less familiar to me.
In the NRSV it's called “Jesus stills a storm”, in The Message this story is called “the wind ran out of breath”, and these subtitles were not part of the original texts they were added in by translators. In Spanish, this passage is subtitled “La Gran Tormenta”, and in The Voice, I didn't have a subtitle.
So the disciples get into a boat. And I'll say something from one of the commentaries a little bit later about them getting into the boat. In the NRSV in verse 37, it says “a great windstorm arose”, and the disciples said to Jesus in the NRSV, “teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” In The Message they say, “teacher, is it nothing to you that we're going down?”
And in The Voice, the disciples in parentheses are shouting over the storm: “Jesus, master, don't you care that we're going to die?”
I thought that was interesting just in terms of interpreting the attitude of what was happening during this big storm. Next in the NRSV Jesus rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “peace, be still. Then the wind ceased.” In The Message, Jesus told the wind to “pipe down and said to the sea, quiet, settle down. The wind ran out of breath and the sea became smooth as glass.”
In The Voice, Jesus said, “that's enough. Be still. And immediately the wind died down to nothing. The waves stopped.” Next, Jesus reprimanded the disciples. In The Message version and said, “why are you such cowards? Don't you have any faith at all? In the NRSV, he said, “why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” And in The Voice, Jesus says, “how can you be so afraid after all you've seen? Where is your faith?” Finally in the NRSV, the disciples are “filled with great awe and said to one another, who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” In The Message, the disciples are in “absolute awe, staggered. Who is this, anyway, they asked. Wind and sea are at his beck and call?” In The Voice, the disciples were still afraid, slowly coming to grips with what they had seen. The disciples said to one another, “who is this Jesus? How can it be that he has power over even the wind and the waves?”
In Spanish, the disciples said that they were going to die. We have four different potential outcomes according to these different translations: perishing, going down, the Spanish version says sinking, and going to die. The sinking didn't really sound as bad as the others, but I did appreciate the more modern version of going down in The Message. I also appreciated the different things that Jesus said to the wind, for example, “pipe down.” The connotations were a little bit different with the language. That's hard for me to explain, but it was really neat. Now I can also recommend which I have in the past as well- You can own as many physical copies of the Bible as you like. But I use a website called Bible gateway.com.
There's other websites as well, where you can type in the verses that you want to look at and select which version you want to look at. So there's many, many different versions in English. And as you can see here, Spanish, I have German in the next one, and there are other languages and other translations that are available.
I also really enjoyed reading the Spanish text. I don't want to hurt anybody's ears by reading it, for fear of my accent, but I just wanted to really encourage if you have either another language in addition to English or a first language other than English, that to me, reading the Bible is not only an intellectual exercise of the brain, but it's very much an exercise of the heart.
And for some reason, I just respond to some of the words in a different way.
So, for example, the Spanish translation has Jesus asking the disciples, “todavia no confian en mi?” According to the translating program that I used, confian means trust. So that made me wonder, what is the difference between faith and trust? Is there a huge difference? It's a very slight nuanced difference, but it somehow feels different. The other verses say, have you still no faith, don't you have any faith at all?
Where is your faith and trust? Somehow to me trust is a more tangible word than faith. Although you can't touch trust either, but I like that. I should have mentioned at the beginning of this assignment, students who were taking Greek, some students are required to take Greek, actually had to translate passages from the original Greek writing into English and students who were not taking Greek were doing this alternate assignment of comparing various translations into the English.
One of the commentaries that I read was written by Charles Swindol. And he writes, Jesus said at the beginning of this story, let us go over to the other side. He didn't say, let us go to the bottom. So the disciples became fearful and thought that they were going to die.
And it seems that they either forgot or just didn't believe that Jesus said let's go over to the other side. And The Voice translation says even the experienced sailors among them were sure they were going to sink. I was in Israel last year, and the tour guide said that even though the disciples fished on the sea of Galilee, it was a general cultural fear of being on the water. So it was reasonable, but they were afraid. Another commentary talked about the fact that Jesus was sleeping in the boat and some readers would consider sleeping during a storm to be trust in God, but that the disciples hadn't gotten that far- this is from a commentary written by Kim Huat Tan.
So when we see people who are trusting in God, do we sometimes judge them, like, aren't you worried about what's going on? Aren't you going to take action to try and do something about the situation? If there's anything we can do about something, great. But if sometimes trusting in God is the only thing to do, is that okay? Can we just allow ourselves and others to trust in God? So that's an example of one of the homework assignments for that class. And I have another one that I'll do a little bit later on.
I have another book to recommend the title is “Sacred Pauses” by April Yamasaki. I've read several books about trying to lower the amount of craziness and running around in our lives. This particular book approaches quiet time with respect. So rather than mocking it, according to our historical Puritan work ethic, the author talks about working hard is fine, but you don't have to prove your value by being busy all of the time.
Do we feel like we have to prove our value by being busy all of the time? And I suspect that for many of us, the answer is, or at least has been “yes” in the past. So if you're looking for a book on trying to scale your life to a more manageable pace- perhaps that's already been affected by our COVID-19 pandemic situation right now- I would highly recommend this textbook.
And one of the activities that we did in this class that I talked about also in the fall semester is students were invited to co-lead different sections. And one of my classmates wrote a poem from phrases that she gathered from each of us in response to our readings.
The author's name is Carrin Mahmood, and I'm going to read a few excerpts from the different paragraphs that she collected from each of us, the phrases that she turned into a poem. The title is Walking Through the Valley.
Walking Through the Valley
Birth
We are one with Creation, invited into the very cosmos by the One who creates it
We are one with Creation, invited into the very cosmos by the One who creates
We are one with Creation, invited into the very cosmos
We are one with Creation, invited
We are one with Creation
We are one
We are
Home
Longed for
My haven, my containment
Welcoming my spirit, confining my wanderlust
In the end, home is in the palm of God’s hand
My resting place
Music
The rhythms of my heart
The dance of my soul
The gift of the Creator, to calm my anxious heart. And fill my hollow places.
Melodic prayer, answered in harmonies which only the Holy Spirit can offer
Homework
Expectation, Discipline, Fortitude, Comprehension
A gift of learning
Delving into the Word, and Walking closer to the Savior.
Bothersome, Exhausting, Guilt inducing, Ravishing
Important, Growth Producing, Necessary
Done
Earth
Our Divinely created inheritance, longing for the Kingdom come,
Crying, “Spare us from ongoing brokenness”
Our foundation, Our life blood, Our source
Crying, “Respect me and I will forever nourish you”
Our refuge, our hope, our responsibility
Ours to tend
Crying
Crying
Crying
Quiet
Peaceful bliss, and deafening distraction
But in the quiet, I am still, and know God is God
Warmth
A tending to life as the earth tilts towards the sun
A promise of growth and fertility
A comfort to cold bodies, outdoor workers, our homeless siblings
A care of the spirit, a helping hand, loving smile
A knowledge that we sit at the hearth of the One who made us
Sunshine
The promise of a new day
The relief of regularity
The thanksgiving for growth and succession
The song that bursts forth because a new day
Elderly
Fragile yet Strong
Vulnerable but Dynamic
Discarded AND Crucial
Pathfinders, Wise, Relevant, Important Vital-
Images of the Creator, in their beauty we are handed the responsibility for both absorbing and accommodating
Grief
We cannot hide from life, nor should we
For it’s all a gift, most sublime
There are incandescent days of glory
Which mark our steps of gifted time
But on life’s scale, ever tipping
Grief too is part of our story
And being present to those moments
Includes the, bruising part of glory
For even in the darkest moments
When our breath seems far away
Our grief is held in God’s heart also
And in God’s hands our burdens lay
Death
Inevitable
Temporary
Transitional
Death
Hope
When there’s darkness all around us
And from the pit we claw and grope
If we but rest our hearts in Jesus
There we find eternal hope
When it’s hard to feel the joy
When God’s love feels far away
If we could rest our hearts in Jesus
knowing hope comes day by day
For God is joy and God is peace
And God is our perfecting love
So children rest your hearts in Jesus
Whose abundant hope comes from above
Thank you to Carrin for assembling the words of the students in that class into a poem.
I completed a significant research project this past spring that started many years ago at my undergraduate university in Boston. I attended Simmons and was not bothered at all that it was a women's college at the time -it's now a university- because in the classroom, we had the chance to really focus on academics and the only people who could answer questions that were posed by the professors were female students. Because we were in Boston, there was also plenty of opportunity for socializing with anybody you cared to socialize with in the community. Research showed even at the time and does still to this day from many different institutions, including Harvard Business Review, that academic learning for women is frankly different in a co-ed environment versus a single gender environment.
I'm not looking to throw any men or boys under the bus, but research shows that teachers call on boys more often than girls, even without knowing it, not intentionally, without realizing when researchers literally counted the number of times. And that men tend to interrupt women more often. I could go on and on, there's tons of research, but this is just a very short summary. I wanted to look at the concept of women's Bible studies because I believed that in the past women had been segregated from Bible studies, perhaps for intellectual reasons.
And I learned later through my research that even hundreds of years ago, it was separated just for purposes of keeping the focus so that basically men could keep their focus. And perhaps it benefited women. And I have attended both co-ed Bible studies and women's Bible studies, and I've learned a great deal in all of them.
But to me, there was something really intangible about attending women's only Bible studies in a positive way, in terms of relationship, building, praying for each other, being honest with each other. And not that you can't be honest in a coed study. But depending on who's in the study, if you're in the study with someone you're dating or someone you're married to, or someone you used to date or someone you used to be married to, that changes the interpersonal dynamics of attendees.
I ended up expanding the topic of the research paper from only Bible study into faith formation groups, because I learned that Bible studies was sort of my concept of my experience of group learning, but there are other types of faith, formation groups, such as spiritual direction groups, or even retreats that might not technically be considered a Bible study. There were no studies that I was able to find to specifically say, during faith formation groups, women learn differently in single gender groups.
I can only imagine what a massive research project that would be, but based on research of non-faith based learning and anecdotal stories. The consensus was that women build relationships among each other in a different way in women's only faith development groups. So I really enjoyed doing that research.
I had good advice from both the subject matter experts with whom I spoke as well as for my faculty advisors and the writing center that I had mentioned when I talked about having my work reviewed by the writing center during a previous podcast. So I wanted to recommend in the end, the consensus was if the location is large enough to offer multiple studies, please be sure to offer a women's only study or faith formation group. Yet knowing that most of the churches that I've attended have not been large enough to offer multiple studies at the same time just because they've been too small. One of the people with whom I spoke specifically said, don't force women to go to a women's only faith development.
If you offer a variety of studies, you could certainly have married couples going together, especially if it's a topic based study that they might be interested in. Some churches offer a study about financial values, say, stewardship, or even something more nuts and bolts like budgeting or financial management with a biblical focus. There are also studies about parenting or marriage. So if possible, offer a women's faith formation group. I just wanted to support and encourage people. Women's studies are just kind of fluffy- one person said that they had heard that. And that's definitely not been my experience. There are very intellectually rigorous studies. Also a conversation sometimes flows a little bit differently. Sometimes women want to share their experience. And when that happens, sometimes other people hear, “Hey, I'm not alone with whatever experience that I'm going through right now.”
And that prayer requests can be more honest if there's a trusting environment of confidentiality if it's women only. So that was a really positive experience. And I'm so glad that I was able to do that research and submit that paper.
The final course that I wanted to talk about was on faith development and discipleship. I particularly wanted to recommend a book written by Austin Channing Brown. The title is “I'm Still Here.” It was a very eyeopening book and I strongly urge everybody to read it. It was really powerful about the author's experience, both growing up and in a faith-based workplace. That was eye-opening even though I thought I was fairly well-versed on the topic of racism or how people can be treated or certainly still are treated.
So I can't speak highly enough about this book. And there were also some other really neat books that I can include in the resource section on the podcast website, 40 minutes of faith.com, additional titles, some of which are about welcoming. How do you welcome people to churches? What types of things can faith-based groups do to be truly welcoming and provide faith development for people? And not just newcomers- there's plenty of folks- I'm in some fantastic spring classes that I'll be talking about next month in a different episode that, you may have learned something as a kid. For me, it was called Sunday school. And I thought, I learned about this stuff, but revisiting it again now, as an adult is far more meaningful than it was when I was a little kid- even though I was interested, I cared about it, but there are some really significant nuances. So all that goes to say that faith development is an ongoing process and it's not like, you learned it when you were a kid, so you don't need to talk about that stuff again, even when it comes to the basics.
So newcomers deserve to talk about the basics, but frankly, people who've been around for awhile also need to talk about the basics of faith.
Again, this spring, I did have some textbooks that I really struggled to get through. And that's okay. I was a little more prepared to give myself grace based on the advice that I had received from mentors in the fall that I don't have to understand every single word of every single textbook.
I also wanted to talk briefly about, about the pandemic coming down on us during this spring semester. So I had been living in Germany last year when I applied to this program and I knew that the bulk of the semester was online, which it had to be because I was living in Germany.
So I was used to attending classes by zoom. And the classes were also recorded. So due to the time zone differences with Germany, there were a couple of classes that I needed to watch the recording the next day.
So when the classes had to be online only in the spring, it didn't really affect me at all because I was already in upstate New York at that point, far away from the school in Dubuque. And the pandemic itself, of course, did hit me, being home, wearing a mask, not sure if I need to wear rubber gloves when I go into the grocery store.
But academically, I had a routine already in place at home and everything was on zoom. I felt bad for my fellow students who were really used to being in the classroom and who looked forward to that. And some of them really needed that support. One of my friends said that they force themselves to sit in the front row because then they would just really concentrate and have fewer distractions being that close to the instructor, just from their learning needs.
And also just being stuck in a dorm room for days on end. I can imagine that that would be really hard for me. So it made me appreciate that I had a house with some different rooms that I could walk around in. I had a kitchen that not all the students had. So I wanted to honor that it was a lot lonelier for some people when the pandemic hit, even though you think, well, online learning, that's not so bad, but even socially, some people really missed that.
So really to this day that there could be some significant mental health struggles among folks who just appreciate it, that daily check-in, as they went to class, maybe chatted for a bit after class, even folks who were introverted, at least, if you're going to go get some food , that you could talk to people in a group, if you wanted to.
Also, some mental wellness situations are at least, if you've got to get up and get out of bed and go to class or you'll be marked absent , at least there's some sort of informal check-in on, how are you doing?
So I just want to your honor, that this can be really hard for some people. And I really got walloped with zoom fatigue. I didn't know what it was called. All I knew is that I just didn't want to be in front of my computer anymore. I think one day I had. Eight hours worth of zoom. And maybe some of you have had more than that, but between class and meeting, some of, which were optional, but I just, at some point had to say, I just can't do this.
I had to set a maximum number of hours for myself that I could be on sort of face to face with people, even if it was a Bible study or something like that, which I really appreciated my local Bible study here moved from in-person to zoom. And that was a treasure I'm so glad that that happened. And I also was brought up that if you do something, you do it right. So if one meeting was from six to seven and the next meeting was from seven to eight and the next meeting was from eight to nine, you know, first of all, you have to be five minutes early, that's military culture and you don't leave early. And then I'm like, okay, I need to take care of my physical body.
So three, one hour meetings in a row is certainly doable. it's not impossible. But it's just uncomfortable mentally and emotionally as well as physically. So I decided that it was okay. Nobody was going to hate me. If I came a minute late to a meeting or excused myself a few minutes early before the meeting ended so that I could literally use the restroom, grab a snack if necessary and just stretch my body.
Since then there's been some research that shows there's are different levels of interaction. When you're say sitting around a conference table or something like that, you're not looking at each other in the face for the full hour. You might be looking down at the materials in front of you. You might look at the person who's speaking, and then there's a bunch of stuff kind of in your peripheral vision, you could even sign out and look out a window or something like that.
But when you're. Trying to look in your camera or you've got all these faces right in front of you on the screen that you're paying more attention, you're not getting body language from people like you would in a room. So you're trying, and to look more at their facial expressions, there's also some more distractions, say the chat function in zoom, which is sometimes very entertaining.
And then sometimes there's just a lot of different stuff what's going on. So I totally experienced that. And just needed to set a maximum number of hours per day that I was going to be on zoom. And if I missed a meeting, that was okay. Or if I went for half an hour, that, that was okay. Also, we did have some pretty fun times though.
My school had some nice social events on zoom in addition to academic stuff. So that was great. So all in all the spring semester was pretty good. It was really strange with COVID. I felt really overwhelmed at one point, especially when the shutdown just started in New York and people were just dying, not so much in my own community, but especially in New York city.
And in certainly Europe, the death toll was so high that I had a hard time concentrating on schoolwork. So that was a little bit of a challenge. But, in the end, by the time the semester ended, I wouldn't say that everything was back to normal by any stretch of the imagination, but at least in terms of academic work at all got done.
Yeah. So I wanted to do the last Bible translation experience that I had for you. again, reading just parts of the passage, and this is from the gospel of John, which is towards the end of your Bible. So well after the middle, the Hebrew Bible takes up more than half of the Bible, which, Christians know as the old Testament.
So I'm going to be reading a few verses excerpted from John chapter one verses one through 10. And the first translation that I selected again, was the new revised standard version, which the abbreviation for that is NRSV. And I, again, selected the message, which you've probably noticed by now is one of my favorites.
And then I picked a German translation as well. And I also became familiar with the 21st century King James version, which is abbreviated KJ 21.
So a lot of the first few verses are the word in the message verses one to two is: “the word was first, the word present to God, God present to the word. The word was God, in readiness for God from day one.” The German used a very interesting word, and I'm going to read just half of verse one: “Das Wort war bei Gott, und das Wort war Gott selbst.”
So “selbst” is self in German- that is a word that I didn't see in any of the English translations. So they kept using the word God, which is fine, but it felt more personal to me to read the word “self” in the German.
So I'll read verse four from the NRSV: “in him was life and the life was the light of all people.”
The 21st century King James version says: “in him was life, and that life was the light of men.” I want to compare the part of the message with a phrase in German. In the message, it says: “the Life-Light blazed out of the darkness; the darkness couldn't put it out.: In German. It says “Es leuchtet in der Finsternis, und die Finsternis hat es nicht auslöschen können.”
And what was interesting to me is that “Finsternis” isn't the same word as darkness. Darkness is “Dunkelheit”. And I learned German when I was a little kid. So my perception may or may not be academically accurate, but I perceived Finsta as a little bit sort of heavier a little bit more frightening.
I mean, darkness is. Probably scary to most kids anyway, but it's not the same. It's almost like gloom. There's more of an emotional attachment. So to, just to me, just to my perception. And so I appreciated reading the German translation translation that the light sort of glowed or lit in this gloom, which also isn't a direct one-to-one translation either.
And the gloom couldn't extinguish it. So I really liked that again. I would recommend if you have other languages in your ability, just to take a look at, see what you discover, if anything, and then again, I don't want to read every sentence of all four translations, but what I really liked at the very end.
In the NRSV it says he was in the world and the world came into being through him yet. The world did not know him. The message says the world didn't even notice the German says a continent in dimension nicked, which is recognize. And the 21st century King James version says, and the world knew him not.
So I appreciated different, nuances in the different translations was very helpful.
One thing that I really like about the message, even if it's not the most academic translation is it feels very personal to me.
I feel more convicted of my spiritual blindness. When I read the message that the world didn't even notice. And in German people didn't recognize him. So I would recommend this as an exercise. If you've got some spare time, you might learn something interesting.
If you didn't hear it. I have a podcast episode with Professor May Persaud about Bible translations that was released earlier this summer. So that's available if you want to learn more about why there are different translations and what. The different emphases are in some of those translations.
Resources:
Mark 4:35-41
John 1:1-10
Introducing the New Testament by Mark Alan Powell
Sacred Pauses by April Yamasaki
I’m Still Here by Austin Channing Brown