Nathan Campbell – Page 219

Gary Millar on the Song of Solomon

Last night Gary Millar spoke on Song of So(ngs)lomon. With a particular focus on how to preach it. He had what I think is a pretty interesting take on the book – an interpretation that would make Song of Songs a nice foil to Ecclesiastes (which explores the futility of a life lived pursuing material happiness).

He suggests the book is written by Solomon about “the one that got away” – a woman who rebuffed his advances because she had found true love with her “beloved”. The thrust of the argument is that the book then gives Solomon’s insights into a life lived pursuing happiness and completion through the pursuit of sexual encounters – and comes to the conclusion that true happiness is found in its proper context, and if you fully subscribe to his theory, real satisfaction and joy comes through experiencing the love of God.

Here are my notes in slightly edited form. Simone has blogged her response to the evening here.

What is Song of Songs doing in the Bible? Nobody seems to know – none of the commentators agree.
When we read the Bible our starting point has to be “this is the word of God” – and with careful reading we really should be able to figure out what it’s about.
There’s a very long tradition of ignoring the sexual element – the Westminster council suggested that any reading along those lines was incorrect… Calvin said “it’s about sex, what’s the big deal?”
The people who insisted it wasn’t about sex believed it was all about Jesus.
Ascribed to Solomon – uniquely placed to write this sort of treatise on love and marriage. 1,000 women, world’s wisest man… Solomon realised that he’d mucked it up. And that’s why he wrote this book.
The key to the book is found in the last few verses… chapter 8 verses 1-11. “Solomon had a vineyard”… These statements unlock the whole book – almost certainly a reference to Solomon’s harem. “Lord of the multitude”… the tenants are probably the staff of the harem… each was to bring for its fruit 1000 shekels of silver… “my vineyard (body in ch 1)”, the thousand shekels are for you and 200 are for those who care for the harem. Solomon would pick someone, send the guys out to make an offer they couldn’t refuse, and it seems there was a feisty woman “my vineyard is my own” – don’t try to buy me. Money, wisdom and henchmen can’t buy you love.
Solomon is the wisest man in the world. He is rich. He is powerful. “Who does this woman think she is…” perhaps leads Solomon to reflect on his life and “who does he think he is”. Perhaps realises that somewhere along the line he’s lost the plot.
Solomon realises he has missed out on real love. And perhaps even a relationship with God. And so he writes about a young couple who are passionately and permanently in love. As the book goes on it becomes less and less likely that Solomon is one of the lovers. He becomes distant to the story.
The book opens up a raft of very difficult pastoral issues – because as soon as we start talking about issues surrounding sex people become edgy. Many people have baggage in this area.
The man works really hard to make his beloved feel beautiful. His beloved is his standard of beauty cf Driscoll (one area where he was helpful). It’s clear when reading the poetry (though sometimes the imagery is culturally odd for us) that this man thinks and puts all of his effort into making his words encouraging for his wife.
It’s hard to distinguish between actuality and anticipation. The book is full of images that are clearly enticing but can’t actually be tied down. General pictures not specific pictures. It’s a mistake to press this book into service of saying anything about sex. The metaphors are deliberately slippery – nudge, nudge, wink, wink – you can’t work out what the specific language is. Immensely sexual but not explicit.
It’s not entirely clear who is speaking at what point. We’re not sure if the people are real or parables. We’re not sure if he’s writing through the lens of rejection and imagining the world of the woman who turned him down… the way in which this relationship is described is with Solomon as a stranger to this kind of love.
Chapter 1 v 5-6 – dysfunctional families do not rule out the possibility of real love. Solomon seems to be urging us to hold out for the real thing.
Chapter 3 v 6 – “Solomon’s carriage”, King Solomon made it himself, royal guard, wearing the crown etc… This woman is dreaming about her wedding. It’s a royal wedding – she dreams of her dream man rocking up in the royal regalia. No suggestion throughout the rest of the book that this is a royal wedding, she gets beaten by the night watchmen which is unlikely if she’s a princess etc… Possible explanation: The girl has a dream, having seen Solomon’s wedding she imagines her wedding to be something like this. Her dream man has the face of her lover – by the end of chapter 3 it could potentially still be Solomon.
Solomon is being passed over for this woman’s real king. “I opened the door…”, “oh daughters of Jerusalem what would you tell my lover…” – this is not how things work for Solomon in terms of securing a wife. Solomon starts to understand that he has love wrong.
Solomon isn’t the Bible’s sex therapist – he warns us of the problems of sexual idolatry.
Because of Ephesians 5 we’re used to modeling love on the trinity. But Solomon instead suggests we need to look the other way. We should see marital love as an echo of God’s love for us.
God is the ultimate – not sex. So at the end of his debauched life Solomon comes to the conclusion that he’s mislead it and that God should be the focus.

March 2, 2010

How to write well

Amy linked to this list of tips for writers the other day. It applies to any application of the written word. A bunch of authors supplied tips to the Guardian on how to be a writer – this has got to be one of the most comprehensive collections of these types I’ve ever seen assembled. It’s so big it has been split over two entries.

If you use a computer, constantly refine and expand your autocorrect settings. The only reason I stay loyal to my computer is that I have invested so much ingenuity into building one of the great autocorrect files in literary history. Perfectly formed and spelt words emerge from a few brief keystrokes: “Niet” becomes “Nietzsche”, “phoy” becomes ”photography” and so on. Genius!

A story needs rhythm. Read it aloud to yourself. If it doesn’t spin a bit of magic, it’s missing something.

Editing is everything. Cut until you can cut no more. What is left often springs into life.

March 2, 2010

Gary Millar’s insights on Deuteronomy

Some helpful stuff from one of the planet’s leading authorities on “the most important book of the Bible” (rough paraphrase)…

The structure of the book is grace in the past, grace in the present and grace in the future. It’s the book that holds everything together – the climax of the Pentateuch and the key that unlocks the rest of the OT (historic narratives and the prophets), and the NT. How do we understand the concepts of blessing and curse? How do we understand grace? Well, it’s here in Deuteronomy.

The logic of 2 Ways to Live comes from Deuteronomy 27.

Jesus answers the Devil, during his temptations, from Deuteronomy.

Getting to grips with this book really matters.

On the idea that the format of the book is based on a cultural “kingly covenant” from around the time it was written

We can’t nail the structure down to any “king treaty” from history. Quite clear that this book breathes the air of covenant – and a covenant relationship. It’s pretty clear that whatever else is happening this is Moses’ final sermon on the subject of God’s covenant with Israel.

On the current “academic” position that Deuteronomy was an exilic invention attributed to Moses as a propaganda exercise

Stupid Academic Theory which holds “Moses could not have foreseen the exile so it must have been written later by someone pretending to be Moses”.

Counter – If Moses has spent his lifetime dealing with Israel messing things up it’s reasonable to assume that he could credibly predict the behaviour of Israel in the future. The foundation of a lot of studies in academia in the last 60 years is on the idea that it’s a late book. A natural reading of Deuteronomy could lead you rightly to the conclusion that Moses, having lead Israel for forty years of frustration, might be in a position to come to these conclusions on the basis of his experience.

On Israel’s failing to claim the promised land and wandering in the wilderness

One of the amazing things about the zigzagging wandering through the desert is the accounts of the neighbouring nations – “your brothers the descendants of Esau”… God says “I have given the Edomites their land”… then, “I have given land to the Ammonites as the descendents of Lot”… the descendents of these other people managed to find their place while Israel failed – including dealing with giant peoples who occupied them, which Israel failed to do.

What is a reference to King Og’s bed doing there in the narrative – he’s a giant who Israel vanquished in their history – but they were too scared to take on the giants in the promised land first time around… this is a critique of Israel’s failure to take God at his word – they managed to deal with giants originally, their neighbours managed to deal with them, and yet, when it mattered Israel failed.

Bonus insight – In Hebrew “to hear” is “to obey” – it means to have taken the information on board and responded appropriately…

On the structure of “the laws and decrees” – Deuteronomy chapters 12 through 26

Several years ago the suggestion emerged that this passage is actually based on the Ten Commandments… which makes sense when you look at the structure. What you find if you look at chapters 12-26 is that you can find some parallels with the structure of the Ten Commandments.

When it gets to commandments 6-10 it gets very messy – but perhaps by the time they get to commandment six Moses has made his point and doesn’t need to maintain the structure.

When God makes a covenant he makes it with every generation of his people. While God made the promises to a previous generation Moses talks like the promise was made to the current people.

What are we looking at these laws for? We’re not the Israel – we’re 21^st century Christians. As soon as we get to the laws all sorts of warning bells go off that this must be legalism. How do you get these chapters across?

Israel, as a society was to be a living breathing model about what life under God was about.

What is it about these laws that would make the surrounding neighbours gasp? There will be principles and pictures of what it means to be the covenant beauty of God.

The OT does not, and never did, understand under a works/righteousness system. The required response to God’s grace was the same pre Christ (though manifested slightly differently).

On some odd laws

“Do not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk”

Did anybody ever think this was a good idea? It seems a bit random.

“When men fight with one another and the wife of the one draws near to rescue her husband from the hand of him who is beating him and puts out her hand and seizes him by the private parts then you shall cut off her hand. Your eye shall have no pity.”

Was this some sort of joke Moses inserted to make sure people were paying attention – there appears to be no historic enforcing of this law.

On the division of the law

Calvin’s division of law into ceremonial, civil, and moral doesn’t actually fit with the text.

A better division:

Obedience and worship
Obedience and the land
Obedience and the community

The ultimate inheritance of Israel is not the land – it’s the God of the land.

A lot of the book is to do with human relationships.

March 2, 2010

Gary Millar on preaching

Apologies – these are rough notes – Kutz is also liveblogging…

A couple of questions I ask myself as I teach parts of the Bible.

Have I pointed people to what God has done for us in Christ as a solution for all our problems?
Have I reminded people that when we come back to God we both discover his forgiveness and are set free to live for him?
We haven’t preached the gospel if our message is to “be like” someone, or “be good”, we haven’t preached the gospel. Even if it is “be disciplined” we haven’t preached the gospel. These things aren’t wrong in themselves but they are wrong by themselves.
Have we pointed people to grace despite our sin?
We must give the reasons to live in a way that brings glory or honour to Jesus. The ultimate reason to live a holy life is Jesus Christ himself.
The hard work of teaching the Bible comes because we have to work hard to get this message under peoples’ skins. Speech not only conveys information it has other force and purpose. It may be to challenge or encourage, to make us laugh or feel sad – but this comes down to the intention of the speaker.
Good exposition invites the listener to feel with the text as well as to think with it.
One of the things we need to do is to be thinking that we need to recover the rhetorical impact of the text – we need to encourage people to feel the same way as the original hearers of the text. For example: Amos 1-2 – “you know what really bothers me about our neighbours… you know what really bothers me about you…” as a rhetorical device.
Preaching can involve stealth bombing – sometimes we need to surprise people. Working hard to get the text in to their lives will help people to listen.
The first 90 seconds is the most important part of a sermon – you’ve got about 90 seconds to convince people to listen (this may be a concession to people’s sinfulness). We need to justify the audience’s decision to keep listening. We must connect with people. We must exegete the listeners. We must speak to the people in front of us.
We can’t make general statements on behalf of our audience – “as followers of Jesus we all want to be living for God” – don’t assume the people are anywhere at all.
Work really hard at understanding people who aren’t like you. Single people, women, young people, people who come from different cultures and demographics.

March 2, 2010

How to preach OT with Gary Millar

Gary Millar is an Irish OT scholar who is Yoder smart. I’ve been wanting to use that pun since listening to Mark Driscoll.

He’s at QTC today speaking on how to preach the Old Testament. He’s got seven basic ways to bring an Old Testament passage to Jesus. These are the points with some notes.

1. Follow the plan – Genesis to 2 Kings is a narrative that leaves us waiting for the ultimate king – wherever you are you can say “this is the first bit of the plan which will ultimately lead to Jesus”

2. Expose the problem – sometimes the Bible just shows up that left to our selves we do some horrendous things. Some narratives just highlight that we are deeply sinful people.
3. Some parts are there to explain categories – what is Leviticus doing in the Bible? Several things. It explains how sacrifice works – how can we understand sacrificial language in the NT if we don’t understand how it worked in the OT. Leviticus explains the category of “ritual cleanliness” – we can’t leave the house without becoming unclean (like Israel who couldn’t avoid becoming unclean).
4. Highlight the attribute – Some stories are there just to show us what God is like. What’s the book of Hosea there to do? In essence it’s there to show us the love of God to an unfaithful people. If you’re preaching on Hosea you highlight the love of God by being faithful to the text – but at some point you have to interact with the NT and what it has to say.
5. Trace the fulfillment. Micah – the “ruler coming out from Bethlehem” – some passages make it easy, in others it’s harder. Different to “following the plan” which involves following the story, tracing the fulfillment is more direct/specific. God promised to do this, he did this.
6. Focus on the action – David and Goliath – the action is 33 words of 58 verses. The rest is David’s commentary on the action – it’s the Lord fighting his enemies. (extra thinking – David and Goliath is like a boxing match with a huge descriptive build up and a very quick knock out).
7. Point out the consequences – Some parts of the Bible make it very clear that if you live without God this will happen, if you live with God this will happen… how wisdom literature fits into the scheme of Biblical theology.

“I think that boring preaching is sinful and we’ll have to answer to God for it.
Boring preaching makes the pew warmer feel guilty and then bored. They walk out feeling worse than they felt when they walked in.”

When approaching the OT Gary takes the following steps.

I sit with a big bit of paper and divide the book up into the chunks that I’m going to preach on…
Read the book as many times as I can
Write down what I think the big idea is for each passage.
Write down if one of the seven options works beside each passage – and I make sure I’m never doing the same one of those seven two weeks in a row.

He added the following insights…

When we take bigger chunks of narrative there are more possibilities.
The further back you go in history the longer and more complex it becomes to “follow the plan”

March 2, 2010

YouTube Tuesday: A bridge over troubled water

This was our drive to college today. Jeremy is hardcore.

March 2, 2010

Pancake art makes playing with food fun

You know how you were told over and over again not to play with your food as a kid – well – it turns out playing with your food is a great way to get your online Warhol (one unit of fifteen minutes of fame). This Pancake art is fun.

March 2, 2010

Understanding the emerging church

I think we can all agree that this sort of emerging church is pretty cool. Except for the whole drought angle…
underwater church

“This combination photograph shows the ruins of a church in the Andean town of Potosi in 2008 (L) and its current state on February 21, 2010. The 25-meter-tall church and ruins of a Potosi town flooded in the early 1980s have emerged from the Uribante-Caparo water reservoir after a drought reduced water levels.”

March 2, 2010

A bit of a pickle

I’m on the record saying the Nickleback are the world’s worst band. I stand by my statement. It also turns out that singer Chad Kroeger has no sense of humour.

If you’re on Facebook you’ve probably been invited to join a little social experiment called “can this pickle get more fans than Nickleback.” I confess to almost signing up. I ignore all similar requests as a matter of principle (though I am a fan of Bacon).

The Nickleback frontman didn’t like it very much when the pickle eventually became more popular – and he joined the group to have a little rant (this is the first time I’ve ever linked to Perez Hilton – it’ll probably be the last.

What he should have done was invited the pickle to join the band on its next tour.

March 1, 2010

Noise reducing toilet stool

Tired of hearing your significant other “falling” from such great heights. Would you like to reduce the noise associated with your visits to the water closet? It would no doubt make phone conversations while on the toilet less awkward. You definitely need, note – not want, one of these kneeling stools (if you don’t want to spend your hard earned you could just pinch one from an Anglican Church somewhere).

You could sit, but not only is that unbecoming a man, you also risk splashing the rim. Enter the Pee Without Noise stool. Kneeling on its soft cushions positions you at the exact right height to land your stream in the bowl at a much-reduced velocity and volume level. This simple, elegant tool could save your dignity, your relationship, or even your life (if there’s a robber in the house but you just have to go)!

What I love is the subtle use of the colour yellow in the marketing… and the angel’s oddly phallic wand.

March 1, 2010

Put your hero in a half shell

The site selling these Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle backpacks went all out and got a teenage mutant to model this ninja turtle bag.

March 1, 2010

How to promote your band on Google Street View

It’s simple really. If you’re an aspiring musician just wait until you hear Google is updating images of the streets in your suburb and then follow these steps and you’ll sell millions, if not billions of copies to workers in Indian call centres.

Get a guitar.
Get a sign.
Drive around until you see the Street View Car.
Go one block past the Street View Car.
Set up a placard and pose.

The result: Priceless.

February 27, 2010

Calculating circular mathematics in the shower: as simple as pi

Did you know that water droplets are perfectly spherical? You could measure it for yourself if you could remember the formula for the volume of a sphere and if you had one of these pi shower curtains featuring pi to 4,600 decimal places.

February 27, 2010

Why I prefer email to phone conversations

Email you can do from the bathroom without fear of condemnation or suspicion.

The Oatmeal has ten reasons. I like this one.

February 27, 2010

Things I would do if I had an annoying little brother

This made me:
a) wish I had a little brother.
b) glad I don’t have a little brother.
c) laugh.
d) all of the above.

UPDATE: I posted the wrong video – I’ll leave both up.

February 27, 2010