The Keener Way

  It would seem that December is upon us. And thus Christmas season. Accompanied by all the things typically associated with Christmas. Lights, candles, trees, mistletoe, wreaths, trees, present shopping, Christmas carols, hot cocoa, fruitcake, figgy pudding, eggnog, hot cider, trees, Santa, candy canes, nativity scenes... Did I mention trees? Christmas is one of the most commercialized times of the year. Its also one of the few times some people ever grace a church pew. To which point it is in our interest to be the most theologically solid we possibly can be during this time.  A lot of the popular Christmas traditions are drawn from pagan celebrations that date to the B.C., including Germanic celebrations of Yule, and the Roman celebrations of Saturn. These traditions were copied over to the Christian holiday by the Catholic church and some by the Lutheran church, in order to make it more appealing to the pagans.  I could say a lot of things about Christmas. I could say a lot of thin

    For the past several weeks, my church has been studying the book of Genesis, a couple chapters at a time. This week was the part of Abraham’s story where Sarah dies and Abraham finds a wife for Isaac. And I had a load of notes, part from the sermon, part from my own mind gears turning. Let’s see if we can make this all make sense. So first off, I was amazed to study just how many great nations ended up coming from Abraham. We all know the Israelites. We all know the Ishmaelites (who occupied Saudi Arabia, parts of Edom, and they eventually fathered the Islamic religions). We even know Esau became the nation of Edom. But after Sarah’s death, Abraham married a third time. We don’t talk about that much. Abraham’s kids by his third wife were Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak, and Shuah. Zimran may tentatively be connected with the nation of Yemen. Jokshan fathered Sheba and Dedan. Is this the Sheba from whence Ethiopia became a nation? Perhaps not, as there was another

  This past week, I've been doing a challenge set by my church's pastor. Each day, choose a random passage of scripture, study it, and try to find an attribute of Adonai's character. In five weekdays, that is five attributes. Its been a fascinating study so far. But it really got interesting when one morning, I decided to study Job 38. A little poke inside me said "no, do Job 42." I looked at Job 42 and thought, "But i don't want to do Job 42. YHWH is rebuking Job's three friends. If I study that, I'm gonna almost have to study the whole book, to really grasp why he was angry with their counsel. That's the way my mind works." But the voice insisted. "Job 42". And I'll be honest, the study was worth it. I only did a very general overview of the whole book, but I came out of it with some enlightened thoughts. Here is a (very) rough and abridged version of the argument between Job and his companions.   Eliphaz (my god is fine g