:: In.a.Mirror.Dimly ::

I’m proud to announce my latest book release:

Read the book of Acts with fresh eyes and easily retweet your favorite passages with the New Twitter Version’s latest translation: The Tweets of the Apostles. 

Download the full E-book today:

Download to your Kindle ($.99)

Download to your Nook ($.99)

Want to check it our first before you toss a buck my way?

Download the free PDF (portrait orientation)

Download the free PDF (landscape orientation)

Don’t forget to tweet #NTV12, mentioning @edcyzewski, and to share on Facebook!

About the Tweets of the Apostles in the NTV

Twitter has changed everything in our world: how we communicate, market, and network. Now, Twitter is changing how we read and understand the Bible. Until now, every translator of the Bible was bound to report every single detail in the original manuscripts.

With Twitter, we’ve found a fast, efficient, easily shared way of communicating that cuts out the repetition and cluttered details. By constraining the message of Acts into a series of tweets, readers will quickly grasp the complete message of the book of Acts and easily share the Gospel with their friends and neighbors who may not understand the Gospel if we build orphanages and provide clean water for the poor, but who may understand a simple, succinct tweet.

The New Twitter Version keeps the message of Acts simple, effective, and easy to share. By focusing on the minor details of the Acts story and cutting out the long, repetitious conversion narratives, this fresh translation reshapes the Bible into the image of today’s communication technology so that we can relate to the characters, understand the challenges they faced, and learn more about what they ate for lunch.

Download the TNV Media Kit now.

Is The Tweets of the Apostles a Real Book?

The NTV and The Tweets of the Apostles is a real book in that you can download and read a real E-book. However, this book is being released on April 1st. Take a moment to consider what usually happens on April 1st. Whoopee cushions… Staplers in jello… Threats to conduct small group over Skype… (Yes, my brilliant friend actually pulled that one off!)

Are you following me?

In fact, every year I release a book like this on April 1st.

• Love Bites (think Love Wins and Twighlight)
• The Lost Tweets of Jesus

All that to say, while I do spend a lot of time talking about what Christians do and believe and how our culture impacts both, you may not want to form your judgments of me based on the NTV. Coffeehouse Theology would be a much better place to start.

What Authors Are Saying…

“Ed Cyzewski has done it again! (Whatever it is that he does).”
- Bradley Wright, Author of Upside and Christians Are Hate-Filled Hypocrites and Other Lies You’ve Been Told

"I would loudly proclaim my endorsement of Ed Cyzewski’s writing but I’m not sure how to pronounce his last name."
- Jason Boyett, Creator of the 9 Thumbs podcast (9Thumbs.com) and author of some books

“Wow, Ed C…ski has done it again. This is a GR8, 1st-rate book! If u read this book & it d/n change ur life, there’s something wrong w/ u. D/n miss it!”

- Matt Woodley, managing editor of PreachingToday.com & author of The Gospel of Matthew: God with Us

About the Author

Ed Cyzewski (MDiv, Biblical Seminary) is a freelance writer and blogger at http://www.inamirrordimly.com who uses curiosity, a seminary degree, and bad puns to help his readers follow Jesus. He aims to make good theology accessible, interesting, and practical. Ed is the author of Coffeehouse Theology: Reflecting on God in Everyday Life and Divided We Unite: Practical Christian Unity. He is the co-author of Hazardous: Committing to the Cost of Following Jesus (CLC, Fall 2012) with Derek Cooper.

Today I’m honored to have another guest post from Sandra Glahn of Dallas Theological Seminary:

A few months back I picked up a newly released second edition of a book on the role of women in ministry. Written by a well-known theologian, it was acclaimed as the latest in scholarship on backgrounds. So I was surprised to discover its chapter on the first-century Greek and Roman world drew on only one secondary source later than 1980.

Though the author downplayed the importance of culture for understanding 1 Corinthians 11 and 14, and 1 Timothy 2—some of the Bible’s more controversial “woman” texts—he went on to talk of women in the ancient world being under male authority for life (which was not always the case), women veiling the fronts of their faces (probably not ever the case, except on wedding days), and other long-outdated information. Unfortunately, his historical understanding, based on old information, greatly affected how he understood the texts.

Yet especially when it comes to understanding backgrounds on the “women” texts, much has changed, particularly in the past half-century.

First, the field of women’s and gender history has exploded as more women have joined men in the academy. And women’s involvement has added a new emphasis on social history. Whereas much of political history focuses on emperors and kings, social history asks all sorts of questions about commoners such as, “What was the average life expectancy?” and “What sort of work did men and women do?” and “Did women sit or lie down during childbirth?” Gender analysis also has us asking, “What did first-century Romans consider feminine?” and “What made a Greek man manly?”

With new emphases in history departments have come new methodologies, including a reconsideration of primary sources. In the past when an ancient writer criticized women for being too talkative, scholars have tended to take such assessments at face value. But today’s historian would look for additional clues. So when reading a writer such as Cicero, who used “female” imagery to insult Antony in The Second Philippic, a contemporary scholar would consider how the author is using gender as part of an overall rhetorical strategy. Is Cicero including his negative assessment of women as part of a scheme of insulting Antony’s enemies?

Also, the academic field of semiotics has seen monumental growth. “Semiotics” is the study of symbols and signs as elements of communicative behavior. Consider what a ring worn on the fourth finger, left hand communicates in the West, or what some think of a man who wears a baseball cap to a funeral. And a white dress on a woman’s wedding day says something different from what a red one would express. In terms of the ancient world, that would include knowing how and where a woman covered her head, with what she covered it (a veil or hair and/or fillets) and what doing so expressed in her context. Any explanation of the head-covering debate that ignores recent findings in semiotics is bound to be based on erroneous cultural information.

Next, a deeper reading of ancient texts has led to finding data about women hidden between the lines. Since Octavian passed laws allowing exemption frommanus (male supervision) for citizen mothers of three children, the historian today will observe that “exemption as incentive” indicates women preferred freedom to being under authority. But the law itself also indicates that not all women lived under such authority all their lives.

Today’s scholars are also more apt to consider the number of years separating an ancient writer from the event he (it was usually a “he”) describes. In the first century Strabo reported on cult prostitution in Corinth’s distant past (from his perspective). But archaeologists today seriously question the accuracy of such hearsay. Yet how many of us were taught that Roman religion was filled with temple prostitutes?

Add to all this the wealth of additional literary, archaeological, epigraphic, and iconographic evidence uncovered in the past half-century. The wording of many inscriptions is now available for search in a massive online concordance, making it possible for scholars to search by word, phrase, and geography without having to pore over books in a distant library or read them at the actual sites.

All of this has greatly aided us in reconstructing visions of first-century life in family, religion, and society. And because most people in the early church were non-elites, historians interested in early Christian backgrounds have greatly benefited from these developments.

So next time you’re browsing titles on the role of women in the church, check out the footnotes and bibliographies. Are the sources up-to-date? The fundamental truths of Christianity will never change, but how we view biblical living may. Our understanding of the contexts in which texts were written has increased exponentially. And we base applications today on our best understanding of what was happening "back then." 

Sandra Glahn, ThM, is editor in chief of Kindred Spirit, the magazine of Dallas Seminary, where she serves on the faculty. She is a PhD candidate in the Aesthetic Studies program at the University of Texas at Dallas and the author or coauthor of seventeen books, including the Coffee Cup Bible Study series.  You can find more from her at aspire2.com.

When I converted from Catholicism to the Evangelical/Baptist camp at the age of 15, I thought of myself in terms of Martin Luther. I knew what the Bible says. I believed it. Little did I know I’d just set the stage for my own theological destruction.

Luther’s phrase, “Here I stand, I can do nothing else” comes to mind.

That rule became a ticking time bomb.

When your belief system requires obedience to the Bible above everything else, you’ve essentially created a standard that is above your belief system. Where the Bible leads, you must follow, even if that dismantles your other beliefs.

For as much as I love the Bible and look to it as a key source of direction in my faith, I can also see how reliance on the Bible alone creates churches full of mini-Luthers who are all taking stands all over the place. This simple observation is almost enough to explain the tumultuous history of Protestantism that continues today in online spats and denominational divides.

Everyone is quite concerned about figuring out where to stand. If Luther took a stand once, shouldn’t I do the same?

After obsessing for years over where I stand, I’ve been wondering if a more helpful matter is figuring out how we got where we are—the walking of yesterday rather than the standing of today. Here are three things I’ve learned by looking at where I’ve come from rather than where I stand:

How Awesome Am I?

Focusing on where I stand gives myself too much credit. Did I really figure all of this out? Nope. I have benefited from those who came before me.

Am I awesome? Not very. Even Luther would probably call me a swine or a fart bag—he was a pretty crass fellow.

I owe just about everything to those who came before me.

How Objective Am I?

When I step back to look at the circumstances that helped give birth to what I believe and do as a follower of Jesus, I gain a really helpful perspective. Not only have  I not made up everything I believe, but I’m taking on a set of beliefs from one time and place and applying them to my own.

I may discover that the beliefs I’ve adopted have some major short-comings if I know a little about their history. Otherwise, I’m not objective enough to figure things out on my own.

The Bible Doesn’t Work in a Vacuum

You can’t distill the Bible into a test tube where you figure out precisely how to live. To use another metaphor, it makes for a poor set of blueprints.

I have often found it far more helpful to think of the Bible as a portrait painting. You can go to a gallery and appreciate how an artist interacted with his subjects at a particular time and place and offered his own representation of it. The nature of the paint or the ability of artists to capture light determined what the paintings look like in each period.

The Bible will not be tamed. It will disturb, disrupt, and shock us. My beliefs have changed so much over the years, and I honestly don’t know what I believe about certain things any more because I always find out something different about God each time I read the Bible.

In reality, I do very little standing when it comes to the Bible. I see myself running, just trying to catch up to the interpreters who came before me and with the various stories that sometimes create portraits of God and his followers that are hard to reconcile with one another.

When you sign on to make the Bible your sole authority, you’re signing up for a wild, disruptive ride where anything contrary to the scriptures needs to go. If you know where your beliefs came from in the first place, you’ll at least be ready for this and have a better idea of where the most dramatic bumps and turns will come.

If you don’t know where your beliefs come from, you’re at the mercy of a Bible that will push, pull, and punch. The Bible will give us plenty of comfort, but with its words of encouragement comes a disruptive message that can topple over every belief system—even the belief system that claims to revere the Bible more than any other.

There is one question you can ask while studying the Bible that will help you see more, learn more, and hopefully apply more than you ever could by just reading the stories.

The Bible is full of people who were just like us. It was written by people just like us. The details are there, tucked away in the spare prose and poetry. The trouble is how to unlock those details so that we can relate to the people in the Bible and sort out what it means for us.

We’re not used to reading books like the Bible. There are a lot of ways that’s true, but one obvious detail is that the Bible wasn’t typed on a computer with infinite pages. The writers of the Bible couldn’t pick up legal pads at Staples or drop off a manuscript at a printing press.

The Bible was written on scrolls—precious, limiting scrolls that could only hold so much. Long-winded writers need not apply for writing the Bible.

These authors were masterful in their economy of words. They distilled stories down to the most important details. If we see something in the Bible, no matter how small the detail, we need to ask, “Why is this here?”

This one question will help you dig into the backstory and the implied situations described in each story.

There are lots of other really good questions that will help you study Bible. However, this one question:

• Forces us to slow down
• Helps us read carefully
• Places us in the events recorded with new eyes

If we can answer the question, “Why is this here?” we may be able to figure out what the Bible has to say to us. We may find hidden treasures. We may even find out why we’re here.

This isn’t a post about God having a smite button. The results I describe are not unlike smiting, but they are entirely self-inflicted. I’m talking about the call to follow Jesus as a disciple and the daily moments we have to choose between obedience and our own plans.

I’ve learned that God lets us resist him. We can fight against God. However, we often won’t like the results. When I have said “no” or “wait” to God, I’ve discovered one of the following: frustration, anxiety, anger, or sadness. Sometimes I get a mix of them all.

I was reading the story of Elisha yesterday, and I began to wonder what would have happened if he resisted the wardrobe change that Elijah suggested for him. What if Elisha said, “No thanks. I’d rather hang here at my cozy estate and keep plowing with the oxen than put my life at risk with that crazy king of Israel!”

Here is where interpretation ceases and a little creative speculation comes into play. Sure, Elisha would have enjoyed some great years at his farm. But if you know the story of Elisha, which I heartily recommend, God repeatedly used Elisha to give the Israelites victory over the invading Arameans. When Samaria was surrounded, God spoke through Elisha and brought deliverance to the people of Israel.

What would have happened if Elisha had refused God’s call for his life?

We can only guess about the various scenarios that would have unfolded, but here are a few suggestions:

Elisha Would Have Struggled with Greed

If he had remained at his substantial farm with his 12-yoke of oxen workforce, Elisha would have continued to enjoy financial security. He never would have known God with the same intimacy as a prophet. In fact, he would have most likely struggled with greed, and who knows what could have happened from there.

Israel Would Have Been Destroyed

Without Elisha’s God-given guidance, the Arameans would have most likely captured the capital and occupied the rest of the country. Elisha would have eventually lost his farm and oxen at the end of the day.

The Worship of God Would Have Suffered

Faithful prophets of the Lord had it rough back in Elisha’s day. They had endured serious persecution under Ahab’s queen Jezebel, and even Elijah had fled in terror at her threats. Elisha helped fight against idol worship and kept his fellow believers on track. 

What’s at Stake for Us?

The story of Elisha reminds me that the decisions I make about obedience can have incredible ramifications for both my own future and the future of others. In addition, saying no to God does not guarantee safety or happiness. In fact, taking a big risk for God and watching God provide is a far safer place to be—even if the process feels anything but “safe.”

God doesn’t delight in making us miserable. He doesn’t use a smite button when we disobey him in this world. He lets us have what we want. When we repent and seek out his desires for us, the self-smiting will cease, and we’ll find peace even in the midst of facing challenges at the prompting of God.

As a veteran of Catholic elementary school and a survivor of fundamentalism, I like to think of myself as rather experienced in the realm of poorly exercised authority. My elementary school seemed to teem with sadistic teachers who only knew how to punish us in groups because of the one undiagnosed ADD kid.

At their worst, the fundamentalists figured out a way to make the Bible feel like my sadistic Catholic school teachers—a guide to the punishments we’re bound to receive unless we’re perfect. As a child, most of the religious authority figures I knew were rather heavy on the guilt and punishment end of things, save for a few women who were amazing teachers and Christians.

Attaching the word “loving” with authority strikes me as impossible in some unguarded moments, and yet, for Christians, this is really the only way authority truly works.

Read the rest of this entry »

Over the weekend our kitchen was full of bowls with hacked up apples, huge pots boiling with water, a food mill, and rows of quart jars. The promise of homemade applesauce for the long winter prompted us to spend the bulk of our Sunday hard at work in our kitchen scrubbing, cutting, boiling, and ladling.

I like to play the part of the menial slave who just focuses on one big project: washing the apples, cutting the apples, etc. My wife is far better suited for the supervision and “big picture” part of canning. She’s good at reading recipes and devising a plan.

I’ve never been good at following recipes. I usually forget something. Knowing this tendency, I could stand in front of a cook book for hours trying to make sure I got it right. If I was in charge of making the applesauce by myself, there’s a chance I could still be standing in front of the cookbook today.

When you’re canning something, you need to follow the instructions carefully to ensure everything stays sterile and that you cook your fruit/vegetables enough. The instructions are important, but the nourishment comes from putting them into practice and making something. No actions, no applesauce, no matter how well I think I understand the instructions. In fact, the instructions aren’t doing me much good without the applesauce they’re supposed to produce.

Theology often needs more applesauce.

That is to say, if theology provides us some critical instructions and guidelines relating to the nature of God, they’re only useful to the point that we actually meet the God we learn about. Our nourishment is knowing God and doing his will—it’s like eating a warm loaf of bread.

For all of my pouting about following recipes, the irony is that I often prefer just reading theology over putting it into practice. I’m malnourished because I miss out on God’s sustaining presence. If I’m not producing fruit that will last—or fruit that is “preserved”—there’s a chance that I’ve put too much value on learning “about” God rather than living “with” God.

Recipes are useful for pointing us in the right direction. We need good recipes just like we need good theology, but if the recipes don’t lead to something substantial and life-changing, we’re probably just starving ourselves.

In the sometimes illogical world of sports where beards are grown in the playoffs and jerseys are left unwashed for good luck, there is a term for fair-weather fans who only support a team at the peak of its success: bandwagon fans. The bandwagon fans don’t endure the losing seasons or the ups and downs along the road to winning the championship.

Bandwagon fans want all of the enjoyment at the end of the season without enduring the regular season. So far as I can tell, that’s perfectly fine in sports. However, when we apply the bandwagon fan principle to other things, it’s not quite as attractive.

The Bandwagon Fan for Campaigns

For example, we have politicians campaigning right now for positions such as president, best friend to lobbyists, and most likely be swayed by large campaign donors. Campaigns have staff and volunteers who invest long, hard days for the sake of their candidates.

Can you imagine someone refusing to help this candidate when given the chance, merely clicking a button in the voting both, and then celebrating as if he/she had been an integral part of the campaign? The bandwagon fan doesn’t look so hot in that scenario.

Bandwagon Faith

The interesting thing about Jesus, is that he’ll welcome anyone into the Kingdom at anyone point of his/her life. If you receive Jesus with your dying breath, you’re just as much a part of the Kingdom as someone who was raised in a Christian home, serving Christ with every breath.

There are no merit badges to accumulate in the Kingdom. We can enter it at any time.

On the other hand, when we are given an opportunity to follow Jesus today, and we put it off until a later point, we have a major problem. We are reminded in the book of Hebrews that today is the day of salvation. If you hear God’s voice today, don’t ignore it.

Let his voice speak into your life, and then take action. Faith is demonstrated by works in the present, not future aspirations.

Bandwagon faith says that we don’t need to fully commit ourselves to God’s Kingdom campaign today. The “bandwagonner” plans to celebrate fully in the Kingdom some day, but fails to invest in the work of God today. Bandwagon faith tries to squeak by with the bare minimum of commitment, ignoring the call of God in the present.

When Christians fail to live in obedience, it’s like we’re saying to God, “We’ll take care of ourselves today, and we’ll get around to you later. Oh, and we can’t wait for that big party with you some day!”

Obedience make’s God’s call a priority, taking tentative, sometimes faltering steps forward. When we leave bandwagon faith behind, we are able to find the joy and peace of God in our present circumstances, even if the way forward is sometimes uncertain and difficult.

We learn that the joy and celebration promised in God’s coming Kingdom can actually be ours to enjoy today. Bandwagon faith robs us of the most precious gift of God: Jesus fully present in our lives today through his Spirit.

These two men were responsible. They had business to take care of, and they were not idle in addressing it. One was fixing his nets along the shore of Galilee, the other had to take care of his father’s burial.

Culturally speaking, the man tasked with burying his father was especially living in careful observance of the law. He was in the right place, doing what mattered.

The difference between the two men came when Jesus called, saying, “Follow me.” This wasn’t something that could be delayed. Jesus literally wanted them to drop what they were doing and to reorient their lives around him.

One man knew when to stop, dropping the lower priorities for the person who mattered most.

The other man asked for time so that he could wrap up his obligations and still follow Jesus.

Learning how to stop is difficult, especially when you think you’re doing everything right. Other priorities can interfere when the most important call comes to us.

Can we stop?

Are we cultivating practices that help us stop daily to hear God’s voice?

Are we ready to stop and respond when the call comes?

One of the most disconcerting phrases in the Bible may be, “We rejoice in our sufferings.” How in the world could a sane person ever arrive at the conclusion that suffering is something to celebrate?

Even worse, we’re guaranteed troubles, trials, persecution, and other forms of suffering in this world. Something in the back of our minds may tell us this is the case, but it doesn’t help to read that right in the Bible.

In other words, the Bible assures us that trouble is coming. Then, once trouble comes, it assures us that we can rejoice in the midst of it. How does someone arrive at this point? In fact, should we even desire to reach this point?

Discipleship is all about the process where God reshapes us into people with his priorities. We become committed to manifesting his Kingdom in this world and detached from the desire to build our own kingdoms. Instead of building faulty structures for our own security and comfort, the Kingdom sends us out. Before we’re willing to leave our faulty buildings behind, we need to be changed.

Left to our own devices we’ll opt to stay put, to compromise the calling of discipleship. People untouched by the power of God have not been conformed into his image. They will steer clear of anything that could lead to suffering or persecution. They have their own kingdoms to worry about.

We’d never take the risks of discipleship without God’s power in our lives that makes us holy and renews our minds. This process of being conformed into God’s image is why holiness is so critically important for disciples.

As we learn to value holiness, we’ll realize that suffering is a sign that this world is passing away, that God’s Kingdom is our only hope. Suffering helps us see the world from God’s perspective.

Suffering reminds us that our little kingdoms are weak and flimsy. God is present in the midst of our suffering, preparing us for the day when all tears shall be wiped away and our joy will be made complete.