Technically… Today is Thursday…
Hello beloved friends,
so this post is actually the post that i said i was going to write last week after i talked to my New Testament professor but the weekend was so busy with LG and freshmen lock-in, i couldnt find the time.. and since i have about 45 minutes until i have to get ready for class.. i thought i’d get to it now:
Like i said, these are my thoughts from a discussion i had with my New Testament professor. Her name is Professor Malbon and she is one of the kindest people ive ever met in my life.
to set this up, my New Testament class is very not-like-bible-study growing up. it’s literally picking up the Bible and studying it like you would a history/english textbook.. looking at context, authorship, narratives, literary devices. as you can imagine, this semester i’ve been struggling a bit with just the way that we approach the text. Growing up in a Christian family, i came into this class with all my “memory verses” and faith-based knowledge of scripture, but immediately, those became nada in studying for this course because in order to succeed in this class, you can’t really approach it with solely the faith-based knowledge i took in.
for example, a specific topic that i had been having a hard time with was the birth stories of Jesus. growing up in church, we used to put on skits at Christmas time where we’d have the character of the angel appear to Joseph in a dream, telling him not to be afraid and that the baby Mary bore was the son of God. But i never realized until this class is that while the Gospel of Matthew depicts the story in this manner, the Gospel of Luke actually has another version, where the angel Gabriel appears to Mary and tells her not to be afraid. it was details like this that challenged my thinking and made me wonder, “how is it possible to have such different stories if the Bible is truly God-breathed?” so i emailed my professor, asking her if i could come in to chat with her for a little and she told me to stay after class on thursday.
Thursday, class ends and i wait for her. she packed up her stuff and we walked over to the Department of Religion’s building. on the way over she asked me a few questions about my major, my grade, why i wanted to take this course… pretty much just making some small talk on the way over.
Once we got into her office, i sat down and we started off by taking a look at my first exam and the questions i missed (very happy with my first exam score, but wont get into that :D) and then she asks what else she “can help me with?”.
i didn’t hesitate and immediately asked her about faith/beliefs when it comes to approaching this course and how there could be so many differences among the gospels? She starts by telling me that i’m not the first one of her students to come to me with these questions over the years then mentions the fact that she is Christian (noting that she its hard to realize that by the way she teaches) and then starts into it. Malbon reminded me that even though these writers wrote books of the Bible, we must remember the fact that they TOO were human beings, meaning that they weren’t perfect in any sense, had unique differences about eachother, and all at times struggled in life. She said that their human nature would cause these discrepencies because the Bible is in fact written by people who struggling to be the people of God, FOR people that would struggle to BECOME the people of God. so while Matthew depicts that Joseph received the angel’s message due to the people it was written for cherishing higer righteousness, Luke was really written to give hope to the lowly, the dejected, the forgotten, and overlooked, so in this case Luke writes that a woman (Mary) played the large part in the story. She mentioned how her and i come from 2 very different backgrounds of faith and obviously have differences based on the Church culture that we grew up in, but we are all wonderfully and beautifully created with our differences for a purpose, and we aren’t supposed to fight eachother to see “who’s right?” but rather, God calls us to be a COMMUNITY of different people to live together FOR the Truth and to exemplify His love on earth.
Malbon also went on to say how she found it funny that we (as believers) find such a need/responsibility to “defend” the beliefs of the Bible we think is “right”, when in fact the Bible will “do just fine on it’s own”, that the Truth doesn’t need our debating on it’s behalf because in the end, God is all-powerful, He’s perfect, and His word will stand true forever. when she said this, i honestly got a little wake-up to realize that hey… woah.. God is truly all-powerful, and i’m just me… a conviction that for reals rather than arguing/trying to make debates over who’s right/who’s wrong, we really need to come together as a loving family, body, community… it’s funny how my fellowship, CCF, has been on this theme of commUNITY for the past 4 months, and God has a way of teaching me more and more even outside the CCF environment.
The final point Malbon had to share with me was this… we study Theology as “us studying God”, but have we ever stopped to wonder maybe.. JUST maybe, theology is actually more the idea of God “wanting to know US“… WOAHHH! ok let me elaborate. while the gospel writers were all humans, we are all humans, we are all unique and different in our own ways. so the idea of God wanting to know/have/love EACH and every one of His unique sons & daughters is what should drive us into truly loving Him and being totally for Him and after His Truth.
Yeah. so like i walked out of that discussion with a big smile/shocked/woah’d face on and my friend silvia knows (cause i called her right away and said pretty much all i just typed to her in like a 4 min fone convo LOL) i was in Legit awe… not so much that Malbon is actually a strong believer and wise woman, but just how God really spoke to me when i didn’t even think to expect it, and taught me so much, waking me up from this bubble of ideas of what faith, the Word, community, and Truth really was…
thank You, Daddy for being so so good to me.
even when i let the things of this world bring me down and think otherwise, i need to realize just how blessed i am and see that my struggles, my hardships are truly parts of my walk and paths to growing and becoming that man of God.
hopefully i can carry this with me into my exam in 2 hours. :P definitely approaching the rest of this semester in this class with a new mindset and heart. Let’s Goooo!
Peace & Love,
-alex
P.S. if you have any questions about this post/couldnt understand it cause i really typed mad fast and just let my thoughts flow… dont hestitate to ask cause id love to share in more detail!
