Study Hall
Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth. 2 Timothy 2:15 NASB
Be diligent – We looked at this verb just a few weeks ago (July 14) when we questioned the shift in psychological impact in the translation “do your best” rather than “be diligent.” But now I want to point to Paul’s exhortation as the solution to a problem raised in the latest issue of Eternal Perspectives. The article I have in mind is a discussion of why so many kids lose their faith when they go off to college. Alcorn’s analysis is two-fold. He thinks the reason so many students drop God from their thinking is that 1) they are intimidated by atheist professors and they lack sufficient arguments to combat these instructors (particularly over the problem of evil), and 2) they are exposed to a culture of sexual immorality and they lack sufficient moral grounding to resist. Alcorn’s solution is to only send children to colleges that adhere to “the authority of the Scriptures” and train children to face the tough questions before they get there. He exhorts parents to “prepare them intellectually and morally for the world they’ll face as adults.”[1] Sounds good, but if it really worked, we wouldn’t have the problem, would we? Haven’t parents been attempting to prepare their children for college for quite a long time now? Don’t they try to instruct their children about the evils of the world and the people who pursue them? What makes Alcorn think that this is a contemporary problem? Why do you think Paul told Timothy about preparation nearly 2000 years ago?
It’s not that Alcorn’s advice isn’t good advice. It’s just that it has been shown to be completely inadequate. It’s the same advice I was given decades ago. It didn’t work then and it doesn’t work now. The problem is not intellectual or moral. The problem is identity. It’s not what they know or don’t know nor is it a problem with what they do or don’t do. The problem is the way they understand who they are. Here’s what I mean. In the Greek-based culture, the sense of identity is based in the individual. The world is the world I know. I am the final arbiter of my truth. I am what I decide to be. Since this view is ultimately egocentric, my thinking about the world depends on what I know and how I behave. I can retain my identity, because it is mine, even if I change my thinking or my behavior.
But in the Hebraic world, I am not an independent, self-existent individual. I am the collective of the consciousness of my community. I exist because I share the values and beliefs of the community. If I abandon those values and beliefs, I no longer exist. I am “cut off” from my sense of self because I no longer am part of the community. I maintain my commitment to the way of life of the community because it provides me with the sense of who I am. Change is not progress. Change is death.
Alcorn’s solution fits the Greek model. It basically comes down to education and discipline. But since identity is a function of self, changing my thinking or my behavior is not a life and death decision. I don’t lose me when I give up on God. So education is merely a defense and sexual purity is merely a choice. Neither threatens my being. In the Hebraic worldview, I am my relationships within the community. To violate those relationships either intellectually or morally directly attacks me, not simply my information storehouse or my sexual preference. It doesn’t really matter how much fortification parents provide. If children are raised to think that they are their own determiners of their lives in the world, they will inevitably slip from the parental fold because the parents have the same foundation. Without community identity, the self is free to find its own way.
Paul exhorts Timothy to be diligent, to study, to exercise zeal—but not in a vacuum. The goal is the incorporation of my entire way of life into the way of life given by God, including the community that practices the Way. The goal is exactly the opposite of the Greek idea of the individual. Train all you want, but once you are cut loose from communal identification, the magnetism of the world will be impossible to resist.
“Be diligent” is not about memorizing facts or beating the body into submission. It is about absorbing a way of life with others that can’t be replaced by anything else.
Topical Index: be diligent, 2 Timothy 2:15, Alcorn, identity
[1]Randy Alcorn, “Forsaken Faith,” p. 9, Eternal Perspectives, Summer Issue, 2014.
Hi Skip
I think your point is true but the issue is more difficult and complicated
For me there is an issue of seeing and knowing
For example a teacher could be teaching a spiritual truth and the student cannot see it
Or the student might understand it but not see the significance
On the other hand I go to an Indian temple with neighbors where everybody seems to see the same spiritual truths
Understand their importance and practice their faith
When it comes In that form it would be difficult to lose at the university 😉
Michael I believe what you are saying is precisely Skips point.
“But in the Hebraic world, I am not an independent, self-existent individual. I am the collective of the consciousness of my community. I exist because I share the values and beliefs of the community. If I abandon those values and beliefs, I no longer exist. I am “cut off” from my sense of self because I no longer am part of the community. I maintain my commitment to the way of life of the community because it provides me with the sense of who I am. Change is not progress. Change is death.”
Hi Pam,
I agree, I was actually arguing with Alcorn’s advice
My education was provided by the University of California
And my education from Skip was essentially an extension of what I learned at UCSD
At UCSD I taught the Bible to undergraduates under the direction of full professors
Some of whom were Rabbis and sons of Rabbis
Some were Marxists
But I could not figure out how these people knew what they knew or how they knew it
Around the turn of the century Skip invited me to join this blog
And Skip began teaching me and a few others what the Hebrew worldview was
And how to understand it
Ahhh that makes more sense.
After listening to Rabbi Foreman yesterday talk about the ten commandments and boiling it all down to respect for others and respect for self. I think a part of the problem is not so much that parents don’t try to teach children about community and “loving” others, and/or defending their faith, but is because the parents don’t understand the basis for what they believe and why.
In a world where we like to take as “gospel” what ever anyone of authority says to us without questioning where that information originated or how it has been distorted up to the point of transmission to us, we are left with no other choice than to assume the Greek position and mold it to fit our our own perspective based on our personal life experience.
If we came at faith from a perspective of respecting others and ourselves – not, the love your neighbor bit from Rabbi Akiva because love is such a subjective word anymore, but from a “That which you hate, don’t do to others” (Hillel) perspective we might find it easier to have compassion and build relationships with others. We might also be able to have confidence to turn our back on what we know is wrong, yet gleam the information we need that is being communicated to us.
We tend to send our children off into the world with a list of do’s and don’ts but not the ability to discern what they are being told. How to sift through information for the useful portions. How to discern what is fact and what is opinion and then how to come to reasoned conclusions from the facts presented.
The thing that I have learned over the last few years of reading what you have written, Skip, and what I have gleaned from other sources, is that YHWH has given us boundaries, but truly never intended for us to check our brains at the door. The Torah with all of its commandments allows us to know YHWH and also to have confidence in how we conduct our own lives. Living a life where we are not dependent on others to affirm our significance or even our beliefs. That is freedom indeed.
I believe this is a key in mentoring men in the Faith. Skip, I sure appreciate your discussion on this from a Hebrew point of view. I will taking on a new male mentee who is an alcoholic. I must help him change his identity to a man who follows Yeshua and identifies with His Band of Men.
Dennis
“so many kids lose their faith when they go off to college”… Stop and really take in this TRUE statement. Read it again without the false sense of confidence you might get by sending your adult children to “christian” college. Now, take a deep breath and realize that WE ARE SENDING OUR KIDS TO THE GAS CHAMBER!
We lost our 2 oldest girls to their own egos but it all started with “christian” colleges. They both came away deformed and, because of the hypocrisy by the STUDENTS and the TEACHING at the well-known universities, they ran with all their might to secular humanist institutions. The memories are too painful for me to address here in a brief comment. I just pray that you who are about to send your beautiful YOUNG “children” out to the wolves, can hear this: my girls lost their knowledge of and faith in God because their peers, who wore His Name like a cheap bracelet, demonstrated how to fool the world by looking pretty and quoting the Bible like they meant what they were saying. It was all smoke and mirrors. My oldest daughter wasn’t surprised (she was fighting God when she got there BUT her heart was still pliable… SHE chose the “christian” college, not us!). She used/uses her experiences at that school as fuel to intensify her “hatred” for God, so-called “christians” and me. She is 37 yoa and truly believes that anybody (well, me and anybody similar to me) who talks God is CRAZY. She has denied us our grandkids because she considers us (me) dangerous. I guess that makes sense if you look at things from her perspective.
Our second daughter was passionate about the LORD and headed off to her “reputable” college to complete the degree necessary to CONTINUE HER MISSION WORK IN AFRICA. At this “reputable” college, she experienced a void, an emptiness from these “christians” who supposedly were there to learn/teach how to serve the LORD more passionately. What she got out of 2 years in that pit was counsel from the Dean that turned her tender heart into a fearful, agitated, selfish one. Needless to say, the village in Africa never saw her face again. Instead, she wasted the beauty God gave her on temporary thrill.
The next generation, my precious grandchildren, have NEVER heard about the God Who made them, Who loves them and Who desires their lives to glorify Him. My heart feels like it is actually bleeding from the pain.
This is heartbreaking. 🙁 After 21 years as a Jehovah’s Witness, I was disfellowshipped and treated with utter cruelty by my family. I threw out the baby with the bath water and turned away from God altogether. For several years I was an atheist, then settled into agnosticism, deciding that maybe I would like it if God existed, because I had a lot of hatred for him and it sure would be a shame if all my rage went to waste because he didn’t exist. 😉
This is a major paraphrasing of what my spiritual journey has been, but a little over a year ago I felt like God caught up with me and lovingly but firmly wrestled me to the ground after years of pursuit. I didn’t have this experience in a church. In fact I hate church. But I was absolutely on fire with the rush of awe at this new relationship with God, because it finally made sense to me and was made real to me in my own heart. It took me about 6 months to become discontent with the “mainstream” Christian culture, and I began to panic that I was losing this beautiful new treasure I had found in God. It was around that time that I stumbled upon this blog and well, down the rabbit hole I went. 🙂
I guess what I am saying is… Don’t give up on your daughters. So much damage is done by religion, but God is greater than religion and greater than wicked arrogant men and greater than our own hearts. If there is a smoldering ember of love for him left in our hearts, he will not see it extinguished. We can run but he will overtake us. No one has cursed and raged at God more than me. 🙂 I pretty much guarantee it. I have seen and lived some of the worst of what religion can do. And still my Father has persisted in showing me who He is. Looking back, his protective hand was over me and his Spirit was guiding me, as much during the years of atheism as he does now.
Don’t give up. God, our God, loves restoration. I have a hunch he loves restoration even more than he loves creation. Nothing is beyond his ability to redeem. Pray for your daughters, and wait in eager expectation for God. I am praying that he will heal their wounded hearts and speak tenderly to them and show them who he is.
Alicia — your words are so precious. Thank you. I have a hunch that your hunch about God is right: He loves restoration more than creation. 🙂
Daria, there is another way to look at your daughters’ current estrangement from God. People turn away from God because they don’t think He has lived up to their expectations. But most of the time they aren’t really turning away from God — they are turning away from the people who have represented God to them. Your daughters have correctly discerned that the “Christians” in their experience didn’t live up to their expectation of God. While their expectations of God may not have been right (and I have no way of knowing whether that’s the case,) from your description, they did correctly discern the truth about people around them who called themselves Christians. Give them credit for that. I suspect their issue is really with people, and not HaShem. Let Him use you to live before them a different way than the Christianity they grew up with. I think He will show you a better way than fretting about their loss.
Trust Him, my friend. 🙂
My heart breaks for you Daria. Please don’t lose faith – Our God is powerful and mighty and maybe just maybe through this pain the door is open for a different type of relationship to be developed between them and their creators (God and You)
“But in the Hebraic world, I am not an independent, self-existent individual. I am the collective of the consciousness of my community. I exist because I share the values and beliefs of the community. If I abandon those values and beliefs, I no longer exist. I am “cut off” from my sense of self because I no longer am part of the community. I maintain my commitment to the way of life of the community because it provides me with the sense of who I am. Change is not progress. Change is death.”
This is exactly why our families are devastated when we embrace Torah. :'(
Cheers
Two basic human needs are to belong, and to be loved. We are meant to “live in community,” whether ‘that’ community be a tavern (Cheers) or a church. This (legitimate) need but twisted fulfillment for “community” or communal family accounts for much evil in this world.
Gangs are everywhere. Why? It is because we are gregarious creatures! We (all) wish to be “part of the herd.” (Yes, herd mentality!)- Moo!- says the cow.
But we are not cattle, we are (worse yet!) sheep. We the sheeple. ~ All we like sheep have gone astray.. ~ These words are so ancient, and yet so fresh! We might be tempted to say- “You’ve come a long way baby!”- for don’t we live (now) in a well-connected, – well-provided for community!
This desire, this basic need for community, (to belong and to be loved-or even respected) runs deep within the heart of every man and woman and (especially) child.
Yet, the problem is absolutely “identity.” We have forgotten who we are.. but far more weightier and worthier – (and far more glorious) is “whose” we are!- or who we are *in Christ!*
~ Don’t you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit which is in you, which you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price: glorify God therefore in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s ~ (1 Corinthians 6.19-20)
~ and when you pray, say, – “Our Father..” ~
Change is coming
~ Behold, I show you a mystery; we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. ~
~ O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? ~
~ But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ ~
~Therefore, my beloved brethren, be stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the LORD, forasmuch as you know that your labour is not in vain in the LORD ~
This, is a only a partial list of who we are *in Christ!*
(please) ~ think on these things.. ~
http://crossinglouisville.com/sermon/our-identity-in-christ/
Love this community! I am right with you there, Daria, got 5 of those wayfarin’ youngin’s meself; Suzanne, what you had to say I felt you said to me, too. Thank you! Alicia, I am going to have to keep what you said in a special way; your gold shines from such a unique place! Thank you! I feel I am having to say “thank you” to everybody today… Carl, you too. Wow!
About that ‘belonging’ thing: when I needed what I needed, and the people around me were not even traveling on the side of the road my ditch was on, I took a good look at what I thought of that. I realized that what I needed most was folks that, no matter how awful my situation or I looked, could STILL find a way to identify with me – that means include me- in their worlds. Instead, I must have looked like a challenge to all they held dear. I wanted to ask “why are you afraid of me?” but no one wanted to engage, it seemed, even to that extent. Instead, what I found, at the bottom, were some really messed up people who DID care, did identify, with me. They were as bad off as I was, granted, but it was still community. There, on the bottom, stripped away of all extraneous add-on inventions of relationship, I was able to see, like the proverbial drunk under the boardwalk, up the spiritual skirts of everybody in town, (sorry: Isaiah started it) and certain things began to make sense.
I saw that instead of going around and trying to find people who look just like me, what was required was to not only be able to say “there, but for the grace of God, go I” but to go further, and (hold onto your paradigm hat, folks!), find a way to say “I identify with you!” And really identify! Wait! That is what my Saviour did!
I was praying in desperation about one of my children, who is flinging particularly far out, by anyone’s definition, I’m sure, about how to respond to him, how to even THINK about him, and I got a verse between the eyes – the one that goes “think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is before you”. OK! So, I decided to not think it strange, ’cause it sure looked like one of them fiery trials to me, and so I decided to treat wherever this kid happened to be as perfectly ‘normal’ (not sure what that is, myself). I had another child of mine get in my face shortly after, over concern about this son, and accuse me of being too ‘flexible’. Hah! I just listened, because I wasn’t sure how to explain why I wasn’t thinking it strange… Seriously, if we are going to be the change we need to see in the world, aren’t we going to have to start by taking community to others; I mean, they are the bound ones: we are supposed to be the free ones, and if ‘free’ doesn’t refer to this, what could it possibly be referring to? If the Creator Himself came down and found a way to identify with me, shouldn’t I be able to turn around and do the same to everybody else? How?
“He drew a circle that shut me out; heretic, rebel, a thing to flout; but Love and I had the wit to win; we drew a circle that took him in.”
I have made a decision that my children, hard as they try, and as smart as they are, are NOT going to find a way to make me not be there for them. Period. I am a mother. I get to do the unconditional love thing. I made a decision that, if I had to choose between righteousness FOR my child, or a relationship WITH my child, I was going to choose relationship. I decided I was just going to shoot them all and let God sort them out. So now, I am going to keep moving where I am, until I find where they are, and then just stand there. For them. With them. (In spite of them… bwahahaha!)
May the Lord bless us, and keep us; may the Lord make His face to shine upon us, and be gracious unto us; may the Lord lift up His countenance upon us, and give us peace. Amen.
Next month my 18 year old heads to university. What will happen in his young life? A community of The Way I have not been able to offer him. We all need a spiritual family. I have found support though a fellowship group, but since there are no kids his age there, he refuses to be involved. Other then a small family group, his community is school friends. This does not bode well. I pray that he will be protected.
send him to Israel with Bob and me. There are about 8 his age going. He will make friends in the Way for life.
There is also a program called Volunteers for Israel in which civilians give time to help the Israeli Defense Forces in ways that civilians CAN help, so that reservists can be sent home earlier because they aren’t being held over to do mundane, but necessary tasks. Their About Us statement is as follows:
The mission of Volunteers for Israel is to connect
Americans to Israel through volunteer service.
We achieve this goal by partnering with military
and civilian organizations that enable volunteers to
work side-by-side with Israelis.
We promote solidarity and goodwill among Israelis,
American Jews, and other friends of Israel.
You don’t have to be Jewish to serve. You pay for your flight and must provide your own health insurance (not Medicare). Your lodging and meals are on IDF bases and you have the weekend (Thurs night through Sunday morning) to site see if you choose. Usually they are looking for 2-3 week commitments but right now they are also doing 1 week programs.
Check out their website for details: http://vfi-usa.org/AboutVFI/Index.php
What a potent insight. I wish I had had it when I approached university. I returned to a community of the Way after some nasty experiences. Although I had some fellowship as a child my parents weren’t believers and i had to find it by myself. My experience suggests that it is vitally important that children be exposed to a community, even if they cannot enter in fully because of their home life. It is important to know that there is something to return to.
This tells me why I continually try to find like minded believers, I need that community.
Great answer for me, thanks Skip.
Thank you Laurita. Wow, I want to copy you!
This raises a VERY BIG QUESTION for me in regards to COMMUNITY. Almost everyone I know who is following the Way is out of community. We stopped going to church a couple of years ago and our teenagers are kind of floating in la-la land out there not really knowing anymore who we are and what exactly we believe. The only church in our area that meets on Sabbath and observes the Feasts is still really churchy and in my opinion still very Greek thinking and practicing. Most of our Torah observant friends either have grown kids, little kids or teenagers with whom my kids just don’t relate. Any suggestions on how to do this with teenagers who were raised in “the Church” and now are not and have no desire to go back, would be greatly appreciated.
Don’t underestimate the value of how you walk in the Way before them on a daily basis. Take the time to say the Bracha after meals and to light Shabbat candles and say a blessing at sundown Friday night. (Sometimes we actually remember to do a Havdalah on Saturday evenings as well.) But while these things help to give a stability to our walk, the most important thing IS our daily walk when we address the common problems of life. I’m sure that you talk about what the Torah response is whenever there is a problem, whether it’s relationships with a friend, or other matters of integrity. Those things are foundation stones that your children will return to, far more so than simply being involved in a youth group at church. Yes, they need friends. One suggestion is to have Shabbat dinner every Friday night and make it a habit to have each child invite a friend for dinner. Don’t make it a religious service, just make it a wonderful time of fellowship that starts with the blessing for Shabbat. I think that’s more in character with what happens in observant Jewish homes.