26 min.
Episode 46: What is a Spiritual Privilege and Power that Most Christians Today Neglect, but Those in the Bible Treasured? #Achoo! Deep Questions with Chase Thompson:
-
- Christendom
Today's passages include this encouraging little ditty from our depressed friend Job, "Anyone born of woman is short of days and full of trouble." (Job 14:1), and it only gets worse from there. This chapter is all depressing and absolutely hopeless. Fortunately, it's wrong. God tells Job this at the end of Job, and Job confesses that he spoke out of ignorance. Job wasn't sinfully wrong - he was ignorantly wrong in his assertions and claims. In the second half of Luke (from vs. 38 on) we see Mary's beautiful song of praise and Zechariah's stirring prophecy. 1 Corinthians 2 sees Paul contrasting the power of speech with a different (and higher) kind of power. Our focus passage in Genesis 48 for today, and it is all about blessing...and it's high time we talked about blessing on this podcast. Let's read and then discuss this neglected command, calling and privilege that Christians have today.
A few days ago when we read Romans 12 together, we heard this COMMAND from Paul. (all caps!) in verse 14, "Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. " Dozens of times in Scripture, the people of God are called to bless people. Unfortunately, In current times, when I say the word blessing, the first two things that most people think of is #1 prayer before a meal, and #2 something you give to people when they sneeze so that demons don’t fly up their nose in a vulnerable moment. Neither thing is remotely related to the biblical idea of a blessing. Before we go deeper in blessing, I do want to rabbit trail on sneezing for a moment.
Sneezing is a very interesting human phenomenon that religious people have made a big deal about over the centuries. In Islam the prophet Muhammad instructed Muslims who sneeze to say " “Thanks to Allah”, and whoever hears them say that should reply “may Allah have mercy on you“, and the person who sneezed should reply “May Allah Guide you to the right path and calm your mind”, and for repeated sneezes, they keep replying the same reply for a maximum of three times, by then the reply is changed to meaning “May Allah heal you“ and the replies stop. According to the Hadiths, the Islamic god likes sneezing, but yawns are from the satan.
Lest you think I am making fun of Islamic people, Christians have also had peculiar ideas about sneezing. The early church father Augustine wrote of a number of superstitions he was familiar with:
Some people are often so superstitious that they even dare to strike a dog that has run between them, but not without paying the penalty. Sometimes the dog sends his smiter quickly away from a ridiculous practice to a real physician. Other practices like this are: to tread upon the sill when you cross in front of your house; to go back to bed if you sneeze while putting on your shoes; to return home if you stumble on your way to a certain place; to be more disturbed by the premonition of a future calamity than concerned about the present damage if mice gnaw at your clothing.
Augustine of Hippo, Christian Instruction; Admonition and Grace; The Christian Combat; Faith, Hope and Charity, ed. Roy Joseph Deferrari, trans. John J. Gavigan et al., Second Edition., vol. 2, The Fathers of the Church (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1950), 89.
Our friend Augustine also had some pretty interesting rules that he laid down to Christians about sneezing:
At banquets, we should not be forever spitting or violently coughing or blowing our nose. We must consider the feelings of our companions at table, and avoid disgusting or nauseating them by our crude conduct, testifying to our own lack of self-control. Not even cattle or asses relieve nature at their feeding troughs, yet many people blow their nose and keep spitting while engaged at table. Again, if a sneeze take us by surprise, or, even more so, a belch, we need not deafen our neighbor with the noise and in so doing exhibit our lack of manner
Today's passages include this encouraging little ditty from our depressed friend Job, "Anyone born of woman is short of days and full of trouble." (Job 14:1), and it only gets worse from there. This chapter is all depressing and absolutely hopeless. Fortunately, it's wrong. God tells Job this at the end of Job, and Job confesses that he spoke out of ignorance. Job wasn't sinfully wrong - he was ignorantly wrong in his assertions and claims. In the second half of Luke (from vs. 38 on) we see Mary's beautiful song of praise and Zechariah's stirring prophecy. 1 Corinthians 2 sees Paul contrasting the power of speech with a different (and higher) kind of power. Our focus passage in Genesis 48 for today, and it is all about blessing...and it's high time we talked about blessing on this podcast. Let's read and then discuss this neglected command, calling and privilege that Christians have today.
A few days ago when we read Romans 12 together, we heard this COMMAND from Paul. (all caps!) in verse 14, "Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. " Dozens of times in Scripture, the people of God are called to bless people. Unfortunately, In current times, when I say the word blessing, the first two things that most people think of is #1 prayer before a meal, and #2 something you give to people when they sneeze so that demons don’t fly up their nose in a vulnerable moment. Neither thing is remotely related to the biblical idea of a blessing. Before we go deeper in blessing, I do want to rabbit trail on sneezing for a moment.
Sneezing is a very interesting human phenomenon that religious people have made a big deal about over the centuries. In Islam the prophet Muhammad instructed Muslims who sneeze to say " “Thanks to Allah”, and whoever hears them say that should reply “may Allah have mercy on you“, and the person who sneezed should reply “May Allah Guide you to the right path and calm your mind”, and for repeated sneezes, they keep replying the same reply for a maximum of three times, by then the reply is changed to meaning “May Allah heal you“ and the replies stop. According to the Hadiths, the Islamic god likes sneezing, but yawns are from the satan.
Lest you think I am making fun of Islamic people, Christians have also had peculiar ideas about sneezing. The early church father Augustine wrote of a number of superstitions he was familiar with:
Some people are often so superstitious that they even dare to strike a dog that has run between them, but not without paying the penalty. Sometimes the dog sends his smiter quickly away from a ridiculous practice to a real physician. Other practices like this are: to tread upon the sill when you cross in front of your house; to go back to bed if you sneeze while putting on your shoes; to return home if you stumble on your way to a certain place; to be more disturbed by the premonition of a future calamity than concerned about the present damage if mice gnaw at your clothing.
Augustine of Hippo, Christian Instruction; Admonition and Grace; The Christian Combat; Faith, Hope and Charity, ed. Roy Joseph Deferrari, trans. John J. Gavigan et al., Second Edition., vol. 2, The Fathers of the Church (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1950), 89.
Our friend Augustine also had some pretty interesting rules that he laid down to Christians about sneezing:
At banquets, we should not be forever spitting or violently coughing or blowing our nose. We must consider the feelings of our companions at table, and avoid disgusting or nauseating them by our crude conduct, testifying to our own lack of self-control. Not even cattle or asses relieve nature at their feeding troughs, yet many people blow their nose and keep spitting while engaged at table. Again, if a sneeze take us by surprise, or, even more so, a belch, we need not deafen our neighbor with the noise and in so doing exhibit our lack of manner
26 min.