Scripture quotations taken from the Revised English Bible, copyright © Cambridge University Press and Oxford University Press 1989. All rights reserved.

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Browsing Category " priesthood "
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A New Time: How To Be A Bible Believer In A Changing World (Episode #100)

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The four cubits podcast has always been about taking seriously both our ancient Bible and our modern lives, even when doing so leads us away from easy, neat answers. Often, that approach will lead us towards personal and communal change - and despite what you might have heard from some Christians, theres nothing more biblical than change!

This episode explores some of the ways in which the people of God in scripture not only navigated changes in themselves, their communities, and their world, but how their experiences of God often drove those changes.

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proclaim (2019/11/23)

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Looking at how a biblical text is written can help us focus on the right things when we're reading it. That's what we're looking at in Nehemiah and 2 Timothy this week: how the message is proclaimed and why it matters. On the other hand there's also Amos, who takes a prophetic flamethrower to his people in a scathing indictment of a religious piety devoid of social justice.

Don't forget, you can now register for the Living Faith Study Day 2019 on EventBrite! It's a gathering for those exploring their relationship to faith, the Bible, and community. There'll be four thought-provoking topics packaged in short talks, with ample time for questions and discussion. I'll be giving one of those talks, "Christian Ethics and Social Justice: The Gospel of the Human Jesus". It's going to be a great day for building faith, and for taking the Bible seriously - both in its ancient context, and in the present day.

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resist (2019/11/10)

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The prophets in the Hebrew Bible urge the people of God to resist empire, but maybe they also confront their own community's traditions in search of better ways of worshiping and knowing God. In Ezra and Hosea this week, we're encouraged to see resistance as a mechanism of active change - and the prophets are nothing if not agents of change.

Don't forget, you can now register for the Living Faith Study Day 2019 on EventBrite! It's a gathering for those exploring their relationship to faith, the Bible, and community. There'll be four thought-provoking topics packaged in short talks, with ample time for questions and discussion. I'll be giving one of those talks, "Christian Ethics and Social Justice: The Gospel of the Human Jesus". It's going to be a great day for building faith, and for taking the Bible seriously - both in its ancient context, and in the present day.

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oath and wisdom: out-takes

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The laws at the start of Numbers 5 might seem unconnected with each other, and with the magic abortion test of marital fidelity that comes next, but there's a common theme. Keeping faith - or breaking faith - ties the provisions in this chapter together.

instruction and humanity (2019/03/10)

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Three quite different passages this week: a list of sexual "don't"s in Leviticus; part of the astonishing Psalm 119 that puts humanity and God only a Torah's-breadth apart; and the question of whether or not the author of Luke-Acts positioned themselves as an historian (spoiler: they didn't). Running through this episode, though, is a similar range of questions based on how (and why) we read the Bible.

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context and confidence (2019/03/03)

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How do we read and study the Bible? How hard should we work to pin down the meaning of every last detail, and is that even possible? This is where our thoughts are drifting in this episode, especially in Leviticus 8 and in a spot of light textual criticism in 1 Corinthians 16. Listen in and be prepared to let go of some certainty in exchange for a firmer biblical foundation.

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past, present, and future (2019/02/17)

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Sometimes the Bible is obscure and esoteric to us, and relies on knowledge that was bound to its culture of origin, as in the instructions for robing the priests in Exodus - and that's OK. Sometimes, we indulge in interpretations that are obscure and esoteric, which rely on the transitory circumstances in our own culture, and we appropriate biblical texts like the Olivet Discourse for questionable ideological reasons - and that's not OK.

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