Greetings!
Peace, mercy, and grace be with you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
I hope all the fathers out there enjoyed a happy Father’s Day.
Sunday, June 16, 2024
The Voice 14.24: Purity in the Camp | Numbers 5:1-35
Right after God prepared Israel with a military census and organizing the Levites, further legislation is given. Those with communicable diseases or discharges are to be expelled from the camp; provisions are made for reparation and restitution when appropriate; and the sotah, or the trial of the wife whose husband is jealous and/or suspects infidelity, is set forth.
Not a few provisions of this legislation are challenging and difficult. But we still do well to consider them in greater depth and what they might teach us about God and Israel, with perhaps some points of consideration for us as Christians today.
The Letter of James | James 3:13-18
James set forth an important contrast between worldly, natural, demonic “wisdom” and the pure, peaceable, godly wisdom from above. The earthly “wisdom” ultimately is spoken of thus accommodatingly, but it does seem to “work” on an earthly level. Our difficulty is how often we become enamored with the worldly “wisdom” and capitulate to it in our faith and practice.
The Gospel of John at West Los Angeles Christian Club: Lazarus | John 11:1-57
Our study will now take a summer break, but we did explore the greatest of Jesus’ signs in His ministry in John’s Gospel: the resuscitation of Lazarus. In the story we learn much about Second Temple Jewish expectations about resurrection along with the multiple layers of irony which mark the response of the Jewish authorities to all Jesus has been doing.
Lesson: Drugs | Chemical Temptations
Outline | Podcast | Conversation
Last week’s lesson on alcohol certainly engendered plenty of Internet chatter and presented the standard variety of views on the matter.
When it comes to drugs it can prove easy to end up preaching a lesson not terribly unlike a primary school D.A.R.E. presentation, and that was definitely not the goal.
The Apostles made provision for the use of medicines but also encouraged Christians to self-control and sobriety. We can perceive in warnings about sorcery about the potential of the use of certain substances as portals to dark forces.
And so we encourage and exhort everyone to maintain concern regarding the principles while extending compassion and mercy to those caught up in drug use and/or who are profoundly suffering. We also do well to wonder about the health of a society in which so many are so easily tempted to turn to such substances to cope.
This week’s picture is of one of those things in the British Museum which the British Museum should legitimately have and showcase: a seventh century Anglo-Saxon battle helmet discovered at Sutton Hoo, testifying to the continued skill of craftsmen even in the depth of the “Dark Ages” at the beginning of the medieval era.
Book Reviews
Life in the body is difficult enough. It’s even less pleasant in less than ideal bodies.
In Shameful Bodies: Religion and the Culture of Physical Improvement (affiliate link; galley received as part of early review program, but full book read), Michelle Mary Lewica speaks of her own developing physical ailment and aging and the pitfalls and challenges which attend to life in the body on account of the cult of physical aesthetic and improvement in our society. The author has specific concerns as they relate to religion and its role in this matter.
The author considers matters of the body in general, disability, and aging. She incisively considers the modern societal discourse regarding each, and well identified a lot of the religious trappings which attend to the cult of bodily self-improvement, as if one can obtain the “salvation” of a healthy body through the right “rituals” of eating and exercise and the like. She does also address matters of Christianity and its involvement in these matters.
The author did well at looking at how Christianity can be misused, abused, and distorted toward ableism and such things. Yet also in her discourse we can find the possible end overreaction of disability theology in casting aspersions on the resurrection and what seems to be an attempt to “baptize” and justify the body in its current corruption. There are valid concerns regarding which such disability theology advocates are reacting - but as in all things life and theology, the temptation to over-reaction remains strong. It is wrong to associate the disabled with the corruption of the creation uniquely; such should not be a reason to baptize corruption, but confess its universality in the current creation.
But overall the author is not wrong in her analysis and description of the body, disability, and aging, our vain struggles against it, the shame associated with the body, aging, death, and how such has come about. We do well to resist the trends regarding which she speaks, re-normalize our limitations, and accept who we are and who others are as they are in this world, doing what we can to live well, but never delude ourselves into thinking we can somehow escape human limitation and corruption through our efforts.
Birding has become quite the phenomenon in America, especially for people of certain generations, and all the more so during and since the pandemic. And one of the great trials involved with getting into birding is all the bird species.
Some bird species names make sense. The Ring-billed Gull has a ring around its bill. The California Scrub-Jay is a member of the jay family which favors the scrub land of California. Acorn Woodpeckers love stashing acorns everywhere. But then you have the Lewis’ Woodpecker, the Stellar’s Jay, and many other similar names which clearly encode some kind of history.
And it’s that history which has come under a lot of discussion and dispute these days. Kenn Kaufman’s The Birds That Audubon Missed: Discovery and Desire in the American Wilderness (affiliate link; galley received as part of early review program) tells the history of the development of American ornithology, and how a lot of said birds obtained their current appellations.
The book’s catalyst involved the author’s fascination with John James Audubon’s paintings preserved in his The Birds of America, which have been recognized for some time as some of the best ever made. But Audubon did not actually draw up every species in North America, not even every species in the American east. Thus the author intended to draw what Audubon did not and detailed the story of how he had missed them.
That story ends up becoming the story of ornithology in general and the development of the understanding of bird life in North America. The author described the Linnean system and how it developed, along with its competitors. The Enlightenment thinkers of the 18th century quite optimistically imagined they could analyze and organize all of life, and the Linnean system is its result.
The story of understanding American birds had many characters, of whom Alexander Wilson and John James Audubon would prove among the most significant. Wilson did a lot more of the work, but ultimately Audubon would become known as the greatest, mostly because of the quality of his work.
Today we have the benefit of all the work which has been done over the past few hundred years to make sense of the birds of North America. Yet in this book we see all the frustrations and misdirections which attended to the process. They could tell some species were quite similar to those from Europe; yet many others proved quite different. Figuring that out would prove challenging. Many American birds look different at different seasons; sometimes they would be mistaken for different species. People did not understand American bird migrations very well (to this day we still are learning more), compounding the difficulty.
And, of course, on top of that, was the intense competitive spirit of Wilson and Audubon in their quest to find and identify new species of birds, and especially Audubon.
Thus throughout the author describes the life and work of Audubon, somewhat of Wilson and some of the other major early American ornithologists, and their adventures and misadventures. The author also provides interludes about illustrating and many of the aspects which go into it.
The author does well at recognizing what was done and many of its more problematic aspects. The killing of so many birds was a feature of the age. And the naming after themselves and people in their association.
The naming has become quite the issue among modern birders; the goal has been advanced to re-name in English all birds which were given names involving people (i.e. the Lewis’ Woodpecker, Stellar’s Jay, Woodhouse’s Jay, Brandt’s Comorant, Baird’s Sandpiper, and many others).
This has proven controversial, of course, and many protest and ask about the need. But Kaufman has done well to show how recent a lot of these names are, and how names were often adapted and changed over time. This book should give some comfort to those who tend to be more enamored with modern names and encouragement in the work to provide names which better describe the birds rather than the intense competition to “find” and name them.
This is a great history of the author’s passion about birds, how American birding has come to be as it is, and the stories of discovery and further exploration. A great resource for those interested in birding.
As always, thanks for your interest and support. Please share and subscribe!
May the peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.
Ethan