Salvation 3

Today’s use of the word salvation comes from Luke 3:2-6

the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness. He went into all the region around the Jordan River, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet,

“The voice of one shouting in the wilderness:

‘Prepare the way for the Lord,

make his paths straight.

Every valley will be filled,

and every mountain and hill will be brought low,

and the crooked will be made straight,

and the rough ways will be made smooth,

and all humanity will see the salvation of God.”

Here we see John the Baptist preaching a “baptism of repentence”.  The writer of Luke links this ministry with Isaiah 40.  Interestingly, Isaiah 40 is a turning point in the book of Isaiah.  It is the start of the last third of the book, which up until that point has been a treatise on God’s greatness, Israel’s sin and prophecies of doom.  At Chapter 40, the book abruptly shifts into words of comfort and kindness from God to His people.

Once again, this salvation of God is not directed only to the Hebrews, but will be seen by all people.

A note: somehow it escaped me until today, but the word “salvation” is not used in the gospels of Matthew or Mark.  Yet, certainly the idea of salvation is not missing from the first two gospels.  So, I searched for “save” and “saved”.  There are a lot of entries for these two words.  The next use of “salavation” doesn’t show up until Luke 19.  So I think I’m just going to back track and start looking at the uses of “save” and “saved” in Matthew and Mark and then add salvation back into the mix once we get into Luke.

Salvation 2

Today in my study of the word salvation in the New Testament, we’ll look at Luke 2:30-32.  This is the proclamation of Simeon over the infant Jesus as he was brought into the temple for circumcision:

“”For my eyes have seen your salvation that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples: a light, for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel.”

Once again salvation is said to be embodied in Jesus.  Salvation here is again identified with light.  As the light is also a revelation, we can probably understand the light of salvation as a revealing light which brings understanding of things  which were previously dark and hard to perceive.  The salvation will be a glory for Israel.  However, unlike Zechariah’s prophesy in Luke 1, Simeon makes it clear that this salvation will be for all people, including the Gentiles.

Salvation 1

This pobably isn’t the best way to re-start my long dorment blog, but I have a need of doing a word study on the word salvation in the New Testament and I figured that I would do it via a series of blog posts as a way to give it some structure.  Sooooo. . . here goes.

We find our first uses of the word salvation in Luke 1:67-80 in the middle of John the Baptist’s father Zechariah’s prophesy over the infant Jesus:

Then his father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied, “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,because he has come to help and has redeemed his people.  For he has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David, as he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from long ago, that we should be saved from our enemies, and from the hand of all who hate us.

He has done this to show mercy to our ancestors, and to remember his holy covenant – the oath that he swore to our ancestor^, Abraham.

This oath grants that we, being rescued from the hand of our enemies, may serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him for as long as we live.

And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High. For you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give his people knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins. Because of our God’s tender mercy the dawn will break upon us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

And the child kept growing and becoming strong in spirit, and he was in the wilderness until the day he was revealed to Israel.

OK, first we need to start with some context.  At the time of Jesus’ birth, Israel was under the control of the Roman Empire.  Historically, those times when Israel was living under the control of other powers, it was understood to be a judgement on Israel for its sin and faithlessness.  Therefor, the political condition of Israel and it’s spiritual need for redemption and forgiveness was seen as entertwined.  In the past, God had worked through righteous Israeli leaders to bring about the release of Israel from foreign rule.  These times were also a time for Israel to be redeemed from their sin and return to following God’s laws.  Again, the political and the spiritual are woven together.

“Hate was just a failure of imagination”

“Hate was just a failure of imagination.”  That line comes from a book (which I have not actually read) called “The Power and The Glory” by Graham Greene.  (It showed up in this column by Michael Gerson which remarkably showed up in the Washington Post.  In it he compares prosperity gospel folks like Kenneth Copeland with the “whiskey priest” protagonist of “The Power and The Glory”.  It’s a good column – you should read it.)  The main character observes, “When you visualized a man or woman carefully, you could always begin to feel pity — that was a quality God’s image carried with it. When you saw the lines at the corners of the eyes, the shape of the mouth, how the hair grew, it was impossible to hate. Hate was just a failure of imagination.”

This struck me because I have often observed how hard it can be for people – and often particularly God’s people – to get past the sin and ugliness and abrasiveness of people to see the image bearing man or woman God created them to be.  I think that “a failure of imagination” is probably just the right accounting of the problem.  When I was growing up my mom used to look at someone who had fallen on the way of life and say, “there but for the grace of God go I.” 

Sex Ed in the Trotter home

So the other day, my 13 year old was telling us that he’d like to go camping as a family (my husband does not camp, so we’ve never gone before).

My husband, ever the smart aleck, decides to respond with a reference to a couple we know who shall remain nameless who got rather down and dirty in a camper, thinking the kids were all asleep.  Unfortunately their 14 year old daughter, laying all of 10 feet away wasn’t actually asleep.  Even more unfortunately for all of them, she didn’t say anything until the next morning.  She was livid.  The father responded with a classic line: “what do you think the Eskimos did?”  At any rate, my smarty pants husband says, “are you sure that would be a good idea Noah?  A tent is awful small and parents have been known to act up once they think the kids are asleep.”

To which my dear son (who does not know the background story, btw), shrugs and says, “eh.  As long as you have your own sleeping bags I don’t care.”

The hubby and I thought we’d never stop laughing.

And as long as we’re on the topic, I figure I’ll share a couple more best of sex ed episodes from our house.

A while back I happened to hear my then 8 year old son Collin make some comment about “s-e-x”.

Me: “Collin, did I just hear you spell the word sex?”

Collin: “I didn’t spell it.  It’s a code word we made up for sex.”

Me: “But that’s not a code word.  You’re just spelling it.  Why not just say sex?”

Collin: “We think s-e-x is a good code word.  We don’t want to just go around saying sex, that would be kind of weird.”

Yeah.  OK.

And finally, one of my all time favorites.  When I got pregnant with my youngest daughter Sophia, it was kind of a spur of the moment thing and very much my husband’s idea (long story).  At any rate, the running joke when I was pregnant with Sophie was that “it’s all Keith’s fault.”

So one day, Noah (then 10) heard me quip that it was Keith’s fault for the umpteenth time.  He turned to me and said, “what – did he get you while you were sleeping?”

Doesn’t really work that way, dear.  I least I would hope it doesn’t work that way!

And for those of you who are appalled that I would tell such embarrassing stories about my kids, don’t worry.  We plan on telling these stories and many more to their friends, wives and kids one day as well.   Not to mention the pictures.  Oh boy, do we have pictures! 

Who me, gifted?

Two days ago, I wrote about how being gifted results in an experience of life and existing which is usually markedly different in intensity and complexity than what normal people experience. Today I’m going to talk about why so many highly intelligent people fail to see themselves as gifted and and why gifted people need to understand their giftedness and teach their children to do the same.

The first point which needs to be made is that contrary to the perception that unusually smart people are arrogant and think that they are better than everyone else, many, many highly intelligent people are in denial about their giftedness. People who belong to Mensa report that one of the most common things they hear from other members are jokes that someone must have messed up their test because they aren’t actually smart enough to be there. People who counsel and work with highly intelligent people find that many of them suffer from “imposter syndrome“. Imposter syndrome is a situation where a person feels that they are simply faking their way through life, that anything they have accomplished is due to luck and that their real abilities fall short of what others are capable of. I’m not aware of any actual research into the self perception of people with unusually high intelligence. However, based on reports from people with high intelligence and those who deal with them, it is probably safe to say that a large percentage of highly intelligent people do not see themselves as such. Contrary to the stereotype, many gifted people are not arrogant to the point of being unable to hold an accurate view of their own abilities.

My terrible mom moment of the day

OMG.  I had an awful bad mom moment this morning.  I signed my 13 year old up for a two day camp where he will learn to canoe.  For whatever reason, I had it all set in my head that it was an overnight trip.  So we packed PJs and a sleeping bag and headed out this morning to drop the boy off.  On the way in the camp counselors asked why we had a sleeping bag!  Because it’s not an overnight event, you see.  I only imagined that it was and got my kid all geeked for it and then embarrassed us by showing up for a sleepover we hadn’t been invited to.  If I had been thinking, I would have lied my pants off and told them that Noah was going straight from camp to a friend’s to spend the night.  But I’m not so good at thinking on my feet like that.  And apparently not so good at reading the various descriptions and packing lists I received for the deal.  I am very, very embarrassed.   I guess I should be glad that the other kids didn’t see us walking in, so it’s only the counselors who think we complete morons.

How being gifted means being different

Over the last couple of years I have spent time off and on doing research into giftedness and living with unusually high intelligence.  It has been far more interesting and enlightening than I expected.  So I figured I would share some of what I have learned with y’all.  Today I will focus on some of the differences which tend to be characteristic of those with unusually high intellegence.  Tomorrow, I’ll get into why so many gifted people have a hard time recognizing themselves as gifted and why it is so important for them to understand their giftedness and teach their children to do the same.

First, the differences.  I always figured that high intelligence was just about how a person learns new information and skills.  What I have found out, however, is that high intelligence entails not just being able to learn new things quickly and easily, but affects a person’s entire experience of life.  People with unusually high intelligence take in and aquire information differently, process that information differently.  They frequently experience emotions and physical stimuli more intensely than others.  They have motivations and drives which others often find odd or bizarre.  In short, being unusually intelligent tends to create a whole life experience which is markedly more complicated and intense than what most people experience.

Psychologists who deal with highly intelligent people label these areas of high instensity and complexity “Overexcitabilities” or OEs. 

Summer Camp and Peer Socialization

My 9 year old spent last week at a nearby nature center for summer camp. It ran from 8-4 with an overnight camp-out Thursday night. It was really the first time he’s spent that much time in that short a period away from his family. He had an absolute blast, got along very well with the other kids and only had one serious discipline problem through the whole week (which is some kind of record for this kid). And at the end of the week, I came to the conclusion that there is no way in heck I’m going to be sending the child off to school anytime soon.

While I’m pleased as punch that he handled himself well with other kids, I am not nearly so pleased with how quickly and (to me) dramatically, he oriented himself to his peers. Each day when he came home, he was wired up to the point of being completely out of hand. He was rowdy, rude, scattered and largely unresponsive to me and my attempts to get him to settle down. The problem is that he had spent all day getting positive feedback from the other kids for his antics. I actually heard a couple of kids telling their parents that Collin is really funny. Which he is. But he’s also quite over-excitable in a variety of ways. He will feed off the energy of those around him and rapidly become physically, imaginatively and emotionally over responsive. Once he gets going, not only is it hard for him to stop, but being in a state of over-excitement can be rather enjoyable so he doesn’t particularly want to stop. The simple fact is that he just doesn’t have the maturity to manage this aspect of his personality very well yet. And, unfortunately, because he receives positive feedback from his peers for this over-excitability, being with his peers all day only exacerbates this problem.

Now, if he were in a classroom with a decent teacher, he probably wouldn’t be quite as free to get himself wound up as he was in a fun summer camp setting. He would have to figure out how to toe the line (which for him would mean pushing just as far as he could while retaining a plausible claim of innocence for himself). However, simply figuring out when and where you can indulge in your favorite immature behavior isn’t the same thing as learning to actually manage yourself maturely. I’m pretty certain that he’d become one more kid who would say, “my family and teachers don’t know the real me. I’m one way around them, but when I’m with my friends, then I can be myself and I’m totally different.”

Real life is hard. In order to navigate it successfully, simply knowing how to act mature isn’t nearly enough. Our kids need to actually be mature in order to make good choices for themselves when they get out into the world. A young adult who’s “real” identity is peer oriented may know how to act maturely in certain settings, but will generally see their free-er, more irresponsible and immature selves as their true selves. Which in the real world usually means you need to get knocked around a lot before you start to actually become mature. Personally, I think we do much better by our kids to do whatever it takes to make sure that they go into the world already mature rather than letting potentially irreversible mistakes, tragedies and crisis teach them.

The other issue that came up with summer camp, which I found a bit disconcerting, was how quickly he developed a strong preference for his peers over his family. This summer camp included a night of camping out at the end of the week. I would hope, given the emphasis we have placed on family and the primacy of family relationships, that after spending a day and a half away from his family, that he would have some interest in reconnecting with them. Instead, he mentioned (twice) in an off-handed sort of way on the way home from his camping trip that he wished he were an only child. He also added that he wished his little sisters weren’t there so I could take him to the store on the way home. (Which is funny because it’s him and not the little girls who I don’t like taking into stores!) When we got home, before he had even said “hi” to his brother, he was begging to call a couple of the kids he had just left 1/2 an hour ago. For the rest of the day when I would suggest that he go to do something with one of his siblings, he would ask again to call one of his new friends or to invite them over. I guess that this makes some sense. You don’t usually have to sacrifice what you want to accommodate a peer’s nap schedule, temper tantrums or age differences. And when you are acting like a spaz, your peers will laugh or join in rather than telling you sharply to knock it off. Really, hanging out with his peers meant shedding the often uncomfortable bonds of self-sacrifice and self-restraint that living in a family imposes on you. However, that self-sacrifice and self-restraint are precisely the things he will need in order to reach his full potential in life. If he sees self-sacrifice and self-restraint not as natural and good parts of a normal, healthy life, but as impediments he can escape in order to seek his own happiness, he will be at a real disadvantage when it comes to achieving his best in life.

What is most amazing to me is that it is now 3 days since he got back from his summer camp. And he is still out of hand. I can’t even imagine what he’d be like if he were in school. I wonder how much problem behavior on the part of kids and immaturity in young adults is driven by the sort of peer socialization Collin experienced last week. We like to think that the structure of a school setting and the demands of teachers and parents are enough to counter-balance this peer socialization. However, from what I’ve seen of kids and young adults, this seems to be one of those things that would be a great idea – if only we could figure out how to get it to work.

Now mind you, I’m not saying at all that kids socializing with their peers is bad or unnecessary. However, having a kid (especially one as overly excitable as mine) spend most of his waking hours with kids who reward and re-enforce their most immature and selfish tendencies doesn’t seem like a particularly good thing to me. And that’s why, although (because?) my kid got along great with the other kids at summer camp, he’s going to have to be a lot more mature before I’d consider sending him off to school.

So what do y’all think? Am I over reacting? Off base? Right on?

I am amazed

God works.  That’s all I can say.  You may have heard the howling and gnashing of teeth on both sides over University of Minnesota at Morris professor P.Z. Meyer’s quest to desecrate a eucharist.  He finally got his hands on one (I didn’t read closely enough to see if it was a consecrated host or not, which to Catholics would be enormously important of course).  What is just amazing to me is the method by which he decided to “desecrate” the wafer: he put a rusty nail through it.  Seriously.  A rusty nail!  A man who wishes Jesus, or the fable of Jesus or however he thinks of Jesus, would just wither up and die, put a nail through the body of Christ.  Because, you know, that just worked so well the first time!  And to top it off, he began the post in which he announced his torture of the “cracker” as he’s calling it, with these words: “It is finished.”  Hmm, seems I may have heard those words before:

Therefor when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, “it is finished!”  And He bowed His head and gave up His spirit. – John 19:30

A chill ran down my spine when I read that.  I am in awe of how just as He did 2000 years ago, God can use corrupted human hearts and evil intentions to speak His truth.  (Amazingly, if you read the post, Prof. Myers seems to be wholly unaware of the echoes of the crucifiction story which are embedded in his words and actions.)

I can’t get too worked up over Prof. Myers.  God created him and God will deal with him in whatever way is best for Prof. Myers’ correction and redemption and God’s glory.  Unless I am called directly to be involved, it’s really not my concern.  However, I am just so touched and awed at the affirmation of God’s presence and power in the middle of a situation which to the human eye looks like the devil himself at work.  All I could do when I saw the picture of the host driven through with a rusty nail and discarded was praise God.  Which I’m pretty sure wasn’t what Prof. Myers had in mind!