In short, start in the world of abstraction, but to reach your team, move quickly into the real world. Give them examples, illustrations, and real-life explanations that will help them understand your concept.

After I read that, I spent the day thinking a discussion I’ll have about Paul and humility and a letter he wrote to friends in Philippi with my Wednesday night group of friends. I wrestled with what concrete could look like for our discussion.

I read a familiar text:

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. (Philippians 2:3)

It’s a phrase that gets preached a lot. It’s a platitude that gets inflicted a lot. But what does it really mean to be humble? What does it look like? What counts?

And I read on:

Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. (Philippians 2:4)

“All good,” I think. “That’s pretty clear. Good business looks at each situation as a win-win. If I help others, they will help me. I’m comfortable with that. That seems pretty concrete.”

But Paul was afraid that what he was saying might be comfortable, convenient, open to self-helping interpretation. So he decided to make “humble” very concrete:

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped
but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness. (Philippians 2:5-7)

Bam.

If I want to understand humble, I can’t look at how serving I am. It starts with how serving Jesus was.

Paul shows the power of a concrete example.

The devil says to jump.

That’s what Matthew tells us in his description of the testing of Jesus.

You know the thing mothers are supposed to have said? When you say that everyone is doing something, they are supposed to say, “If everyone was jumping off a cliff would you jump?” We know enough to not respond to that kind of pressure.

But what if ‘everyone’ was quoting the Bible?

I mean, that’s pretty authoritative, right? So if the Bible says “jump”, then we should jump.

But the Bible doesn’t say to jump, particularly not in the passage that the devil quotes. The passage is about protection in the face of adversity, not willful leaping from tall buildings for the sake of defending God.

“What? For the sake of defending God? Where is that in the text?”

The devil quotes scripture. The implication is, if you really believe in God, you will do this. Otherwise you prove that you don’t really believe God, that you don’t trust him, that you aren’t really a follower. You have to jump to defend God.

But here’s the risky business of the title. It isn’t in jumping. It’s in listening to single sentences out of context from known deceivers.

When a person known to lie about everything accuses someone of not being very Christian, what, exactly, does that mean? Compared to how Jesus would have responded in the same setting?

When a person unfamiliar with any of the Bible says, “Aren’t you supposed to love everyone? So why are you not helping me?”, what exactly, does that mean? Compared to how Jesus would have responded in the same setting?

Jesus will respond to the devil with a different passage, one used accurately. And in that, a guideline:  read the whole book.

Immanuel.

In the middle of Matthew 1:17-25. Matthew quotes Isaiah (a prophet) who uses the name Immanuel and then helpfully explains it: God with us.

This quote is an aside to the audience in the middle of a pretty tough story. Joseph has discovered that his fiance is pregnant and he knows he isn’t the father. He could make a big spectacle, but he plans to be a gentleman.

And an angel shows up in a dream and tells him the whole story. And Joseph believes it.

We struggle with faith. We struggle with believing. We struggle with knowing what to do next. Or I do.

Then I think of Joseph who has about the worst news you can have (your fiance has apparently betrayed you) and dreams about an angel who says the the Holy Spirit made her pregnant and the child should be named Jesus (the Lord saves) because he will save people from their sins.

Joseph believes that this was really an angel and that he really needs to do what the angel says.

He believes in Jesus even before he knows who He is, before he meets Him.

For Joseph, following Jesus, following God meant

1. taking a risky action. In going ahead with the wedding, Joseph risked his reputation as a “righteous man.” In fact, he probably gave it up.

2. confirming a relationship with another follower. There was one other person on the face of the earth who wouldn’t laugh at the thought of an angel talking about this child being from God. He was probably apologetic the next time he saw Mary.

These two steps are always part of following Jesus. It’s the challenge of Immanuel. God with us.

There isn’t a sudden revival. It’s just that at the beginning of the new year, many people decide to start being more spiritual and they start by reading through the Bible.

Maybe they start with Matthew. Suddenly,  good intentions run into a list of names. (Matthew 1:1-17.)

Why all the names? I mean, a good writer doesn’t start with a list of unpronounceable names. It is off-putting to a reader. It is not good marketing.

Unless, however, you aren’t actually starting the story with a list of names.

Think instead of a forward to a book.

For the first readers, who knew many of the names,  this is like a biography where the forward says, “This unknown person is in the tradition of expert a and b and c.” A book of popular philosophy where the forward says, “I’ve known this person and can attest to his credentials.” The infomercial kind of book where all the degrees of all the people who use this product are listed on the cover.

The first sentence is a claim, a title: Jesus is the son of David, the son of Abraham.

The next sentences show how the claim is true, a list of relationships. Every name is a story. Every name is identity. Every name is passing on the promise and the dread and being a nation.

Some stories aren’t happy. Some stories are skipped (a generation or two). Some stories are controversial women.

But this is a way of starting a story with a context.

The first chapter isn’t to be interesting prose or compelling narrative. It’s to make a link for the audience that first read it.

The adventure starts in verse 18: “This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about.”

I can’t remember when I started, but I’m almost a third of the way through, in 2 Kings.

It’s been good to do. Most of what I’ve been reading has been story. Even the rules lists have been okay, kind of like story problems only without the math. It has been interesting to see the patterns of behavior: God says something. people do it. people forget. God doesn’t.

The gory parts I haven’t worried about this time. I mean, I’ve read them but I haven’t been in the mode of “that’s awful; how could God do/allow that.” I’m reading the story.

I’ll tell you what I’m wondering about, though. The poetry. In a few books, I’ll be at the poems and the proverbs. They don’t lend themselves to 20 pages a day. I mean, I can’t quite imagine setting a goal to read through T.S. Eliot at 20 pages a day. Doesn’t work. So why should I do that with David’s poems, just to meet a goal that I set?

The Bible isn’t all one book. It’s a collection of 66 documents. Some are letters. Some are historical chronicles. Some are biographies. Some are predictions. To try to maintain a consistent pace through all of them seems–now that I’m in the middle of this project–ill-advised.

So I’ll do what I can. I may skip past the psalms and come back to them. I may make them a January project, (5 a day for 30 days covers all 150). I may just treat them as poetry to savor and consider.

In the meantime, I’m having to learn about discipline. Not the discipline that says, “read a certain amount a day” but the discipline to decide why exactly I am reading everything else.