The Bible as Improv will release in March only 60 days away. You have heard from Mark Batterson and from Dwight Friesen at Mars Hill. Now thanks to another friend who has weighed in. I love Alan and his wife Deb (in fact their new co-authored book on discipleship is up on Amazon Untamed)
Here is what Alan had to say about The Bible as Improv.
“Ohh, this book is going to kickstart many hot conversations! And why not? Surely the Bible, of all books, ought to stimulate serious dialogue. If it doesn’t we should wonder whether it is being read properly. Here Ron provides us completely unconventional, and deliciously controversial, look into about how we interpret the Scripture, or rather, how we allow them to interpret us. Agree or disagree, it is bound to get us excited about the Bible again.”
Alan Hirsch
Author of The Forgotten Ways and co-author of Untamed (with Debra Hirsch). Founder of Forge Mission Training Network.
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This week we are going to prepare for the new year and will then resume our dialogue on practice….though this is in some ways a year end practice post
Each year end, I would guess, we all have some routines of review and anticipation. We look at goals from the last 12 months, assess our progress, reflect on strengths, learn from our missed marks and recalibrate for a new year ahead. For some of us these are very intentional, measured, specific and helpful. For others of us these are thought about in our head, sit in the background of self conversation and are even dreaded because this year end, like so many past, is another example or procrastination, and unmet hopes and dreams.
Ben Franklin said, “There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond and to know one’s self.”
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Please click here for part 1.
Please click here for part 2
Please click here for part 3
Please click here for part 4
I think the best way for us to safeguard ourselves from the charge of this being too New Agey is to recognize that while we are called to be gods, our god-ness is always derivative and therefore diminutive. This is a critical distinction that prevents putting humanity on the same level as the Triune God but at the same time acknowledges and engages what appears to be the full intent of the biblical material. Whatever it means that we are made imago dei and have the breath of God within us, it is certainly does not mean we are in every way shape and form identical to the Triune God the Creator of the Universe. There is a distinction between Creator and the Created. There is a qualitative and unique difference between the Maker and the Made. As the Created and Made ones, whatever similarities, likenesses, and whatever imago dei fullness we have, is derived from the God who made us. As a result of being derived it means we are less than the Creator. This is the safeguard and clarification of how we can have the first person conversation while allowing the Triune God to remain God and yet at the same time we can be imago dei, little gods, as Jesus says.
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Gratitude needs to be a daily practice. And since we have been talking about practice the last several posts let me remind you of a concrete one.
Gratitude moves past blessings, joys and transformative moments into the present. The coming of Jesus, who was willing to have his vastness as God shoehorned into the confines of skin, is the focus or our gratitude at this time of the year. Christmas services and tomorrow will reenact, retell, remind and review that past event in the hopes of moving it forward into the NOW moment.
We can only live right now. We can’t live yesterday or tomorrow. Enjoy each NOW the next few days. Breath deep, smell the scents, the food, the wine, the cookies the pine. And bring forward into the now all sorts of memories and events that will remind you of why the baby came into the world.
Merry Christmas!
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Last week I thanked Mark Batterson for his blurb on my forthcoming The Bible as Improv this week it is Dwight Friesen, Associate Professor of Practical Theology at Mars Hill Graduate School in Seattle and author of Thy Kingdom Connected, that gets thanked.
“If you have ever witnessed a jazz ensemble breathe fresh life into a classic Miles Davis piece, then you have a sense of what Ron Martoia is inviting us to through The Bible as Improv. Faithfulness and playfulness dancing together toward fullness of life; immersion in the history of the art, keen awareness of prior interpretations, skilled with one’s instrument, thoughtful study of the charts, interpreters playing off one another in community and with the audience. The Bible as Improv is a beautiful exercise in practical biblical hermeneutics.”
A blog review was just posted last night…
“Ron Martoia wants to change how we read the Bible. In fact, he believes, we’ve been reading the Bible wrong for a while now…”
full review here
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The last post we gave you the opportunity to review attention and intention posts and just briefly mentioned repetition. These three key legs are what support a good practice.
Some people balk at this work practice but let me tell you why we use it. Jesus as an example had a practice of pulling away from the crowds and heading to the mountains, desert or water. This practice was for apparently a number of things… but what is important is that the Gospels make clear this rhythm of “awayness” funded him being in a different way. In other words awayness changed his withness. Practice patterns fund life patterns. Practice enables us to do through training what we simply can’t accomplish through trying.
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Neuroplasticity is the capacity of connections between neurons in the brain to change in response to experience and our environment. The good news? It isn’t age dependent. We have brain plasticity till we die if we exercise our brains.
I was just at a spirituality conference in South Africa where an expert on brain science talked about how up until just recently the medical community was convinced that our brains could be mapped showing where each of our abilities, for instance the ability to see, was located in the physical structure of the brain. In other words it was thought this map was the hardwired diagram of our brain. But not so.
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GOD IN US
In our Protestant church tradition we don’t have many categories for understanding this first person, God-within pursuit. But Scripture teaches this first person perspective. Consider these passages in light of this 1st person conversation. (Emphasis added.)
His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires. (2 Peter 1:3-4)
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