Let’s say the author and editors of the Pentateuch (Genesis-Deuteronomy) were living in a largely mythic culture, with a mythic view of God as well as a mythic reality and world around them. We might legitimately ask the question, does a skin legion, per the book of Leviticus, actually render you unclean to attend “church?’ I mean literally, does that mean you can’t worship God and he no longer connects to you? Does contact with a corpse disqualify you from being able to worship? All the laws of Leviticus, for instance, come “from God” yes, but within a very particular sort of mythic culture, meaning they are coming from a very particular view of God that THEY had. Does inspiration make this view of God, and these laws “correct” because it is canonized in the inspired text?
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Authors are always enmeshed in a culture, it cannot be otherwise, and I think we have observed that the idea of an author penning an inspired text does not mute, overcome, or diminish there cultural-ness. Abraham and child sacrifice, Moses and ordered genocide, Paul and slavery…
Jean Gebser, writing early in the 20th century, noted that civilizations go through stages of development that represent actual ways of seeing and viewing the world. His observation was that humanity’s stage of consciousness and development was reflected in their meaning making as a culture. A magic/tribal culture will make sense of their world, with sun and rain god’s and the corresponding dances to invoke those god’s activity differently than a postmodern pluralistic culture makes sense of it’s multicultural, rationalistic way of explaining a drought. Gebser’s contribution is in noting that over the course of thousands of years cultures have undergone slow but marked evolutionary development.
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What are the implications for the biblical text’s author being enmeshed within a particular culture vastly different than that of the readers?
For instance in Genesis 22 God in the inspired text says to Abraham go offer your son as a burnt offering on Mount Moriah. We could bypass the question of culture and time period, as most readers of the biblical text do, including most conservative scholars, seminarians and professors. If we do that we are left asking a couple honest questions.
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The two bucket theory has major problems we discovered last post. The first problem is stuff is jumping buckets. “Truths” formerly in the eternal and ever relevant bucket over time end up, due to societal evolution, in the cultural and no longer relevant bucket.
The second problem is this, who says we should read scripture this way? Why are we reading for eternal truth packaged in short, repeatable, memorizable propositions? Who convinced us this was the way to go?
The questions we ask always circumscribe the possible answers. Ask different questions, different answers become possible. Why do we read the bible looking for eternal truth that directly applies to my life? I have asked this question of over 1000 people (mostly pastors and staff), from publishing house executives (no houses will be named to protect the indicted) to bible school professors. The answer is almost verbatim the same. We read for eternal truth because the bible “is the inspired word of God!” (usually said with gusto and a fist pump of some sort.) And yes bible school profs have said this.
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We have had an overwhelming response from churches asking for a way for groups to do the ttTribe journey together. Some churches are having staff do it together as way of coming to know and be together in new ways. Some churches are having elders engage the process. Others are actually allowing the trek tribe environment to be their small group curriculum on a monthly basis.
The request for discounted group prices became an obvious need. So let us help you take the trek tribe experience to your own tribe.
Download the 12 page manifesto ttTribe-Manifesto and then if you want group pricing look at the end of the document or here If you really don’t want to take the time with the 12 page detailed version here is a quick 3 page version ttTribe-ManifestoShort
So far we have people from five countries that have already pulled the trigger. Are you next?
When original goodness and blessing gets displaced by original sin you can’t 
help but have anything but the traditional way of spiritual formation. It has been characterized as a three phase movement…
• Purgative, –holiness, purity, cleaness
• Illuminative –enlightenment, clarity, awareness,
• Unitive Way. – oneness with each other and world, judgments drop, unity with all of creation ensues.
I am not sure what your experience has been but the more I travel and the more I work with a wide variety of churches the more convinced I am that my experience is not unique. I have been schooled in the purgative way…almost exclusively! Unfortunately here is where the necrophila and the church intersect. If it is all about death, dying and cross you never get to life, living and resurrection. Of course the traditional way only has the purgative as movement one, but why then so little discussion and formation related to the other two?
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