Blessed Indeed

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More Than Just Male and Female: The Six Genders in Classical Judaism

September 05, 2022

Christianity came out of Judaism, so Jesus was a Jew and grew up with the classical Jewish understanding of gender. It's very easy to assume that Judaism is an exclusively gender-binary religion as the Jewish obligation to observe commandments is traditionally divided along male/female lines: men pray three times daily, while women don’t have to; men put on tefillin, while women do not. We see it in assumed gender roles, in liturgy, in proscribed family responsibilities, and in both secular and religious laws. If, however, we look just a bit deeper into the sacred texts, the Mishnah and Talmud, the ancient Jewish law books that record the rabbi’s teaching on how to put the law into practice, we see lots of references to exceptions that have to be made to account for the people whose gender was not so clear cut. This description from Rabbi Elliot Kukla shows that classical Judaism actually had 6 genders: Zachar/זָכָר: This term is derived from the word for a pointy sword a...

Trajectory of Scripture - Outside to Inside Holiness

August 25, 2022

TLDR - Too Long Didn't Read Summary In the Old Testament holiness was synonymous with physical perfection and people thought Holiness came from the outside. Many rules were created around how you could be made unholy by things like illness or disability or touching or eating or wearing the wrong thing or hanging out with the wrong people. Jesus disagreed - he said holiness comes from the inside, from our hearts, from love - and unholiness from our evil thoughts that lead us to stop loving God and other people. The key reason for all of the rules was to teach us to ‘Love our neighbour’ and to take care not to hurt others in what we do. When laws were being twisted to harm, judge or reject people they were missing the point. Food and drink and people can’t make you unholy, because nothing God made is un-clean. However if you think doing something is wrong, and do it anyway - in your heart you are not loving God. Holiness comes from outside. You can be made unclean by what y...

Trajectory of Scripture - Exclusion to Inclusion

August 23, 2022

TLDR - Too Long Didn't Read Summary During Israel’s early history Foreigners and Eunuch’s (LGBT people) were excluded from worship. As time goes on the trajectory of scripture leads to more and more inclusion. Deuteronomy 23:1-8 – Exclusion from worship for foreigners, eunuchs and others and their descendants. 1 No one who has been emasculated by crushing or cutting may enter the assembly of the LORD. 2 No one born of a forbidden marriage nor any of their descendants may enter the assembly of the LORD, not even in the tenth generation. 3 No Ammonite or Moabite or any of their descendants may enter the assembly of the LORD, not even in the tenth generation. Isaiah 56 1-6 – Inclusion for those who have been Othered is Coming! 1 This is what the LORD says: “Maintain justice and do what is right, for my salvation is close at hand and my righteousness will soon be revealed. 2 Blessed is the one who does this— the person who holds it fast, wh...

What is a Trajectory of Scripture?

August 23, 2022

To find out what God is teaching us on a particular topic, it often helps to chart the course or trajectory throughout scripture and history to see how God has been slowly moving people to a better standard. Sometimes this trajectory continues moving forward beyond the New Testament into the present day world too. Slavery is a good example. In the Old Testament times, slavery was accepted as a normal part of culture. However the law limited what could be done to slaves, for example, beating was ok as long as they didn’t die. Later Israelite son’s sold as slaves were treated better than daughter’s. Then all Israelite slaves were treated better. By the New Testament, all slaves were treated fairly. Then slaves were referred to as your brothers, your family or your equals. If we follow this path that scripture naturally sets us on we conclude that God desired the emancipation of slaves. While no scripture exists that abolishes slavery outright, we can infer from the trajectory...

The Lords Prayer

April 01, 2017

Take a walk through the Prayer House - The Door is always open.

Praying the Psalms 2

March 01, 2017

4. RAMP up your prayers I recently read an interesting comment by George Muller. He said that the first thing upon awakening, he would go to prayer, but sometimes it had taken him fifteen minutes or even half an hour to get "in the Spirit". Then he decided to go to the Word of God first, and to read until he was led to pray. This solved his problem. After meditating on scripture first he was able to experience a more meaningful prayer time. George Muller once said he could think of 50,000 answers to prayer - so a pretty good role model. Go through the Psalms in sequence. Each prayer time, take the next Psalm. R - Read it through once. A - Analyse the poetry - check About Poetry for help. Put it in historical context - what was happening when the Psalm was written - what was going on in the Psalmists life to bring out these prayers and petitions? Read it through again in light of what you have learned. M - Meditate ...

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