Seven Habits of Families - Stephen Covey

Intro: You're going to be 'off the map' 90% of the time

The miracle of the Chinese bamboo tree: After the seed of this amazing tree goes into the ground you see nothing for four years except a tiny shoot coming out of a bulb. During those four years all the growth is underground in a massive, fibrous root structure that spreads deep and wide in the earth. But then in the fifth year the Chinese bamboo tree grows up to eighty feet!

Many things in family life are like the Chinese bamboo tree.

Leo Tolstoy in Anna Karenina: 'happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.'

Habit 1: Be Proactive

Genesis: R. Reno

Introduction

When Genesis 3 depicts the first sin, to explain the full meaning of the verses presses the commentator outward toward a fully developed account of the depths of human depravity. There is nothing about the tasty apple and the fateful first bite that suggests the mud-filled trenches of the Somme or the as-stained winter skies above Auschwitz or the bodies frozen into cruel Soviet Siberian mud of the shadows of men and women burned into the concrete of Hiroshima

Genesis is the book of beginnings and up until G12 it features several firsts: first woman, first sin, first murder, first city.

The chapters that recount for us the careers of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph reveal the source and origin of what will be. The future is not simply a natural or expected outworking of an original creation. It is something new and unexpected: God creates for a purpose greater than creation itself.

God seems to regret creating humanity and the engulfing floodwaters wipe the slate of creation clean. But the stain of sin remains in the sons of Noah, and God utters words that reveal all we need to know about the future role of universal cleansing in the divine plan: 'Never again.'

Dead Ends

11:5 And the Lord came down. 

Babel.

The dispersement of the peoples is a punishment that limits. Less good can be done - but also less evil. 

That is critical. When reading Babel I am concerned by God's 'if this is what they've done with a common language, there's no telling what they could achieve!' as though that's a bad thing. It's when you realise that God has in view the power of sin upon humanity that one sees a different tone to God's concern, that of fear for his creature's future existence!

11:31 They settled there.

Terah restates the way of the people who built the tower. He stops moving and in settling in one worldly location he is absorbed into the world that is defined by the past choices of Adam and Eve.

The Scandal of Particularity

The fall of Adam and Eve is so universal that it raises the expectation in the reader that God's remedy will also be worked out in the same universality.

If all of humanity has been implicated in the covenant of the lie that we can live by bread alone, then wouldn't it stand to reason that the divine plan should deal with humanity at the same inclusive universality.

Von Rad:

Previously the narrative concerned humanity as a whole, man's creation and essential character, woman, sin, suffering, humanity, nations, all of them universal themes. In Abraham's call, as though after a break, the particularism of election begins.

From Gen. 12 onward Genesis is concerned with one household, a tiny portion of humanity that would be otherwise invisible or uninteresting to anyone whose concepts had been formed solely by the grand account of creation.

Nothing in Gen 1-11 gives us a clue about how God plans to achieve this consummation of creation in the aftermath of human disobedience. We learn of blind alleys: forgetfulness and grand scheme to scrub the world clean. Only in Abraham do we discover the extraordinarily unlikely nature of the divine plan: to call one man and his household and to invest this narrow slice of humanity with the promise of a new future.

12:1b Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house.

Sin defines the future for Adam and Eve's children. A tear in history is necessary, and it must be deep. Abraham's call is like the flaming sword that issues from the word of God. As Jesus teaches 'If any one comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers ans sisters... and his own life, he cannot be my disciple.' Because the children of Adam and Eve are beholden to the lie that worldly life can satisfy our desire for rest, God must interrupt the cascading flow of time, tear out a family from the drumbeat of the generations, in order to cut to the joints and marrow of human history, dividing soul and spirit in order to sever the nerve of sin.

Abraham is not called out of the human condition. He is called out of a history made through a false loyalty.

Left to the future chosen by Adam and Eve, idolatry is our destiny. As Paul observed, all humanity has exchanged the living God for dead idols.

12:1-2 The land that I will show you... a great nation... make your name great.

Now God promises to give Abraham-in-particular what humanity-in-general sought to achieve by its own hands when it gathered to build a tower to heaven: a place, a nation, and a name remembered by future generations.

God promises a future that redefines rather than rejects the false hopes of Babel.

In the promise to Abraham we can see divine fulfilment of our presently deformed desires for place, nation, and immortality. The original garden provided a place, and human beings rightly desire a homeland. The same holds for a nation. Patriotic impulses, nationalisms, tribal loyalties, family pride - all these drives toward a greater and more glorious common life. Finally, immortality is approximated by the forward reach of reproduction toward future generations. There is nothing unnatural about the human rebellion against death.

Augustine's two cities captures this tension wonderfully:

We are called out of our loyalty to the earthly city... so that we can transfer our loyalty to the heavenly city 'whose builder and maker is God.'

We are not to be other than human, we are to be human in the right way.

12:3 By you all the families of the earth shall bless themselves.

God does not conquer the power of Satan's lie with a strategy of saturation bombardment from a distance. God establishes a small, unnoticeable beachhead in history through the forward thrust of the generations flowing from Abraham... A small company presses its way into enemy territory, unnoticed as it penetrates deeply and gains the strategic crossroad. Again, the NT does not deviate.

12:4 So Abram went, as the LORD had told him.

It's not enough for the Lord to call; Abraham must answer. Human agency therefore plays a real role, but it is the role of response rather than origin. Adam and Eve did not invent evil, evil's origin was outside them, but they did respond to it and that had real and disastrous effects on the world.

12:7 To you and your descendants I will give this land.

It is certainly true that the future, as future, has no present reality. It can't. But the future can have reality as part of a promise, and it makes sense for Abraham (and us) to live and act on the basis of promises about the future. The weather report promises rain, so we take our umbrellas. The company promises a decent salary, so we take the job. The state promises to prosecute those who cheat on their taxes, so we keep good records. The reasonableness of allowing statements about the future to govern our lives depends on the present trustworthiness of the promise rather than on our ability to directly inspect the future. Of course, if God makes a promise, then it is absolutely trustworthy, more trustworthy in fact than any judgement we might make on the basis of past or present realities. Thus, if we believe in the promises of God, then we necessarily live in the present as if it were a foreign time and in the world as if it were a foreign land. What is promised by God is more reliable than present circumstances and conditions...

Thus the importance of the altar he builds. God promises, therefore Abraham builds. His trust in the promise creates an 'already' of what is promises. The altar is a beachhead of the future into the present, a foretaste or firstfruit of the promise.

Abraham moves onward and builds altars elsewhere in the land. His descendents do the same. The world is the real place for our future: 'Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.' God promises a place and Abraham trusts in the promise of a place, not in the place of the promise. Abraham's trust in the promise makes the future present. He builds the altar and his building of it on the basis of the promise makes the spot sacred. Abraham doesn't not discover a sacred spot and then build the altar.

12:10 Now there was a famine in the land.

Abraham endures many trials (traditional readers find 10). The promise to Abraham does not provide him with a straight and easy road.

In these trials the way of the promise becomes clear. It will not be without tribulation (Mt. 16:24 'take up cross'). If the burden is light then it is only because of our trust in the power of God to make good his promises, not because the way is pleasant.

12:13 Say you are my sister.

Abraham's lie. These stories make clear a point that becomes more apparent later. Those called remain under the influence of sin... We see therefore that the promise alone - and Abraham's trust in the promise - is not powerful enough to alter the trajectory of events. God needs to intervene. The way of the promise is difficult, and our ability to successfully walk in this way depends upon God's work in history. God does not just call, promise and make a covenant. The Lord is a man of war who performs mighty deeds for those whom he has chosen: 15:7

Sodom & Gomorrah

19:2 - Lot's poor decisions. He is a pale version of Abraham.

• He wrongly imagines the Jordan valley to be a new Eden.
• He resists the blind lust of the men in Sodom but is easily lured into incest by his daughters.
• Abraham can convince God to spare Sodom but Lot can't even convince his sons-in-law to flee, leaving his daughters without suitors. 
• He then misjudges the city of Zoar as a place of safety and later retreats to a cave.

Throughout the narrative Lot should be read as a man inclined toward what is right and good, but as one who fails and falters, because he relies on human discernment and natural powers rather than the promises of God.

According to Peter, Lot is a good man who is distressed by sin and wickedness but - he dithers and lingers (v16).

He rightly seeks a restoration of Edenic innocence, but he settles in Sodom, unable to distinguish between the luxuries of the city and the abundance of the original garden. 

19:16 - he lingered so the men seized him.

The narrative emphasises the reason for the angelic rescue: God remembered Abraham and for this reason 'sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow.'

Lot's role as agent and actor do not shape his future. Left to his own devices he would have remained and been destroyed. We are not in a different position. Left to our own devices we would remain in our sinful habits.

19:24 - The LORD rained on Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire.

Like the residents of Sodom and Gomorrah, in Christ we die. In judgment we are joined to the Son of Man who is revealed on the cross. For this we should rejoice in thanksgiving rather than recoil in therapeutic horror.

19:26 - She became a pillar of salt.

It is in the spirit of perseverance that Jesus urges his disciples to 'remember Lot's wife'.

We cannot negotiate terms for discipleship. Mt. 24:18, Lk 9:62.

Abraham and Isaac

22:1

For many modern readers, the idea that God tries and tests the faithful offends. We ten to think of loving parents as those who protect rather than try. A good teacher seeks to empower rather than test. We worry about the perils of competition. Encouraging self-esteem becomes the great preoccupation. Everybody is a winner, and prizes and ribbons are on hand for all the participants. True love nurtures, we imagine; it does not challenge and demand, try and judge.

However the scriptures testify differently:

The community:

• The wilderness trials of Israel (Deut. 8:11-20) are done to humble. These are ongoing in Israel's history.
• Judges 2:22 refer to the people in the land as there to test Israel. 
• Jeremiah 9:7 the Lord tries his people with the afflictions of exile. 
• Zech. 13:9 the Lord will set aside a remnant and test them

Individuals:

• David: 1 Chr. 29:17 'I know though triest the heart.' 
• The psalms
• Job. A trial sent by God
• Abraham.
• Jesus in the wilderness
• James 'count it all joy when you meet various trials.'
• Peter 'these have come that the testing of your faith.'

Job & Abraham are similar in the immensity of the trial they're put through. 

The speech of God out of the whirlwind gives a spiritual answer to the theological problem of suffering. God says in effect 'It's not about you.'

Similarly Abraham's trial is designed to test his reliance. Does Ab hope in himself and in his ability to produce offspring or in God.

Christ: he who loses his life for my sake shall gain it.

Isaac and us: like our baptism. We are bound to Christ, die with him and rise with him to new life as well.

Critique of modern images of God:

Perhaps we like comfortable images of God as a cosmic therapist whose love amounts to a universal scheme to promote self-esteem, because we want to hold on to our lives rather than lose them. The sheer material success of Western culture can heighten our fantasy that worldly realities and powers are able to carry us to a fundamentally new and transformed future. Medical science will stamp out sickness. New farming techniques will feed the world. Democratic institutions will perfect the human species. In these wand other ways, we pledge loyalty to worldly powers, an investment that St. Paul calls the works of the law. It is a way of living that trusts only in the kind of future that we we can imagine building for ourselves.

To be tested is to be brought back to reality.

We need to be separated from our earthly loves so that we can receive them back, not as sources of our happiness and hope, but as the finite goods of creation that God established in the beginning...

The dynamic of renunciation and restoration that defines Abraham's trial and all spiritual trials in the Bible...

We need to be freed from our impulse to live as children 'of the world,' not in order to escape from finite reality, but so that we can become more fully capable of living 'in the world.'

22:2 - 'go to the land of Moriah'

In this way it reiterates the main theme of the entire cycle of stories about Abraham. He has a future only insofar as he trusts in the promises of God. All other means toward a new future circle back to the dead end of sin and death.

22:9-10 - build an altar... laid the wood... bound Isaac... took the knife...

In contrast to the earlier episode at Sodom when Abraham was quite capable of a calculating and extended dialogue with the LORD, we now read of the cold, unquestioning efficiency of Abraham.

The concrete realities described in the scene makes it one of the most indigestible scenes in scripture. The text offers no easy exit into symbolism or allegory.

Like the servants of Abraham who seem to evaporate on the day of the commanded sacrifice, the disciples have scattered, and a dark hopelessness dominates Golgotha. Peter deines Christ and weeps bitter tears. Judas Iscariot hangs himself. Pilate washes his hands as the crowd in Jerusalem chants for death. The soldiers spit, mock, and beat. Jesus is prepared for death with the same painstaking care, nailed to the cross with the same grim determination that Abraham used to bind Isaac for sacrifice... and in the malignant atmosphere, in the darkness of abandonment, hatred and cruel disdain for life, the Father really does sacrifice his son.

22:12 - I know that you fear God.

Love unites whereas as fear drives apart. So how can we fear God?

Yet however prudent and necessary, social life ordered by worldly fear is as much a spiritual dead end as an individual life organised around worldly loyalties and loves.

Augustine tells of how even after his intellectual objections to faith had fallen away and he was disposed to believe in Christ, he could not. He feared the narrowness of the way. He wanted to be rid of the binding chains of his sin, but as he tells us, his desire for new life in Christ was accompanied by a paralysing anxiety that he could not endure a moral change of such magnitude.

An analogy:

When we walk across a bridge, we may enjoy every confidence that the engineers have done a good job and the span will not collapse. And yet, who does not feel hints of terror when looking over the edge into the depths of the chasm below.

After the test:

With satisfaction God says to Abraham, 'You are now a man who knows how to walk humbly with his God' and you seen that 'the fear of the Lord leads to life.' Proverbs 19:23.

Genesis 32: Jacob wrestles with God

31:13 Return

Even when he is not antagonistic, Jacob finds his life agitated by conflict: between Leah and Rachel, between his sons and foreigners, between Joseph and his brothers. Jacob is ever striving, ever contesting, ever pushed forward by the struggles and conflicts of his large family. 

Rachel steals the household gods:

once again the covenant household appears to be a source of sin, not sanctity.

32:17 Jacob was greatly afraid

Jacob, however realises that he has reached the limits of his capacity to manipulate events. If Esau wishes to play the role of Cain and destroy the one who has been chosen, then no gifts or concessions or ritual acts of submission will satisfy him. Nothing short of Jacob renouncing his claim to God's promises will do. But Jacob cannot renounce the future that God assigned him. The way forward seems blocked. The logic of the matter divides them: either the elder shall serve the younger or he shall not. Jacob fittingly offers a prayer of petition that places his future in the hands of God. 'Please LORD,' his prayer asks, 'be faithful...'

32:20 that i may appease him

The future of the covenant rests in God's hands, but this does not excuse us from undertaking our own efforts. Reconciliation depends upon God's providence, but the divine plan calls for us to play an active role, rather than to sit on the sidelines of the divine project as passive spectators.

32:24 a man wrestled with him.

Jacob seems to both struggle against and tenaciously cling to his adversary.

After the vision of the ladder Jacob turns the [usual structure of because-therefore] around and makes the covenant dependent upon his assessment of God's faithfulness. The covenant seems to be a bargain in which Jacob claims the upper hand: 'If you reliably show that you have chosen, then I will make you my God.' In a crucial sense, then, Jacob sets himself up as over and against God as an equal partner: 'You may judge me, but beware, I'll judge you as well.'

The nightlong duration of the wrestling is meant to suggest the futility of a spiritual disposition that seeks to lash God to terms we devise,  a futility that leads only to a maimed life: Jacob's thigh was put out of joint". Yet, as the wrestling match moves to its end, Jacob does exactly the opposite of what he pledged after his vision. He holds on to God - he makes the Lord his God - and this in spite of long servitude to Laban, in spite of conflict in his household, in spite of worries about the murderous resentments that his brother very likely harbours against him. Like Israel in exile, in spite of his trials, Jacob holds God close, and therein is he blessed.

32:28 - you shall no more be called Jacob, but Israel

Name changes signal new identities.

One translation of the meaning of his name:

You shall no more be called Jacob, but Israel shall be your name. For you have been strong with God, and you will be powerful with men.

With tireless petition we should assault God to win his favour, as did the Canaanite woman with her determined efforts to win the favour of Jesus and as the widow did with her persistent demand for justice.

32:28 Therefore to this day the Israelites do not eat the sinew of the hip.

Abram becomes Abraham and Genesis drops his old name. Jacob becomes Israel but is still called Jacob. Why? It is suggested that it is because in him the blessing comes on all the children and the creation of the nation of Israel.

37:2 the generations of Jacob

Joseph is the object of envy, the favoured son whom the brothers wish to destroy - and whom they (unwittingly) seek out as their saviour. They wish him dead and yet he is the source of life for them.

The text begins with a 'these are the generations of Jacob' but then launches into the story of Joseph. No long list of begets follows:

Joseph does not serve this future by assuming the role of patriarch and taking a privileged place as the next person in a narrow line of succession. He begets a future for Israel by saving his clan from famine.

The Christological reading does more justice to the traditional impulse of the story.

• Joseph is the beloved son of Jacob, hated by his own kin; so also does the Beloved Son of God come 'to hi own home, and his people received him not' (Jn1:11).
• Just as the effort to destroy Joseph leads to the salvation of his family; so also does the suffering and death of Jesus end up securing salvation for the human family.
• The brothers are out with the flocks, but Joseph remains behind with his Father. Jacob then says, fatefully, 'Come, I will send you to them' Joseph obediently goes and in going enters fully and defencelessly into his brothers' world of deadly scheming and plotting. 
• Were someone to have asked Jesus 'whom do you seek?' his answer would have been the same as Josephs 'I am seeking my brothers'
• They saw Joseph coming and conspired against him to kill him; the chief priests... and took counsel together in order to arrest Jesus by stealth and kill him.
• Reuben intervenes and stalls immediate action; not unlike the high priest's palace who warn, 'not during the feast, lest there be a tumult among the people.'
• to go into the pit serves as a metaphor for death.
• Even in the pit Joseph lives.

To use the literal sense of Joseph's fate as a slave, we can say that, in death, the incarnate Son allows himself to be taken prisoner by the power of death, so that he can destroy its stronghold.

• In prison Joseph interprets the dreams of two fellow prisoners who like those on the cross beside Jesus, one is destined for life, the other for death.
• Baker and cup bearer; bread and wine.
• Joseph is restored suddenly; shaves and given new clothes. A transofmred face and new clothes.
• Jesus rises not as a disembodied spirit but instead in a body purified and clothed in incorruption.
• After Joseph's new status is given to him, years pass before he saves the region and is reconciled to his brothers. Revelation commends patient endurance for those who believe in the risen Lord. Joseph seems to create complications and delays and trips back and forth, all of which heighten the anguish of history.

Future Men - Douglas Wilson

Intro:

Raising boys requires faith, but it is not faith in the boys but it is faith in God.

Chapter one:

Five aspects of masculinity.

Men are created to exercise dominion over the earth; they are fitted to be husbandman, tilling the earth; they are equipped to be saviours, delivering from evil; they are expected to grow up into wisdom, becoming sages; and they are designed to reflect the image and glory of God... Let's call them: lords, husbandmen, saviours, sages and glory-bearers.

On the glory of woman being man and on comparisons and the cry of inequality. G. K. Chesterton wrote a short poem called 'Comparisons':

If I set the sun beside the moon,
And if I set the land beside the sea,
And if I set the town beside the country,
And if I set the man beside the woman,
I suppose some fool would talk about one being better.

To end the chapter he sums it up brilliantly:

We should want our boys to be aggressive and adventurous. They are learning to be lords of the earth. We should want them to be patient and hard-working. They are learning to husbandry. WE should want them to hate evil and to have a deep desire to fight it. They are learning what a weapon feels like in their hands. We should want boys to be eager to learn from the wise. They are learning to become wise themselves. We should want them to stand before God, n the worship of God, with head uncovered. They are the image of glory of God. 

UK Church & Culture Research

On the Rise of the Nones in the UK:

Mark Zukerberg defends faith vs atheism and the article explains the rise of spirituality vs the decline of religion in the west:

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/mark-zuckerbeg-not-an-atheist-christianity-judaism-a7502561.html?cmpid=facebook-post