TRIGGER WARNING: Positive posting of a passage from the Message Paraphrase by Eugene Peterson.
If I may, Eugene Peterson wrote a plethora of works that have stood the test of time for those who are ordained and called to the office of pastor.
From Tell It Slant, Run With Horses, The Pastor: A Memoir, Under the Unpredictable Plant, A Long Obedience In the Same Direction, and Eat this Book, to Traveling Light, Reversed Thunder, Answering God, Where Your Treasure Is, Like Dew Your Youth, and Leap Over a Wall, the author of As Kingfishers Catch Fire was known for not a few well-penned-and-smithed turns of phrase.
And this capacity to smith words from the Old Testament, Hopkins-educated purveyor of biblical truth from the Tanakh was persistently on display.
And while one of those vloggers I enjoy told us to burn his bible paraphrase, there were some places where The Message shone, as it fell flat in other places.
And, yes, I am sure you can cite 12 or so places where the Message sucks it up badly, but here is a place where Peterson, an honest OT scholar, unlike other…ahem…passionate…types…does some of his finest work.
One of those places where I as a scholar really appreciated Peterson’s streetwise lexicon was Romans 12:1-2, which reads:
So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.
Romans 12:1-2 (MSG)
Now, granted, if you have not read a major translation, you might not know the backbone of what is behind this passage, but it really does add some interesting color and decor to the concepts to which Paul is speaking.
From the ESV, we read:
I appeal to you therefore, brothers,[a] by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.[b] 2 Do not be conformed to this world,[c] but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.[d]
Romans 12:1-2 (ESV)
And the NASB 95:
Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, [a]acceptable to God, which is your [b]spiritual service of worship. 2 And do not be conformed to this [c]world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may [d]prove what the will of God is, that which is good and [e]acceptable and perfect.
Romans 12:1-2 (NASB95)
WHAT?!?!?!?!? YOU MEAN PETERSON EVEN SHINES IN THE MESSAGE….
Yes….even in the Message that talks about all sorts of unusual things….
One of the things that I appreciate about Peterson, when that paraphrased is preached by someone with a large amount of earned authority to people who are well-versed in Scripture, is that another layer of revelation may come.
Look at that first phrase in Peterson. He is talking about the everyday life that you and I live, and he is exhorting us to place those before God. In other words “God, it is all yours.”
Your every single act in your every single day belongs to God. Your every single quirk and trait was placed into/hardwired into you by God. Your smile when things evoke pleasure when you are alone, and joy when you are in community, was put into you by Him. Your anger when something violates God’s justice was placed into you by Him.
NEWS FLASH: not every evokation of anger is off or in need of medication or counseling. Some things are just wrong. Full stop.
Your every enjoyment of friends and community, your every problem-solving furrow of the brow was placed there by Him. he made problems as tools for growth into our deeper design.
Next, read this from the Message.
Don’t become so well-adjusted
Right, which means allowing something to force us to comply or into a mold or to become pliable for another….
to your culture
Coming so far into alignment with the culture that raised us or that birthed us or that saw us come into completeness… Or so becoming what everyone else needs us to be..or a level of compromise that indicates a relaxing of the standards…
that you fit into it
that we become one with it, and move right into “our assigned place”
without even thinking.
Gang, this is the beginning of the brain rot that was described in Romans 1. Although they knew God, they did not glorify him.
ON THE OTHER HAND
Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it.
Recognize what Papa wants for you as his child, as his son, and as his bride. Don’t give the world a place that should belong to God and vice versa. Have Him seated in the throne of your heart and move and listen, and hear and act accordingly. In accordance with that, your very life will be found on the altar in order to become material for sacrifice. Revelation 12:11 echoes the fact that setting your life down on the altar is one of the ways that you overcome the wiles of the dragon. His slick presentation is met with both a shrewdness that comes from being as one of the King’s Serpents (Matthew 10:16), and pairing that with the innocence of doves.
We so frequently pick the one or the other. Either to be pure and holy, and senseless tougue-wagging fools who do not know when to keep our mouths shut around the secrets that the Lord has told us, and we so blab everything and yield our position to the prince of the power of the air with every word we think is God-fearing, because we think we are supposed to speak all of the truth we have been given and so we do not keep tabs to distinguish what Father has instructed to to share versus what He has told us to ponder.
Or we are so slick and slimy and wise, as it were, but we also don’t maintain a threshold of innocence. God has made us to pick up both serpentine and avian tendencies. And to alight on a situation, and to be careful with the strategies that Father has shared with us so that we do not accidentally blabbed to the enemy in a provocative fashion.
OF CAKES AND GAYS
Question: When are we going to have believers who own a bakery that bakes cakes for gays as well and, clothe that freaking cake with our earned authority, such that there is a presence of conviction and love that travels with that cake, so that everyone who comes to that gay wedding falls out under the power of God, after they have paid us top dollar, they come to know the Lord and their eyes are opened.
Our current mentality towards social issues lacks a whole lot of shrewdness and a lack of understanding pertaining to our own earned authority.
It is time for us to change our strategy from an adapted position of powerlessness, to one where we exercise the FULLNESS of our authority.
Speaking of adjusting to meet the new attack with a new counteroffensive. Because they can stop us from baking and making a living doing what we are passionate about.
But they cannot stop us from praying, and if we are willing to serve them and “wash their feet” with our baked goods or whatever else, they may come away transformed.
SCOTUS telling us we could not pray in school did not keep prayer out of schools. Your not praying is your own choice. And as long as there are tests, there will always be prayer in schools.
Again, you are not a victim, and you are not powerless.
AND NOW ONTO LISA BEVERE
So, what does Lisa Bevere have to do with this.
Simple.
She carries a whole lot fo earned authority to speak to the issue of Romans 12.
And she speaks with an unction that some might label as feminist, but not quite.
She knows who her King is.
Listen to the following, where she uses the Message to get her point across.
And recognize, it is not just about exposing false teaching, but it is also about exposing inadequacies in our self-perception as preached to us by powerless pulpit-mongers.
Gang, THE CROSS IN NOT JUST ABOUT BLOOD AND PEACE AND SALVATION! IT IS A WEAPON!!!