Environment Bible Quotes

The ancients were afraid that if they went to the end of the earth they would fall off and be consumed by dragons. But once we understand that Christianity is true to what is there, true to the ultimate environment - the infinite, personal God who is really there - then our minds are freed. We can pursue any question and can be sure that we will not fall off the end of the earth.

Contrary to popular opinion, the most important characteristic of a godly mother is not her relationship with her children. It is her love for her husband. The love between husband and wife is the real key to a thriving family. A healthy home environment cannot be built exclusively on the parents' love for their children. The properly situated family has marriage at the center; families shouldn't revolve around the children.

Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true. The consequence was a positively fanatic orgy of freethinking coupled with the impression that youth is intentionally being deceived by the state through lies; it was a crushing impression. Mistrust of every kind of authority grew out of this experience, a skeptical attitude toward the convictions that were alive in any specific social environment - an attitude that has never again left me. - Albert Einstein, Autobiographical Notes, edited by Paul Arthur Schilpp

It seems that a whole lot of people, both Christians and non-Christians, are under the impression that you can’t be a Christian and vote for a Democrat, you can’t be a Christian and believe in evolution, you can’t be a Christian and be gay, you can’t be a Christian and have questions about the Bible, you can’t be a Christian and be tolerant of other religions, you can’t be a Christian and be a feminist, you can’t be a Christian and drink or smoke, you can’t be a Christian and read the New York Times, you can’t be a Christian and support gay rights, you can’t be a Christian and get depressed, you can’t be a Christian and doubt. In fact, I am convinced that what drives most people away from Christianity is not the cost of discipleship but rather the cost of false fundamentals. False fundamentals make it impossible for faith to adapt to change. The longer the list of requirements and contingencies and prerequisites, the more vulnerable faith becomes to shifting environments and the more likely it is to fade slowly into extinction. When the gospel gets all entangled with extras, dangerous ultimatums threaten to take it down with them. The yoke gets too heavy and we stumble beneath it.

Refuse to become a victim of a negative environment.

Pharisees were the upstanding “conservative evangelical pastors” of their day, strongly convinced of the inerrancy of Scripture and its sufficiency for guidance in every area of life, if only it could be properly interpreted.69 Yet it is precisely such an environment in which a healthy perspective on the Bible can easily give way to legalism.

We must experience Heaven on earth; May your homes, surroundings and work places portray a safe clean environment.

Whatever your present environment may be, you will fall, remain, or rise with your thoughts, your Vision, your Ideal.

Morals do exist outside of organized religion, and the ‘morality’ taught by many of these archaic systems is often outdated, sexist, racist, and teaches intolerance and inequality. When a parent forces a child into a religion, the parent is effectively handicapping his or her own offspring by limiting the abilities of the child to question the world around him or her and make informed decisions. Children raised under these conditions will mature believing that their religion is the only correct one, and, in the case of Christianity, they will believe that all who doubt their religion’s validity will suffer eternal damnation. This environment is one that often breeds hate, ignorance, and ‘justified’ violence.

From the beginning, Judeo-Christian principles have been the foundation for American public dialogue and government policy. They serve as the solid basis for political activism in support of a better socioeconomic environment. Found in American homes, truth from the Hebrew Christian Bible has enabled individual liberty to prevail over secular empires because it is a practical message about reality from man’s Creator. In their quest for liberty, Americans focused upon the conspicuously self-evident “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” It is the governing character of these principles (laws), such as humility, the Golden Rule, and the Ten Commandments, that leads to success. This is the sure foundation upon which man’s right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” rests. Called “virtue” by America’s Founding Fathers, the impartial and divine element frees man to do what is right. “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty” (2 Cor. 3:17).

When women grow increasingly lax in their pursuit of Bible literacy, everyone in their circle of influence is affected. Rather than acting as salt and light, we become bland contributions to the environment we inhabit and shape, indistinguishable from those who have never been changed by the gospel. Home, church, community, and country desperately need the influence of women who know why they believe what they believe, grounded in the Word of God. They desperately need the influence of women who love deeply and actively the God proclaimed in the Bible.

You have no excuse to give... Jonah prayed fervently even in the belly of the shark! Environment is not a barrier!

Sourdough starters scavenge wild yeasts like Saccharomyces exiguus, Candida milleri, and Candida humilis from the environment, which do not cause vaginal yeast infections (they also scavenge S. cerevisiae). If

We are committed to involving as many people as possible, as young as possible, as soon as possible. Sometimes too young and too soon! But we intentionally err on the side of too fast rather than too slow. We don’t wait until people feel “prepared” or “fully equipped.” Seriously, when is anyone ever completely prepared for ministry? Ministry makes people’s faith bigger. If you want to increase someone’s confidence in God, put him in a ministry position before he feels fully equipped. The messages your environments communicate have the potential to trump your primary message. If you don’t see a mess, if you aren’t bothered by clutter, you need to make sure there is someone around you who does see it and is bothered by it. An uncomfortable or distracting setting can derail ministry before it begins. The sermon begins in the parking lot. Assign responsibility, not tasks. At the end of the day, it’s application that makes all the difference. Truth isn’t helpful if no one understands or remembers it. If you want a church full of biblically educated believers, just teach what the Bible says. If you want to make a difference in your community and possibly the world, give people handles, next steps, and specific applications. Challenge them to do something. As we’ve all seen, it’s not safe to assume that people automatically know what to do with what they’ve been taught. They need specific direction. This is hard. This requires an extra step in preparation. But this is how you grow people. Your current template is perfectly designed to produce the results you are currently getting. We must remove every possible obstacle from the path of the disinterested, suspicious, here-against-my-will, would-rather-be-somewhere-else, unchurched guests. The parking lot, hallways, auditorium, and stage must be obstacle-free zones. As a preacher, it’s my responsibility to offend people with the gospel. That’s one reason we work so hard not to offend them in the parking lot, the hallway, at check-in, or in the early portions of our service. We want people to come back the following week for another round of offending! Present the gospel in uncompromising terms, preach hard against sin, and tackle the most emotionally charged topics in culture, while providing an environment where unchurched people feel comfortable. The approach a church chooses trumps its purpose every time. Nothing says hypocrite faster than Christians expecting non-Christians to behave like Christians when half the Christians don’t act like it half the time. When you give non-Christians an out, they respond by leaning in. Especially if you invite them rather than expect them. There’s a big difference between being expected to do something and being invited to try something. There is an inexorable link between an organization’s vision and its appetite for improvement. Vision exposes what has yet to be accomplished. In this way, vision has the power to create a healthy sense of organizational discontent. A leader who continually keeps the vision out in front of his or her staff creates a thirst for improvement. Vision-centric churches expect change. Change is a means to an end. Change is critical to making what could and should be a reality. Write your vision in ink; everything else should be penciled in. Plans change. Vision remains the same. It is natural to assume that what worked in the past will always work. But, of course, that way of thinking is lethal. And the longer it goes unchallenged, the more difficult it is to identify and eradicate. Every innovation has an expiration date. The primary reason churches cling to outdated models and programs is that they lack leadership.

...the job of the spiritual memoirist is to read the world like a book. Medieval monks believed the natural world was a scriptural text, liber mundi, requiring as much study and devotion as the Bible. This impulse is literary as well: Writers are constantly alert to the environment, seeking out its inherent metaphoric resonance.

The liturgical person discovers who he is in the context of a community that listens to and explains the Bible and acts in accord with it. In this, he stands opposed to those whose identity is shaped by the heroes, ideals, and norms of the environing secular culture and to those whose sense of self is formed by the texts and practices of other religions.

We do our best to hear from God, but we are all a bit spiritually hard of hearing. Our own convictions sometimes get intermingled with what we believe God is saying to us. None of us knows everything. We’re all shaped by our environment and limited in our understanding. We do our best to hear from God, but we hear God through our individual filters, our preconceived ideas and convictions. This

Yet the Bible teaches that the local church is the natural environment for discipling. In fact, it teaches that the local church is itself the basic discipler of Christians. It does this through its weekly gatherings and its accountability structures (this chapter), as well as its elders and its members (next chapter). These in turn provide the context for the one-on-one discipling we have been considering so far.

The Grahamites who preach on the streets of Bangkok all talk of their Holy Bible and its stories of salvation. Their stories of Noah Bodhisattva, who saved all the animals and trees and flowers on his great bamboo raft and helped them cross the waters, all the broken pieces of the world piled atop his raft while he hunted for land. But there is no Noah Bodhisattva now. There is only Phra Seub who feels the pain of loss but can do little to stop it, and the little mud Buddhas of the Environment Ministry, who hold back rising waters by barest luck.

A friend of mine commented yesterday that she has experienced similar insights that I talked about that all enlightened Masters and founders of religion are actually talking about the same ocean, the same invisible life source, the same God. She also said that she worked in a Christan environment at the time that she received these insights, and when she tried to share these insights with the Christians she was accused of being "impure" and of being associated with the "Devil". Christians hold on to the idea that Jesus was the only son of God, without realizing that we are all son's and daughter's of God. By holding on to the idea that Jesus is the only son of God, they do not either to realize that all enlightened Masters are talking about the same God. Jesus did not talk about faith, he talked about trust. He talked about discovering a trust in yourself and in relationship to God. Jesus said that the kingdom of God is within you. In Christianity, the church has become the intermediate between man and God, and people who claim that they have found a direct relationship to God are accused of blasphemy. The Christan church has become a barrier between man and God, and anyone who has declared that he has found a direct relationship to God are immediately banned by the church, for example Master Eckhart and Franciskus of Assisi. I have always had a deep love for Jesus, but it is not the picture of Jesus that the Christian church presents. I was a disciple of Jesus in a former life, and was thrown to the lions in Colosseum in Rome as one of the early Christians. Jesus had many more disciples than the twelve disciples mentioned in The Bible. In this life, I resigned my automatic membership in the church as soon as I could think for myself when I was 15 years old. I was also disgusted with an organization that said that they preached love and which has murdered more people than Hitler. My experience with these rare and precious insights are that they expand our consciousness of reality. They are gradual initiations into reality. They may fade away, but we will never be the same again after receiving them. They will also come more and more, the more committment we have to our spiritual growth.

8 The chief duty of every new age is to upraise new men to determine its liberties, to lead it towards material success - to rend the rusty padlocks and chains of dead custom that always present healthy expansion. Theories and ideas that may have meant life and hope and freedom for our ancestors may now mean destruction, slavery, and dishonor to us! 9 As environments change, no human ideal standeth sure! 10 Whenever, therefore, a lie has built unto itself a throne, let it be assailed without pity and without regret, for under the domination of an inconvenient falsehood, no one can prosper.

When you read the Bible you are getting advice from a few priests and rabbis who lived in ancient Jerusalem. In contrast, when you listen to your feelings, you follow an algorithm that evolution has developed for millions of years, and that withstood the harshest quality-control tests of natural selection. Your feelings are the voice of millions of ancestors, each of whom managed to survive and reproduce in an unforgiving environment. Your feelings are not infallible, of course, but they are better than most other sources of guidance. For millions upon millions of years, feelings were the best algorithms in the world.

Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached the conviction that much of the stories of the Bible could not be true. The consequence was a positively fanatic free thinking coupled with the impression that youth is intentionally being deceived by the State through lies; it was a crushing impression. Suspicion against every kind of authority grew out of this experience, a skeptical attitude towards the convictions which were alive in any specific social environment—an attitude which has never again left me, even though later on, because of a better insight into the causal connections, it lost some of its original poignancy.

The scientists not only sanctified human feelings, but also found an excellent evolutionary reason to do so. After Darwin, biologists began explaining that feelings are complex algorithms honed by evolution to help animals make correct decisions. Our love, our fear and our passion aren’t some nebulous spiritual phenomena good only for composing poetry. Rather, they encapsulate millions of years of practical wisdom. When you read the Bible you are getting advice from a few priests and rabbis who lived in ancient Jerusalem. In contrast, when you listen to your feelings, you follow an algorithm that evolution has developed for millions of years, and that withstood the harshest quality-control tests of natural selection. Your feelings are the voice of millions of ancestors, each of whom managed to survive and reproduce in an unforgiving environment.

MAY 31 The Power of Your Words Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit. PROVERBS 18:21 NASB OUR WORDS have tremendous power and are similar to seeds. By speaking them aloud, they are planted in our subconscious minds, take root, grow, and produce fruit of the same kind. Whether we speak positive or negative words, we will reap exactly what we sow. That’s why we need to be extremely careful what we think and say. The Bible compares the tongue to the small rudder of a huge ship, which controls the ship’s direction (see James 3:4). Similarly, your tongue will control the direction of your life. You create an environment for either good or evil with your words, and if you’re always murmuring, complaining, and talking about how bad life is treating you, you’re going to live in a pretty miserable world. Use your words to change your negative situations and fill them with life.

The flowers must have been the latest generation of perennials, whose ancestors were first planted by a woman who lived in the ruins when the ruins were a raw, unpainted house inhabited by herself and a smoky, serious husband and perhaps a pair or silent, serious daughters, and the flowers were an act of resistance against the raw, bare lot with its raw house sticking up from the raw earth like an act of sheer, inevitable, necessary madness because human beings have to live somewhere and in something and here is just as outrageous as there because in either place (in any place) it seems like an interruption, an intrusion on something that, no matter how many times she read in her Bible, Let them have dominion, seemed marred, dispelled, vanquished once people arrived with their catastrophic voices and saws and plows and began to sing and hammer and carve and erect. So the flowers were maybe a balm or, if not a balm, some sort of gesture signifying the balm she would apply were it in her power to offer redress.

We can already see from the aforementioned things that faith is an integral part of the Christian life. I would even go so far as to say that without it we cannot really live a Christian life at all. So why does the subject of faith seem so elusive to so many people? The Bible tells us in Hebrews 11:6, “But without faith it is impossible to please Him [God]....” Satan knows that if you and I learn to walk by faith in every area of our lives, we will ultimately be pleasing to God. Therefore, the enemy has strategically brought confusion in the area of faith. It seems that faith has become a taboo word. Over the past 20 years, the church has embraced many dimensions of the New Testament paradigm, such as prophecy, apostolic ministry, the gifts of the Spirit, and revival culture; however, it seems that we have still fallen short in the area of faith. This subject has been smeared with abuse, misunderstanding, ignorance, and outright fear. Once we learn to tap into this kind of faith, we are accessing the realm of the supernatural, and it is in this environment that we experience the miraculous.

WHY SATAN HATES FAITH We can already see from the aforementioned things that faith is an integral part of the Christian life. I would even go so far as to say that without it we cannot really live a Christian life at all. So why does the subject of faith seem so elusive to so many people? The Bible tells us in Hebrews 11:6, “But without faith it is impossible to please Him [God]....” Satan knows that if you and I learn to walk by faith in every area of our lives, we will ultimately be pleasing to God. Therefore, the enemy has strategically brought confusion in the area of faith. It seems that faith has become a taboo word. Over the past 20 years, the church has embraced many dimensions of the New Testament paradigm, such as prophecy, apostolic ministry, the gifts of the Spirit, and revival culture; however, it seems that we have still fallen short in the area of faith. This subject has been smeared with abuse, misunderstanding, ignorance, and outright fear. Once we learn to tap into this kind of faith, we are accessing the realm of the supernatural, and it is in this environment that we experience the miraculous.

I always found it interesting how the church often has a tendency to try to make everything look better than it really is.  No divorces are happening here.  No alcoholism, domestic violence, or abortions.  Just smiling faces and warm handshakes as you walk in the door.  It like we're saying, if we can just create a sterile enough environment, then doggone it, our environment will be clean.  But of course, God sees us all for who we really are, and He is privy to all of your angry words, gossiping tongues, and secret stashes.  He knows who you really are, yet He loves you anyway.

There are deceivers among Muslims as there are among Christians who go on Scripture (i.e., Qur'an/Bible) with "Sola Scriptura" attitude and behaviour. They take this path thinking that they purify themselves from an evil doctrine which was attached to Scripture, as if it were a legitimate act of scholarship and Scripture would be cleansed by such a self-proclaimed entrepreneurship endeavour. It helps them foremost in attracting new converts in environments that are not tolerant of historical Scripture and its culture in the first place. However, such an unscientific stance will inevitably lead to their dependence on the text rather than the authority of the whole package (i.e., text, history, science, reason, context ..etc) which The Lord has endowed the truth with, and sooner or later they'll end up worshipping the text itself; and eventually the book (i.e., the paper and its cover)! If one cannot differentiate between the authority of the Messengers of God and other creatures and yet refuse to simply believe that their role is not substitutable by others, then worshipping materialism in form of atoms/particles or spirit/consciousness will unequivocally follow and conclude the development of their faith/religion establishment. Playing that role of the Messengers (i.e., revelation reception) when there is no such communication/relation with God in the first place, will certainly lead to establishing a contact with that being that lurks in the darkness in the absence of light awaiting those stray children of Adam. If God wanted to establish faith using Socialism, He'd have inscribed Scripture on a mountain for example so that all creatures/humans have equal access unto it! But this is not how The Lord created and intended the universe to be; there are ranks, preferences and degrees. He who transgresses the limits is not guided by God and is to be held responsible for his stray choices.

Jacob was a crafty supplanter, but Laban was more subtle than Jacob. This was sovereignly arranged by God. Everything Laban did to cheat and to “squeeze” Jacob (31:7, 40-42), plus the competition, envy, and wrestling between Jacob’s wives in their bearing children (29:31 — 30:24), were sovereignly used by God to deal with Jacob’s natural disposition so that God could transform him. Jacob’s history shows that God sovereignly arranges each aspect of the environment of His chosen ones so that He may carry out His work of transformation in them (Rom. 8:28-30).

What is interesting to me is people tend to congregate around whatever aspect of God is most familiar to them. Holiness folks, God’s righteousness and abhorrence for sin. Pentecostals, God’s indwelling Spirit and the signs that follow. There are others but those are two I know most about. I’ve seen many a person project their ego, their upbringing, their beliefs onto different passages in the Bible. For a person who grew up in a loving and welcoming environment, the thought of God not listening, not accepting, not loving them is as foreign as hearing another language.

God's truth can be compared to the shining stars in the night sky.  They are beautiful from a penthouse suite located in a huge metropolis with thousands of city lights glowing all around.  But that view cannot compare with the brilliance of those celestials viewed from a hillside on deserted Wyoming acreage on a cloudless night.  Each constellation stands out in clarity, the luminescence is breathtaking, and the joy of experiencing the precious "findings" in the night sky is exhilarating.  It seems, in those environs, as if the observer can see forever.  So it is with God's Word.  Focused on the Scripture alone with no other "lights" shining about, makes for easier, fresher, more personal discoveries of God's truth.

The Framework of Life Deuteronomy 6:2 “Thus for the sake of Christ and his coming, natural life must be lived within the framework of certain definite rights and certain definite duties.” —ETHICS The Christian’s concern should never only be for the church and for God’s future kingdom, but also for natural life and the world. Our concerns should include good government, equal opportunity, justice, values that ennoble the human person, as well as concerns for our environment and the world’s resources. These concerns are not secular. Rather they are deeply spiritual, for without a sustainable world and cultural values based on freedom and justice, the message of God’s love revealed in Jesus Christ would fall into a vacuum. Thought The God of the Bible is Creator as well as Redeemer. He is concerned about this life as much as He is concerned about eternal life.

Oftentimes religious circles are known for extreme control of the people, situations and environment around them. Control then becomes the issue of the hour. Studying the Scriptures without letting the Holy Spirit teach us puts us in control. He always takes us to Jesus. Going to the One the Scriptures point to puts Him in control. In other words, when the Bible is an end unto itself, it gives us a measure of learning, but no personal transformation.

On the very first page of the Bible, then, power, flourishing and image bearing are connected. Power is for flourishing—teeming, fruitful, multiplying abundance. Power creates and shapes an environment where creatures can flourish, making room for the variety, diversity and unpredictability of coral reefs and tropical forests, but also the surprising biological richness of high deserts and ocean depths. And image bearing is for power—for it is the Creator’s desire to fill the earth with representatives who will have the same kind of delighted dominion over the teeming creatures as their Maker. Which means image bearing is for flourishing. The image bearers do not exist for their own flourishing alone, but to bring the whole creation to its fulfillment.

Perhaps you grew up in a legalistic spiritual environment as I did. With legalism, Christianity is all about conforming to a code of conduct that has been added to the precepts and principles of the Bible and then judging people on the degree to which they conform to the extrabiblical code. “I’m a good Christian because I don’t do the ‘filthy five’ (or the ‘dirty dozen’).” That kind of legalistic focus produces external conformity, like in the military, but not the kind of true life change we are looking for. Actually, I believe there’s more disobedience to God in the legalistic Christian subculture than anywhere else, because so often there has been no real heart change. Instead, sinful patterns that God wants to change are forced under the surface—a sort of conspiracy of silence. Legalistic Christians are hiding the real truth of who they are from everyone around them. The result? Biblical fellowship is hindered and true life change becomes very difficult. Legalism is a stifling environment where lasting heart change is impossible. Over the Christmas holidays, my family and I visited a church caught in legalism. I didn’t want to go, but I had no choice and so I went. The problem was I forgot about the dress code. I was sort of “dress casual,” if you know what I mean. Then we got in the building. Oops! Every single male from three years of age to ninety-nine had a suit on, and those ties sure looked tight. Now to their credit, they were friendly, but even the handshake itself was kind of compassionate. “Oh, poor brother. We hope you’ll soon be within the reach of the gospel.” You know, that feeling you get when people are judging you because you’re not quite like they are. Anyway, I snuggled up my coat, brought my kids in, and sat down. Being familiar with this approach, I was doing really well until they started a baptismal service where the pastor walked right into the baptistery with his suit on, coat and all. I just wanted to stand up and go, “What are you thinking! It’s not about rules! Jesus died so we could have a genuine intimacy with Him, not just look the part, or what you think looks the part. Won’t you ever learn that rules by themselves don’t change us? They just force our sinful natures under the surface and help us hide behind externals and pretend we’re closer to God than we really are.” Of course, God is not for or against suits. Dressing up for church when motivated by reverence and not religion can be good. Similarly, dressing down can be

Our choices in attitudes, words, and actions set the tone in our environment.

Would Christ feel comfortable in an environment where men and women are consuming alcoholic beverages, gambling away their money, and engaging in conversation that is often filled with the baser things of life? It is a relevant question. As a Christian, Christ lives in you and you carry Him wherever you go. The Bible tells us to “come out from them and be separate” [2 Corinthians 6:17 NIV].

Some knowledge of the Septuagint is very important for Christian studies. Eighty percent of the Old Testament quotations in the New Testament are taken from the Septuagint. As Christianity moved out of a strictly Jewish environment, the Septuagint became the Bible

A sapient cat looking at humanity's salad garden buffet designed by God would not be seen as so much a paradise if the divine is seen as giving this to intelligent cats. It would be seen as quite the opposite. Since cats use plants as emetics and also lack the ability to taste sweet, Eden would be a rather hellish place. It would be a place where God might send a cat to punish the feline. This is because fruits and vegetation to eat would be a place to eat bland foods that cause one to vomit. It would hardly be a beneficial place for cats if this was a place of divine refuge where death did not exist. Again the immortal state would place cats in a rather hellish environment.

Rather than acting as salt and light, we become bland contributions to the environments we inhabit and shape, indistinguishable from those who have never been changed by the gospel.

I love the church. I like the waxed candles that remind me people think of people. I love the bouquet of flowers on the altar that a group of grandmas grow in their gardens and pridefully donate every week. I admire the wooden statues of craftsmanship, of a mother staring at you with the kind of pure, loving look I forgot to ask from mine. I like the skinny man nailed to the cross reminding me that people are capable of sacrificial love. I like to stare at the art on the stained-glass windows, of angels, of lambs, and of fruit. I love running my hands over mosaics and tracing the lips of saints. I love the hymns and joy of the choir, who sing regardless if you’re too scared. I love watching the collective sway of bodies subconsciously comforted by their environment after finally saying “Peace be with you.” And most of all, I love being surrounded by people trying. They wear Christ around their neck and squeeze a rosary for dear life, admitting their weaknesses and sins. Tell me, where do you find that? There is an honesty in the church, spilling from kneeling persons, that gives me the hope humans can take care of each other and our planet can be a good one. Where else can I be exposed to the practice of morality on such an emotional level? I love everything about the church—the shiny pews, the smoky incense, the Bible and its purpose – because when all is considered, it makes sense. It is a template of discipline and thoughtfulness. Why call religious people idiots when they’re the few paying attention to their own lives? And there are other ways to be moral of course, but not many ways to practice. I’ve learned that to believe in God doesn’t subtract any life from you. It is additional. It is the world and God. If someone wears a jacket over their shirt, they aren’t naked. They’re double-layered.

It is a well known fact that an observant person can accurately analyze a man by seeing his workbench, desk or other place of employment. A well organized desk indicates a well organized brain. Show me the merchant’s stock of goods and I will tell you whether he has an organized or disorganized brain, as there is a close relationship between one’s mental attitude and one’s physical environment.

In recent years, the application of archaeozoology (the study of animal remains) and palaeoethnobotany (the study of botanical remains–including palynology, the analysis of pollen grains in soil) has begun to make an increasing impact on the study of the ancient Near East in general and the Levant in particular. They shed light, for example, on the ancient environments, the domestication of plants and animals, diet, various cultural practices, and even such things as trade (showing, for example, whether wood used for building was local or imported). Of particular interest for the study of the Bible has been evidence for the domestication of and the eating of the pig, in view of the biblical prohibitions (for example, Lev. 11: 7). Evidence suggests that, after the Middle Bronze Age, apart from its use by the Philistines, the eating of the pig was not common until the Hellenistic period. The

We can leave our children no inheritance more valuable than the legacy of God’s Word. It gives us clearer thoughts, steadier nerves, healthier emotions, purer habits, and better environments.

One beauty of God’s creation is this: if you’re not willing to accept Christianity, then you’re free to reject it. This freedom to make choices—even the freedom to reject truth—is what makes us moral creatures and enables each of us to choose our ultimate destiny. This really hits at the heart of why we exist at all, and why God might not be as overt in revealing himself to us as some would like. For if the Bible is true, then God has provided each of us with the opportunity to make an eternal choice to either accept him or reject him. And in order to ensure that our choice is truly free, he puts us in an environment that is filled with evidence of his existence, but without his direct presence—a presence so powerful that it could overwhelm our freedom and thus negate our ability to reject him.

Jackals are doglike scavengers that often live among ruins with no concern for the debris and decay all around them. Like jackals, these false prophets were content to live in a disintegrating environment, oblivious to the judgment that was falling on the nation.

come alive and to speak, had to be chosen by the reader, who would vary the sounded breath according to the written context. By this innovation, the aleph-beth was able to greatly reduce the necessary number of characters for a written script to just twenty-two—a simple set of signs that could be readily practiced and learned in a brief period by anyone who had the chance, even by a young child. The utter simplicity of this technical innovation was such that the early Semitic aleph-beth, in which were written down the various stories and histories that were later gathered into the Hebrew Bible, was adopted not only by the Hebrews but by the Phonecians (who presumably carried the new technology across the Mediterranean to Greece), the Aramaeans, the Greeks, the Romans, and indeed eventually gave rise (directly or indirectly) to virtually every alphabet known, including that which I am currently using to scribe these words. With the advent of the aleph-beth, a new distance opens between human culture and the rest of nature. To be sure, pictographic and ideographic writing already involved a displacement of our sensory participation from the depths of the animate environment to the flat surface of our walls, of clay tablets, of the sheet of papyrus. However, as we noted above, the written images themselves often related us back to the other animals and the environing earth. The pictographic glyph or character still referred, implicitly, to the animate phenomenon of which it was the static image; it was that worldly phenomenon, in turn, that provoked from us the sound of its name. The sensible phenomenon and its spoken name were, in a sense, still participant with one another—the name a sort of emanation of the sensible entity. With the phonetic aleph-beth, however, the written character no longer refers us to any sensible phenomenon out in the world, or even to the name of such a phenomenon (as with the rebus), but solely to a gesture to be made by the human mouth. There is a concerted shift of attention away from any outward or worldly reference of the pictorial image, away from the

The Bible is the voice of God in print—the Spirit’s breath written down in such a way that we can take it in and live by it. Which is why whenever you separate the Word of God from a relationship with God, it may not have the life-giving effect of the Spirit on you that you hoped it would. You need a relationship with God for His words to take life in you. You want the living Word to be connected to the written Word so that the breath of God’s Spirit can bring life into your dryness, circumstances, situations, and environment (Ezekiel 37:1-14). The Spirit is the oxygen tank that secures our survival in the waters of a wicked world.

These seven attributes of the worldview Jesus initiated account for an obvious truth; Jesus followers have had an oversized impact on the sciences. 1. Christ followers believed matter was good and worthy of study 2. Christ followers believed their world was the product of a singular, orderly, rational God 3. Christ followers believed God was distinct from his creation 4. Christ followers were motivated by their desire to worship the God of the universe 5. Christ followers believed they could better understand God by observing His activity in the 'book of nature' 6. Christ followers pursued physical and intellectual investigations of their environment 7. Christ followers created a place to advance the sciences

This is the path of Torah: Bread and salt shall you eat, and drink water by measure; you shall sleep upon the ground, and live a life of privation, and in Torah shall be your work. And if you do thus, “You shall be happy, and it will be well with you” (Ps. 128:2)—Happy [refers to] this world, and well to the world to come. Greatest is the Torah, for it gives life to those who perform it[s commandments] in this world and in the world to come, as it is said, “It is a tree of life to those who hold on to it, and all who maintain it are blessed” [Prov. 3:18]. —m. Abot 6:4, 7 Once the wicked regime [Rome] decreed that Jews be forbidden to study the Torah. Pappus b. Judah subsequently found R. Aqiba nonetheless convening groups in public for the study of Torah. “Aqiba,” he said, “are you not afraid of the regime?” He said: “Let me answer you with a comparison: It is like a fox that was walking along the river-bank when he saw some fish moving in groups from place to place. He said to them: ‘What are you fleeing from?’ They said: ‘From the nets that the human beings cast over us.’ He said to them: ‘Wouldn’t you like to climb up onto the dry land so that you and I might live together as your ancestors and mine once did?’ They said: ‘Are you indeed the one who is alleged to be the cleverest of animals? You are not clever but foolish! For if there is danger in the place where we do live [that is, our natural environment], is it not all the more so in the place where we must die?’ So is it with us now: for we sit and study Torah, about which it is said, ‘For it is your life and your length of days’ (Deut. 30:20); were we to abandon it, we would be in far greater danger.” — b. Berakhot 61b

The Bible-like form of the Course reflects its function as a correction for the Bible’s exclusory and punitive teachings. Though it has been a source of guidance for many, the Bible has also contributed to a great deal of pain. Minority groups, animals and the environment as a whole have long felt the brunt of the Bible’s divisive passages. Humans are to have dominion over the earth; if you ‘spare the rod’ you ‘spoil the child’; ‘the head of woman is man’: these are just a few Biblical statements that people have used to justify denigration and brutality.

The Absolute is the ONE from which everything arises, which ultimately is everything. It is the eternally unlimited that carries all potential within itself. It is the emptiness of the eastern philosophers and also the ONE, the BEING of the Greek philosophers, which carries all possibilities within itself. Man wanted to make this absolute explicable, so he personified it and called it GOD! The Absolute is BEING, unmentionable and unimaginable, in contrast to the personified God of religions. Hinduism distinguishes very precisely between GOD and BEING and has the names Brahma and Brahman for them. Brahma, that is personified God, and Brahman, the all-embracing, the all-pervading, the nameless, the formless, the eternal absolute, the all-indwelling principle. We humans have become so accustomed to seeing and identifying with and about ourselves solely as a body that we have forgotten who we really are. When we become aware again that our subtle body is light in itself, that we are Brahman, that we are the source of all that is, then a "new" view of ourselves, our fellow human beings and our environment opens up. The Absolute, the BEING, is the source of everything that is. The un-created light is the radiance of the Absolute. This light is beyond any evaluation and any cataloging into this or that. This light is highest vibrational energy. Without this light there is no life.

Linear Models The Six Ages of Man: this is Augustine’s model that plots human history from the Biblical Genesis to the Apocalypse. The first five ages comprise the events of the Bible, while the expansive sixth age, which includes the present time, stretches from the first coming of Jesus Christ until the last judgement and gets older and more decayed over time. In this view of history, things will only get worse until the second coming. The progressive vision of history: this is the notion that humans, through reason and knowledge, and their mastery of science and their environment, can harness an unlimited perfectibility—materially, morally, and socially.

These points of continuity and discontinuity should have an important role in our interpretation of the Bible, and knowledge of them should guard against a facile or uninformed imposition of our own cognitive environment on the texts of ancient Israel, which is all too typical in confessional circles.

Reflection on Romans 12:1–2 It is increasingly difficult for us to remain unaffected by the values of our society. In an age of unprecedented communication, we receive an extraordinary number of messages reinforcing the world’s value system. But the solution is not to remove ourselves from the world. We are to go into it with a firm understanding of the values of God’s kingdom, refusing to be intimidated or swayed by contrary opinions and prepared for God to use us. In fact, when we’re filled with his Spirit and listening for his voice, we can shape our environment more than it shapes us. Our transformed minds can make an impact. Instead of being conformed to the world, we can become transformers of it.

God also worked on my heart to help me realize that traumatic events are not easily fixed and healing takes time. Before then, I thought that Christians could, and should, be able to overcome their challenges and setbacks through prayer, Bible-reading, and a little bit of time. Having grown up in a safe environment and community at home, and having never experienced a crisis or trauma, this was the simple perspective I had. “Get over it,” sums up how I felt. The months of processing taught me to accept and not judge other people who have been through trauma. So now I tell them, “Take your time,” instead of “get over it.” I’ve also learned that leaders must have patience as people process trauma because God is in no hurry.

La bible c'est plus de 66 ouvrages rédigés par plus de 40 auteurs différents sur un espace temps d’environ quinze siècles.

•A candidate running for president in 2012 referred to higher education as “mind control” and “indoctrination.” He ran again in 2016.         •A former Governor and 2012 presidential contender blamed the separation of church and state on Satan. He also sought to solve his state’s drought problem by asking its citizens to pray for rain. He ran again in 2016.         •A 2012 presidential contender claimed, “there’s violence in Israel because Jesus is coming soon.”         •A Georgia congressman claimed that evolution and the Big Bang Theory were “lies straight from the pit of Hell,” adding “Earth is about 9,000 years old and was created in six days, per the Bible.” He’s a physician, and a high-ranking member of the House Science Committee.         •From another member of the House Science Committee: “Prehistoric climate change could have been caused by dinosaur flatulence.”         •From the Chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee: “Global warming isn’t real, God is in control of the world.”         •A former Speaker of the House -- a born-again Christian, and convicted felon – declared, “One thing Americans seem to forget is that God wrote the Constitution.”         •The Lt. Governor of a southern state claimed that Yoga may result in satanic possession.         •A Southern senator claimed, “video games represent a bigger problem than guns, because video games affect people.”         •A California state representative proudly stated: “Guns are used to defend our property and our families and our freedom, and they are absolutely essential to living the way God intended for us to live.”         •Another California representative suggested that abortion was to blame for the state’s drought.         •From a Texas representative: “The great flood is an example of climate change. And that certainly wasn’t because mankind overdeveloped hydrocarbon energy.”         •An Oklahoma representative said: “Just because the Supreme Court rules on something doesn’t necessarily mean that that’s constitutional.”         •From another Texas representative: “We know Al Qaeda has camps on the Mexican border. We have people that are trained to act Hispanic when they are radical Islamists.”         •A South Carolina State representative, commenting on the Supreme Court’s legalization of gay marriage said, “The devil is taking control of this land and we’re not stopping him!

Without dioceses, local parishes and village churches could barely continue, even if the villages themselves could have long survived the constant turmoil and bloodshed. And as we have seen, monasteries and shrines could not last for long in an environment of prolonged warfare. The strength of early and medieval Christianity was that it created a sanctified landscape in which Christian institutions were visible everywhere. The weakness of being so heavily invested in real estate was that it left an almost infinite abundance of tempting targets for plunder and destruction, and once these were gone, so were many of the forces that kept believers attached to the faith. The question must arise as to whether some other kind of organization might have offered a better chance of resisting decline. In theory, we can imagine church structures less dependent on monks and clergy, and lacking the tight hierarchy dependent on the empire’s cities. Retroactively, we could even think of a Christianity that looked more Protestant, in the sense of placing more control and initiative in the hands of ordinary believers, whose decentralized church life would depend less on institutions than on direct access to the scriptures. But such an alternative is difficult to conceive realistically, as monasticism and episcopacy were so deeply en-grained in Eastern tradition, while the Protestant idea of access to the Bible assumes forms of printing technology that would not be feasible until centuries afterward. And the annihilation of European heretics like the Cathars suggests that even quite imaginative forms of clandestine organization could not withstand unrelenting persecution.

It is true that the Christian West used its technological superiority to colonize much of the world, and that technology has created serious dangers for the environment as well as for humanity. Nevertheless, it is ideological blindness to ignore the fact that technology functioning within a biblical framework has been one of the chief instruments of human emancipation.

Dynamism occurs in two matrixes of sequence. I mean matrix in the same sense as in the movie The Matrix—an environment or context in which things happen. Water is the matrix of tea, meaning that tea happens in water. Cyberspace is the matrix of e-mail, meaning that e-mail happens in cyberspace. The matrix of sequence in space is time, meaning that everything that happens happens in time. The matrix of sequence outside of space is eternity. Many people think that eternity is infinite time, but that isn’t how the Bible describes it. Eternity is a separate matrix of sequence in that every point of time is present to every point of eternity. That is why prophecy is possible. God lives in eternity, and from every point of the dynamic matrix of eternity, all of time is present.

The Peg Technique The peg technique is slightly similar to memorizing by association in that it uses a second memory to help the mind recall it. It is different in that you create the memory on the spot. The peg technique is meant to give your mind something extra to hang onto the memory with. Thus the memory hangs on the peg (image object etc), hence it is called the peg technique. The peg however is more than just a simple mental image you form. It is a ridiculous or silly image you create in the hopes that your mind will better remember it. How is this supposed to work? The mind many times can remember things that are bizarre in regard to its surroundings. Being a naturally inquisitive creature fueled by a thirst to understand the world around us, we must examine and better understand any discrepancies in our environment. For example men are fascinated with the workings of atoms and their bizarre behavior when broken apart. People have devoted their entire lives to figuring out these mysteries. When things function in a different way than expected, people can’t stop examining the subject until the can fully understand it. The peg technique was created on this basic premise with the hope that the concept would cross over with silly mental images. In the end this technique is proven to work well with numbers, and lists, among other things. It does not however help one to retain the meaning. In order to remember certain things one would need to create a memorable image in mind that would help bring to memory what they’re trying to recall. How this would apply to scriptures, is that you would choose to make the scripture into a silly image in your mind in order to help you remember it.

According to the “consciousness model“ of magic, thoughts can be objectivated and become reality. In simpler terms, both the outer life and the inner life of the human being is a reflection of one‘s intentional thoughts, and, thus, a “magician“ is a person who actively does things instead of just thinking or talking about them. Not only has quantum physics proved that, at the quantum level, matter reacts to the “observer“, namely, to one‘s thoughts, but also everyone can easily confirm that one‘s immediate environment (for instance, one‘s home, the activities that one performs, one‘s profession, etc.) is an expression of the fundamental significations and the major driving forces of one‘s inner life. Hence, from an elevated perspective, “magic“ means wisdom put into action with faith and focused thought in order to produce history according to one‘s will. This notion of magic is explicitly referred to in the Bible, specifically, in Matthew 2:11 – 12, where we read that three Magi visited and worshiped Jesus Christ, the Messiah, after his birth, bearing gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. In principle, magic is the traditional science of the secrets of nature and of the human being. It is the old name of the subject-matter of the ancient occult initiates and intellectuals of India, Chaldea, Persia, Egypt, and Homeric Greece.

What happens in one generation often repeats itself in the next. The consequences of actions and decisions taken in one generation affect those who follow. For this reason it is common to observe certain patterns from one generation to the next such as divorce, alcoholism, addictive behavior, sexual abuse, poor marriages, one child running off, mistrust of authority, pregnancy out of wedlock, an inability to sustain stable relationships, etc. Scientists and sociologists have been debating for decades whether this is a result of “nature” (i.e., our DNA) or “nurture” (i.e., our environment) or both. The Bible doesn’t answer this question. It only states that this is a “mysterious law of God’s universe.

The measure of a man may be taken very accurately by the extent to which he adapts himself to his environment and makes it his business to accept responsibility for every adversity with which he meets, whether the adversity grows out of a cause within his control or not.

The missionary then told his congregation how after the Lord had instructed Adam and Eve to care for the Garden of Eden they were seduced by the serpent into committing mortal sin, as a result of which the Almighty “cursed the ground” and banished the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve to a life of toil in the fields. This particular Bible story made more sense to the Ju/’hoansi than many others the missionaries told them—and not just because they all knew what it meant to be tempted to sleep with people they knew they shouldn’t. In it they saw a parable of their own recent history. All the old Ju/’hoansi at Skoonheid remembered when this land was their sole domain and when they lived exclusively by hunting for wild animals and gathering wild fruits, tubers, and vegetables. They recalled that back then, like Eden, their desert environment was eternally (if temperamentally) provident and almost always gave them enough to eat on the basis of a few, often spontaneous, hours’ effort. Some now speculated that it must have been as a result of some similar mortal sin on their part that, starting in the 1920s, first a trickle then a flood of white farmers and colonial police arrived in the Kalahari with their horses, guns, water pumps, barbed wire, cattle, and strange laws, and claimed all this land for themselves.

Being full of both grace and truth is part of his glory revealed. It’s not a balancing act. The goal is to max out both, neglecting neither. This fullness defined Jesus, yet our pendulum tends to swing a mile to the left or a mile to the right, depending on what our formative faith environment emphasized. Very few of us have been nurtured toward both. Some of us grew up in a truth-focused faith environment or church. Typically, these environments value doctrine over method or, at the bare minimum, focus more on Scripture, study, and obedience than on understanding freedom and grace. While this environment may result in a more developed view of a doctrinal gospel, it often lacks the ability to empathize appropriately during a situational or social issue. Our default becomes a form of legalism, and our confidence is often misinterpreted as arrogance or even judgment. Conversely, some of us grew up in a grace-focused faith environment or church. Typically, it is these “it’s the heart that matters” environments that often value the how over the what. The life that accompanies this focus is often expressed outside the walls of a church service or Bible study. Our default is grace, at times seemingly at the expense of truth, and our freedom is often misinterpreted as being too compromising. Those of us who grew up in truth-focused environments most likely struggle with extending grace to ourselves and others. Those of us who grew up in grace-focused environments most likely struggle with applying truth to ourselves and others. And so we clash when we come together to pursue gospel living, not always realizing the reason we see things so differently. What can we do about this? Knowing where our roots lie is a great place to start. From there we can ask the questions, Do I need to apply more truth to this situation, issue, or relationship, or do I need to extend more grace? and, How is my perspective perhaps skewed by my faith environment background?

Effective Bible discussion, generated by a hospitable learning environment, is a guided conversation that involves people in observing, interpreting, and applying God’s Word.

The world is full of questions. Whether the topic is politics, race, relationships, the environment, or religion (especially religion), there seem to be more questions than answers.

Et Jésus lui-même commençait d'avoir environ trente ans, étant, comme on l'estimait, fils de Joseph: d'Héli, de Matthat, de Lévi, de Melchi, de Janna, de Joseph, de Mattathie, d'Amos, de Nahum, d'Esli, de Naggé, de Maath, de Mattathie, de Séméi, de Joseph, de Juda, de Johanna, de Rhésa, de Zorobabel, de Salathiel, de Néri, de Melchi, d'Addi, de Cosam, d'Elmodam, d'Er, de José, d'Éliézer, de Jorim, de Matthat, de Lévi, de Siméon, de Juda, de Joseph, de Jonan, d'Éliakim, de Méléa, de Maïnan, de Mattatha, de Nathan, de David, de Jessé, d'Obed, de Booz, de Salmon, de Naasson, d'Aminadab, d'Aram, d'Esrom, de Pharès, de Juda, de Jacob, d'Isaac, d'Abraham, de Thara, de Nachor, de Seruch, de Ragaü, de Phalek, d'Éber, de Sala, de Caïnan, d'Arphaxad, de Sem, de Noé, de Lamech, de Mathusala, d'Énoch, de Jared, de Maléléel, de Caïnan, d'Énos, de Seth, d'Adam, de Dieu.

Ronald J. Sider admonishes that “if Christians could recover the practice of the Sabbath, it would help us turn away from the mad consumerism that is destroying people and the environment. . . . And in those quiet times in the divine presence, the God of the poor would transform our materialistic hearts and make us more generous.

Guardini recognized that the liturgy is the true, living environment for the Bible and that the Bible can be properly understood only in this living context within which it first emerged.

Karl Bonhoeffer would not have called himself a Christian, but he respected his wife’s tutelage of the children in this and lent his tacit approval to it, even if only by participating as an observer. He was not the sort of scientist who ruled out the existence of a realm beyond the physical and seemed to have had a genuine respect for the limits of reason. With the values that his wife taught the children, he was entirely in agreement. Among those values was a serious respect for the feelings and opinions of others, including his wife’s. She was the granddaughter, daughter, and sister of men whose lives were given to theology, and he knew she was serious about her faith and had hired governesses who were serious about it. He was present at family religious activities and at the holiday celebrations his wife orchestrated, which invariably included hymns, Bible readings, and prayers. “In all that pertained to our education,” Sabine remembered, “our parents stood united as a wall. There was no question of one saying one thing and the other something else.” It was an excellent environment for the budding theologian in their midst.

For those who have an interest in understanding the Bible, it should be no surprise that this Israelite literature would reflect not only the specific culture of the Israelites but many aspects of the larger culture of the ancient Near East. Even when a biblical text engages in polemic or offers critiques of the larger culture, to do so its authors must be aware of and interact with current thinking and literature. When we compare the literature of the ancient Near East with the Bible, we are ultimately trying to recover aspects of the ancient cognitive environment that may help us understand the Israelite perspective a little better. By catching a glimpse of how they thought about themselves and their world, we sometimes discover ways that the Israelites would have thought that differ totally from how we think.

Throughout this book I will be presenting what can be understood about the cognitive environment of the ancient Near East and interspersing “Comparative Explorations” to consider specific similarities and differences found in Israel.

These points of continuity and discontinuity should have an important role in our interpretation of the Bible, and knowledge of them should guard against a facile or uninformed imposition of our own cognitive environment on the texts of ancient Israel, which is all too typical in confessional circles. This recognition should also create a more level playing ground as critical scholarship continues to evaluate the literature of the ancient world.

Whole generations of Americans growing up today have absolutely no idea that the heritage of this nation is based on the Bible. Even many older adults, who grew up under a different educational system, have become convinced that America was founded by a group of “separationists” whose primary goal was to create an environment where all public places like schools, courts, and government buildings would be “religion-free zones.” Many Americans today live as if they really believe that the Founding Fathers intended for us to experience both liberty and licentiousness. Many have been led to believe that our Founders would be comfortable with the moral filth and unrighteousness we now live with every day in America. Sometimes it seems that any idea may be expressed in America today except the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

In my view, both opinions are valid. But I side with the minority. It is extremely difficult to be decent when living among indecent people. Few people have the moral courage to reject their environment.

discrimination, and rejection, then the obvious solution is to create an environment in which the injured, the worn-out,

Big-name crimes have a way of becoming big name not only because of the crimes themselves but because of the story they tell about the country at the moment. The infamous bank robbers of the 1930s -- Charles "Pretty Boy" Floyd, Frank "Jelly" Nash -- were stealing money at a time when hardly anyone had any, when Dust Bowl poverty made such thefts seem, if not justified, then at least understandable. The 1920s jazz killers -- women who murdered their husbands and blamed it on the music -- did so in an era where the country was grappling with rapidly loosening morals and a newly liberated female populace, which had just gotten the vote. And now here were arsons, happening in the type of rural environment that had been figuratively burning down for several decades, whether in the midwestern Rust Belt or the southern Bible Belt, or the hills of Appalachia.

The Bible pictures the word of God as having a similar twofold character. God is the king; we, his creatures, are his subjects. His word relates both to things around us and to us directly: God speaks both to determine our environment and to engage our minds and hearts.

Pastor Todd Hunter agrees, writing, “Information alone does not produce change because it does not touch the will, the emotions, the heart, the spirit, or our social environment.”11 Even Paul acknowledges the point implicitly. After all, in Romans 7 he writes that he knew the good he ought to do. Yet despite having this knowledge of what was good, he found himself unable to do it.

Environment is a personal affair. So, if your present Environment hinders you, walk away from it. Hunt out a new Environment. Men and Women who form the habit of getting things done, make their own Environment, hour by hour — day by day.

The entire sweep of the Bible teaches that Christians in non-Christian environments are not to be worried so much about changing their environments as they are to remain faithful in whatever kind of environment they find themselves.

The process begins both with the text of scripture and with the context. As obedient believers read scripture, they will reflect on how it relates to their lives and will seek to obey what they have learned. As they begin to live out the reality of the Bible in their context, they will gain even deeper insight into the texts they have read. At the same time, seeking to live obediently to scripture will continually raise further issues and questions that demand biblical answers. That, in turn, will drive them back to scripture to seek answers. “Our understanding of Scripture is conditioned by our environment and shaped by our obedience. . . . Practice, then, inevitably has epistemological significance” (Dyrness 1991, 117).

It is sad to see this dynamic of the law happen in the church and then see the opposite happen in Twelve Step groups. In these recovery groups, people are taught that the very first thing to do when you fail is to call someone in the group and get to a meeting. They are taught to “run to grace,” as it were, to turn immediately to their higher power and their support system. The sad part is that this theology is more biblical than what is practiced in many Christian environments, where people in failure run from instead of to God and the people they need.

If you want a major hint at what is consistently part of destroying our environment, I’ll give you one: Factory farming.” -Shenita Etwaroo

If you start this day with a healthy Point-Of-View, you will end it a happier, healthier, broader, bigger person. How wonderful, too, the individual effect that a high, square Point-of-View has, not upon yourself alone but on your whole environment. In fact, how it makes Environment!

Scanning the next two centuries, we see that the pattern changes dramatically (see page 229). Solo, amateur innovation (quadrant three) surrenders much of its lead to the rising power of networks and commerce (quadrant four). The most dramatic change lies along the horizontal axis, in a mass migration from individual breakthroughs (on the left) to the creative insights of the group (on the right). Less than 10 percent of innovation during the Renaissance is networked; two centuries later, a majority of breakthrough ideas emerge in collaborative environments. Multiple developments precipitate this shift, starting with Gutenberg’s press, which begins to have a material impact on secular research a century and a half after the first Bible hits the stands, as scientific ideas are stored and shared in the form of books and pamphlets. Postal systems, so central to Enlightenment science, flower across Europe; population densities increase in the urban centers; coffeehouses and formal institutions like the Royal Society create new hubs for intellectual collaboration.

The Victorian goth is a genteel character, morning that environment which nurtured sensitivity and venerated consideration.