Framed Bible Quotes

Oh, mercy. If it catches you in the wrong frame of mind, the King James Bible can make you want to drink poison in no uncertain terms.

He does have surprising, secret purposes. I open a Bible, and His plans, startling, lie there barefaced. It’s hard to believe it, when I read it, and I have to come back to it many times, feel long across those words, make sure they are real. His love letter forever silences any doubts: “His secret purpose framed from the very beginning [is] to bring us to our full glory” (1 Corinthians 2:7 NEB).

You love it right?" Lassiter asked, holding his Bible high. "I mean, you told me to go on the internet. I did. I even printed out my diploma or whatever the hell it's called." Opening the cover of the King James version, he took out a piece of paper and waved it around. "See? Nice and legal-like" Beth leaned in "Wow". "I know right? Just like Harvard" "Impressive" "I'm totally framing that shit, wha-what.

There is a circularity here I do not doubt. I am defending the Bible by the Bible. Circularity of a kind is unavoidable when one seeks to defend an ultimate standard of truth, for one's defense must itself be accountable to that standard.

It is contended by many that ours is a Christian government, founded upon the Bible, and that all who look upon the book as false or foolish are destroying the foundation of our country. The truth is, our government is not founded upon the rights of gods, but upon the rights of men. Our Constitution was framed, not to declare and uphold the deity of Christ, but the sacredness of humanity. Ours is the first government made by the people and for the people. It is the only nation with which the gods have had nothing to do. And yet there are some judges dishonest and cowardly enough to solemnly decide that this is a Christian country, and that our free institutions are based upon the infamous laws of Jehovah.

What I'd like to read is a scientific review, by a scientific psychologist--if any exists--of 'A Scientific Man and the Bible'. By what route do otherwise sane men come to believe such palpable nonsense? How is it possible for a human brain to be divided into two insulated halves, one functioning normally, naturally and even brilliantly, and the other capable only of such ghastly balderdash which issues from the minds of Baptist evangelists? Such balderdash takes various forms, but it is at its worst when it is religious. Why should this be so? What is there in religion that completely flabbergasts the wits of those who believe in it? I see no logical necessity for that flabbergasting. Religion, after all, is nothing but an hypothesis framed to account for what is evidentially unaccounted for. In other fields such hypotheses are common, and yet they do no apparent damage to those who incline to them. But in the religious field they quickly rush the believer to the intellectual Bad Lands. He not only becomes anaesthetic to objective fact; he becomes a violent enemy of objective fact. It annoys and irritates him. He sweeps it away as something somehow evil...

While the romantics rejected the Enlightenment’s exaltation of reason, many theologians accepted it and sought to frame the Bible as a set of empirical data.

Well, I may not have a framed Latin diploma, but I know crazy talk when I hear it. Alcohol has been an important part of the human diet for thousands of years. The Bible is filled with references to people drinking alcohol, such as this quotation from the Book of Effusions, Chapter Eight, Verse Six, Row 7:

In the Bible, "will" is used in three ways.

The sentence 'thou shalt not suffer a witch to live' has caused more suffering, torture, and death than probably any other sentence ever framed.

And he had a couple of Bibles in need of customized repair, and those were an easy fifty dollars apiece – just brace the page against a piece of plywood in a frame and scorch out the verses the customers found intolerable, with a wood-burning stylus; a plain old razor wouldn’t have the authority that hot iron did. And then of course drench the defaced book in holy water to validate the edited text. Matthew 19:5-6 and Mark 10:7-12 were bits he was often asked to burn out, since they condemned re-marriage after divorce, but he also got a lot of requests to lose Matthew 25:41 through 46, with Jesus’s promise of Hell to stingy people. And he offered a special deal to eradicate all thirty or so mentions of adultery. Some of these customized Bibles ended up after a few years with hardly any weight besides the binding.

The example of Jesus Christ is the only perfect example that ever existed in human nature. It is therefore, a rule by which to try all other examples; and the dispositions, frames and practices of others, must be commended and followed no further than they were followers of Christ.

Oh great, more Bible shit. Just what my fuckin’ pounding hangover needs!” Feeling annoyed and gaping at his disregard of the Lord’s written word, I muttered, “John 4:8. It is worthy of your respect.” “Got it,” Ky said in amusement. “Gonna write down that worthy shit, frame it, and hang it on my wall.

If we can agree that the sky is blue, for example, how is it that such agreement is possible? If the world is a world of chance, how could anybody agree on anything? Agreement presupposes a world made by God, designed to be orderly and designed to be known by rational minds. You can see that this kind of argument is presuppositional. It’s appealing to the true knowledge of God that the unbeliever has but suppresses (Rom. 1)—a knowledge that he has in common with the believer. To argue this way is very different from saying, “Let’s assume that the Bible can be false, and let’s judge its truth on the higher authority of our senses and logic.” Now

Intellectual questions and doubts naturally arise when we read Bible stories because to our rational minds they often seem so utterly unbelievable. Perhaps we need a new frame of reference. When we open the Bible we should enter its pages with an attitude of Bring it on! Only then will we see the power of this incredible book.

Jesus must have had man hands. He was a carpenter, the Bible tells us. I know a few carpenters, and they have great hands, all muscled and worn, with nicks and callused pads from working wood together with hardware and sheer willpower. In my mind, Jesus isn't a slight man with fair hair and eyes who looks as if a strong breeze could knock him down, as he is sometimes depicted in art and film. I see him as sturdy, with a thick frame, powerful legs, and muscular arms. He has a shock of curly black hair and an untrimmed beard, his face tanned and lined from working in the sun. And his hands—hands that pounded nails, sawed lumber, drew in the dirt, and held the children he beckoned to him. Hands that washed his disciples' feet, broke bread for them, and poured their wine. Hands that hauled a heavy cross through the streets of Jerusalem and were later nailed to it. Those were some man hands.

PSA103.13 Like as a father pitieth his children, so the LORD pitieth them that fear him. PSA103.14 For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust. PSA103.15 As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. PSA103.16 For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more. PSA103.17 But the mercy of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him, and his righteousness unto children's children;

PSALM 139 O LORD, you have  p searched me and known me! 2    You  q know when I sit down and when I rise up;         you  r discern my thoughts from afar. 3    You search out my path and my lying down         and are acquainted with all my ways. 4    Even before a word is on my tongue,         behold, O LORD,  s you know it altogether. 5    You  t hem me in, behind and before,         and  u lay your hand upon me. 6     v Such knowledge is  w too wonderful for me;         it is high; I cannot attain it.     7  x Where shall I go from your Spirit?         Or where  y shall I flee from your presence? 8     z If I ascend to heaven, you are there!          a If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! 9    If I take the wings of the morning         and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, 10    even there your hand shall  b lead me,         and your right hand shall hold me. 11    If I say,  c “Surely the darkness shall cover me,         and the light about me be night,” 12     d even the darkness is not dark to you;         the night is bright as the day,         for darkness is as light with you.     13 For you  e formed my inward parts;         you  f knitted me together in my mother’s womb. 14    I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. [1]      g Wonderful are your works;         my soul knows it very well. 15     h My frame was not hidden from you,     when I was being made in secret,         intricately woven in  i the depths of the earth. 16    Your eyes saw my unformed substance;     in your  j book were written, every one of them,         the days that were formed for me,         when as yet there was none of them.

The average person thinks that the purpose of religion is to give us a list of rules and techniques or to frame a way of life that helps us to be more loving, forgiving, patient, caring, and generous. Of course, there is plenty of this in the Bible. Like Moses, Jesus summarized the whole law in just those terms: loving God and neighbor. However, as crucial as the law remains as the revelation of God’s moral will, it is different from the revelation of God’s saving will. We are called to love God and neighbor, but that is not the gospel. Christ need not have died on a cross for us to know that we should be better people. It is not that moral exhortations are wrong, but they do not have any power to bring about the kind of world that they command. These exhortations and directions may be good. If they come from the Word of God, they are in fact perfect. But they are not the gospel.

I'm not the only person who carries a lot of assumptions when I read the Bible, and it can be tough to entertain the idea that the Word of God has different perspectives in it. Biblical apologists spend all their time weaving these different viewpoints into a single frame, in an effort that often looks like squids playing Twister: fascinating, appalling, and hard to follow. We've seen what this approach to history can sow: a destructive oversimplification of the Church's past. Americans treat their national narrative in much this way, too. We simplistically teach a single story in our history classrooms, of brave rebels who left cultures of tyranny and heroically crossed the Atlantic to found a nation built on freedom and justice. When we speak of our national sins, such as the genocide committed on Nation Americans or the brutal, longterm economic extraction of wealth from black bodies via slavery and segregation, we seem to dismiss these troubling matters as things that happened in the remote past but that have been resolved today.

If some, as you suppose, in their dullest frames can read the Bible, go to the Throne of Grace, and mourn (as they ought) over what is amiss, I must say for myself, I can, and I cannot. Without doubt I can take the Bible in my hand, and force myself to read it; I can kneel down, and I can see I ought to mourn: but to understand and attend to what I read, to engage my heart in prayer, or to be duly humbled under the sense of so dark and dissipated a state of mind; these things, at some seasons, I can no more do than I can raise the dead; and yet I cannot plead positive inability: I am satisfied that what prevents me is my sin, but it is the sin of my nature, the sin that dwelleth in me. And I expect it will be thus with me at times, in a greater or less degree, till this body of sin shall be wholly destroyed.

Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God,

In areas where the Bible has left us free, when we carry out Christian ministry, we should be constantly engaged in cultural adaptation — refraining from certain attitudes or behaviors to remove unnecessary stumbling blocks from the paths of people with culturally framed perceptions.

Modern Christianity’s view of the unseen world isn’t framed by the ancient worldview of the biblical writers.

Today pluralism operates as a court religion, while having less and less intellectual credibility. Betraying the plastic terminology in which its directives are framed are the additions to the “Human Rights Code” passed in the Canadian province of Ontario in 1994. The Code cites “human dignity” to justify the criminalization of “conduct or communication [that] promotes the superiority or inferiority of a person or class because of race, class, or sexual orientation.” The law has already been applied to prosecute scholars making hereditarian arguments about social behavior, and its proponents defend this muzzling as necessary for “human dignity.” But never are we told whence that dignity is derived. It is certainly not the one to which the Bible, a text that unequivocally condemns certain “sexual orientations,” refers. Nor are we speaking here about the dignity of nonengineered academic discourse, an act that the supporters of the Ontario Human Rights Code consider to be criminal if judged insensitive. Yet the pluralist advocates of human rights codes that now operate in Canada, Australia, England, and on the European continent assume there is a human dignity. Indeed this dignity is so widely and passionately accepted, or so it is asserted, that we must criminalize unkind communication. In the name of that supposedly axiomatic dignity, we are called upon to suppress scholarship and even to imprison its authors.

f you're looking for sparkle in your life, I've got some great ideas. • Nothing lifts my spirits more than encouraging scriptures. Try framing a card with your favorite Bible verse and hang it next to where you do your work. Talk about sparkle! And make sure your children have their own Bibles to introduce "sparkle" in their lives. • Ask a friend to be your prayer partner for a week. Call or e-mail each other with prayer requests and praises. Or walk together and get rid of some pounds while praying. Write prayers that go along with a verse of Scripture. • Volunteer your home for a Bible study. Be on the lookout for ways to obey God by serving others. Such simple things, but what joy they can bring.

Hebrews 11:3 - Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.

A champion fighter once lost a match to an opponent he expected to defeat. After losing, he held his champion frame by believing and understanding that it was he who lost the fight, not the opponent who won it. This is important to understand, as this small mental maneuver maintained his mastery over what happened. This is called taking responsibility. The fighter trained for the next fight, accepting responsibility for his loss by continuing to train and overcoming the weaknesses that had led to him losing the previous fight. When the rematch came around, he won.

To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; A time to kill, and a time to heal.” —Partial excerpts from Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, King James Bible “Time flies like an arrow . . . but fruit flies like a banana.” —Unknown  (often attributed to Groucho Marx)

These particular beliefs are being challenged—God as supernatural being up there, out there; humans as the center and point of creation; Christianity as the true religion; Christianity as singularly about individual salvation; the Bible as consistent, not contradictory; you can add to the list. Christians in our day are being pressed to reflect on cherished beliefs. Their foundations are shaking. Some seize the opportunity. Others dig in and resent the challenge of this inner, theological work. Jesus references the “winnowing fan that separates the grain from the chaff” (Matt 3:12). Isn’t this a part of what you do? You help parishioners separate the wheat from the chaff, letting go what’s not alive and retaining what’s lifegiving. Each letting go is a loss. Each one is an experience of dying. It’s grief work. It’s hospice chaplaincy. With patience and tender care you invite members to grieve the loss of what was but no longer contains vitality for them.

However, what Girard uncovers in the literature of the Jewish and Christian religions offers another narrative perspective. While other religious myths tend to conceal the scapegoat mechanism by framing reality from the perspective of the persecutors, the biblical stories speak from the perspective of the victim.26 In the Hebrew Scriptures, Israel tells the story of their people and their God with a focus on their own failures.27 They are the slave people whom God rescues, the unfaithful covenant breakers whom God forgives, and their laws and stories reveal God’s preference for the victimized and downtrodden. Instead of keeping victims invisible, the Bible tells their stories: Abel whose blood cries out from the ground, Joseph who is a victim of his brothers’ mimetic violence, and Hagar who is sent into the wilderness as Sarah’s scapegoat.

Karly- I stopped wearing my glasses after that day, when Jess Smith walked up and ripped them off my face and broke them in half, and poked me in the boob hard. I miss them, what wrong with glasses, they make you look sophisticated. Why was I so quiet and laid back, and a pushover? Marcel- She runs like everything for the bathroom, like always- not making it very far. She feels like some poor little girl, with a broken nose, and I remember when that happened. That is when I felt like she was in love with me she took the balls to the face for me. ‘I thought you liked balls in your face one boy said.’ You tripped and fell to the ground, hard, and I picked you up and carried you to safety, and we fell in love, even more, kissing under the bleachers. ‘You’re a weirdo,’ and the kiss was long and – fearing H-O-T! Like, kick your tongue out smoking hot! It’s still not as bad as the time my face was smashed to a brick wall, by some back boy- and I have to have something done about it, like getting my nose redone, yet I blamed it on my dad. Jenny- Sing the same girlie crap every year, you’ll blow chunks all over the place, which never happened, that’s why she stopped singing way back when. You can see here doing it on YouTube! Like- It happened! Jenny says every time someone brings it up. Until some unicycles guy flies into the frame where nothing freaking speedo- showing his tor·pe·do with the American flag up his ass! I don’t know if that is patriotic or what the hell that is… I am not sure what to look at. What can you say other than- ‘Ew-ah- gross…? Who does that…?’ Marcel- It kind of reunions the magic does it…? I spoke. Karly- Yep! I am glad I cannot see all that anyway! I am sure yours is better anyway. (She goes underneath his underwear down for it, getting a handful, and does what she feels is right in front of them all. It was more romantic than you would think pervs.) I did it for me and him, I did not give a crap; if they liked it or not… they can all look the other way. I have- a leaning popping lag kisses, and he rubbed his nose on mine saying it- I LOVE YOU! You’ll be fine… I’ll make sure of that. Karly- Back in time: We rain from the schoolyard to my house… stole my dad’s Nash and got married. My stepmother cased us down, with a bible in her hand saying we were sinners. Both- We’re sinner okay then- we all are- yet love is love even if age is in the way. Marcel- the very next day, it was all over. Say what you want to say… I know why- how- and who.

To use them, and turn his press into an assembly line, his workers had to master an array of skills—reading the Latin of the source Bible; rapidly and accurately arranging the type, upside down and backward, in frames to duplicate the text for printing; spacing type line by line and employing the scribe’s art of using hyphenation and abbreviations to ensure that it lined up perfectly in two columns of equal width. Not to mention learning to ink the type, work the presses, and pull clear, unblemished pages, tens of thousands of times.

A type establishes a frame for interpreting the greater reality when it appears, and meantime, simply by existing, it inculcates the principle of which the greater reality will in fact be the supreme instance. When the greater reality arrives, it becomes the decisive factor in its own field; one way or another it transcends and supersedes the type. In space-time terms, the type is thenceforth a thing of the past, no longer determinative of what must be done or of what will happen. The biblical account of it, however, is of permanent value as providing concepts and categories for understanding the antitype. Typology thus becomes a kind of phrase book for use in theology.

Chesterton, conveying an evergreen truth in a language that now may strike us as awkward and archaic, asserts: “Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial. Melancholy should be an innocent interlude, a tender and fugitive frame of mind; praise should be the permanent pulsation of the soul. Pessimism is at best an emotional half-holiday; joy is the uproarious labor by which all things live.

Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job all agree: the Bible doesn’t capture a freeze-frame of God and bind him to it. If we get on board with this idea, some other things the Bible says about God will make more sense.

The Bible didn’t offer specific advice on the topic (abortion). Many evangelicals disapproved of “abortion-on-demand,” but not in the case of rape or incest, where fetal abnormalities were present, or when a woman’s life was at risk. In 1968, Christianity Today considered the question of therapeutic abortion—was it a blessing, or murder? They gave no definitive answer. As late as 1971, the Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution urging states to expand access to abortion. But with the liberalization of abortion laws, and as abortion proponents began to frame the issue in terms of women controlling their reproduction, evangelicals started to reconsider their position. In 1973, Roe v. Wade—and the rising popularity of abortion in its wake—helped force the issue, but even then, evangelical mobilization was not immediate. Only in time, as abortion became more closely linked to feminism and the sexual revolution, did evangelicals begin to frame it not as a difficult moral choice, but rather as an assault on women’s God-given role, on the family, and on Christian America itself.

Psalm 19 1-6 Interpretation 1 The spacious firmament on high, With all the blue ethereal sky, And spangled heavens, a shining frame, Their great Original proclaim. 2 Th'unwearied sun, from day to day, Does his Creator's power display; And publishes to every land The work of an almighty hand. 3 Soon as the evening shades prevail, The moon takes up the wondrous tale, And nightly to the listening earth Repeats the story of her birth: 4 Whilst all the stars that round her burn, And all the planets in their turn, Confirm the tidings as they roll, And spread the truth from pole to pole. 5 What though in solemn silence all Move round this dark terrestrial ball; What though no real voice or sound Amidst their radiant orbs be found; 6 In reason's ear they all rejoice, And utter forth a glorious voice, For ever singing as they shine, "The hand that made us is divine.

Paslm 19:1-6 - Interpretation 1 The spacious firmament on high, With all the blue ethereal sky, And spangled heavens, a shining frame, Their great Original proclaim. 2 Th'unwearied sun, from day to day, Does his Creator's power display; And publishes to every land The work of an almighty hand. 3 Soon as the evening shades prevail, The moon takes up the wondrous tale, And nightly to the listening earth Repeats the story of her birth: 4 Whilst all the stars that round her burn, And all the planets in their turn, Confirm the tidings as they roll, And spread the truth from pole to pole. 5 What though in solemn silence all Move round this dark terrestrial ball; What though no real voice or sound Amidst their radiant orbs be found; 6 In reason's ear they all rejoice, And utter forth a glorious voice, For ever singing as they shine, "The hand that made us is divine.

Too often we frame things as though we are waiting for God, but what if God is waiting for us?

Over the course of a long writing career, John Frame has developed the approach that he calls “triperspectivalism,” based on a Trinitarian model. Whereas God’s knowledge is omniperspectival in a way that ours can never be,55 we can grow in wisdom by increasing the number of perspectives we take into account. In terms of human knowledge, Frame’s three perspectives are normative, situational, and existential. The normative perspective deals in obligations and highlights God as lawgiver; the situational perspective deals in states of affairs and situations and highlights God as in control over his world; the existential perspective deals in our subjective experience and self-knowledge and highlights God’s “personal presence in everything.

People are confounded when a football player puts Bible verses in his eye black or kneels to pray in the end zone. To non-believers, it seems like a kind of spiritual flamboyance or pushy proselytizing when athletes publicly acknowledge God as the central pillar of their game plan. What these spectators rarely consider is why this spiritual orientation is so effective, on and off the field—why it works, and feeds on itself. Instead of “I’m the king of the world if I win, and a failure if I lose,” and the crushing pressure that entails, the spiritually rewired athlete’s internal logic is this: I’m a child of God; that’s my primary identity. God loves me regardless of what happens in this competition. God has given me these talents, these amazing gifts, and it’s my responsibility to use them as best I can, to perform and succeed to the utmost of my ability. But it’s not for personal glory, or to feed my towering ego. Rather, every burst of speed and power is a testament to a higher power whose love transcends any kind of earthly success. The competitive results are not part of that higher reality. But the effort is. The leap toward perfection of effort, a kinetic hymn, is a connection to God. It’s sacred, the way prayer is sacred. And at the same time it is exquisitely concrete. It has mass, speed, position, trajectory, in the now of a throw or a catch or a weight that needs to be lifted. It’s where physics meets the soul. This transcendent frame of reference doesn’t take away competitive pressure. But it takes away the emotional pressure that degrades performance and locks an athlete up. Faith eliminates a lot of psychic gear grinding and inefficiency. For a well-prepared, well-trained athlete, it’s a winning formula. And it was a winning formula for Rich Froning in July 2011.

Most historians, even many religious leaders, have discounted the story of Exodus as a myth, a moral lesson rather than a historical reality. As support for this stance, skeptical archaeologists point to the lack of Egyptian sources in documenting any series of plagues or a mass exodus of slaves, especially within the time frame indicated in the Bible.

be specific, then: a type in Scripture (tupos in Greek, meaning originally a die-stamp or matching impression) is an event, institution, place, object, office, or functioning person that patterns a greater reality that in some sense is of the same kind and is due to appear on history’s stage at some subsequent point. This greater reality is called the antitype. The term “type” is taken from Romans 5:14, where Adam is called a tupos(“pattern”) of Christ, the one who was to come. “Antitype” comes from 1 Peter 3:21, where baptism, understood not simply as an applying of water to the body but also, and essentially, as an outgoing of faith to God, is called the antitypethat the preserving of Noah through the flood waters by his entering the ark had prefigured. A type establishes a frame for interpreting the greater reality when it appears, and meantime, simply by existing, it inculcates the principle of which the greater reality will in fact be the supreme instance. When the greater reality arrives, it becomes the decisive factor in its own field; one way or another it transcends and supersedes the type. In space-time terms, the type is thenceforth a thing of the past, no longer determinative of what must be done or of what will happen. The biblical account of it, however, is of permanent value as providing concepts and categories for understanding the antitype. Typology thus becomes a kind of phrase book for use in theology.

we are looking at life from our perspective, our limited, finite and earthbound frame of reference. Our egos step in the way of God and we think we can see things better from our point of view. We block God out and stumble our way ahead. We are looking at our life from our will be done, not God’s will be done.

The sixteenth-century parallel: (1) medieval scholasticism as a synthesis between the Bible, Plato, and Aristotle; (2) the heresy of works-salvation, perhaps with Tetzel as an extreme case; (3) Luther the Reformer, who like Athanasius pushes hard for the fundamental principle of justification by faith alone; and (4) Calvin the consolidator, who rethinks the whole of theology in the light of the knowledge gained in the Reformation.

Layout is not simply a matter of punctuation and versification; it also helps frame the understanding of a complicated idea like belief in God, or a law like the prohibition against murder.

Healthy Christians create. It is the nature of our God to create. He’s introduced in Genesis 1 as the Creator of everything. One of the last images given to us in the book of Revelation is God creating the new heaven and the new earth. The Bible is literally framed around the act of God creating.

Alec grinned. "You will get used to it." I snorted. "I don't think a few days are enough for me to get used to how repulsive you can be." "A few days? Kitten, there is no time frame on our relationship." I raised my eyebrows. "Wait a second, you're sayin' if we're still civil after this trip that you still want to date me?" Alec shrugged. "Why not? I like you, and I'm finding being in a relationship fun. I don't know what Dominic and Ryder complain about all the time." I felt a huge smile take over face. "They have both got some mileage in with their girls, give us a few days and you will probably want to ring my neck." Alec snorted. "I'm remembering Dominic's Man Bible here so I'm just going to nod my head and agree with you." I reached over and patted his head. "Good boy.

The indwelling of the Spirit is God's favorable presence abiding with those who enjoy His merciful establishment of a covenant relationship. John Frame explains, “God is not merely present in the world; he is covenantally present. He is with his creatures to bless and to judge them in accordance with the terms of his covenant.

For he knows our frame; [1] he remembers that we are dust.

Pharisees angrily labeled Jesus a “blasphemer” for claiming He was no garden-variety prophet, but the very Son of God, they were not telling the truth, but their experience of His words was “accurate” within their frame of reference. In the same way, it’s accurate for us to label how God sometimes behaves as “brutal,” but it’s not true. Five years or so ago I was slowly realizing that I’d compartmentalized God for most of my life—I did not (could not?) understand the stories about Him, or His dealings with me, in an integrated way. No one had been more tender or kind to me in my life—there’s a greatness to God’s love for me that is palpable and … fundamental. There are tears I need to cry that release only when I’m alone in His presence. There are raw places in my heart that only He knows how to access and nurture. There are secrets about my soul that only He can speak to. But He has a fearsome and nearly inexplicable side—revealed in Joshua 10 and 11 and everywhere else in the Bible—that I didn’t know what to do with. It’s as if I was offered a five-course meal of God and told the waiter to take the beet-and-brussels-sprout salad back to the kitchen; I’d rejected the parts of God that made me feel sick to my stomach. And here’s something that served only to deepen my dissonance: I’d experienced a deeper love than I’ve ever known from Him during times of great brutality in my life.

The whole Epistle is so methodical, that even its very beginning is   framed according to the rules of art.

He made you. He formed you in your mother’s womb and sewed all your sinews. He connected all your bones and brought you forth in life. He gave you your life to love you, not to condemn you. We read in the Bible that God knows all things. He knows your heart, your frame (remember He made it), everything you’ll ever need, and everything you’ll ever aspire to be. He hasn’t only known you now that you’re alive, He’s known you since before time. Before He ever created time, He thought of you. You are not an accident! You are a purposeful well-thought, out creation of God. He’s been spending thousands of years thinking of you. How you will look, and act. How you will respond to life, and how life will respond to you. He’s been thinking of these things before the world ever spun on its axis. Before He created anything He’s been cherishing you in His heart and in His thoughts.

That is a way of summarizing the main content of the Bible: "God is Lord" is the message of the Old Testament; "Jesus is Lord" is the message of the New Testament.

The Bible’s theological attack on racism is powerful, and in response many idealistic Christians have set out to form communities that are “multicultural,” but this is far, far easier said than done. There is no such thing as a neutral, culture-free way to do anything. If you form a governing board made up of people from different races, how will your board go about making decisions? Anglo, African-American, Hispanic, and Asian cultures all have distinct approaches to things like fact-finding, authority, persuasion, time frames, ratification of agreements, and so on. So which culture’s way of decision-making will prevail? And why should it be that culture’s method? And if you think you can craft a culture-free way to make decisions as a group, you are very naïve.

Our bodies have been created not only by God but also for God..We are driven today by whatever can bring our bodies the most pleasure. What can we eat, touch, watch, do listen to, or engage in to satisfy the cravings of our bodies?..in his love, gives us boundaries for our bodies: he loves us and knows what is best for us..[there are] clear and critical distinctions between different types of laws in Leviticus. Some of the laws are civil in nature, and they specifically pertain to the government of ancient Israel..Other laws are ceremonial..However, various moral laws..are explicitly reiterated in the New Testament..Jesus himself teaches that the only God-honoring alternative to marriage between a man and a woman is singleness..the Bible also prohibits all sexual looking and thinking outside of marriage between a husband and a wife..it is sinful even to look at someone who is not your husband or wife and entertain sexual thoughts about that person..it is also wrong to provoke sexual desires in others outside of marriage..God prohibits any kind of crude speech, humor, or entertainment that remotely revolves around sexual immorality..often watch movies and shows, read books and articles, and visit Internet sites that highlight, display, promote, or make light of sexual immorality..God prohibits sexual worship-- the idolization of sex and infatuation with sexual activity as a fundamental means to personal fulfillment..Don't rationalize it, and don't reason with it-- run from it. Flee it as fast as you can..We all have a sinful tendency to turn aside from God's ways to our wants. This tendency has an inevitable effect on our sexuality..every one of us is born with a bent toward sexual sin. But just because we have that bent doesn't mean we must act upon it. We live in a culture that assumes a natural explanation implies a moral obligation. If you were born with a desire, then it's essential to your nature to carry it out. This is one reason why our contemporary discussion of sexuality is wrongly framed as an issue of civil rights..Ethnic identity is a morally neutral attribute..Sexual activity is a morally chosen behavior..our sexual behavior is a moral decision, and just because we are inclined to certain behaviors does not make such behaviors right. His disposition toward a behavior does not mean justification for that behavior. "That's the way he is" doesn't mean "that's how he should act." Adultery isn't inevitable; it's immoral. This applies to all sexual behavior that deviates from God's design..We do not always choose our temptations. But we do choose our reactions to those temptations..the assumption that God's Word is subject to human judgement..Instead of obeying what God has said, we question whether God has said it..as soon as we advocate homosexual activity, we undercut biblical authority..we are undermining the integrity of the entire gospel..We take this created gift called sex and use it to question the Creator God, who gave us the gift in the first place..[Jesus] was the most fully human, fully complete person who ever lived, and he was never married. He never indulged in any sort of sexual immorality..This was not a resurrection merely of Jesus' spirit or soul but of his body..Repentance like this doesn't mean total perfection, but it does mean a new direction..in a culture that virtually equates identity with sexuality..Naturally this becomes our perception of ourselves, and we subsequently view everything in our lives through this grid..When you turn to Christ, your entire identity is changed. You are in Christ, and Christ is in you. Your identity is no longer as a heterosexual or a homosexual, an addict or an adulterer.

In several ways the most profound development of the structure of intensification occurs in what is arguably the greatest achievement of all biblical poetry, the Book of Job. When we move from the prose frame story in Chapters 1 and 2 to the beginning of the poetic argument in Chapter 3, we are plunged precipitously into a world of what must be called abysmal intensities. It is only through the most brilliant use of a system of poetic intensifications that the poet is able to take the full emotional measure and to intimate the full moral implications of Job’s outrageous fate. The extraordinary poem that constitutes Chapter 3 is not merely a dramatically forceful way of beginning Job’s complaint. More significantly, it establishes the terms, literally and figuratively, for the poetry Job will speak throughout; and, as I shall try to show in my next chapter, when God finally answers Job out of the whirlwind, the force of His response will be closely bound with a shift introduced by His speech in the terms of the poetic argument and the defining lines of poetic structure. What I am suggesting is that the exploration of the problem of theodicy in the Book of Job and the “answer” it proposes cannot be separated from the poetic vehicle of the book, and that one misses the real intent by reading the text, as has too often been done, as a paraphrasable philosophic argument merely embellished or made more arresting by poetic devices.

To understand, however, how the received form of the Bible frames and presents them, we do well to refer to the way I introduced them in chapter 1: the laws are, first and foremost, treaty stipulations. They are the conditions and mandates set down by the sovereign king YHWH for His treaty with the vassal Israel.12 As such, they are prescriptive in nature, and are meant to be binding on the members of the covenantal community. It is on the basis of the fulfillment of these stipulations that Israel the vassal will be judged by the heavenly sovereign king, just as earthly sovereigns judged their vassals on the basis of their compliance with the treaty stipulations. It may well be, additionally, that Scripture intends that judges make quasi-statutory, analogical, or referential uses of some of these laws.13 At the same time, it is clear that judges, perforce, must have also engaged a comprehensive oral law, or set of unwritten norms and social customs. The

Alyosha heard Shukhov’s whispered prayer, and, turning to him: “There you are, Ivan Denisovich, your soul is begging to pray. Why don’t you give it it’s freedom?” Shukhov stole a look at him. Alyosha’s eyes glowed like two candles. “Well, Alyosha,” he said with a sigh, “it’s this way. Prayers are like those appeals of ours. Either they don’t get through or they’re returned with ‘rejected’ scrawled across ’em.” Outside the staff quarters were four sealed boxes–they were cleared by a security officer once a month. Many were the appeals that were dropped into them. The writers waited, counting the weeks: there’ll be a reply in two months, in one month. . . . But the reply doesn’t come. Or if it does it’s only “rejected.” “But, Ivan Denisovich, it’s because you pray too rarely, and badly at that. Without really trying. That’s why your prayers stay unanswered. One must never stop praying. If you have real faith you tell a mountain to move and it will move. . . .” Shukhov grinned and rolled another cigarette. He took a light from the Estonian. “Don’t talk nonsense, Alyosha. I’ve never seen a mountain move. Well, to tell the truth, I’ve never seen a mountain at all. But you, now, you prayed in the Caucasus with all that Baptist society of yours–did you make a single mountain move?” They were an unlucky group too. What harm did they do anyone by praying to God? Every damn one of them had been given twenty-five years. Nowadays they cut all cloth to the same measure–twenty-five years. “Oh, we didn’t pray for that, Ivan Denisovich,” Alyosha said earnestly. Bible in hand, he drew nearer to Shukhov till they lay face to face. “Of all earthly and mortal things Our Lord commanded us to pray only for our daily bread. ‘Give us this day our daily bread.'” “Our ration, you mean?” asked Shukhov. But Alyosha didn’t give up. Arguing more with his eyes than his tongue, he plucked at Shukhov’s sleeve, stroked his arm, and said: “Ivan Denisovich, you shouldn’t pray to get parcels or for extra stew, not for that. Things that man puts a high price on are vile in the eyes of Our Lord. We must pray about things of the spirit–that the Lord Jesus should remove the scum of anger from out hearts. . . .” Page 156: “Alyosha,” he said, withdrawing his arm and blowing smoke into his face. “I’m not against God, understand that. I do believe in God. But I don’t believe in paradise or in hell. Why do you take us for fools and stuff us with your paradise and hell stories? That’s what I don’t like.” He lay back, dropping his cigarette ash with care between the bunk frame and the window, so as to singe nothing of the captain’s below. He sank into his own thoughts. He didn’t hear Alyosha’s mumbling. “Well,” he said conclusively, “however much you pray it doesn’t shorten your stretch. You’ll sit it out from beginning to end anyhow.” “Oh, you mustn’t pray for that either,” said Alyosha, horrified. “Why do you want freedom? In freedom your last grain of faith will be choked with weeds. You should rejoice that you’re in prison. Here you have time to think about your soul. As the Apostle Paul wrote: ‘Why all these tears? Why are you trying to weaken my resolution? For my part I am ready not merely to be bound but even to die for the name of the Lord Jesus.

In other words, the new understanding imparted by the Bible comes from a source lying beyond our ability to frame questions.

The following brief treatment of a few of the categories of wisdom literature has a single purpose for the scope of this study. Both the instructions of Egypt and the proverbs of Mesopotamia stand as further examples of the idea that wisdom compilations were used widely in the ancient world as a means of offering principles that could serve as guides for living. These principles are in effect mandated in the pursuit of wisdom if order is to be maintained in society. Unlike the treatises considered above (judicial, medical, and divination), these wisdom literatures do not characteristically introduce situations that undermine order, though such situations are often addressed. Instead, they tend to anticipate situations that will be faced and offer advice so that order will not be undermined, and in so doing they frame the values of society.

But biblical theology does not derive from the church fathers. It derives from the biblical text, framed in its own context. Scholars agree that the Second Temple Jewish literature that influenced Peter and Jude shows intimate familiarity with the original Mesopotamian context of Genesis 6:1–4.17 For the person who considers the Old and New Testament to be equally inspired, interpreting Genesis 6:1–4 “in context” means analyzing it in light of its Mesopotamian background as well as 2 Peter and Jude, whose content utilizes supernatural interpretations from Jewish

But biblical theology does not derive from the church fathers. It derives from the biblical text, framed in its own context. Scholars agree that the Second Temple Jewish literature that influenced Peter and Jude