After months of reading, I finally started writing yesterday – 1,000 semi-coherent words spilled forth from my brain onto the computer screen. What a relief and amazingly energizing. I've decided to write in layers, first my own thoughts as they come out, then going back and adding in necessary quotes to clarify, expand, etc., and then multiple re-writes. As usual, I'm never sure which order my thoughts should go in. I am not a linear thinker, everything is a point on a web, all things connecting and communicating back and forth with each other idea. I'm really working hard to suspend judgement on the logical flow of my arguments and trust that in the end they will either make sense or be rearranged.
The big insight from yesterday's work was determining the completely obvious: the contextual motivation informs the hermeneutical task! Or, pastors and professors will engage in biblical interpretation differently because the intended outcome of their work is so very different.
This might be stating the obvious, but...it seems so much of theology and biblical interpretation is considered only from the academic perspective and rarely from the ecclesial perspective to which both are more native and essential.
Also, as icing on the 1,000 word masterpiece, after two years, I installed blinds in our house. As my son said, 'We can walk around in our underwear and no one will see us." Ah, life is good! Now, only 79,000 words to go.
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