Monday, October 27, 2008

Book Club

We had a good book club meeting last night. It keeps sounding like people in the community might be invested in joining us, but as of yet nobody has made it.

Last night we studied The Shack. It was interesting to see the diversity of response to the book. One of the responses was by my neighbor Scotty. Scotty thinks that we have this culturally conditioned view of God, and of the supernatural for that matter. In reference to angels, he is convinced that his guardian angel looks like a triceritops dinosaur. I laughed out loud, but thought it was great. Certainly the angels in Revelation look more like a dinosaur than it looks like our renaissance picture of angels.

One of our more mature ladies was frustrated that the author didnt include Bible verses, until she reread the cover of the book and realized that it was fiction. So cute.

The smart alec side of me did want to say....verses are not in the Bible. Well...they are, but they are not. Verses were a later addition to the Bible, and are there so we can understand the Bible better. But John did not write his gospel with chapters and verses. That is just how we have put things together as people.

That got me thinking...how much of what is "inside" our Bibles are not really a part of the Bible at all. Paragraph divisions. Subheadings. Footnotes. Cross-references. Study notes? How do they condition our thinking? Define our way of reading?

Anyway...there was a little bit more personal sharing of things.

It is interesting. I am getting to use these book clubs to discuss theological issues--most have one or more theological themes. So I am getting to teach a whole group of folks that do not usually come to a traditional class/bible study.

btw...I was just elected as president of friends ofthe library...lol...life in a small town...life as a small town pastor.

4 comments:

Aphra said...

As president maybe you can stock the library with Bibles? :) lol.

larkswing said...

Congratulations! hehe

My husband and I went to the Dead Sea Scrolls exhiit on Sunday. It was interesting seeing some of the original scrolls (well parts of them) but it was interesting to me how many copies of, for example, Exodus and Genesis. I also did not realize that Isaiah may have had three authors. I say this to say, I wonder about what we read in our Bibles today and about all that was not included...about the translations and choices in whish version of the stories to indclude. All very interesting!

reliv4life said...

Well, we will just call you El Presidente then!! You make a good point on the bibles - I am sure all those things influence our interpretations...esp the flow of things. You are right about the revelations angels, the discriptions almost sound scary looking as apposed to how angels are usually portrayed as so...well...angelic! :) I have always thought about joining a book club, but have not ever stepped up and done it...maybe some others that are thinking of it there will decide to actually come and check it out. I am SO glad you have found your niche and are happy!! It makes my heart sing!!

Jason Pfeifer said...

Greetings,

I was surfing today and stumbled upon your article regarding book clubs. I'm one of the founding partners of Booksprouts.com

We are an online book club site that is free to join, and allows members to create a club, invite friends, create meetings, and to choose and read books together online. The service is still fairly new, and we are interest in getting feedback on it, as well as getting the word out to people that may be interested in the service. We welcome you to trying out the service free of charge, and welcome to you blog or write about it - good or bad - we appreciate all feedback that helps us improve the service for our members.

Thank you, and we hope you enjoy Booksprouts.com!

Please contact me directly with any questions or assistance.

Regards,

Jason Pfeifer
Community Manager
Booksprouts.com
jason@booksprouts.com

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