Practically Known Theology, an Intro to the Psalms.

[abcaines]

Introduction to the Psalms: The Anatomy of the Soul

(Note: this is my somewhat rewritten manuscript for the Sunday school class – or “equipping hour”, as we call it at my church – I taught. It’s the first class in a ten-week series on the Psalms.) b…

practicallyknowntheology.com

A few days ago, Huk posted a link to this guy's blog. I read his testimony, all 18 chapters of it... I thought my testimony on my blog was long...

His testimony really touched me because he grew up in Pensacola and it turns out I may have crossed paths with him and/or his dad. I definitely recommend reading his testimony.

He's has a different perspective on a good many things and this article about the Psalms caught my eye, having recently read through the Psalms myself. I've posted the link to the article but it may be helpful to read his testimony and you'll get a clearer picture of where he's coming from.

For me, personally, this is a perspective I've never considered before... having cut my teeth on strict fundamentalist interpretation of the Scriptures... the points he brings up apply to more than the Psalms... give it a read and see what you think.

 

[ALAYMAN]

Good read, powerfully insightful. Maybe my favorite sentence...


"Look, it’s not facts over feelings, and it’s not feelings over facts. They’re not at war with each other."

 

[ALAYMAN]

I really liked his conclusion as well...

I realize some are probably a little skeptical about some or even much of this. It’s hard to divorce ourselves from the mind-centered cognitive approach that has been drilled into us. But I’ll leave you with this: At the beginning, when I was talking about how our emotions give us understanding, when I was offering propositional statements about how emotions work, how did you respond? Now compare that response to your response when I related the story about my mom dying. For many, although I’m sure there are exceptions, the story opened you heart in ways that gave you better understanding than my attempts to convince you via your mind.

I admit, before I'd gotten very far into his analysis of Psalms I was double-barrell ready in my mind to start pounding him with the mantra that the emotions should follow the intellect and not the other way around. But after I read that existential account of God sovereignly using the death of his sweet Christian Jesus-loving mother in his own conversion my defenses melted away. Of course that led to an openness to hear what he was saying, albeit ultimately through the cognitive process (or at least not devoid of it), but via very personal evocative and emotive relationality of my own hurts. My father was killed in a tractor roll-over incident right before my very eyes when I was 19 years old. It was that very incident that was the turning point that brought into crystal clear focus my own confrontation with a long-standing fear of final judgment and a date with death that I knew I was waiting for me at some point (ultimately leading me to seek out a church to figure this thing of "God" out....then my conversion), near or far, in my life. The lament that he spoke of on our "story" was visceral and relatable to all of our existence, and in a very real sense one part of our being that drives us to God, as he very well put it in descriptive theological and analogical terms.

 

[abcaines]

I really liked his conclusion as well...



I admit, before I'd gotten very far into his analysis of Psalms I was double-barrell ready in my mind to start pounding him with the mantra that the emotions should follow the intellect and not the other way around. But after I read that existential account of God sovereignly using the death of his sweet Christian Jesus-loving mother in his own conversion my defenses melted away. Of course that led to an openness to hear what he was saying, albeit ultimately through the cognitive process (or at least not devoid of it), but via very personal evocative and emotive relationality of my own hurts. My father was killed in a tractor roll-over incident right before my very eyes when I was 19 years old. It was that very incident that was the turning point that brought into crystal clear focus my own confrontation with a long-standing fear of final judgment and a date with death that I knew I was waiting for me at some point (ultimately leading me to seek out a church to figure this thing of "God" out....then my conversion), near or far, in my life. The lament that he spoke of on our "story" was visceral and relatable to all of our existence, and in a very real sense one part of our being that drives us to God, as he very well put it in descriptive theological and analogical terms.

Better watch out... this post may get quoted somewhere else.

You very eloquently summarized my whole approach to this article. To be honest, I read this on Saturday and the change of thought was being applied to what I was taking in on Sunday at church.

 

[ALAYMAN]

Better watch out... this post may get quoted somewhere else.

You very eloquently summarized my whole approach to this article. To be honest, I read this on Saturday and the change of thought was being applied to what I was taking in on Sunday at church.

He has an interesting perspective.... former-fundy-Calvinist-gadfly-to-the-evangelical-world. Sorta reminds me of the rallying cry of Trump as not being a politician (I'm sure he just threw up a little in the back of his mouth at the parallel drawn between himself and orange man ) and desirous to drain the swamp. I've only read a little bit of his other writings so far, and though he pleasantly surprised me with the Psalms post, disarming my fundamentalist tendencies a bit, those same filtered glasses which I cannot detach or completely distance myself from leaves me a bit leery of some of his other self-avowed "wokeness" and anti-complementarianist philosophical tendencies.

 

[abcaines]

Agreed. There are some subjects I have not mustered the courage to read. I'm impressed with what I'm impressed with but I'm definitely taking him with a grain of salt.