Why Tag the Bible?

When emailing back in forth I got this question -

I still can not figure out why I'd spend time tagging the bible?

Good question, there are plenty of online and offline commentaries, software products, studies, etc. For the non-professor, scholar, average joe what value is there in tagging the bible?

Much in every way!

While those discussions of exegesis and hermeneutics are valuable, it's you who has to live out your spirituality.

Instead of describing the bible as a scholarly exercise, try linking biblical truth to your online life such as -

"This happened yesterday to me and I'm blogging about it / I read about it in another blog / I read it on the news / I read an article." ....

"It was good/bad/sad/interesting/hard" ...

"It Reminded me about Psalm X or Proverb B or Book Chapter Q"

"How it's really comforting / challenging / useful / true / difficult "

The Benefit is this: You learn to look to the scriptures to help you understand you're everyday existence - you're relationship with God and his universe.

The Jewish way was to meditate on the scriptures day and night, in the midst of everyday life and use them to frame their perspective of the world around them.

Benefit two - blessing others

Next when someone is reading Psalm X or Proverb B and say's what does this mean? How is this relevant? They have a page full of links including yours that act as examples to help them engage the God of the bible in their everyday life and figure out how that particular scripture is useful.

My hope is that a community tagging the Bible in this way will be transformed by a deeper understanding and engagement of God and the Bible in their everyday life.

The "T" word

I've been adding a few links to bibleicio.us lately and I have been tagging them with the T word.

everything I do so I cringe slightly. First of all, It's such an inclusive word that it's almost not useful for tagging.

Secondly, is the baggage - so many people automatically assume that by using the word "Theology" you are talking about something esoteric, non-practical, and divorced from everyday reality. Since my whole hope is for a community that teaches each other to engage the scriptures deeply and practically that's not the type of perception that I want to promote.

But all I'm really trying to say by tagging something theology is it is a thoughtful discussion about beliefs concerning God. We all believe something, even if we don't think about it our actions demonstrate what we actually believe, practiced theology is identifying and comparing these beliefs with the ideas coming from scripture and scholars of scripture, finding the differences and deciding what to do with them.

Jason Clark has a good post that explains better than I could about why we should bother with the "T" word.

New Thoughts

I like new thoughts. The last few days have been full of them.

You could use the fancy word paradigm shift. So here are some for you broken out by categories that may change your mind, maybe even some behavior

Life, Theology - Kingdom of God

My biggest shift came as a result of a Holy Spirit encounter back in 1997 that made me re-think all of the passages of the bible that say the words spirit or breath (that's a good chunk of the bible).

A More recent shift involes a good chunk of the gospels is "The Kingdom of God" A phrase I use to just read over, and go on. Fortunantly for Christendom George Eldon Ladd didn't do the same. He unpacked that phrase and the essence of Jesus's teaching in a way that makes you re-read the gospels.

Basically the Kingdom of God is his active reign or rule.
It is where God's will is active in our hearts, attitudes and morals, in our physical body through healing, in the spirtual relm over demonic forces.

The Good news is that the Kingdom of God is not just a in the future by and by type of thing. It is something that Jesus proclaimed as arriving 2000 years ago. It is something that we as Christians get a taste of right now. You don't have to simply endure to the end and make it to Heaven, God is active and exercising his rulership right now.

But, it's not fully here as the present evil age and the Kingdom of Satan are still here. So there is an overlap and we contantly live in the "now and not yet" Kingdom. That is why all the paradox's - Why we are sinners yet are a new creation. Why there are healings but still people suffer and die. Read about it. Think about it. Tag about it.

Marketing, Economics - longtail

It started with this observation by Clay Shirky - Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality.
It was further clarified in a wired article. When people have freedom of a lot of different choices you don't get a bell curve with a lot of people choosing whats in the middle. Instead there are very clear favorites that quickly slopes down from the toop into the long tail territory that most of the choices live. This explains so much of business and life, why so many things are not equal. It also points out the potential of the long tail as most of the attention so far has been on the hits or favorites.

DESIGN - CSS inspiration

Sorry you just have to look at this one. For those who don't know CSS is a technology that seperates the actual web page text from the colors and look and feel of the website. Why should we care - the CSS Zen Garden gives us over 800 different examples. So now if a few of those web designer's would give me a few stylesheets and graphics for Bibleicio.us

HOME PAGE

New face lift for bibleicious home page no more scary under construction.

NEW PROJECT for Work

Sorry it's hush hush so I can't say anything until its close to being done.