Thayer Thursday – 3 seconds
Chris Thayer is the Director of Discipleship at Good Shepherd Church in Charlotte, NC where he oversees adult life groups and Biblical education. On Thursdays I share his weekly “Thayer’s Thoughts” for small group leaders, which are based on the previous Sunday’s sermon. Click HERE to watch or listen to the accompanying sermon.
3 seconds.
That is the approximate amount of time before modern TV shows and movies change camera angles or switch to different a scene.
It’s incredible to watch an old movie or TV show and see how much longer camera shots or scenes last. I don’t know if this has contributed to or is indicative of the disease – but it highlights the reality that our attention span has greatly diminished.
This isn’t present in visual media alone. We also see it in our relative inability to process detailed and drawn out thinking. We are increasingly becoming a sound-bite culture. Quick quips carry more weight than well thought out arguments. I bring this up not simply because it’s interesting, but because it has had a profound effect on how I (and likely many others) read and understand scripture.
Over the past several months I’ve spent time trying to read scripture closer to the manner the original audience would have. So rather than reading and meditating on a single verse, I’ve been trying to read and meditate on a whole book of the Bible. It’s quite honestly been a difficult endeavor. It has highlighted how influenced I am by our sound-bite culture. I’m quick to hone in on a single verse or saying at the expense of understanding that verse within the context of the rest of the letter. However, the more I try to read the books of the Bible within their overall context, the more rewarding it becomes.
For instance, in 1 Corinthians (1:18-25) I started by reading 1:18-2:5. In my Bible, this is broken into its own subsection under the heading “Christ the Wisdom and Power of God.” This is a great section of scripture about God turning the world upside down in His Kingdom – showing that His foolishness is greater than the best of human wisdom by using the foolish to shame the wise; the weak to shame the strong. This is the paradox of the cross personified. The Jewish people were not expecting a murdered King to be their ruler. The Greeks found the idea of a dying God to be foolishness. All of this, Paul teaches us, is done to show how backwards our thinking has become as the human race. Looking at the line God has drawn and seeing it crooked reveals not God’s unsteady hand, but the extent of our impaired vision.
All of this is fantastic and thought provoking. I was challenged and saw my shortsightedness in this passage, however, when I read what preceded and followed these verses. 1 Corinthians 1:10 through chapter 4 (and following) contains Paul’s overarching argument against division within the church. Divisions in the Corinthian community highlight, according to Paul, that they are immature. That they are still visually impaired. They are judging things by human standards as opposed to God’s. Ironically, Paul weaves a masterful rhetorical argument to this end – which drives home his point that the Corinthians are thinking about everything the wrong way round. To assume superiority of any sort brings destruction to God’s temple – the community of believers.
That is not the way of the cross.
Through the cross, Jesus turned the world upside down and inside out.
To assume a position counter to that is an insult to God and is a force of destruction, not life. They are thinking with brainwashed minds rather than with brains that have been washed by God.
Chris Thayer
Sermon: “Brainwashing” (Watch HERE)
Categories: Blog, New Testament, Thayer Thursday