Something's been bothering me from my word study

Something about my word study on Philippians 4:19 has been bothering me for a few days.

I referred to the Greek word plouton (or more accurately, ploutos, πλοῦτος, both translated typically as "riches" or "wealth"), and made an association to Pluto and Ploutos, the Roman and Greek gods of wealth.

The cultural shift in the reference to Pluto as an association to a Greek word - has been a gadfly for me.

Was I incorrect in making the association at all? Wouldn't Ploutos - the Greek reference, not the Roman - be the right reference to use?

Why choose Jonah?

As I've mentioned before, I recently held the rather weak conviction that Jonah might have been allegorical rather than historical. That weak conviction has been altered; I'm now weakly convicted that it is historical and not allegorical.

(Cue all the pitchforks and torches, I suppose, since it's apparently a horrible thought to wonder about these things. Sorry, folks. I can't say I'm strongly convicted that something is true if I'm not, not if I'm being honest with you and myself.)

One of the reasons I've been thinking about it is the choice of Jonah in the first place.

The Value of Word Studies

When I mentioned Philippians 4:19, I mentioned having done a word study, my first word study focused on the Greek language.

What's the value of a word study? Should it be how people study Scripture?

Well... my thought is that word studies are a useful tool, but that this tool should be one among many. You shouldn't feel you have to rely on word studies to learn God's Will.

In fact, I'll go one further: if a word study is required to understand a passage, then you're being informed incorrectly.

Sometimes a little knowledge is enough.

For better or for worse, I'm a fairly intellectual person. My judging function (from Jungian psychology) is very active; throw a pattern in front of me, and I instantly start analyzing it for how well it works, or how it can be improved.

This means that my walk among Christians as a Jew is ... challenging. Christians don't typically have the same ferocious dedication to understanding that Jews do; as a result, many things get expressed that simply don't hold up under the glare of history and understanding.

This is a struggle for me, because it's a constant prodding to correct and instruct and educate.

This correction and education is unfair and unnecessary; it's my struggle, not

Philippians 4:19: God will supply our needs...

We had an interesting study in Sunday school, on the end of Philippians - 4:19 through 4:23.

The class focused on 4:19:

And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus. (NIV)

The teacher asserted that this verse was used to justify a "prosperity gospel," in that people asserted that "all your needs" was the same as "all your wants." I never really thought of this verse in terms of a prosperity gospel, so I was arriving at it with what I thought were neutral biases - and wanted to find out more about what the words being used were, since translations seem odd to me when they're so easily misapplied.

Reevaluating Prayer

Prayer is one of those things I rarely think I have to think about, but that's more an expression of my own arrogance and pride rather than an honest evaluation of prayer itself. I, like so many other Christians, value myself over God - and that's something that's got to change.

What is Prayer?

Prayer is a call for a response from someone else. It's not just talking to God - it's a communication, normally involving a request, with someone else.

The colloquial usage of the word makes it a religious expression, but that's common usage and not necessarily the best way to think of prayer.

When does questioning become sin?

When is it all right to question God? When does such questioning become sin?

In one view, it's pretty easy to answer those questions, although the answers are a little too open-ended for my satisfaction: God tells us to test Him (1 John 4:1, for example). So it's okay to test.

When does that become sin? When questioning yields an answer that doesn't trust in His will, of course.

Pat answers, sure. Tried and true, you might say, and useless.

So when is it all right to question God? It's important to realize that