Context

A week ago yesterday I attended church services from my living room couch. Often my wife and I tune in to an independent Church of God congregation from Big Sandy, Texas on our computer. At other times I'll attend services at an independent Church of God congregation in Waco. Although I resigned my membership in the Worldwide Church of God many years ago, whenever I decide to attend services by actually being there or via telephone or internet, I still attend one of the breakaway WCG groups. That is, as long as they're independent. I do this for a couple of reasons. Whichever the congregation there are names I'm familiar with, often even people I know. People with whom I share a lot of common experiences. After all, I was a member a long time. Make that three reasons. These are all seventh day congregations.

Anyway, the sermon last week by the first speaker was pretty much modus operandi for WCG sermons over the years. He, this speaker, flipped back and forth in the Bible, picking out maybe forty snippets of scripture, a couple of verses here, a part of a verse there, to reinforce the particular point he was making. And as I was saying, this was pretty typical Church of God preaching methodology from all the years I remember. Not often did context play much of a role.

My guess is that this teaching concept is taken from a verse, Isaiah 28:10, which they quoted a lot. Although this too is taken out of context.

Isa 28:10
10 For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little: KJV

"Text without context is pretext." This I first heard from Jerry Feldman, rabbi of the Adat Yeshua messianic congregation in Overland Park, Kansas, who also carries credentials from a protestant denomination, Assemblies of God, I believe. This short sentence struck a chord with me from the first even though I wasn't exactly sure of the meaning of "pretext." So, I went home and looked it up: "a purpose or motive alleged or appearance assumed in order to cloak the real intention or state of affairs." This is probably not deliberate on the part of preachers, including the CoG preachers I've been listening to, but it can certainly be the result, right? With the true meaning missed.

In these blog entries I'll be including enough text to give context. There's also a historical context and a cultural context to be considered as well.