This may seem like a new series, but I want to add insight to three original posts from July 2014. And what does an obituary of sweet Georgia Brown have to do with it?
Simple, her life little remembered resounds in a melody which has always haunted my mind with the futility in death.
I’ll share some interesting background of the melody I did not know in the year of our Lord 2014, history familiar to my own youth and life stories forgotten by then.
(You can go ahead & play it in the background if you like.
A You-Tube version of the original will open here and play while you scroll through all the rest.)
Best-know performance of song by Jerry Leiber & Mike Stoller – 4m37s
Who is sweet Georgia Brown?
Since I have chosen her obituary as cover for this 3-post series, I owe you some of her interesting background.
For more: (including a picture from 1968) Source - Wikipedia bio
Think of it as a brief fitting memorial to one of so many entertainers of the 60's now forgotten in the 21st c.
During her initial performing career as a nightclub singer, she adopted the professional name Georgia Brown with reference to two of her favourite repertoire items: “Sweet Georgia Brown” and “Georgia on My Mind.” After an attempt at a recording career, with three overlooked singles released on Decca Records in 1955, Brown moved into musical theatre..
Brown’s career role was that of Nancy in the musical Oliver!, a role she created in the original 1960 London production. When she first came in to audition for the musical’s author and composer, Lionel Bart, he recognized her as a childhood neighbour, and greeted her as “Lily Klot”.
On 9 February 1964, she appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show with 18-year-old Davy Jones (pre-Monkees) recreating two scenes from the musical then showing on Broadway.
This happened to be the same evening that the Beatles made their first live U.S. appearance on the show.
In 1974, Brown married producer Gareth Wigan, with whom she had been involved for at least seven years; the couple married in order to expedite the emigration of themselves and their son Jonathan (then aged six) to the U.S. Brown and Wigan separated in 1979, with their divorce becoming final in 1981 after protracted legal wrangling.
Death Brown died at the age of 58 in London on 5 July 1992.
Although she had become a permanent U.S. resident and lived in Hollywood, she had flown to London to appear on the bill for a tribute to Sammy Davis, Jr. held that week at the Drury Lane Theatre. Before the date of the tribute she became ill, and underwent emergency surgery to remove an intestinal obstruction at Charing Cross Hospital where she died from complications.
What do the lyrics say?
“Is that all there is,” do they cry out?
Or is their proclamation, “I Did It MY WAY?
The lyricist who wrote these and many more influential songs for entertainment of the 20th century is Jerry Leiber..
“Careful little ears what you hear,” reminds the lyric of the old children’s Sunday school song.
Philosophy or Biblical Truth?
Therefore, your food for thought in this series is wisdom (or lack of it). What do the songs and questions really ask?
The presumed answer of questions like, ‘Is that all there is?’ is YES.
And, ‘I did it my way,’ presumes NO god and that death of the matter of the body is in fact, the end of it all.
Want to know the philosophy of the music?
Read the link above to the lyricist of these songs.
Just think of your 'applause' in life as an early song heard at your funeral or a fond memory in your obituary.
Is that all there is? No, it's not, says the Lord God. - RH
Original post July 1, 2014 – Topic: Does life have meaning?
For those philosophers among our readers:
Don't miss the Victor Frankl link in this post.
(We'll talk of Jesus AND Jewish philosophies tomorrow
& in a post conclusion from Scripture next Monday, God-willing.)
Summer 2021 AD {Scriptural} Reruns
CLICK “…Continue reading ” above,
THEN Ask a question or comment at the end of this post
“Truly I tell you, unless someone is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.
Christ Jesus – Gospel of John 3:5
The Apostle John begins his Good News with creation then proceeds to verify the identity of Christ as prophesied and witnessed in Jesus’ earthly ministry.
Previously I addressed the very question of God, for not everyone believes in Almighty God, creator of the heavens and earth. We will for the moment skip over the powerful testimony of John the Baptist and continue with creation.
If so, it must follow that you want to know more about God. John refers to Jesus as logosor ‘the Word.’ He tells us: “… the Word was God.”
Therefore, Jesus IS at the beginning – He created with God and He IS God.
Note that the Hebrew word for God, אֱלֹהִים ‘elohiym is plural. Jesus speaks of Himself in this same plural sense.
John 3:11, “Truly I tell you, we speak what we know and we testify to what we have seen, but you do not accept our testimony.
Perhaps you believe in God, but do you believe what God says?
Jesus speaks the very words of God!
John acknowledges the Messiah Jesus the Son as part of the One True God; but John witnesses even more. So let’s continue with the nature of God, also considering Spirit and the intangible attributes of that which is unseen.
John introduces the Holy Spirit in a dialogue between Nicodemus and Jesus.
Nicodemus, a faithful Jew
Visit of Nicodemus to Christ painting by John La Farge
Nicodemus was a Pharisee and therefore believed in the resurrection. His learned position as a leader of the Jews brought him to question Jesus, who had performed many miracles.
“Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one could perform these signs you do unless God were with him.”
3 Jesus replied, “Truly I tell you, unless someone is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
4 “How can anyone be born when he is old?” Nicodemus asked him. “Can he enter his mother’s womb a second time and be born?”
We make the same mistake, thinking of birth as creation. It is not.
Just as the resurrection marks an event uniting a created soul with God, birth is an event marking a new existence of that which was already created. The birth of the flesh marks an event connected to the breath of a baby whose spirit is formed by the Lord.
Just as you don’t know the path of the wind, or how bones develop in the womb of a pregnant woman, so also you don’t know the work of God who makes everything.
Does the work of God in the spirit of man end with the end of our flesh? The Pharisees and Jesus believed the spirit to exist beyond the life of man. (We will not here discuss the nature and timing of the resurrected body here.)
Note that the Hebrew word for wind, רוּחַ ruwach, is equivalent to ‘spirit,’ which we note in the creation narrative of Genesis.
Genesis 1:
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness covered the surface of the watery depths, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.
A description of a chaotic void of darkness, an emptiness, watery depths describes a formless space without purpose or life itself. Yet God, specifically the Spirit of God (רוּחַ ruwach אֱלֹהִים ‘elohiym) was moving over this formless void.
God IS the only Life in the instant of creation.
Jesus tells Nicodemus, ‘you should know that God is Spirit.’
5 Jesus answered, “Truly I tell you, unless someone is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. 6 Whatever is born of the flesh is flesh, and whatever is born of the Spirit is spirit.
Born of water
Genesis 1:6-7 Then God said,
“Let there be an expanse between the waters, separating water from water.”
So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above the expanse. And it was so.
Consider for a moment that if Jesus is the logos, the very spoken Word of God, then these Mosaic quotes may be attributed to the Messiah.
Jesus implies, ‘I AM He who separated the waters and I tell you that you must be born of water and the Spirit.’
Be born again from your chaotic sinful life into the resurrection, reborn pure and forgiven that you might have eternal life.
John also witnesses a connective symbolism between the pure water and the blood at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry in Galilee.
6 Now six stone water jars had been set there for Jewish purification…
7 “Fill the jars with water,” Jesus told them. So they filled them to the brim… the headwaiter tasted the water (after it had become wine)…
11 Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee. He revealed his glory, and his disciples believed in him.
John then tells us how after this Jesus goes to Jerusalem and cleanses the Temple marketplace. As a result of these events Nicodemus will come to Jesus privately one night.
23 While he was in Jerusalem during the Passover Festival, many believed in his name when they saw the signs he was doing.
John points out additional connections between the purification water and the purification of the wine of the Passover sacrifice. In his first letter John speaks again of this rebirth as he writes to the church:
Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God.
6 Jesus Christ—he is the one who came by water and blood, not by water only, but by water and by blood. And the Spirit is the one who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth.
7 For there are three that testify: 8 the Spirit, the water, and the blood—and these three are in agreement.
Born of flesh
Imagine a personal conversation with God! The Lord, a flesh and blood ‘Son of Man’ as Jesus referred to himself, answers a learned teacher of scripture. He essentially suggests to Nicodemus that what is created of water and Spirit is different from our flesh created from dust.
Water becomes essential to bones and flesh, as blood flowing with life. Spirit separates the chaos of created man from the lifeless nature of a formless and godless earth.
Perhaps Jesus referred to the scripture from Ecclesiastes in His dialogue with Nicodemus asking about being born of water and the Spirit.
10 “Are you a teacher of Israel and don’t know these things?” Jesus replied.
Jesus, the Messiah in the flesh, tells Nicodemus that we must be born again – born again in the Spirit.
John the Baptist and many other Prophets urged true believers in the Lord to repent. Jesus also preached repentance and emphasizes a return to a new and pure relationship between the Spirit of God and the spirit of a man.
To be ‘born again’ is much more than mere repentance, which may be temporal and lacking in guilt, contrition and an earnest desire for the cleansing of sin.
Our born again spirit is rebirth of a relationship between the new spirit of changed flesh and the Spirit of the Living God.
John also witnesses much more of the difference between spirit and flesh, mostly in the spoken words of Christ Jesus.
“The Spirit is the one who gives life. The flesh doesn’t help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.
The concepts of spirit, as in the Holy Spirit and the spirit of man, is more complex than what we can address in discussion of John’s Gospel, letters and the Revelation of Jesus Christ to John. Jesus’ simple reply to Nicodemus that we must be born again does point to the Holy Spirit.
For a more detailed study worthy of academic study of Scripture as Nicodemus would have been familiar see the entry below:
“Holy Spirit.” Examples where the Person is meant when the article is absent… Sometimes the absence is to be accounted for by the fact that Pneuma (like Theos) is substantially a proper name, e.g., in Jhn 7:39. As a general rule the article is present where the subject of the teaching is the Personality of the Holy Spirit, e.g., Jhn 14:26, where He is spoken of in distinction from the Father and the Son. See also Jhn 15:26 and cp. Luk 3:22…
The subject of the “Holy Spirit” in the NT may be considered as to His Divine attributes; His distinct Personality in the Godhead; His operation in connection with the Lord Jesus in His birth, His life, His baptism, His death; His operations in the world; in the church; His having been sent at Pentecost by the Father and by Christ; His operations in the individual believer; in local churches; His operations in the production of Holy Scripture; His work in the world, etc.
We could, as many do, become entangled in more theological argument of what Jesus told Nicodemus in John 3:3 and consequently neglect John’s witness of what Jesus reveals about the Person of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus states that we must be born again in Spirit. Where else does John mention this?
Because the Holy Spirit commonly the Person of God most misrepresented and least mentioned, let’s look first to the examples cited in Vine’s Dictionary (above) to the scriptures from John.
“The one who believes in me, as the Scripture has said, will have streams of living water flow from deep within him.” He [Jesus] said this about the Spirit. Those who believed in Jesus were going to receive the Spirit, for the Spirit had not yet been given because Jesus had not yet been glorified.
John 7:38-39 CSB
In our next post we will take a look at the witness of John the Baptist, who also bears witness to Jesus receiving the Holy Spirit, to which the Apostle John refers here.
Jesus, prior to His crucifixion and resurrection in the flesh and in the spirit, instructs the Apostles further about the Holy Spirit.
25 “I have spoken these things to you while I remain with you. 26 But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and remind you of everything I have told you.
Jesus’s Gift of Peace 27 “Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Don’t let your heart be troubled or fearful.
Who would not love a personal counselor like this? Jesus promises a Person with His same love in the Person of the Holy Spirit. Later John affirms this testimony of Jesus:
“When the Counselor comes, the one I will send to you from the Father — the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father — he will testify about me.
“You also will testify, because you have been with me from the beginning.
John 15:26-27
John is witness and testifies to this for many years, more years than all other Apostles. Jesus also refers to the Holy Spirit as ‘the Spirit of truth.’
Does one desiring God seek truth?
John provides both witness and explanation of the Truth. Therefore, even in this present day we would not want to miss what he shares with the church in the Revelation of Jesus Christ to John.
“Let anyone who has ears to hear listen to what the Spirit says to the churches. The one who conquers will never be harmed by the second death.
Contemplation of Justice by James Earle Fraser – US Supreme Court building
Justice
At the beginning of this series I outlined topics which included justice. Here we will explore their linked applications.
Commandment
Law
Justice
Judgment
Penalty and Sentence
Redemption
Justice – n. 1) fairness. 2) moral rightness. 3) a scheme or system of law in which every person receives his/ her/its due from the system, including all rights, both natural and legal. – source: dictionary.law.com
The multi-branched tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
“but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for on the day you eat from it, you will certainly die.” – Genesis 2:17 CSB
Paradise by Lucas Cranach the Elder – painter, draughtsman, printmaker and court painter – 1530
We move now from relatively calm waters of Adam knowing the difference between good and evil to a more tumultuous current of original sin flowing through the generations.
Justice, and only justice, you shall follow, that you may live and inherit the land that the LORD your God is giving you. – Deuteronomy 16:20
Ma’at (“connective justice,”) governed personal moral behavior, as can be seen in religious texts, as well as the proper relationships between gods and men, between kings and society, and between individuals. Thus it literally connected everyone from the gods, through the king, down to the lowliest farmer. It was the mirror of the divine order of the world and also the foundation of private ethical behavior. Ma’at was the most persistent and pervasive idea in ancient Egyptian society.
Importantly, the most visible and the longest lasting image of Ma’at in a private context, at least to the modem observer, is the famous “last judgment scene,” in which an individual faced his or her mortality by having his or her life deeds weighed in the balance against the symbol of justice, the ostrich feather, in front of all of the gods in Egypt.
If found wanting, the person’s soul was devoured and his or her existence was extinguished. On the other hand, if found “true of voice,” one gained eternal bliss in the afterlife. This was not the public representation of state justice, but, rather a more intimate depiction of the expectations of private moral behavior.
Do you recognize this universal connection to the truth in the Law given to Moses on Sinai by the Lord God?
Delegated authority of the Law
Application of law ultimately leads back to the same question Adam would have to judge after gaining ‘knowledge of good and evil.’
What is right? Is this good or evil in the eyes of the Lord?
Basic precedents of law include English Common Law and other fundamental documents.
of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, … and secure the Blessings of Liberty … ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
The Bill of Rights & evolving societal amendments
Religious Law
Hammurabi a Babylonian code of law
The contemporary legal systems of the world are generally based on one of four basic systems: civil law, common law, statutory law, religious law or combinations of these. However, the legal system of each country is shaped by its unique history and so incorporates individual variations.[1]
A Stream Towards Justice
We have examined the role of authority in the law. It is here that the roles of God, government, family and community all come into play.
The basis of all law is the authority by which it is given. Justice requires effective application and fair administration of remedies by a righteous and impartial judge. – Roger Harned
A commandment comes directly from Almighty God. Call it ‘religious law,’ but an absolute over-riding Authority connects God’s word to man’s actions.
Hebrew followers of Moses heard the Lord speak directly and were afraid. Even so, they disobeyed the direct command of God even before Moses later descended Sinai with the stone tablets – the Law, carved by the finger of God in stone.
This inviolable Law would be carried in the Ark of the Covenant; not as reference, but as witness to their own promises to God. Yet many would violate (trespass) their solemn covenant promises to God many times and in many places throughout the long history of Israel.
Penalty of the Law
Even though prescribed specifically for certain violations in specific contexts of the Law, ‘penalty’ is not mentioned by name in the King James Version of the Bible. The overriding issue, simply, is innocence or guilt and not particularly the punishment.
A divine sentence is in the lips of the king: his mouth transgresseth not in judgment. – Proverbs 16:10 KJV
Have you ever considered that the ‘sentence’ of the court is the spoken judgement against the convicted violator of the law?
Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil. – Ecclesiastes 8:11 KJV
Perhaps you have even noted the legal principle of a right to a speedy trial in the wise advise above.
Now note the usage of the Hebrew root for the consequence of guilt:
דָּם – dam
blood (342x),
bloody (15x),
person (with H5315) (1x),
bloodguiltiness (1x)
bloodthirsty (with H582) (1x),
vr blood (1x)
Again, this goes to the higher authority of Almighty God. Perhaps a good Biblical example of commanded penalty would be ‘capital punishment.’
“Whoever sheds human blood, by humans his blood will be shed, for God made humans in his image.
“But you, be fruitful and multiply; spread out over the earth and multiply on it,”[Gen. 9:7] God commanded Noah and his family who were spared by the judgement of the earth.
Looking upstream through the generational sins even in the time of Moses, redemption from bloodguilt against God hardly seems attainable.
Kings and Nations under God
And what cause soever shall come to you of your brethren that dwell in their cities, between blood and blood, between law and commandment, statutes and judgments, ye shall even warn them that they trespass not against the LORD, and so wrath come upon you, and upon your brethren: this do, and ye shall not trespass. –2 Chronicles 19:10 KJV
reign of Jehoshaphat ~873–849 BC
From later records of Israel (and Judah after David), we learn of the continued importance of the Law or Commandment of God to this ‘chosen’ nation. The above quote from 2 Chronicles is recorded in the time of Jehoshaphat, in the 9th century Before Christ.
Note the distribution of authority given by King Jehoshaphat to others from 2 Chronicles 19:
A King’s delegation of justice
4 Jehoshaphat lived in Jerusalem, and once again he went out among the people from Beer-sheba to the hill country of Ephraim and brought them back to the Lord, the God of their ancestors. 5 He appointed judges in all the fortified cities of the land of Judah, city by city.
6 Then he said to the judges, “Consider what you are doing, for you do not judge for a mere mortal, but for the Lord, who is with you in the matter of judgment. 7 And now, may the terror of the Lord be on you. Watch what you do, for there is no injustice or partiality or taking bribes with the Lord our God.”
8 Jehoshaphat also appointed in Jerusalem…
some of the Levites and priests
and some of the Israelite family heads…
Delegated authority from the Lord to the King, then to officials responsible for religion, for community and for family. Even warning of how to manage outsiders (foreigners and servants), all under delegated authority of the Lord through others. Not freedom, as we know it. Certainly not license to choose whether to obey or defy any law or regulation.
10 For every dispute that comes to you from your brothers who dwell in their cities—whether it regards differences of bloodguilt, law, commandment, statutes, or judgments—you are to warn them, so they will not incur guilt before the Lord and wrath will not come on you and your brothers. Do this, and you will not incur guilt.
11 “Note that Amariah, the chief priest, is over you in all matters related to the Lord, and Zebadiah son of Ishmael, the ruler of the house of Judah, in all matters related to the king, and the Levites are officers in your presence. Be strong; may the Lord be with those who do what is good.”
God will judge
God is a righteous judge and a God who shows his wrath every day. – Psalm 7:11
He will judge your people with righteousness and your afflicted ones with justice. – Psalm 72:2
Psalm 111:9 Christian Standard Bible (CSB) 9 He has sent redemption to his people. He has ordained his covenant forever. His name is holy and awe-inspiring.
