Steve Yegge has a blog (his "Blog Rants" blog) where, once or twice a month, he posts a length (in Internet terms, at least) missive about some facet of programming, languages, and the software industry. He’s got a variety of good things to say, and I’ve found the posts of his that I’ve read to be rather insightful and worth paying attention to.

Anyway, the present topic. Recently, he posted an explanation of why he writes such long posts. In his defense of his blogging style, he discusses an interesting concept (albeit with no studied scientific basis). He discusses short-term (about 20 seconds) and long-term memory (lifetime), and proposes the existence of an intermediate memory bank, where thoughts are kept around for 10-15+ minutes while the brain decides whether they’re worth filing in long-term memory. An interesting hypothesis, and I can definitely see what he’s saying and where he’s getting it. Even if it is entirely irrelevant as far as actual psychological science goes, it does seem like a fun and useful working concept and it has some interesting practical results.

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I think, sometimes, that the epistles to the Corinthians are some of the more difficult portions of the NT (aside from Revelation) to understand. There are a few reasons:

1. We don’t have the whole conversation. We’re "missing" at least one of Paul’s letters to them, and we don’t have the letters they wrote to Paul (or at least they aren’t readily available to the average lay person). This makes it difficult to understand the entire context in which Paul wrote.

   It is worth noting, however, that this ought not to be a roadblock to our endeavors to understand the text. If we needed the rest of the context to understand what God intended to communicate through Paul writing these letters, then He would have seen to it that we got that context.

2. These letters (especially I Corinthians) contain or allude to some teachings which appear nowhere else in scripture, or have at best tenuous connections to doctrines expounded elsewhere. Thus, it is difficult to get clarification from other texts.

   One of the clearest examples of this is the allusion in I Cor 15 to being baptized on behalf of the dead. To my knowledge, this concept is mentioned no where else in Scripture. What were they doing? Why? What does it mean? Is this a practice we should have in the church today? These questions go unanswered.

   Another is the teaching in ch. 10 on head coverings. Specific teaching on this subject is not present in other epistles (although there are other teachings on authority), so there isn’t much information about what other churches in other areas were taught to practice.

3. Then there are things like II Cor 6 and 7. It seems fairly straightforward, but my mind was struggling today to wrap itself around 6:14-7:1. It’s clear enough, but why is it here? Before it, Paul is asking them to enlarge or widen their hearts. After it, Paul is asking them to make room for him in their hearts. What does this middle piece have to do with welcoming Paul in their hearts? It seems to me that the nature of the yoking mentioned in verse 14 would have something to do with the context, but I’m somewhat at a loss to make a connection.