AP Wire | 12/26/2006 | Military deaths in Iraq exceed 9/11 toll

AP Wire | 12/26/2006 | Military deaths in Iraq exceed 9/11 toll

Quote from the story:

"The president believes that every life is precious and he grieves for each one that is lost," deputy White House press secretary Scott Stanzel said Tuesday.

So, I'm thinking... western military deaths are probably the smallest fraction of deaths in this situation, compared to enemy combatant deaths and civilian deaths. I don't care so much about enemy combatant deaths, but civilian deaths is a little bit different.

It's hard to get an accurate count of Iraqi civilian deaths, but I bet it's pretty darn high. If we subtract out the number of Iraqis that would have died under the old regime, I bet it still far exceeds the number of people killed on 9/11.

So, we, as a nation, have answered violence with overwhelming violence. We responded in anger to an attack, and look where it's gotten us.

Lesson: next time, take a deep breath and get the facts right. And, if you do go in, plan for an after-victory program. We are the world's policemen. Like any New York City cop, we have to treat everybody with a certain minimal amount of civility.

Filioque Controversy

Filioque Controversy

Looks interesting. Part of the split between Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches.

Neo Culpa 2

btw, I heard on NPR that the Iraq Study Group may recommend more troops be sent to Iraq (along w/engaging in dialog w/Iran and Syria).

And I also heard recently that some general (current or recently retired) felt that we needed twice as many troops in Iraq to stabilize the country. I understand we currently have upwards of 120,000 troops there now.

Anybody remember Eric Shinseki getting fired for telling Rumsfeld we'd need 300,000 troops to go to Iraq?

(I should find some links for all this, I suppose.)

Ok, here's one: http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2006/11/abizaid_dont_im.html

Neo Culpa

Hmm. Where's Wolfowitz in all this? I sorta thought this whole thing was his baby. The author of this article doesn't mention him. The other neo-cons don't mention him.

Is the author asleep? What kind of magazine is Vanity Fair?

Are the neo-cons purposely neglecting to mention him?

Will the full article in January explain all this?

What Would Jesus Do?

[Nothing new under the sun here.]

Heard in church today: What would Jesus do? Apparently, this concept is at pretty old, not just cooked up in the 1990s by the neo-religious-right.

The idea is: promise that, for a year, you won't do anything at all without asking yourself: What would Jesus do?

Now, I wonder....

Jesus would give his all. His earthly possessions, his blood, his life. Every bit of it.

"Sell everything you have and give the money to the poor."

So, what's the point of asking ourselves what Jesus would do? We should sell our possessions and give the money to the poor? Move into the smallest, cheapest house and car, buy clothes at the PTA thrift shop, never take vacations (except for mission work), not spend money on unnecessary luxuries like digital cameras or cable TV or NetFlix? Stop smoking and drinking two beers a day?

Or... are we simply expected to writhe in guilt every minute of every day at our failure to have the courage and faith to take that road of poverty?

God wants the best for us. He doesn't want us sad and miserable every day. Of course, we should be aware of our sins (and that includes our lack of total commitment), but we should also be aware of his love for us in spite of our imperfections.

Man, what a tough question. I get a little pissed off at people that cast these sorts of judgemental aphorisms around. "What would Jesus do?" Implying a (yet another) holier-than-thou attitude. Leave me alone!

And, of course, there I am, sitting in church, being judgemental myself, because everybody is giving these self-centered reasons for giving money to the church (e.g., "because it makes me feel so good!" It's not about you, it's about God. You missed the point. Grump, grump, grump).

And... he does expect us to live the life of total charity. If every person on the planet were to do so, that would be... the kingdom of God.

Sigh.

So. A nothing blog entry. We should act. We should feel guilty. But not too guilty, because we are still loved. But we should still act.

And, by the way, blogging is not acting. Unfortunately.

Did God Divorce His Wife?

A dramatic headline, I know.

God = Elohim.

God is El, I think. Bethel, house of God. Israel, God strives. Daniel, God is my judge.

El was the supreme god in the land that became Israel, the father of Baal and the husband of Ashera, against whom the Old Testament prophets constantly railed. Why such strong reactions against both Ashera and Baal? We hate the ones closest to us. Case in point: the ones the New Testament Jews despised the most were the Samaritans, I believe. (Samaritans [and there are still some today] believe the only scripture is the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, so they're like "almost-Jews".)

If we take the "parental figure" view of God, Israel (and us, as spiritual/figurative descendants of Israel) was God's children.

My 8-yr-old son was lolling around on the carpet at home a few days ago. I asked him to pack his knapsack for school the next day. He did, reluctantly. Then I asked him to zip his knapsack up, so the stuff wouldn't fall out. He looked directly at me, said "No." and then looked over at his mom. She is encouraging this sort of behavior on his part. She gives him emotional support at moments like this, or at least, doesn't discourage him. (It's complicated, but she's conveyed to him that she likes it when he shows her favor over me, and shows evidence of alienation from me. She actively worked to punish him in the past for showing me favor, now she doesn't have to; all she has to do is not discourage it, so it's essentially passive encouragement.)

The emotional pain I felt was piercing.

My young son, the innocent child, is showing me he doesn't respect me. I see him growing away from me, day by day, under the subtle encouragement of his mom. (I couldn't discipline him because then she would have "rescued" him from me, or she and I would have had a big fight and Conrad would later feel it was his fault, and I am absolutely not going to do anything to make him think our divorce is his fault in any way.)

And it occurred to me: this must be how God felt when Israel (his children) displayed (display) a preference for Ashera (i.e., Astartes) and Baal (or other modern-day distractions, like possessions and status).

Ouch. I can definitely feel his pain.

Does God Always Answer Prayers?

So, this question came up in Alpha: Does God always answer prayers?

It was posed as a true/false statement during a talk, and we were invited to discuss it in our small groups for a couple of minutes before continuing.

My answer was "No", and the reason I gave that answer was because sometimes I pray and get absolutely no response, no feedback whatsoever. And I believe the answer to the question is "No".

But... a lot of other people said the answer is, essentially, "Yes, of course he does!". Which I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised at.

However, to say that "lack of response" is "response" (or "lack of answer" is "answer") is stretching the meaning of the word "answer" w-a-a-y-y too thin, and it's another example of the kind of non-thinking I feel sometimes happens among people calling themselves Christians.

Ok, now, don't get me wrong. These folks I was with last night are all good people, every one of them. I got genuine solace from them last night, when I needed it, and I do feel that God was working for me through them.

But, I just wish I could find a bunch who would be willing to consider the non-platitude, non-pat answer, because I think such a greater appreciation of God and his workings could be gained from that consideration.

God doesn't respond to every prayer. He hears every prayer, and he considers every prayer, but sometimes he makes the situation neither better nor worse. Sometimes, God's response (I should put that in quotes: "response") to a prayer is a deafening silence.

Maybe the thing that frustrated me the most, and maybe it shouldn't frustrate me so, was the sense that I'd been ambushed after I gave my answer. "Gotcha!" No, you didn't get me.

* * * * *

Ok, that's enough whining for tonight.

Vanity Plate Bible Citations

So, one occasionally sees vanity plates with Bible verses on 'em.

If I had such plates, I might put one of the following on 'em:

MICAH 6:8

1 COR 10:23

So there.

Psalm 19:14 / links on false prophecy

Here, let me pray into my blog (I'm pretty sure God's reading it):

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.

- - - - - - -

So, the question came up in Alpha: how can we detect false prophets? I had this big, long answer, but it's essentially just quoting from the Bible, so let me just put the links out for future reference:

• Deuteronomy 13:1--3, 18:21--22
• Jeremiah 23:13--32
• 2 Peter 2

I would have loved for the answer to be "if they tell you to hijack planes and fly them into skyscrapers, they're false prophets," but it ain't quite that simple. Those passages essentially say: if the prophet's predictions don't come true, or if the prophet's lifestyle isn't consistent with the lifestyle God calls for, then you know it's a false prophet. Another thing that's said is that if the prophet encourages us to worship "another god", we know it's a false prophet.

However... what is "another god"? Baal? Molech? Sure, that's clear enough. But, what about an angry "God" that tells us to kill immoral people who are functioning in support of a capitalistic society? Is that truly a message from God, or is the false god of anger and hatred what's really being worshipped here? (Or is this a case of the prophet telling his own dreams instead of God's message?) At what point does righteous anger become unrighteous anger?

Alpha

So, I've been taking this class at OUMC. I've been wearing two hats: one, as a student in three Disciple classes and currently starting my fourth; the other as a Christian who considers some aspects of his faith new. I have this sort of secret plan (that I tell everybody I meet about; maybe I should be a little quieter about it) to find out what it's like and maybe introduce it at my church someday (UUMC), so I want to see what it's like. And also, at the same time, I'm interested to know if there's anything Important I missed, as I formed my own beliefs about God and Jesus (partly in my "off" years, and partly during the five past years that I've been attending church).

It's been very nice so far. The OUMC folks have an incredible amount of energy for this class. They're in the kitchen every Tuesday night, starting about 4:00 pm, cooking a simple supper for us (well... maybe not quite so simple -- some of those wimmin can cook; I don't think it's the men; sorry to be sexist), there are a lot of people running around serving drinks, they have speakers every week from the church (mostly lay folk; this week, it was a fellow student in Disciple).

I wonder if UUMC can come up with this level of energy. I really need to get more involved with my own church, but, ya know... two nights per week plus a divorce is a gracious plenty right now.

Status update

Got the custody eval report. They recommended a 50-50 split and some sort of followup eval six months after the split.

So, now I'm looking for a house, on the assumption that we'll negotiate that my wife keeps the house and I move out.

Negotiations beginning in the next couple of weeks, I think.

Wheee!

1 Chronicles

So, we discussed 1st Chronicles in Disciple last Monday. I was supposed to have read it during the preceding week, but I hadn't done my reading every day like I should have. I did the first six or so chapters early on, but then stopped, and wound up doing the last 23 chapters Sunday night.

Whoosh! :-S , as they say.

So, the fact that 1 Chronicles is a great big list of names wasn't helped by my reading it that fast. I really do think there is a good reason for this huge list of names, and I wish I could have slowed down and really savored them. Here's some of it (1 Chron. 4). It's stultifying stuff:

¹ The sons of Judah: Perez, Hezron, Carmi, Hur, and Shobal. ² Reaiah son of Shobal became the father of Jahath, and Jahath became the father of Ahumai and Lahad. These were the families of the Zorathites. ³ These were the sons of Etam: Jezreel, Ishma, and Idbash; and the name of their sister was Hazzelelponi, ⁴ and Penuel was the father of Gedor, and Ezer the father of Hushah. These were the sons of Hur, the firstborn of Ephrathah, the father of Bethlehem. ⁵ Ashhur father of Tekoa had two wives, Helah and Naarah; ⁶ Naarah bore him Ahuzzam, Hepher, Temeni, and Haahashtari. These were the sons of Naarah. ⁷ The sons of Helah: Zereth, Izhar, and Ethnan. ⁸ Koz became the father of Anub, Zobebah, and the families of Aharhel son of Harum. ⁹ Jabez was honored more than his brothers; and his mother named him Jabez, saying, "Because I bore him in pain." ¹⁰ Jabez called on the God of Israel, saying, "Oh that you would bless me and enlarge my border, and that your hand might be with me, and that you would keep me from hurt and harm!" And God granted what he asked.

¹¹ Chelub the brother of Shuhah became the father of Mehir, who was the father of Eshton. ¹² Eshton became the father of Beth-rapha, Paseah, and Tehinnah the father of Ir-nahash. These are the men of Recah. ¹³ The sons of Kenaz: Othniel and Seraiah; and the sons of Othniel: Hathath and Meonothai. ¹⁴ Meonothai became the father of Ophrah; and Seraiah became the father of Joab father of Ge-harashim, so-called because they were artisans.

But, it has little stories embedded in it, some of which happened to no-name people (and, yes, I picked this passage on purpose).

The big take-away I got from our session was that this list of people is full of names, some clearly recognizable (e.g., Judah, Esau) and some not so recognizable. What this meant to us was that the unknowns are connected to the greats; we unknowns are also connected to our greats (and our greats from the past), in one large family, essentially. It's pretty inclusive. We can imagine ourselves listed in this huge roster of names. (The cynical among us will note that it's almost completely male. Well, yeah, it's the Ancient Near East of 2500 years ago. Come on.)

Prov. 10:15 -- wealth vs. poverty

So, I've been reading Proverbs, off and on, as I try to make up for some reading I missed in my Bible study class (Disciple, yay Disciple, great class -- I may have mentioned it before :) ).

10:15 The wealth of the rich is their fortress; the poverty of the poor is their ruin.

I thought that was kind of challenging, the Bible putting wealth in a good light and poverty in a bad one, so I dug a bit more.

16 The wage of the righteous leads to life, the gain of the wicked to sin.

The annotation in my Bible refers to these two verses together. It says:

V. 15 is a neutral observation about the reality of wealth and poverty; v. 16 adds ethical comment on the gain of the wicked. Cf. 11.28 and 18.11, where the protection of wealth is declared to be illusory.

So...

11:28 Those who trust in their riches will wither, but the righteous will flourish like green leaves.

(the annotation for this verse and v. 30 (which I'm not quoting here) refers us to Ps. 1:3 and Ps. 92:12--14)

and

18:10 The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous run into it and are safe.

11 The wealth of the rich is their strong city; in their imagination it is like a high wall.

and the annotation on 18:10--11 says:

A proverb pair: The name of the Lord is reliable (Ps 61.3; 124.8); the protection of wealth may prove to be imaginary (10.15--16 [emphasis mine -- isn't it fun how all this stuff ties together?]; 11.4).

Neet, huh?

That's just my Bible. There's also the Oxford Commentary, which says

V. 15 contrast an advantage of wealth with a disadvantage of poverty. Wealth provides protection and security against the vicissitudes of life (cf. 18:11), whereas the poor have no resources to fall back on. For this the poor may sometimes have only themselves to blame (v. 4). But not all wealth is advantageous. How it is acquired is the test of whether it is an asset or a liability (v. 2) The instruction in 1:8--19 illustrates the liability of ill-gotten gain (cf. also 20:17; 21:6; 28:20). By contrast, the wealth that accrues through 'righteousness' [note the single quotes -- British book!], i.e., honesty and integrity, is a mark of divine blessing and provides for a long, secure, and anxiety-free life (v.22; cf 11:4).

And finally, my HarperCollins Commentary has the following:

Only one clearly observational, neutral saying is found: the poor are ruined by lack of goods, but wealth is the fortified city of the rich (10:15). However, this comment is immediately contextualized by v. 16 and later by v. 22. The sages would prefer to believe that wealth is a gift of Yahweh that confirms its possessor's righteousness. Otherwise, the standard act-consequence relationship is displayed throughout the chapter.

So, we do have this sort of view that good things happen to the righteous in this world, but I guess we can't quite accuse Proverbs of glorifying wealth.

You can make up your own mind on whether you agree with the commentaries. It's entirely possible that I'm taking things out of context. Anyway, food for thought.

(I recently heard a couple of references to "the prayer of Jabez" and "the gospel of prosperity," so I was a little sensitive to this when I ran across it.)

Praise the Source of Faith and Learning

I don't normally put up hymns, just like I don't normally put up prayers, but this one really struck me last Sunday when we sang it in church.

I love it when hymns have messages for me.

Praise the source of faith and learning who has sparked and stoked the mind with a passion for discerning how the world has been designed. Let the sense of wonder flowing from the wonders we survey keep our faith forever growing and renew our need to pray.

God of wisdom, we acknowledge that our science and our art and the breadth of human knowledge only partial truth impart. Far beyond our calculation lies a depth we cannot sound where your purpose for creation and the pulse of life are found.

May our faith redeem the blinder of believing that our thought has displaced the grounds for wonder which the ancient prophets taught. May our learning curb the error which unthinking faith can breed lest we justify some terror with the antiquated creed.

As two currents in a river fight each other's undertow till converging they deliver one coherent steady flow, may we blend our faith and learning till they carve a single course and our seeking and our yearning join in praising you their source.

Here's a link to the music, pardon the crappy midi rendering:

• http://www.hymnsite.com/fws/200420.mid
  
• http://www.hymnsite.com/fws/hymn.cgi?2004

Propaganda War

I guess we can view Vietnam as the first war of information, propaganda and public opinion.

In future, I suppose almost all wars (except all-out war between, say, the U.S. and China) will be wars of public opinion.

I bet that, in the end, the side that can steer the closest to the truth while spinning it properly will win. Now this is a useful thing for Republican spinmeisters to do: spin the world, not us.

Prayers for Kids

I've been sort of on the lookout for good, simple prayers for children, to teach my own someday, once I'm done with this divorce and I have some kid time to myself (those who know me know what this is in reference to: mom is alienating them from me).

This is one my parents taught my sister and me when we were young, and I've taught it to my kids, although we don't get much of a chance to practice it.

Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest.
Let these, thy gifts to us, be blessed.

It's a good one, but I always thought there should be more. Finally, I stumbled across something else that might also make a good children's prayer. It's hymn 621 in the Methodist hymnal, written by John Cennick in 1741, and we sang it during today's communion, but... who cares?

Be present at our table, Lord;
Be here and everywhere adored;
Thy creatures bless and grant that we
May feast in paradise with thee.

(The melody, by the way, is that same "Praise God from whom all blessings flow", except that it's 100% quarter notes, so the tempo is very even.)

Alpha

This looks pretty cool. I sorta wish our church would do it, if I understand it correctly.

BBC Analysis: New model schism for Anglicans?

I guess all analysis contains some editorial bias, but this is an interesting take: the possibility of a more chaotic , less clean-cut schism.

Profile: Katharine Jefferts Schori

Short profile, no blatant editorializing. :)

BBC presents two opposing viewpoints: Anglican split 'has become necessary'

A short piece presenting two opposing viewpoints on the doings in the U.S. Episcopal Church.

Editorial: Fear and loathing in Anglicanism

Last line: ouch.

Quotes from "The Good Book", Chapter 1

Spent some time today (Saturday) reading The Good Book, by Peter Gomes. Not for any particular reason other than spending some comfortable time with my parents, for my birthday.

This book is subtitled, "Reading the Bible with Heart and Mind", the first part of the book is entitled "Opening the Bible", and the title of Chapter One, from which these quotes come, is "What's It All About?".

I made notes of some passages I particularly liked. (I touch-typed them in and used a spellchecker, but hopefully I haven't made gross grammatical mistakes or correctly spelled the entirely wrong words below. Please feel free to point out any mistakes I made, and I'll fix them. (Thanks.))

As a bit of background, I'll point out that Gomes is black, gay and a Baptist. None of which are relevant, right?

On pp. 8--9, Gomes quotes James D. Smart, writing in a book title The Strange Silence of the Bible in the Church, written in 1969. (You may recall an earlier post I did on the dichotomy between scholarly study and the lay view of the bible.)

Responsibility for this strange silence of the Bible in the church does not rest upon preachers alone. Much too often they have borne the whole reproach without there being any recognition of the complex character of the dilemma in which they find themselves. Rather, there had been a blindness which scholar, preacher, teacher, and layman alike have shared -- a blindness to the complexity of the essential hermeneutical problem, which, in simple terms, is the problem of how to translate the full content of an ancient text into the language and life-context of late 20th century persons.

Gomes goes on to say:

Contemporary Christians tend to avoid complexity as being hazardous to their faith, and are thus unprepared to cope with complexity when it confronts them. In April 1996, for example, all three major U.S. weekly newsmagazines featured Jesus as the cover story for Holy Week. What was the reason? This was hardly an outbreak of newsroom piety, but rather the "discovery" that scholars were debating yet again the relationship between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith, and that many of the words and actions attributed to Jesus in the new Testament were in fact, in the view of much of modern scholarship, the work of writers of the early Christian movement. "Some scholars are debunking the Gospels," ran Time's cover headline. "Now traditionalists are fighting back. What are Christians to believe?"

I was asked by many sincere believers as well as by the vaguely curious what I thought of Time's story. Would it do damage to the faith? Hardly. As the sign in the old antique shop reads: NOTHING NEW HERE. Questions about the nature of the gospels and of their place in the life of the church are as old as the gospels themselves. Questions about the resurrection are as old as the Apostle Paul's writings on the subject. These are matters that have always belonged to the church, and always will. Time's discovery of the Christianity's two-thousand-year-old debate suggests only how far Time is removed from the intellectual life of biblical scholarship. But alas, the story also revealed the large gap between the basic working assumptions of biblical scholarship long held by the scholarly community and the conventional wisdom or general knowledge of a less and less biblically literate Christian population. To make a story there must be winners and loser. The not too subtle implication of this Holy Week Special is that what the scholars believe they know and what the believers believe they believe are seen to be at odds, and if the scholars are right, then the believers must be wrong, and the Christian faith folds like a house of cards.

Gomes considers the source of "bible illiteracy" on pp. 11--12:

We might well ask how this illiteracy came to be, given that the Bible has always had pride of place in Christian worship and particularly in American Protestantism, but any of us who have had experience of what passes for "Bible study" in recent years in most churches can answer that question. For many the Bible served as some sort of spiritual or textual trampoline: You got onto it in order to bounce off of it as far as possible, and your only purpose in returning to it was to get away from it again. It is the lay version of what Willard Sperry, one of my predecessors in The Memorial Church, used to lampoon as "textual preaching." The preacher who was keen to practice what he preached would follow this formula: "Take your text, depart from your text, never return to your text."

Bible studies tend to follow this route. The bible is simply the entry into a discussion about more interesting things, usually about oneself. The text is a mere pretext to other matters, and usually the routine works like this: A verse or a passage is given out, and the group or class is asked, "What does this mean to you?" The answers come thick and fast, and we are off into the life stories or personal situations of the group, and the session very quickly takes the form of Alcoholics Anonymous, Twelve-Step meetings, or other exercises in healing and therapy. I do not wish to disparage the very good and necessary work that these groups perform, for I have seen too many good effects and have known too many beneficiaries of such encounter and support groups to diminish by one iota their benefit both to individuals and to the community. I simply wish to say that this is not Bible study, and to call it such is to perpetuate a fiction.

Bible study actually involves the study of the Bible. That involves a certain amount of work, a certain exchange of informed intelligence, a certain amount of discipline. Bible study is certainly not just the response of the uninformed reader to the uninterpreted text, but Bible study in most of the churches has become just that -- the blind leading the blind or, as some caustic critics of liberal Protestantism would put it, the bland leading the bland. The notion that texts have meaning and integrity, intention, context, and subtexts, and that they are part of an enormous history of interpretation that has long involved some of the greatest thinkers in the history of the world, is a notion often lost on those for whom the text is just one more of the many means the church provides to massage the egos of its members.

I'll take the libery of suggesting here that "massaging egos" can mean that the church allows the kind of judgementalism I blogged about earlier.

Gomes then discusses three aspects of the bible:

• it's public
• it's dynamic
• it's inclusive

public -- p. 18:

When I say that the Bible is public, I mean to say that it is a treasure that is held in common, it belongs to the community of believers and not to any one individual or to any one part of the community of believers.

pp. 19--20:

The public nature of the Bible is meant to have an impact upon public life. Again, it is not a secret of private vocation but a public proclamation of what can be discerned of God's intentions for the creation from the witness and testimony of scripture. People should not be surprised, therefore, that Christians always want to translate their understanding of scripture and its demands into the public lives that Christians lead. The Bible is meant to play a role in society, as are Christians. This public dimension of the Bible invariably produces conflict, even in allegedly homogeneous Christian societies, and certainly in secular and pluralistic societies. This however, is a conflict responsible Christians cannot avoid, and the working out of the proper relationship between the public dimensions of one's biblical faith and one's citizenship in a community that does not necessarily share or appreciate that faith is part of the inevitable and uneasy burden that every responsible Christian must shoulder. The early Christian martyrs would have lived to ripe old ages had they not found it necessary to proclaim their biblical convictions in public. To try to create a "Christian society" where there is no risk to the public nature of the Bible and the faith that cherishes it is a form of arrogant escapism. The Bible is a public book, and as such will always give offense. Christians who take the Bible and themselves seriously have to be prepared for that.

dynamic -- p. 21:

The Buddhists say, "Seek not to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; rather, seek what they sought." To understand the dynamic aspect of scripture, we must appreciate the fact that "what they sought" seeks us, and in fact, "what they sought" is apprehendable to us in terms and times that we can best understand. So in the Bible we handle lively things, which means that we must be subtle, supple, and modest, all at the same time.

inclusive -- pp. 22--23:

It is one of the unbecoming but unavoidable ironies of Christianity that Gentile Christians, who were excluded from the Jewish churches, and who in the times of the Roman persecution were themselves excluded from all hope in this life, should themselves become the arch practitioners of exclusion. Even centuries of Christian exclusivism, however, extending into our very own day, cannot diminish the inclusive mandate of the Bible, and the particular words of Jesus when he says, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." What Roman Catholic social theory teaches as the church's "preferential option for the poor," to the annoyance of Christians rich in the things of this world, is the same principle that extends the hospitality of the bible, indeed preferential hospitality, to those who have in fact been previously and deliberately excluded. So the Bible's inclusivity is claimed by the poor, the discriminated against, persons of color, homosexuals, women, and all persons beyond the conventional definitions of Wester civilization.

p. 23:

One of the great paradoxes of race in America is the fact that the religion of the oppressor, Christianity, became the religion of the oppressed and the means of their liberation. Black Muslims ask incredulously how any black person in America could possibly be a Christian, given the legacy of white Christianity. The answer, of course, is that if Christianity in America depended upon white Christians, there would be no right-minded black Christians. What is the case is that Christianity, and the Bible in particular, did not depend upon Christians for its gospel of inclusion, but upon God. Thus black American Christians do not regard their Christianity as the hand-me-down religion of their masters, or an unnatural culture imposed upon them and thus a sign of their continuing servitude. No! They understand themselves to be Christians in their own right because the Gospel, the good news out of which the Bible comes, includes them and is in fact meant for them. We will find that when we look at the life of the Bible, and the life of the world in which it is to be found, we discover that the heart of its public dimension, and indeed the source of its dynamism, is this principle of inclusion by which all of the exclusive divisions of this world are transcended and transformed.

In thinking about the Bible -- its public nature, its dynamic, living qualities, and its inclusivity -- as we try to make sense of it with mind and heart, we would do well to remember these three principal characteristics. They serve as landmarks, points of departure and of return, and they will guide us even as we seek guidance in the opening the Bible.

Vacation Bizarreness

Ok, I'm back from vacation. We went to northern Alabama to visit old family stomping grounds and friends.

I visited my Onkel Ernst and Tante Irmgard, pseudo-uncle/aunt to my mother (and, hence, us). He was a rocket scientist in Huntsville, along w/my grandfather, but 10 years younger than my grandfather. He and my grandfather became best friends. He's now 92 or so .

I had a wonderful time talking to him about his experiences on the eastern front during WWII. He was trained as an astrophysicist and actually did some research into how many neutrons are generated when a U-238 atom splits, but Hitler decided making him a schutzer was a better investment of Germany's resources at the time. So, off he went, and nearly died in a Russian artillery bombardment. He was in the basement of a house that collapsed. He was pinned by timbers and debris, but a second incoming shell freed him. His 30 comrades weren't so lucky. (He did lose some toes to frostbite. Walking across the Ukraine in 40-below temperatures can do that.)

When he got back to Germany after that, he was notified to report to Peenemunde. Wernher von Braun, the chief of Germany's rocket program at the time, needed highly technical people to help him. He'd gotten clearance to scour the rolls of soldiers' names, and he'd sent down a classmate of Onkel Ernst's to do the job. Coincidence and personal connection ("hey, I know that guy!") may have kept him from being sent back to the front.

We talked about the replica of the "apex predictor" he was building in his garage, for an upcoming 50th anniversary celebration of our first satellite launch. He built the original apex predictor in that same garage 50 years ago for the insertion of the Explorer satellite into orbit in Jan. of 1958, a few months after Sputnik went up. Basically, he had to predict the apex of the trajectory of a missle in order to fire the booster pack on the satellite to give it the right horizontal velocity to keep it in orbit while the rest of the missle fell back into the ocean. The device itself is extremely simple, basically just a very accurate, calibrated timer-activated switch. The complexity comes from the conversions of input data from three independent (and therefore disagreeing) sources into a seconds-from-liftoff figure. This was all in the days before electronics, so he was doing his calculations with a slide rule. (Not "live", but he set up pre-programmed conversion tables, essentially.)

He was successful, though, because the satellite stayed in orbit for twelve and a half years.

So, that's family connection #1, a gen-yoo-wine Rocket Scientist.

Then, we went to Guntersville to see the house my great aunt lived in all her life (she never married) and to visit her grave. My sister was especially close to her; she's named after her. The house was built by my great- or great-great-grandfather around the turn of the century (I think it was built earlier, around 1875 or even 1855, but others in my family say 1895). It was a big frikkin' house, two stories, 12-inch timbers, a maze of hallways and staircases and downright spooky. My sister and I used to explore it whenever we visited and scare ourselves silly in some of the rooms (which did have an eerie vibe). After my great aunt died (in the late 1980s), the house was sold by my second cousin, once removed. In doing so, he had more than one offer and chose to sell it to the party who he thought would be the better custodian of it, even though they offered less money. Yay, second cousin, once removed! The folks who bought and restored it, we had assumed, were totally unrelated, but it turn out that the wife is related (she thinks our grandmothers were cousins). This house was then sold by these folks to a local bank that wanted the lot it was on (pretty much downtown) and which promised to build a new headquarters inside the house (a remodelling). It turned out the house couldn't be used (too many interior walls would have had to be removed), so the bank offered to sell the house back to the owners for $1, but they would have to move it. They took that on, because they didn't feel the house should be demolished. That was a tremendous project because of all the various administrative headaches. The biggest problem was getting the telephone company to agree to move the phone wires strung between telephone poles along the street. The plan was to roll the house across the street to the Tennessee River (dammed, to make Lake Guntersville), float it around the point (under a bridge) and bring it back on land on the other side of the point. If you've ever driven through a medium-small Southern town, you know how many wires are in the air. My understanding is that the cost of moving it was about equal to their selling price, so, apart from the hassle, the move was free.

For those that are interested, see maps.google.com. The house was moved from the corner of Blount Ave. and Brown St., down Brown St. to the river, floated around the point and brought back on land to sit almost at the corner of Lusk St. (how appropriate) and Sunset Drive (next to the Episcopal Church :) ). By the way, while you're looking at the map, you might be interested to know that great aunt Ibby and a whole passel (what is that, a corruption of "parcel"?) of my ancestors and their relatives are buried in the cemetery at the corner of O'Brig and Debow. (I'm guessing "O'Brig" is apostrophe'd, based on the funky spacing on the street sign I saw. Maybe it's "O. Brig.")

We got to visit the house and spent an hour or two chatting in the front parlor with my heretofore unknown relative. She's pretty damn cool, a former high school English teacher, cancer survivor with short, brilliant white hair, wearer of slightly unconventional jewelry, gracious in the best tradition of the Deep South and runs the town history museum. And, no, the contradictions and implications inherent in being rich, white and connected in the Deep South in a smallish town are not lost on me. Did I mention she's on a first-name basis with my father's second cousin who's somewhat of a mover and shaker in this town? Close enough to him to be able to twist his arm to lead some sort of historical tour of Guntersville.

That move was a tremendous hassle, and I, personally, am glad they undertook it.

So, that's family connection #2, a rich, gracious cousin who bought the family manse and took care of it, basically out of the blue.

After that, we pressed on to Gadsden, to see the town where my dad grew up, and to visit his mother and father, buried in the cemetery there. At both cemeteries, we took pictures of headstones, the digital equivalent of rubbings, I guess. (Some of the headstones in Guntersville were so worn and eroded that rubbings might have been the better approach.) After we visited Pop and Nana's grave, we toured around town looking at the places my father grew up. I would have (should have, really) videotaped the whole thing, but it would probably be excruciatingly boring to just about everybody else, so I just tried to pay attention as he pointed out houses left and right. Then, we drove up the mountain overlooking town to see the house he had spent the latter half of his adolescence, the fabled "House on the Mountain" that had figured in so many conversations but which I had never seen. The house is on a ridge overlooking the town, built around 1925 by my grandfather, not big, but you know the real estate dictum: location, location, location. (And, of course, "not big" is a relative term -- it ain't a bungalow.) It's on a huge lot, set back from the road by a long driveway and a thick forest, adjacent to (but out of sight of) similarly upscale houses. So, we pull up this long, asphalted driveway that looks like a street, past the one house at the end of the "street", into the big apron in front of a big old garage, turn around, behaving like the stereotypical lost family, and, as we're slowly cruising by the house again, an older gentleman comes out with that sort of suspicious "can I help you lost folks who shouldn't be on my property?" sort of thing going on. My father introduces himself and the guys says "I'll be damned. I was a freshman in medical school while you were a resident," and introduces himself. (He grew up in Anniston, a local city.) And suddenly, they're two medical colleagues exchanging reminiscences about med school and the local VA hospital and whats-his-face with that ballistic cardiogram device he was trying to get people to adopt and so on and so forth. Then, on top of that, it turns out this guy was a bomber crewman (pilot?) in WWII, over Germany, while my dad was an infantryman in the same theater. (My dad actually spent seven months in the south of France as a "fugitive from the law of averages", as he puts it. He eventually had a German "potato masher" grenade bounced off his knee while he was hunkering down in a foxhole and was lucky enough to escape with only the tiniest fleck of steel in his knee. However, as you might guess, any piece of steel in your knee is enough to hospitalize you.) So, now they have something else to reminisce over.

So, we (and that includes the current residents) got the full tour of the house and all the mischief two little boys (my father and uncle) can get into. We saw where my dad's cat Bosco was buried in my grandmother's turkey roaster. (Bosco had an unfortunate encounter with a dog, and the boys gave him a full funeral, with honors. The best available casket was the turkey roaster, which was appropriated without consultation with the lady of the house. When she later found out about it, they offered to exhume it, but she declined the offer, and it remains in the yard to this day.)

We got to sit in the front parlor of this house, too, and chat a spell. The man of the house was all sweaty, since we had interrupted him at lawn-mowing. He was about 80. The lady of the house came home in the middle of all this, also all sweaty, from a line dance class. They were both hale and hearty, in full possession of their mental faculties, enthusiastic about life, and outgoing. Another example of Southern hospitality, sort of. She was from Iowa, complete with corn-fed, big-jointed Iowan accent, so I guess on her part it was Midwestern hospitality, which is pretty much just as good. We would have chatted longer, I think, but my dad was impatient to get on the road.

So, there's family connection #3, a med-school colleague, again, completely out of the blue.

So, my takeaway from all this is this: it's really interesting how small the circles are when one lives in the top layers of the social pyramid.

I can't really claim any of this, I guess, since I'm just a software developer and a web hack, at that (I compete with copy-and-paste offshore developers for my employment), but I suppose with the proper amount of hustle earlier in life, I might have been able to. I suppose I could say I'm not living up to my heritage, that I'm the unproductive scion of greater generations, the proof that blue blood alone does not determine destiny. Still, there is a certain sense of familial pride.

Disciple 3 Closing

So, we had our last Disciple (3) meeting Saturday. It was a big deal, kind of a review and commissioning. One of the things we did was a little... performance, I guess, is the right word. We had a script we stood up and read from (unrehearsed), so it was kind of a way of reinforcing our theme of the year, reviewing the message we had been contemplating.

I'm going to take the liberty of typing it all in here, now. :)

We stood in a circle, at the different points of the compass, facing inward.

"One" is a prophet, or a prophetic figure. It's a 5-person performance. This one should probably have stood in the middle, but we didn't, in our case.

When the script says "(Turn away)," we each turned and faced away from the center (away from each other).


ONE: Awake, my people, pay attention.
The Holy One has a point of contention:
At the marketplace they measure with false weights.
They sell the needy for a pair of shoes.
They indulge their appetites,
ignoring the hungry at the door,
deaf to the cry of the poor.
They have ears but do not hear.

ALL: Everything's fine. Peace. Peace.

ONE: The houses are splendid, the monuments secure.
They revel in their success, saying,
"By our own hands we built this!"
"The Temple will never be destroyed!"
They have hearts to discern but do not perceive.

ALL: Everything's fine. Peace. Peace.

ONE: They silence the prophets whose voices trouble the peace.
They cling to the law that gives them security
or to the special knowledge that makes them elite.
They have eyes but do not see.

ALL: Everything's fine. Peace. Peace.

ONE: They bow at the altars of their gods.
They indulge in ecstasies without responsibilities
and sensation without sensibility.
They have veiled their faces from faithfulness.

ALL: Everything's fine. Peace, peace.

NORTH: We are rich!

EAST: We are strong!

SOUTH: We are right!

WEST: We're having fun!

NORTH: But isn't it strange
how you just can't trust anyone anymore?
No one's word is good. Everyone is out for themselves. (Turns away.)

EAST: Why are the cities crumbling?
And why are there so many poor? (Turns away.)

SOUTH: What about all the violence? And fragmented families? (Turns away.)

WEST: Life is empty, meaningless.
Nothing we do really satisfies.
It takes bigger thrills to excite us, more drama to entertain us.
We're not even sure who we are anymore. (Turns away.)

ALL: Everything is not fine.
We are cut off from one another.
We are distant from ourselves.
We are alienated from earth.
We are exiled from God.

NORTH: Our sin is greed.

EAST: Our sin is pride.

SOUTH: Our sin is arrogance.

WEST: Our sin is dissipation.

ALL: It is idolatry -- worshiping the creature, not the Creator.

NORTH: We have killed Truth and sacrificed Integrity.

EAST: We have crucified Compassion and written off Patience.

SOUTH: We have ravaged Respect and restricted Vision.

WEST: We have buried Faithfulness and trivialized Love.

ALL: We have sowed the wind and reaped the whirlwind.
There is no peace. No life, no hope.
No holiness, no wholeness. Only dead and scattered bones.

(Silence)

ONE: Come from the four winds, O Breath.
Breathe upon these that they may live.

ALL: Rise upon us, O Gracious One,
with healing in your wings.

ONE: Turn to me, and I will welcome you home
-- as a mother the child of her womb --
I will not forget you!
-- as a father the long-lost young --
I will not reject you!
-- as a spouse the beloved one --
I will not forsake you! Turn to me. (All turn back to the center.)
And you will live!
And my children shall come home
from the north and from the south,
from the east and from the west,
bringing gifts and treasures with them.
The Holy One was buried but is risen!
Was dead but is alive!

ALL (to North): Come to the banquet!
We have need of you.
May your ears hear the cries of creation,
your minds plan justice,
dispense generous mercy.
May you hear the truth and live with integrity.

ONE: Your chief administrator shall be called Righteousness.

ALL (to East): Come to the banquet!
We have need of you.
May your hearts discern the call to action,
attentive to the needs of all,
your hands work with tender strength
and build with patient perseverance.
And may you walk with humble hearts before God.

ONE: Your strong walls shall be called Salvation.

ALL (to South): Come to the banquet!
We have need of you.
May your speech guide with graciousness
and imaginations inspire to hopefulness.
May your eyes see the Vision and make it plain.

ONE: Your overseer shall be called Peace.

ALL (to West): Come to the banquet!
We have need of you.
May your unveiled face shine with human kindness and divine care,
and the fullness of your attentive presence
grace us with the hospitality of humor and dignity
and deep meaning.
May your unveiled face shine with faithful love.

ONE: Your gates shall be called Praise.

ALL: And people will come from east and west,
north and south, and eat with all the saints
at the heavenly banquet.

ONE: The dividing wall of hostility is broken down.
You who were far off are brought near.

ALL: We are all one in Christ Jesus
who unites us as one household of faith and freedom--
one body, one blood, one family.

ONE: Go into the world, then, beloved of God,
remembering who you are.

NORTH: with ears to hear,

EAST: hearts to discern,

SOUTH: eyes to see,

WEST: unveiled faces.

ONE: And may your words and deeds,
being and doing, loving and serving,
be a witness to the presence of the resurrected Christ,
the unbounded grace of God,
and the renewing power of the Holy Spirit.

ALL: Amen.

Progressive Churches.org

Progressive Churches.org

W00t!

When Help Is Not On The Way

... Bokilo can almost see home from the edge of the squalid camp where he has lived for three years. Swollen-bellied children run past him. There's cholera in the water, and malaria in the huts. Two miles away, his fields lie untilled, and that's how they'll stay. 'Of course I can't go back,' he says, warning of the armed bands roaming freely outside town. 'They will kill you. ... They take your boys. They take your girls.'

Constant fear of marauders who murder, rape, pillage, and enslave. Legions sweeping into camps. Sexual violence as a weapon of war.

Think you know what this is about?

Guess again.

I feel tricked by the emphasis on another, more well-known hot spot.

Drinking Liberally

Drinking Liberally

Short of going back home and drinking filtered tap water or breaking out that bottle of home-brewed rutabega wine that Abby down at the Co-Op gave you for Kwanzaa/Yule, how does a conscientious progressive lament the latest BushCo atrocity without putting even more money into the pockets of blood-sucking multinationals?

Funny. :)

Libertinism vs. Asceticism, Sacred vs. Profane

Went drinking w/a friend tonight, and the topic came up of whether ogling is ok or not.

1 Corinthians 10:23-33

And I'll quote it here, in order to add my own highlighting. Text in this style is crosswalk.com's highlighting. Text in this style is my own.

23 "All things are lawful," but not all things are beneficial. "All things are lawful," but not all things build up. 24 Do not seek your own advantage, but that of the other. 25 Eat whatever is sold in the meat market without raising any question on the ground of conscience, 26 for "the earth and its fullness are the Lord's." 27 If an unbeliever invites you to a meal and you are disposed to go, eat whatever is set before you without raising any question on the ground of conscience. 28 But if someone says to you, "This has been offered in sacrifice," then do not eat it, out of consideration for the one who informed you, and for the sake of conscience 29 I mean the other's conscience, not your own. For why should my liberty be subject to the judgment of someone else's conscience? 30 If I partake with thankfulness, why should I be denounced because of that for which I give thanks? 31 So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God. 32 Give no offense to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God, 33 just as I try to please everyone in everything I do, not seeking my own advantage, but that of many, so that they may be saved.

Now, Paul had ample opportunity here not to deviate from a discussion of meat. But, instead, he chooses to put in some more-general phrasing.

He does say "'All things are lawful,' but not all things are beneficial. 'All things are lawful,' but not all things build up."

Ok, time and energy are short. I might develop this a bit more in future, but I just wanted to toss this out while it was on my mind.

Fun With Bible Interpretation

See:

• 1 Tim 2:9--15 -- women should be silent in church and learn in submission
• 1 Tim 3:1--13 -- bishops and deacons can't be remarried -- so much for my prospects of becoming a bishop or deacon.
• 1 Tim 1:10 -- use of the word "sodomite" (in my translation)

These are some of the more objectionable parts of Paul (especially that first item). It would be very tempting (and I think I may have fallen to this temptation) to discount this as "not authentic Paul", since indications are that the Pastoral Letters (1 & 2 Timothy and Titus) were written by somebody after Paul.

However, it's kind of a weak attack to say some part of the Bible is less legitimate than some other part because of its authorship. We have to tackle the bible as a unified whole (for some definition of "unified whole"). If conservatives cite this in support of their position, we need to find some other way to counterargue.

(More later, work calls.)

- - - - - - - -

(2:45 pm) The point being, in spite of my hastily and poorly worded phrasing above, that we can't play parts of the bible against each other based on authorship or time of writing. Even if something wasn't written by Paul but claims to be (the technical term is pseudepigraphal, like "apocryphal", from pseudo- and epigraph), that doesn't matter, because it's all been accepted as part of canon by the early church fathers (who are as much (or almost as much) a part of the development of Christianity as Paul and Jesus were).

(is my compile done yet?)

- - - - - - - -

(4:50 pm) Um, well, maybe that statment about the early church fathers is a little overdone.


(2 May 2006, 9:20 am) See the comments on this entry for more stuff.

Reluctance

One of my favorite poems. I'm in the mood for it tonight. :)

Ah, when to the heart of man.... how true. :)

Reluctance -- Robert Frost

Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world, and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended.

The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last lone aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch-hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question 'Whither?'

Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?

Aljazeera.Net - Analyst says bin Laden 'desperate'

Finally, an Aljazeera article I can read w/out seeing red. Too bad we're saddled w/an administration that feels it needs to play to uninformed, selfishly/fearfully conservative middle-class whites in this country, instead of leading, as it should.

And, of course, like all things web and all things media, there's no telling how much we can trust this. :( But it reads good.

Aljazeera.Net - Analyst says bin Laden 'desperate'

Quote:

The American war against al-Qaeda cannot and will not be won on the battlefield. The US is not facing a conventional army. This is an unconventional war and I think in many ways al-Qaeda is totally highly adaptable and dynamic.

The only way for the US and the international community to win this war is by creating coalitions and alliances with Arab and Muslim societies, not just counter-insurgency tactics.

The US must really endeavour to address the legitimate grievances of the floating middle and Arab and Muslim public opinion and create alliances by addressing regional conflicts like the Palestinian predicament.

It does this by keeping a healthy distance from Arab and Muslim dictators and by building bridges with the largest constituency in the Arab Muslim world - Arab and Muslim youth.

(Emphasis mine.)

NYT Story on Evangelicalism / Definition of the "Emerging Church"

Interesting.

Quote:

There is also a growing conflict over theology, or specifically the orthodoxy of the "emerging church" movement.

ALTHOUGH much of the attention on the emerging church movement has been on changes that its leaders have made in worship — bringing back liturgy and ancient practices like meditation and chanting — the movement has also sought to introduce theological innovations.

It emphasizes reading the Bible as a narrative, perfect in its purposes but not necessarily inerrant; de-emphasizing individual salvation in favor of a more holistic mission in serving the world; even making evangelicals less absolutist on whether people from other religions might find their way to heaven.

All of this has made many evangelical leaders nervous. They worry that the "emerging church" will water down the theology.

Eulogy: William Sloane Coffin

A liberal icon, I guess.

Remembering William Sloane Coffin

by Jim Wallis 4-20-2006

Rev. William Sloane Coffin was likely the most influential liberal Protestant clergyman and leader of his generation. One of the first white men to go South and be arrested in the civil rights movement, one of the first church leaders to dissent from the Vietnam War, one of the first moral voices against the nuclear arms race, Bill was a prophetic voice of Christian conscience to both church and state for many decades.

Who Wrote the Bible II

Very nice-looking section of the web, more-or-less official United Methodist Church indoctrination. ;)

Who Wrote the Bible?

I got into a discussion w/some co-workers yesterday that touched on "who wrote the Bible".

I've learned/come to the conclusion that the bible was laid down in multiple layers by various anonymous authors through time. That it was edited by "redactors". That, for example, written prophecy started w/Amos around 800 BCE (BCE: Before Common Era, a less Christian-centric way of dating, in this multicultural world. Then, we have CE: Common Era (what some old-fashioned :-P folks refer to as "AD")).

One of my co-workers (at least one of 'em), a more-or-less traditional conservative-ish Christian, is of the opinion that, for example, Moses wrote the Pentateuch. Except for the part where Moses dies; Joshua wrote that. (That's the party line, by the way.)

Another of my co-workers, an agnostic/atheist, is of the opinion that Christians labor under the assumption that there was one author who wrote it in one pass and it's been unchanging ever since, which he considers unrealistic. When he heard me say "Genesis got re-worked" (which it did, imo, post-Exile), he almost blew a fuse trying to transition from the unrealistic concept of "bible-in-one-pass-unchanging-forevermore" to the unrealistic concept of "bible-edited-over-time-but-always-true-word-of-God".

And then, I found this on a umc.org forum, from a person whose screen name is "Ezekiel 33:6":

I recently reviewed some "Bible Study" material a friend of mine had been furnished by the Conference to study for the ministry. What I saw appalled me. The writer had, not two, but three Isaiahs, had Moses with a hand full of followers wading in ankle deep water across the northern end of the Red Sea, and described the besetting sin of Sodom as "inhospitality." Of course, Moses wrote none of the Old Testament, and neither Daniel nor Revelations are about end time prophecy. Was Jesus born of a virgin, and did he raise bodily from the dead? I saw no positive affirmation of that fundamental truth upon which the fate of the entire universe rrests. Yes, the UMC is a dead body which has been embalmed with a "Form of Godliness."

Now, I read in my Oxford Annotated Bible, for example, that there are at least two authors of the book of Isaiah: the real Isaiah, and then one or two others. That modern scholars actually refer to "First Isaiah" (1-44, or thereabouts), "Second Isaiah" (45-57, or thereabouts) and "Third Isaiah" (58-66, or thereabouts). Don't quote me on those chapter divisions, this is off the top of my head. And I believe it. These are smart, conscientious people who have devoted their lives to studying the Bible. Why shouldn't I rely on their efforts?

I've also read (and believe) the other stuff "Ezekiel 33:6" is complaining about: Moses didn't write the Pentateuch, the problem w/Sodom was not homosexuality (nor was it necessarily "inhospitality", but that's a heck of a lot closer to the truth than homosexuality), Daniel and Revelation are messages to a persecuted church/people instead of primarily descriptions of end times.

So, here's my question (and my homework assignment): how did we come to this? We have this split between scholars and academicians who study the bible seriously and reach these conclusions (which I'm inclined to believe), and we have folks who have never taken a critical look at the bible (with the aim of giving it a good, hard shake to see what further knowledge falls out -- not with a destructive aim [I do believe God gave the Bible some wonderful complexity as part of its message]). Instead, these "traditionalists" have simply accepted what they were taught as children in Sunday School and never really examined it.

And, how do we mend this? I'd like to bring people hostile to a scholarly examination of the bible over to the "dark side" [I'm joking, you people who want to quote me out of context!] without bringing their worldview down in shambles. So, we need this gentle introduction to the concept that maybe Moses didn't write the bible. And maybe the serpent in the Garden of Eden isn't actually Satan. And maybe Satan is a post-exilic invention, an inclusion of the Persian (Babylonian) concept of a dualistic universe (as opposed to the original Hebrew concept of a one-god universe).

God is a Comedian

God is a comedian, playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.

-- Voltaire.

Quote courtesy of a friend of mine.

So true. Lighten up, people.

More good quotes here.

Prayer -- What's Up With That?

Well, this is the next of the publishable blog ideas on my stack. Let's see if I can blog while inebriated (yay, Lent is over; guess what I gave up for Lent?).

So, prayer. How do we expect that to work?

Oh, Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz?
My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends.

We offer up our wishlists to Santa Claus God, and He fulfills them?

Sounds outrageous.

However, check this out: Luke 11:1--13. So, there it is: ask, and you shall receive. Outrageous.

(Luke rawks. It's my new favorite, replacing Matthew.)

Gosh, it would be nice to win the lottery.

Heavenly Father, thank you for this day, for my life, for my health, for my children and all the people who support me, even though I don't deserve it.
I confess I am not worthy. I am lazy because I am afraid and I have no faith. I am selfish because I am caught up in the rush of my everyday life, and I too quickly move to escape when I get home from work.
Please, watch over those who are near to me: the people in my bible study group, who share their issues every week; the people they would like me to pray for, whose stories are all so much sadder than my own; my ministers, who carry the burden of the church: congregants in the hospital (dying), homeless people (sinking ever deeper); my various friends who are facing their own crises; the family of that minister who committed suicide last year; and all the people of the world who are facing such crushing pressures, of starvation and oppression.

Please, Father, if you can spare a little energy for me (and I know you can, because you're infinite), watch over me and energize me as I try to get through this divorce. Watch over my children and warm their hearts as they cope with their parents fighting like this. Please take care of us all, near and far, worthy and unworthy.

I ask all this in the name of Jesus Christ, who died for me, even though I don't deserve it, and who I accept as my savior and [eh... doubt... doubt...] Lord.

Amen.

Ok, there it is, my standard daily prayer. Well, it should be my daily prayer, but I'm happy if I remember it twice a week.

So, now what? Do I wait for an answer in the mail?

Once, when I was a child, I ate a whole lot of Quisp. Remember that? In the Cap'n Crunch family. And, you could save up a bunch of boxtops and send them all in for a gun that shot clouds of this neato white power (I think it was cornstarch or flour). So I did.

I ate the requisite amount of Quisp. Several boxes, saving the boxtops.

I put them in a envelope, along w/an order form, and mailed it (physically) to General Foods, or whoever was doing that offer.

And waited.

And waited.

Oh, the anticipation.

After six weeks (an eternity, when you're 10 years old), my cornstarch-shooting gun arrived. It was great! Cheep red plastic, special "white powder" (that when you ran out of, could be replaced with flour). A little "click" sound, and a puff of white powder came out. It totally rocked!

I soon lost it. I wasn't particularly heartbroken, because my mind was on other things.

Is that what prayer is like? We send the boxtops, we wait for the response, maybe for a long time? We have faith that the mail will eventually deliver?

It somehow feels cheap, and yet.... we're praying for real things. Never mind our own desires. World peace. Warmth for others, who really need it.

. . .

Well. Yeah. That's exactly what prayer is. We ask God for stuff. It is outrageous.

It's an external focus. He may answer our requests. He might not.

Why doesn't he? Because we ask for something that wouldn't be beneficial to us. Or we ask for something that would be detrimental to others. Or, we need to learn to be happy with what we have.

Or... just because! Who are we to guess what's on God's mind?

So, now I find myself in the position of saying "feel free to ask God for anything, just don't expect him to grant it. But ask anyway!" Totally outrageous. How can I expect any sane, rational human to fall for this?

:)

But I do.

Interesting Essay I Received in My Inbox

I thought this was interesting read. I'll paste it in here in its entirety; I'm guessing the Sojourners folks won't mind (dissemination of message, and all).

Bothered by the cross

by Deanna Murshed

As someone who has been a Christian for a while now, I must confess that the idea of redemption through the cross has lost its power to bother or puzzle me as it did in the past.

I remember being jealous of folks who could confess a grand conversion experience that pulled them from lives of sheer drunken hedonistic debauchery - dramatic stories in which they were saved just in the nick of time - into resurrection just by the skin of their teeth. And although getting in by the skin of our teeth is surely true for all of us, it is at least more obvious in those great stories, for whatever reason.

But that is not my story.

Even my earliest memories include my mother sharing Bible stories with me. Though I struggled with the meaning or reality of these accounts to be sure - I can't recall a time when I didn't perceive myself within this grand story of redemption.

My mother showed me a simple faith. My father, on the other hand, questioned just about everything. And I somehow inherited both. God help those who hear me think out loud.

I also remember that as a child, the idea that Christ died on the cross and rose again for me - though it was repeated over and over again and I so desperately wanted to believe it made sense - seemed odd. But I think it was repeated often enough, that eventually, I just came to accept it. After all, the answer to almost any question in Sunday school was easy: "because Jesus died on the cross!"

So, somewhere along the road, I took it for granted that Christ lived, died, and rose again. Somewhere, maybe after I had responded to the sixth altar call - just to make sure God had duly noted my belief - I had heard it enough times to think I had this mystery of mysteries settled.

But every now and then, I come back to that place. Really, what in the world does this mean? Christ died on the cross. It is so easy to hear now that the absolute foolishness of it - and I mean that in the best possible way - simply ceases to amaze me.

But liturgical cycles are good for that - making you not forget any part of the story and asking you to revisit each station, as it were. One passage has been coming to mind (from John's gospel):

"Jesus replied, 'The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life'" (12:23-25).

The version of the Bible called The Message states the last verse this way: "In the same way, anyone who holds on to life just as it is destroys that life. But if you let it go, reckless in your love, you'll have it forever, real and eternal."

The part that really struck me recently (though I've surely heard it read a hundred times) is that the dying of the grain is not for the resurrection of the seed itself - you do not die simply to be resurrected into a better you. You don't give up that bad habit or attitude, greed or grudge, simply to come out on top. (Though I suppose that's not a bad place to begin). No, the grain dies so that it can produce and reproduce life. The passage says, unless a seed falls to the ground and dies it is no more than a single grain.

The answer as to why the grain needs to die is for it not to remain alone. In other words, Christ died so that he could bear more Christs and grow his reign!

Though this way of living for others seems like such a radical (re)orientation, all of creation seems to be screaming this message. Every part of the wheat is living for the spread of life, wants there to be more wheat. The most basic cycle of nature reflects the divine order.

It is simply astounding, when I think about it, that the God of creation does not live for direct self-satisfaction! The God of creation who has all power and all might is in constant submission to another purpose. And God is inviting us to follow.

When one reads the surrounding texts in John where Christ is trying to explain to his disciples who he is and why he must leave them, he is rather indirect. He never says, I do such and such because that is my plan. Rather, he points to the Father and then says that the Father points to the Son and has given Him authority. And then the Spirit testifies of the Son and so on and on. And then the Father lifts up the Son. It is almost comedic how each part of the trinity points the finger at the other - not in blame, as in the human tendency - but because of a perfect harmony, submission, and a trade of trust and authority between each member. This is a wholly different order - a glimpse of what divine community looks like.

I don't know about you, but completely surrendering my will for another goes against every grain of my self-preserving being. And it looks nothing whatsoever like our capitalist culture which encourages us to think the opposite - both economically and morally. The world says that if each individual seeks out his or her own personal fulfillment, we will all ultimately benefit. But the gospel compels us to seek the benefit of others with no guarantee of anything in return.

This is a terrifying invitation that should bother us.

But do our motives have to be absolutely perfect in the sight of God before we can follow? And can we ever reach the point of being perfectly other-oriented? (If so, I'm in trouble).

But I'm comforted that in scripture, I find myself in good company. Christ's disciples followed him for many reasons - not all of which were noble. Ironically, sometimes they were selfish in their pursuit of selflessness. Sometimes they sought to gain something (to meet earthly or eternal needs), other times because they knew there was no other way. Later, they figured a few things out - saw Christ more fully - and their motives changed to those of gratitude, and ultimately, they imitated Christ's example to obey simply because God is worthy.

So, I've come to believe that we hold on to this mysterious truth for different reasons at different times in our lives, though we may never come to fully understand how it is that Christ's death saves us.

That we should follow Jesus in his death so that we might really live is the message of this Easter season.

May God have mercy on us as we follow this call.

Deanna Murshed, integrated marketing manager at Sojourners, is a graduate of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School's faith and culture program.

Good Movie: Narnia (The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe)

I just finished watching Narnia w/my 7-yr-old. GOOD movie! Not big and sweeping, like Fellowship of the Ring, but still plenty riveting for a 7-yr-old. My 6-yr-old got scared.

A co-worker of mine announced that it was boring. Well, yeah, I guess if you're expecting a competitor to Fellowship, it is boring and lightweight fluff. However: the target audience is different. I can't show Fellowship to my 7-yr-old. It's too violent and too involved. However, Narnia kept him stuck in his seat, and he loved the ending.

Sorry for all the italics.

There was a lot more symbolism that I didn't pick up when I read it as a teenager.

The stone table represents the Mosaic Law. The "Deep Magic" is the Mosaic Law, but the "Deeper Magic" is the basic law that the commandments are supposed to be a rough approximation of, and that Jesus shows up with, saying, "there's a more-important principle: love".

And the women at the tomb, seeing Jesus's body gone: Lucy and Susan at the Stone Table, hearing it crack and turning around and finding Aslan gone.

The cracking of the Stone Table: the invalidation of the Mosaic Law. (That's probably a little overdone on the part of Lewis, but maybe it reflects the book of John. I dunno, I haven't really studied John yet. Next year. :) )

Neet!

* * *
(update, Apr 14)
* * *

One more thing. Peter as king after Aslan leaves. :)

Would Jesus Have Time to Have Coffee With Me?

Hmm, I just thought of something.

Would Jesus have time to have a cup of coffee w/me?

He's a busy man. People constantly bringing sick children or sick selves to him, touching the hem of his garment, climbing trees to see him 'cause they're so short they can't see through the crowd.

Plus, I think he might be doing some fundraising, too (seeds in good soil yielding a hundred fold).

I see people (one former college classmate in particular who shall remain nameless 'cause she's almost famous and I don't feel worthy to be dropping her name) who are too busy hanging out with movers and shakers to be hanging out w/the likes of me. (I woke up on the living room couch once to see her talking to Bill Friday on the teevee.)

Sure, Jesus is God and all, but he's in only one human body.

What does that mean, exactly? Jesus is too busy to have coffee w/me.

Ok, so now that I've mentioned it, he'll probably drop by one time to have coffee w/me, but that would only be to show that he can do it. He wouldn't have time to make a regular thing of it, like, say, every Weds. night.

Or... do we have to get all mystical now, and say that he sees every sparrow fall, and wherever two or three are gathered in his name, he's there, too (great quote, btw)? So, he's like the ultimate multi-tasker, like Garry Kasparov playing 32 games of chess simultaneously. Or it's like... he's 100% present at every conversation where he needs to be? Kind of like Schroedinger's cat?

Hmm. Fun idle thoughts. :)

Prayer Labyrinth at Binkley Baptist, Chapel Hill

This morning I got up at 5:45 am (woke up 5:30 yuck) to open the prayer labyrinth at Binkley Baptist Church here in Chapel Hill. This is an ecumenical effort shared by ten churches here in Chapel Hill, if I recall the figure correctly. Lit the candles, cued the music (female voices, Celtic spiritual stuff). It's in a huge area w/polished concrete floor (concrete tinted pinkish brown, not the normal grey) and big wooden arches and wood construction, and a monster skylight way overhead. Wonderful space for this, very quiet. Walking the labyrinth is kind of mystical and new-age-y, you might like it.

The labyrinth at Binkley is a copy of The Chartres labyrinth. One of the ways to walk it is found here: Walking a labyrinth. (Those are two links off the page The Labyrinth: Walking Your Spiritual Journey.)

Labyrinth, the Occult has Gone Mainstream -- conservatives hate it. A lot of energy is spent on this page detailing how evil it is.

How I Got Religion

Well, here's my story.

Possibly excruciatingly boring, possibly close to what you, dear reader, are feeling.

I've put a lot of effort into writing this, which is not to say "go easy on me" (heck, I invite comments), but is in way of an apology for its incoherence. If I had just written it in one fell swoop, sans interruptions and edits, it might have had a more "coherent incoherence" (i.e., still incoherent, but with a different, more unified, flavor).

---

As a child, my parents made me go to church. A Presbyterian, solid Republican, suburban church. (This was before the days of Ronald Reagan; the Republican choices were between Goldwater and Ivy League Republicans like Nelson Rockefeller.) If those folks in the church had any inkling of the existence of real evil in the world and what to do about it, they sure didn't tell us kids. There wasn't a whole lot of engagement, I felt. So I lost interest. Which made my parents push harder. Which made me lose interest more.

So, after a while (i.e., when I was about 15), I just stopped going; kinda put my foot down. Not a real long time after that, Joel Steinberg and Hedda Nussbaum beat their illegally-adopted daughter to death. (I just now tried to read that article, but it still upsets me too much, even today.)

That was it, the last straw (more like an eight-pound rock than a straw). My childhood church seemed totally disconnected from evil in this world, and so did God. How could he allow something this horrible to happen?

So began about 25 years of my separation from the church.

Part of that time, I was of the opinion that we were just totally random. The universe was endlessly cycling (oscillating universe theory), and we were just the natural consequence of some constants and behaviors of time, energy, matter and whatever else is in this here universe with us (string theory, anyone?).

I didn't hold on to that theory for more than a few years, if I recall, because that much infinity is hard to grasp. Really? The universe has no beginning (and no end)? Really? All this observable complexity, order from chaos, is just the natural consequence of a handful of random natural laws? We get from there to DNA, paramecium, primates, Charlemagne, Sylvia Plath and suicide borne of despair? Is it really possible to measure human misery? It's just a bunch of electrical signals? The agony we feel is nothing, really?

No, I disbelieve (...I said to myself after a few years of that). There must have been a Prime Mover, an initial impetus. God the Clockmaker. What a marvellous creation he has made. And now it's running on its own, self-winding, self-maintaining, perfectly balanced. He may be off on some other project now, or he may be simply sitting and admiring the beauty of it all, like I do after I write something I'm proud of (code, English text, whatever).

So, I came to believe that there is (or at least was) a God. If "was", where is he now? Did he die? Did he wander off to start a new project? If he died, he wouldn't be the all-powerful, omniscient deity we're thinking of. (Instead, there would be another deity above that one, and that one would be God, knowwhutimean?)

This is not a question one comes to a conclusion about and then stops considering, so my thoughts continued to develop, as time went by. If we accept that God is just watching, then we have to question His benevolence. How can He take a hands-off attitude and be counted benevolent? That would make him a cold God, like the ones the ancient Greeks and Romans seemed to believe in. Mount Olympus, deity politics, Hera, Zeus, eating babies, hey look at all those people down there they look like ants from here let's squash some and watch them run around no don't squash them let's just watch them they look so interesting.

So... why are we so interesting to God? We have free will. We have intelligence (as far as I know). Are we going to make endless interesting patterns for Him?

I've played with a fractal-generating program. Mandelbrot and Julia sets. (Remember those days?) Fascinating. All that chaos and complexity from a simple equation.

After a while, it's excruciatingly boring. Nothing really new comes out. Nothing really engages my mind.

What would engage my mind? Human conversation. An equal intellect.

Does the same thing apply to God? Is he waiting for us to grow up and join him? I honestly thought so, and maybe still do today. (Although, the more I come to understand him and us, the more I realize just how far we have to go to "grow up.")

What does it mean to join God as an equal? We'd have to be rilly powerful. Powerful enough to create a universe and beings w/intelligence and free will. But, we'd have to be Godlike in our personalities and behaviors, too. What does that imply?

What would it be like to join God as an equal? Some happy gathering in which we slap each others' backs (if we're masculine) or exchange hugs (if we're feminine) or both ('cause we'd be both :)? ) Then what? Would we start having arguments, like all independent, free-willed, intelligent beings do? That can't be, because then there'd be more than one God. After the happyfest, would one of us wander off to create a universe of his own? Hmm, my thoughts lead me to strange conclusions.

So, rather than think about that happy day when we "grow up", I just decided that it was good enough to be "spiritual," meaning: I accepted that God exists, is at least mildy interested in us, has some sort of mission for us and I would meet him when I die.

I had, earlier, read some articles about near-death experiences being the same across many different cultures and times. So, I do accept it as a given that we will meet our Maker when we die, and there will be a final judgement as to how worthy our lives were. Even if this is an illusion we experience during our last few seconds of consciousness, God could still be in that illusion. It could seem like an eternity to us, of either regret for a wasted life, or joy and peace. Maybe we'll be a heartless person who feels nothing while they're dying, but... the human subconscious is a powerful thing. Who wants to take the risk of getting a conscience when it's too late to do anything about it?

During this time (very approximately), I went to college and took a class in Quantum Mechanics. In that class, I ran across the mind-opening concept of non-Newtonian physics. At the quantum level, reality doesn't consist of little billiard balls bouncing around off each other. Electrons, neutrons, protons and photons are little packets of probability. The electron is probably right here [points to a nearby spot], but it could be over here [points to a different nearby spot], or even w-a-a-a-y-y over there [points down the street]. The milk stays in the glass because the particles of milk are moving in random directions, but, on average, downward, under the gentle influence of gravity. However, there is no fundamental reason why the milk shouldn't jump out of the glass in a graceful arc and land on my shoes, or tunnel through the glass about eight inches to the right, and then act under the "gentle influence of gravity" again. ("Tunnelling", incidentally, is another interesting concept, in which a particle is first here, then there, but without actually travelling through the intervening space.) All of which is a way of saying that there is no "must" in reality. If you drop an egg, it doesn't "must" break. If God acts to perform a miracle, it is not a violation of any scientific principle. Holy shit. A little knowledge is dangerous, I guess, especially if you're a sophomore. Quantum mechanics is the first (and only, in my experience) branch of science that allows God. So, now the possibility of miracles begins to stew in my mind, in the background, while the rest of my life is going on.

I also decided, around that time, or maybe a little later, that even if Jesus isn't divine, he was still a very wise person and what he said is worth studying. Even if he never lived, what he is said to have said is worth studying. I existed in that happy "spiritual but not church-going" state for quite a while, but one's mind never stops turning over, and more things occurred to me:

First, one of the easiest places to get involved in good works (conscience into action) is in a church. Churches frequently seem to be interested in getting "boots on the ground". So, if you're spiritual but not church-going, you still might want to be involved in a church just to get involved w/community service. One might consider that (empty) worship is actually less important than action.

Second, the measure of one's commitment to spiritual things is one's willingness to show that commitment in public or otherwise turn that commitment into action. Sure, one can read religious works in the home on a Sunday morning, while others go to church. One can take walks in the woods and commune w/God, expressing appreciation for his work in creating nature and human senses to enjoy it, and admission of one's own imperfection. But, it's kind of all for naught if you're too embarrassed to show it in public.

Third, one could mix and match elements of different religious systems, but I think there's a problem with that: given freedom, we might choose only the parts we're comfortable with and ignore the parts we're not comfortable with, so we'd wind up with this sort of self-validating religion. Even if one accepts that various advanced world religions (e.g., Hinduism, Shinto, Confucianism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam [as opposed to animism and shamanism, which seem to be more concerned with power than with ethics]) are artifices created by very wise humans, it's still reasonable, I think, to assume that they're self-consistent and well-thought-out, at least to a large degree. So, one could just pick one, and go with it, taking it seriously. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, actually preached a sermon (and thank you, Justin, for showing me this sermon) in which he said, basically, that it's not so important which particular flavor of Christianity we pick, but that we stick with what we picked while warmly embracing others who have chosen differently. In other words: no browsing. Pick one and stick with it, but recognize the validity of others' different choices. Wesley was speaking of different flavors of Christianity (and he was certainly aware of Judaism and Islam), but I'm willing to extend that to many of the world's other major religions (at least, until I get to know them better :) ).

I actually, some years ago, read a book on Buddhism by William Theodore de Bary while I was thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail, and I toyed with the idea of becoming Buddhist. In the end, though, I didn't make the leap because it felt like too much of a gimmicky move to me. I felt I should go back and face the demons of Christianity, as it were.

(Another incidental note: de Bary delivered a two-day lecture on Confucianism that looks interesting me, but I have yet to read it.)

In my experience in life, I had noticed that there were people who had a serene, quiet assurance about these sorts of matters. I always wished I could do that: be assured, and not be persecuted by doubts. I eventually came to the conclusion that it's useless to wait for proof, or for someone to reason it all out for you. The definition of "faith" is that we believe without evidence. I took that to mean that there's nothing wrong with simply believing, and since I had chosen Christianity, I only had to make two leaps of faith: (1) God exists and cares about us. Easy, already done. (2) Jesus was divine, both God's only son and God himself. That wasn't so hard, either. All of us, at some point, have had some transporting experience, something really blissful, a sense of being in the groove, in tune with the universe. Suppose you could feel that permanently? I wonder if maybe Jesus was like that: totally in tune, all the time. That would pretty much be divine, so, sure, I could accept point (2). The rest is just icing on the cake.

(Is this just some sort of group psychosis, a mass self-delusion? Hmm. How can I support the "no" position? Maybe life itself supports the position that there must be Something More.)

However, I still didn't actually do anything until an external trigger occurred: my wife decided her son (my stepson) should achieve the rank of Eagle Scout, in order to make his college applications look good. In order to do so, he needed the recommendation of a religious figure, so she ordered me to pick a church and she would join me in it (and he would, too, obviously). (We had previously discussed starting to go to church, but had never done anything about it.)

So, I scouted around a bit for a church to join. I wanted a traditional sort of church, sort of picking up where I left off (unresolved issues and all). I had a bad taste in my mouth from my childhood church (predestination, "Jesus is Lord", a smidgeon of racism [which certainly isn't restricted to Presbyterians, but which I was disappointed to find in my church]), so I was a little biased against Presbyterianism. I was definitely biased against Baptists because of all the shenanigans of the Southern Baptist Convention. I had always been sort of favorably impressed by Methodism, for one, because they sort of had a systematic, "methodical" air about them, and also because of their "Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors" slogan (it's right on their website, umc.org). It turns out that Methodism is actually pretty similar to Presbyterianism in the standard worship practices ("liturgy"), which I liked. (I actually like it more than I did when I was a child, including all the standing up and sitting down and standing up to sing a hymn and sitting down again).

There was this one church where the minister (Bill Gattis) preached these really impassioned, thought-provoking sermons with little razor blades of blackness in them. Definitely not the normal saccharine sermon, but neither was it all hellfire and brimstone and "sinners in the hands of an angry God" type stuff, either. It was stuff that made you think and appreciate. I was hooked. (The other Methodist church I looked at also had a good, thought-provoking minister, but the physical building was't austere enough for me. I like that hardwood floor, hardwood pew kind of traditional sanctuary.)

Side note: the minister that "hooked" me got promoted out of the church a year later. But one shouldn't really commit to church life solely on the basis of a charismatic minister, right? Pick a place and dig in. So, I actually officially joined the church immediately after he announced his departure, because I wanted him to be the one who "inducted" me (basically, it involved me standing in front of the congregation along w/some other folks, promising to be a good Christian in this call-and-response sort of deal).

That's when I started going to church, about four years ago (2001?). It was only the most trivial, mundane of external triggers, but sometimes, we all need some external "push" to do something, even if we're already ready to do it. My stepson and wife have long since stopped going to that church with me (they only lasted about six months, and he did get the Eagle), but I regarded that "push" as having come from God, and I'm grateful for it. (Remember that "possibility of miracles" thing I discovered in my Quantum Mechanics class?)

When I spoke to our minister about officially joining the church, he asked me a bit about my background and what I was interested in, and I said I went to Davidson College and was interested in learning more about the Bible, as I had in classes at Davidson. (They have some relatively serious Bible-as-literature classes.) His response was that I might be interested in a Bible study class called Disciple. (It's kind of a high-commitment class, right up the alley of a bookworm like me.)

So, I took it (am taking it, still). I'm in my third year, almost done with the year. (There's one more year to go.) The first year was really interesting, and it has changed me. Well, maybe I was ready to change, but it was certainly influential. I can't recommend this class enough, to all people.

While taking this class, I made the discovery that the Bible is not at all about narrow-mindedness or hellfire and brimstone (hmm, I've used that phrase three times now). It is a pretty clear call to compassion for all while following a not-entirely-unreasonable code for behavior. (Um... about that stoning adulterers thing... we can talk about that later.)

I have gained a deeper appreciation (deeper than what I had before) of... the messages in the Bible, in their various nuanced presentations. There's a fair degree of subtlety and sophistication in some of that stuff. Some of the text is cryptic enough to require study; it's pretty easy (in my opinion) to walk away with the wrong message.

And, somewhere along the line, between the examples of good folk in church and over the years, good sermons and bible reading, I have come to Believe. No dramatic born-again moment required (although there have been some little flickers). Exactly what I Believe is always up for debate, but I believe there is Something More, that we have a Calling, and it's detailed in the Bible (and maybe some other places, too, but I have chosen to study the Bible) and in communion with God (you could call that "prayer" or "meditation" or "thought" or something along those lines).

I would say, "wow, look at all those capital letters," but you know what? That would be just too self-deprecating, and not the right thing to do with the Message.

:)

* * *

By the way, Joel Steinberg was released from prison a few years ago (2004), about the same time I was getting back into religion, but after I was fairly well on the way. Is this a message from God to me? Is it a kind of test of my faith? Of course not, that would be way too solipsistic. But, how is it that we become aware of some things but not of others? Or we become aware of things a long time after they occurred? Is that just random?