Still trying the "not obsessing over tiny bits and then missing the whole picture" approach out. It was partly prompted by N.T. Wright answering a question about "how to read the bible," and presenting something entirely different than what I'm used to hearing people suggest. He stressed the importance of reading a thing the way it was intended to be read.
For instance, if Paul the apostle wrote a letter, and you never read it all at one go, and maybe then going back later to read through the bits, then you're probably missing the overview, the big picture. You're not reading it in a very natural way. Not like how you'd read a letter (or email, for modern folk.) You're just begging to interpret the individual bits in ways any understanding of the whole thing would never support.
I know a guy in Manhattan who has what he calls "Read Outs." People come, as to a poetry reading, and an entire book of the bible is read aloud. They convene elsewhere afterward, anyone who wants, and they can discuss the part of the bible they just heard in its entirety, if they want. But the point is unmistakably not to read a tiny bit of the bible for ten minutes, and then spend all of the rest of the time analyzing that little bit, but to read it aloud in natural chunks. Like, the whole book of James.
Growing up, I always had to go out to Reading Meeting every Thursday night. But it wasn't mostly reading. They usually just read one part of one chapter from one book of the bible (trying to avoid re-reading anything we'd already read). So, we might be at verse 23. They read that chapter fragment, starting at verse 23, in the King James Bible, which guaranteed that very few could follow it easily. They dismissed any 20th century translations as irreverent, poorly translated paraphrases, and then spent the vast majority of the hour doing amateur, on-the-fly paraphrases of their own, despite their having much less in the way of credentials than the guys who'd done the modern translations.
This meant that, for instance, the book of Romans took us a few months to get through. Far more time was spent on paraphrase than hearing any large percentage of the book of Romans read as one piece. On any given week, the majority of us were having trouble remembering anything that had come before, (most of it had been read as much as two months previous) in the book of Romans, and we often didn't have what was coming next in our minds either. At all.
So, basically anything could be tossed in without fear of it being cross-referenced against anything the apostle may have written twenty minutes earlier or later. That was one way of doing bible reading. Good to know there are other ways too.
This meant that, for instance, the book of Romans took us a few months to get through. Far more time was spent on paraphrase than hearing any large percentage of the book of Romans read as one piece. On any given week, the majority of us were having trouble remembering anything that had come before, (most of it had been read as much as two months previous) in the book of Romans, and we often didn't have what was coming next in our minds either. At all.
So, basically anything could be tossed in without fear of it being cross-referenced against anything the apostle may have written twenty minutes earlier or later. That was one way of doing bible reading. Good to know there are other ways too.
The Bible As An Attempt To Answer Two Big Questions
After I linked the N.T. Wright clip, a Facebook friend linked me to a lengthy analysis of the different ways to interpret the bible, and correctly slotted this view put forth by N.T. Wright into the same niche one held by a guy named T. Desmond Alexander, who wrote:
"Produced over many centuries, the differing texts that comprise this
library are amazingly diverse in terms of genre, authorship and even
language. Nonetheless, they produce a remarkably unified story that
addresses two of life's most fundamental questions:
(1) Why was the
earth created? [oh, okay. You could say "What's the point of there being an earth?" if you don't believe it was created. Changes very little in terms of arguing about this topic.]
(2) What is the reason for human existence?"
T. Desmond Alexander's From Eden to the New Jerusalem: An Introduction to Biblical Theology.
We Use Stories To Answer Questions
I've been teaching English and creative writing, and occasionally history, for some years now (like, seven) and I've been watching DVDs of TV shows and movies with the commentary tracks on for longer than that, in huge numbers, and I've always been into the whole "Big Picture" approach. Context before Content in the Classroom, I say. In Capitals. And I've seen how deep and universal the use of a story is, as a human means of making sense of the world.
I try to get the kids to see how very often they're going to package up "too many facts," snip anything that's too soon, and anything that happens too much afterward, and make a story to present to someone, usually to explain things. Stories are the cookies we make of the stuff of life, in order to get others to swallow our own perspective and experience of things. So, in court, in trouble with your folks, asked to explain the birds and the bees to a child, asked where life came from to begin with, talking to a teacher or police officer, trying to placate an aggrieved lover, trying to convey how good something would be, trying to convey how good something was, trying to convey how the very opposite of good something would be or was. It goes on and on. We do it all the time.
I try to get the kids to see how very often they're going to package up "too many facts," snip anything that's too soon, and anything that happens too much afterward, and make a story to present to someone, usually to explain things. Stories are the cookies we make of the stuff of life, in order to get others to swallow our own perspective and experience of things. So, in court, in trouble with your folks, asked to explain the birds and the bees to a child, asked where life came from to begin with, talking to a teacher or police officer, trying to placate an aggrieved lover, trying to convey how good something would be, trying to convey how good something was, trying to convey how the very opposite of good something would be or was. It goes on and on. We do it all the time.
All great sages taught with stories. Plato, Jesus, Muhammad. All great charlatans and fiends made up stories to sway the people as well. Jim Jones, Hitler, the Enron guys. (It's up to you whether you think the Bush Administration, selling the necessity of the 2001 American Invasion of Iraq, were the former or the latter.)
But stories. So no wonder I like the view Alexander holds about overarching stories unfolding through the collection of extremely diverse writings calling and answering one to the other in the book we call The Bible (The Book).
But stories. So no wonder I like the view Alexander holds about overarching stories unfolding through the collection of extremely diverse writings calling and answering one to the other in the book we call The Bible (The Book).
My Adventures Reading Isaiah
Anyway, last week I tried to see how much of Isaiah I could get through until I couldn't deal with my head being 'full' and having to stop. I only got through the first seven chapters. I was raised on "A Bible Chapter a Day Each Morning," but I also emember how it was to read the whole bible one summer when I was twelve. Ploughing through. Not stopping to try to figure out every little thing. Assuming there was an overarching thing not to be missed, a benefit from holding a large number of chapters in my head at the same time and being able to think and feel about them like that.
Today I tried the same thing. I started back in chapter 1 again, and having already read the first seven made it easier to plough through, but I still only got through to the tenth chapter. I was tempted to go research Assyria, or Ephraim or Samaria and know more about their geography, their origins and their mentions in the New Testament. To find out more about what they meant as archetypes. But I fought that urge and ploughed through until my head complained enough that I stopped. I can do them later. Like now, if I want.
Today I tried the same thing. I started back in chapter 1 again, and having already read the first seven made it easier to plough through, but I still only got through to the tenth chapter. I was tempted to go research Assyria, or Ephraim or Samaria and know more about their geography, their origins and their mentions in the New Testament. To find out more about what they meant as archetypes. But I fought that urge and ploughed through until my head complained enough that I stopped. I can do them later. Like now, if I want.
I had to fight one urge, deeply trained into me: to see the things God is taking away from Judah as individually "wrong," and therefore as being something individuals were being punished for doing, one at a time, individually, with no bigger picture. Like, Isaiah describes the daughters of the women of Jerusalem as acting like divas, princesses. Proud and haughty. And God was going to leave them wandering the streets covered in sores, hair fallen out in patches, leaving them bald and filthy, wrapped in burlap sacking for clothes, all their makeup and jewellery and vanity gone. And it was almost impossible to read that as a consequence for a bigger problem, done by their culture as a whole, rather than just "God hates vanity and is punishing each vain person." Same thing with every single other consequence to an overall attitude problem Judah had.
It was clear. God had bigger fish to fry than one girl thinking she was Kim Kardashian.. God hadn't sent Isaiah to talk to the people, and have his message inscribed for perpetuity in the holy writings of the three Abrahamic religions, and call Judah "Sodom" and "Gomorrah" because some girls thought they were Paris Hilton. ("But one girl thinking she was Paris Hilton was vanity, so it was wrong," one person would say. Another person would say "Whatever. So not the point.")
It wasn't just that so many people had individual vagaries, and that He was punishing lots of them individually, like we'd prefer to imagine today. He was punishing the whole kingdom. For a general attitude and approach to life. Tarring all of it with one Big Brush. Even people innocent of this attitude. Everyone.
It wasn't just that so many people had individual vagaries, and that He was punishing lots of them individually, like we'd prefer to imagine today. He was punishing the whole kingdom. For a general attitude and approach to life. Tarring all of it with one Big Brush. Even people innocent of this attitude. Everyone.
The Story I Was Seeing
The story as I was seeing it is is this: God "set up" Israel for success, with Jerusalem being where He was to be worshipped. In a very human fashion, Israel succumbed to political infighting and various men vying for power, and was split into two kingdoms (because two guys needed to be king so badly they split the whole country in half rather than give up power. People died. People lost everything.) What had formerly just been Israel became two kingdoms: Israel and Judah. Confusingly, "Israel" kept the name of the original, while Judah kept the city of Jerusalem, the central place of worship.
Now, one would tend to assume God would approve of the side which "kept" Jerusalem. That He's take that side. They weren't just Israelites in name, but they also worshipped according to the book, in the right place, as it were. Yet, as I said before, God is disgusted with them. Their every scriptural, religious, traditional observance disgusted and annoyed Him rather than was honoured by Him as proper and dutiful. He actually sends a prophet mainly to tell them that, in great detail and at great length. He calls them names. Specifically, besides a whole lot of animal images, he calls them Sodom and Gomorrah, places renowned for having earned God's displeasure in the past and being razed to the ground. And He threatens them. Even if they repent, He's still going to lay a huge beatdown on them.
Stuff Judah Did Wrong
This raises the question: what exactly did Judah do to earn the disgust of God? How were they acting that made God no longer enjoy having His Name associated globally with them, and made Him want to distance Himself from their smug daily routine, and their whole culture? Some common, recurrent biblical complaints are levelled against them in Isaiah. Ones you can find all through the bible. Ones that are often levelled against every church out there today. In Judah, center of the place to worship God:
-the powerful oppressed the weak, exploiting them rather than looking after them. The poor, the widows, the fatherless (the disenfranchised, those with no one to speak for them) are trodden over roughshod. Neglected like our homeless today. Or exploited, like white folk did with the aboriginal people of...well... the entire world. This spirit is seen in older bible stories in situations such as the one in which the Queen wants to have a regular citizen's vineyard, so has him killed to take it for herself, or where the King plays peeping tom, creeping a regular citizen's hot wife, and has him killed so he can take said hot wife to add to his own collection of hot wives.
-vanity. the success, the prosperity, the unity, the good humour, the power, the beauty, the art, the everything good that God was making sure they had and enjoyed was a source of pride rather than gratitude. (never mind humility. What about gratitude?) In a slightly different conversation, a comparison is made between an axe talking like it's just cut down a tree by itself, when clearly, a dude merely used it in cutting down trees himself.
-the values and virtues expected of them by their own God ignored, the people were interested in inventing gods made in their own image, or in the image of their favourite animals. Idolatry. Taking the focus of their attention and appreciation off the source of the good stuff, and putting it on an archetype, or 'ism, or human guy, or book, or tradition, or activity, or fictional character.
Application To A Modern Christian Church
Do I even need to do this? Maybe. Maybe this isn't as obvious as one would hope. Here are some ways you could mess this up, Judah style, and earn God's disgust, His withdrawal of association, utility and blessing:
-the powerful oppressing the weak. In a church, sometimes this just adds up to people with more social status generally getting their way, and if people with less social status annoy them or impugn them or even disagree strenuously enough with them, then potent social retribution and oppression/alienation/ostracizing occurs. Social assassinations and career sabotage are the way of the unprincipled 21st century human being.
Also, it can be an education or title thing. The "powerful" can be those with a divinity degree, the title of elder, pastor or whatever, or sometimes last names and inherited family power can determine who is "the powerful." In some churches, anyone who has a problem with how an elder, pastor or Johnson or Smith handled something may be out of luck, and had better shut up or that's it for them. In other places, if you don't have a degree, you don't get to talk.
-vanity. Whatever it is that you like in your church can go there, if you let it. You can feel responsible for the thing, rather than grateful for it. How much doctrine or teaching or theology you feel your group is a repository for, how much humility you feel your pastor or church shows, how diverse you claim your church is, how many people attend it, how nice it is in there, how good the music is, how spiritual you feel the people generally are, how "positive" everyone is, how noble those in positions of authority are. Any of that. The line is crossed when you move from enjoying the thing to using it as a badge of honour for your group, as a "product feature" to be used in selling it.
Christians are pretty well taught against vanity, so they have evolved a pretty neat trick in many circles: having vanity on behalf of others. Or on behalf of the entire group. Like that's somehow not vanity.
There is little God hates more than vanity and smug, self-satisfied boasting. In common everyday terms, we all know that feeling when we're getting high on our own primacy in something. "I'm the prettiest girl in the room!" "No one here can even try to argue with me, because they suck!"
-Idolatry. Heavily connected with the other two. Stems from the latter, quite often, and causes the former, very commonly. I was always taught that idolatry could be identified by how much someone liked something. I'd argue that it can be identified by how and why someone likes something. So, the way people tried to identify idolatry, in our church (which group publicly proclaimed its superiority in terms of teaching, administrative practice, worship style and just general Christian-hood) was thusly:
"Sam loves hockey. He really loves playing it. Probably too much. It takes a lot of his time. Time he could be spending reading his bible. Therefore, it's an idol. Sam should give up hockey for God."
Now let's look at two guys who could be accused of having made an idol of hockey shall we?
A Tale Of Two Church Hockey Guys
Sam I Am loves hockey because of how it feels. He loves trying and working and getting in the zone and falling into sync with the entire experience and having it work out. Something really opens up inside him. The game takes him entirely out of himself. He isn't thinking of any of his problems while he's playing. He actually feels wonderful playing and often remembers to correctly attribute the experience of a fun evening playing it to God. If the players really enjoy each other, and there is warmth and camaraderie and unity, he correctly attributes that to God. He sees God as the source of all the good stuff. He understands that God is goodness itself, and that anything that was actually good about the evening, came from God.
Sam loves hockey. It's a thing he can see God in. When he's loving hockey and seeing it coming from God, God is loving him and the hockey and delivering the "good" up to Sam and the people he's playing it with, in spades. And people are attracted to that dynamic. They want to play hockey with Sam, and they also will listen to Sam talk about life and hockey and dealing with problems and even about God and the bible. When Sam has problems, they want to help. If they have problems, Sam can be counted upon. It's a whole little confluence of good things, drawing God and Sam and other people together, to have what some cheesy church folk might term "a God experience." And then Robert Righteous has come in and demanded shame and guilt and serious piety put a stop to all of it. Shame on him.
Sam loves hockey. It's a thing he can see God in. When he's loving hockey and seeing it coming from God, God is loving him and the hockey and delivering the "good" up to Sam and the people he's playing it with, in spades. And people are attracted to that dynamic. They want to play hockey with Sam, and they also will listen to Sam talk about life and hockey and dealing with problems and even about God and the bible. When Sam has problems, they want to help. If they have problems, Sam can be counted upon. It's a whole little confluence of good things, drawing God and Sam and other people together, to have what some cheesy church folk might term "a God experience." And then Robert Righteous has come in and demanded shame and guilt and serious piety put a stop to all of it. Shame on him.
Will I Wish is different from Sam I Am. Will I Wish loves trouncing everyone who isn't as good as he is. He likes making players look stupid, by being better. When decisions relating to what night hockey will be played on arise, or who is playing what position and who is captain, Will cares deeply that this come out according to his own vision of how it should go, with him getting his way every time. He will do whatever it takes to make it go his way. He makes no attempt, and had no ability, to see anyone else's side of anything. He will use his skills, his social status, any monetary considerations he can bring into the matter, the fact that he lives near the arena. Any of that.
When he doesn't get what he wants, he takes small, petty revenges. He erodes and poisons the offending person's social status by slander and gossip. He seeks to "open the eyes" of others as to how dangerous or odious this person who disagree with him is. He checks him harder or doesn't pass to him when playing.
Will is there to win glory for himself. He does not do assists. He hotly contests any decision that ruins any chance for him to be seen by others to be the best. He is very tempted to cheat, and does if he can get away with it. He has no sportsmanship. He takes the confidence that comes from a position as assistant pastor, and thinks that translates into him being the king at the rink. He doesn't drive anyone home, or if he does, they end up "owing" him somehow, generally praise and social support.
Will goes to church because it makes him look decent and proper. He decides it's right for everyone to do it (because he does it) and he bothers anyone who's been missing church services, and threatens to have them forbidden to play hockey with the church guys if they can't attend better.
Will thinks hockey is awesome because he is making it awesome. When things really aren't going his way at hockey, his "big gun" is to threaten that just maybe, he might have to play hockey elsewhere, or (tragedy of tragedies) nowhere at all.
When he doesn't get what he wants, he takes small, petty revenges. He erodes and poisons the offending person's social status by slander and gossip. He seeks to "open the eyes" of others as to how dangerous or odious this person who disagree with him is. He checks him harder or doesn't pass to him when playing.
Will is there to win glory for himself. He does not do assists. He hotly contests any decision that ruins any chance for him to be seen by others to be the best. He is very tempted to cheat, and does if he can get away with it. He has no sportsmanship. He takes the confidence that comes from a position as assistant pastor, and thinks that translates into him being the king at the rink. He doesn't drive anyone home, or if he does, they end up "owing" him somehow, generally praise and social support.
Will goes to church because it makes him look decent and proper. He decides it's right for everyone to do it (because he does it) and he bothers anyone who's been missing church services, and threatens to have them forbidden to play hockey with the church guys if they can't attend better.
Will thinks hockey is awesome because he is making it awesome. When things really aren't going his way at hockey, his "big gun" is to threaten that just maybe, he might have to play hockey elsewhere, or (tragedy of tragedies) nowhere at all.
It was actually Will who suggested that Sam should give up hockey. For God. Sam is better than Will is.
Debrief
It is obvious that conclusions as to judging the place of hockey in these two guys' lives based on how much they care about it (equal), or how much time they spend playing it (equal) are silly ones. It's the spirit/attitude that is the really important thing here. According to the bible, God looks at the "inner things of the heart." His objections as not so much only relating to what is done, but what's in the heart. So, the vanity, the oppression of weaker and more vulnerable people, and thinking the good in the thing (even a hockey game) is something I bring with me, and take when I leave? All that flows out into not only what is done, but how. Because of "why."
The Solution
The story with prophets in the old testament is almost always kinda the same one. "God isn't happy. You're inventing things to worship instead of seeing Him in good things. 'Jimi Hendrix's guitar sure could write songs,' you say. The weak, powerless and helpless are exploited and left to rot. And you're smug. Even if you can see what He's sent me to tell you, not everyone's going to be able to, which is why He's allow crap to go wrong and 'awesome' to go away. But if you rethink it all, and approach things in a different way, with a clearer vision of it all and your place in it, and what good you can do there, He's gonna love that. And ultimately that's where hope is."
The Solution
The story with prophets in the old testament is almost always kinda the same one. "God isn't happy. You're inventing things to worship instead of seeing Him in good things. 'Jimi Hendrix's guitar sure could write songs,' you say. The weak, powerless and helpless are exploited and left to rot. And you're smug. Even if you can see what He's sent me to tell you, not everyone's going to be able to, which is why He's allow crap to go wrong and 'awesome' to go away. But if you rethink it all, and approach things in a different way, with a clearer vision of it all and your place in it, and what good you can do there, He's gonna love that. And ultimately that's where hope is."
No comments:
Post a Comment