Divinely feminine

She Who Is, originally uploaded by juliecinci.

Our discussion group wound up its investigation of the book She Who Is by Elizabeth Johnson. The vase is a thank you gift. Pretty appropriate, don't you think? ;-)

Falling away from faith Pt. 10

In addition to reading the Bible through the historical-critical methodology (which in itself was a genuinely new way for me to investigate Scripture), graduate school opened to me other modes of inquiry: ideological criticism, reader-response criticism, autobiographical interpretation, feminist and liberation critiques, narrative criticism and more.

The most powerful of these (to me initially) was ideological criticism, or sometimes called "reading against the text." In my years of evangelicalism, the aim of all Scripture readings was to find the harmonic thread - the way the passage being read fit into the rest of the Bible and validated our core beliefs. One such inviolable belief was that God never changed. That meant the God of the Old Testament who led the Hebrews to defend their lands, to take other lands and to wipe out other people groups had to be reconciled with Jesus, the Son of God who modeled radical notions of peace.

Another belief was that if the Bible said "God said it," then God must have said it. There was no chance that the words in the Bible were somehow the words men had put into God's mouth. If that were the case, then inspiration of Scripture (the version of inspiration that allows for no inconsistencies or errors) would be at risk.

Reading against the text, then, meant to consider that some stories consolidate power, subdue challenges to power or articulate proper hierarchies that control some and establish others as the God-chosen leaders. Ideological criticism, or reading against the text, means to ask questions about who gains what from a particular version of the story and who suffers loss. It means giving a close reading to notice if the text manipulates anyone.

I wrote a piece on Numbers 16 that takes an ideological critical view. Sometimes I think it's easier to understand how something works by experiencing it rather than my telling you about it. So I've included that short essay here.

--

Question #2; Numbers 16:1-50 (Ideological Criticism)

The Bible is peppered with narratives that shape our ideas about power relationships between people and God, particularly how those power structures are formed and reformed. Who has access to God, is one of the recurring issues confronting the ancient Israelites. Given the gradual shift from the human experience of intimacy with a fully anthropomorphized deity in the Garden of Eden, to the God of Exodus who dwells in smoke and fire on a forbidding mountain, it’s not surprising that the privilege to approach God dwindles from general access to a select few, of God’s own choosing.

Any time a common experience becomes scarce or a select few are given special access, the potential for jealousy, rivalry and abuse of privilege exists. Numbers 16:1-50 represents the skillful conflation of “two episodes involving defiance of leadership” (Blenkinsopp 173). Dathan and Abiram (two Reubenites) join with Korah (a Levite) and 250 lay leaders to challenge how hierarchy and authority are lived in the community.
“Ideological criticism is interested in examining the content and context of these various faces of oppression and their ethical significance” (Postmodern Bible 304). What are the implications of this text as a product of writers who have a power position to protect? How is divinely appointed privilege (that separates laity from clergy) dangerous? I’d like to look at the nature of the content and context of this story first, and then at the ethical significance of this passage for us today.

Korah’s challenge to Moses doesn’t demand more authority for himself, even though that is how Moses interprets it. Korah says, “You have gone too far! The whole community is holy; every one of them, and the Lord is with them. Why then do you set yourselves above the Lord’s assembly?” (v. 3) Korah criticizes the system of leadership that operates according to pre-established degrees of holiness. He confronts the arrogance and exclusivity of the leadership.

Moses responds by asserting, “You Levites have gone too far” (v.7). He recasts the criticism as originating in a competing hunger for power and uses shaming tactics to underscore the danger of challenging or criticizing his leadership: “Is it too little for you that the God of Israel has separated you from the congregation of Israel, to approach him in order to perform the duties of the Lord’s tabernacle…?” (v.9) He assumes that the lay leaders and the Levites want to be full-fledged priests and argues that instead, they ought to be content with their current status in the community.

God confirms Moses’ interpretation and executes a spectacular judgment of Korah and his men; the ground opens and swallows the rebels including all that is defiled by contact with them–wives, children and even entire households (v. 32). No one could be in doubt of God’s meaning: don’t challenge the God-ordained leaders, nor should anyone desire a place in the religious hierarchy that has not been appointed by the Lord.

The judgment took place in the “midst of the assembly” (v. 33) and should have served as a teaching moment. But the congregation couldn’t discern that there had been cause for such a judgment, “You have killed the people of the Lord” (v.41), they protested. Their “rebellious” comments caused the Lord to send a plague upon the congregation, which was only quelled when Aaron (the rightful, ordained priest) executed the proper ritual to reconcile the people to God.

The ideological message couldn’t be clearer–leaders are appointed by God. Complaining about them lands followers in a heap of trouble. And only by the merciful execution of the proper atoning rituals by the elected leaders can the congregation remain rightly related to God and protected from further punishment. Situating this text in its historical context, Blenkinsopp suggests that a struggle for temple control and its revenues, as well as a challenge to priestly hegemony in the Persian period (6th-4th BCE) might clarify the ideological agenda of this story. The priestly writers, in an effort to protect their privileged position, have written a cautionary tale for the Israelites–a place for everyone and everyone in his place.

In my opinion, this story should not be used as an endorsement of authoritarianism. Nor is it a sanction against criticizing leaders. Read uncritically, one might find support for clerical superiority and resistance to criticism from the laity. As a woman in evangelical circles, I have experienced similar lines of reasoning: “Do not challenge male leadership of the church. God gives you your sphere of influence and it is wrong to question God’s hierarchical structure.” An ideological critique of this passage offers us a means for evaluating the dangers of authoritarianism, especially the kind that suppresses criticism of leaders by those who are in power.

--

An ideological reading of the Exodus account might ask why Egyptians not in power deserved to suffer the same way that the leadership did? An ideological reading of New Testament epistles might ask why such a strong hierarchy related to men and women is asserted when there is no corresponding teaching in the Gospels, or why Paul seems inconsistent in his beliefs about the roles and value of women in Christ.

There are loads of other ways to read the Bible (I've not even touched on half of them here). Scot McKnight, ironically, is doing a series on Jesus Creed right now that is outlining some of them.

Are these new to you? Familiar? Helpful? Distressing? What do you think?

How the Jesus Seminar Works

One of my favorite columnists over at R&S forums for UPI wrote a wonderful, concise explanation of the Jesus Seminar and how it works. If you have only a vague familiarity with it (or believe that the members are the spawn of Satan), I commend the reading of it to you.

18 Percent Jesus, Richard Hooper

A Doubting Teresa

I wrote for UPI this week (took August off). I'll probably be contributing once every two weeks (maybe even move to monthly) because I do so much writing now, it's been difficult to keep up with UPI as well.

This column takes some of the writing from the last two blog entries and expands the thoughts. You may or may not want to read it if you've been reading along here. I post it for those of you who are coming to the blog to discuss the article (found me through UPI) or those who aren't finished talking about this topic (or are just really nice and always read what I write regardless). :)

Thanks for everyone's participation the last several weeks. I feel I've been able to get inside some of the thoughts at a more profound level through your comments, challenges and contributions.

Salut! (as the French say)

Mother Teresa: Part Two

I started to post a very long comment so I thought I'd just put up a new entry to discuss this further.

Dave said: It demonstrates to me at least that "faith" as practiced and understood by many Christians (and others) is not based on evidence or anything demonstrable, but is rather a choice of affiliations that we make for a variety of complex and individually diverse reasons.

I liked how you put this. The reason I raised the issue "what is faith?" is that that very term is critical to this discussion. Are we willing to overlook the persistent, unending doubt and lack of experience in Mother Teresa because she was "Mother Teresa?"

When I expressed doubt online several years ago (the extent of my doubts at the time had to do with not seeing Scripture as the inerrant word of God and wondering what the Son of God actually meant), I was asked to "re-sign" a statement of faith before I was allowed to be a camp counselor for a homeschool group. Never mind that I had already signed it years before. Never mind that I was expressing doubt, yet had not "settled" anywhere in my beliefs at that point in time.

The response I received from those in charge was that doubts assail us all, but we are not to express them publicly (only privately) and that if I could no longer sign the statement of faith at that moment in time, I no longer believed. Belief had to be asserted, not doubted. Had I been Teresa, apparently, I would have signed as an act of faith. Yet in my tradition, scrupulous honesty was valued. The woman who "outed me" to the leadership made it clear in a phone call that she was "counting on the fact that I'm an honest heart" (and therefore would not sign) and would not force her hand by "making her" send the "incriminating" writings to the leadership team.

In other words, had I signed the SoF, I would have had to endure the humiliation of being seen as someone who was lying about my faith in addition to doubting aspects of it.

So that brings me back to Teresa. She knew she could not express this doubt publicly and did not. She kept it private and in writing, asking for these testimonies of doubt to be destroyed.

So here's the first question: Why? Why did she know that doubt is incompatible with profession of faith? What consequence did she fear?

If not experiencing God and doubting God, yet working for God anyway is what constitutes admirable faith (and we all know that supposedly), why aren't more leaders and lay Christians openly expressing doubts on a regular basis, yet going to church and doing Christian work anyway? Why is there such emphasis on conforming to beliefs? How does doubt fit in with belief?

Carrie: I see Teresa's perseverance as proof of her faith, not evidence of lack of it.

Well, let's look at that for a minute.

In the article, it states:

She compares the experience to hell and at one point says it has driven her to doubt the existence of heaven and even of God. She is acutely aware of the discrepancy between her inner state and her public demeanor. "The smile," she writes, is "a mask" or "a cloak that covers everything." Similarly, she wonders whether she is engaged in verbal deception. "I spoke as if my very heart was in love with God — tender, personal love," she remarks to an adviser. "If you were [there], you would have said, 'What hypocrisy.'"

Is Teresa admitting to lying? Sounds like it. Hypocrisy is a strong word to use to describe self. Avoiding hypocrisy has been the guiding principle of my re-evaluation of faith. I have attempted "with God, without God and before God" (as Bonhoeffer might put it) to openly describe my spiritual state as truthfully as I knew how because I saw a close link between truth (Jesus is supposed to have said he is the way, the TRUTH, and the life) and spiritual health. Why didn't Teresa?

I suggest it's because she had the expectation that her condition was abnormal. She believed herself to be hated by God and couldn't understand why. That means at some point in time, she received teaching that did not suggest faith was the persistence in good works while filled with doubt and a lack of experiences in God.

When someone complains that they have never experienced God (or don't), what advice do you give? What helpful comments have you received? Most of the time, the suffering soul is asked to pray more, to confess sin, to receive the gift of tongues, to enter soaking prayer, to attend more powerful worship, to trust that some day that experience will reach him or her.

How do I know this? It's what I've heard taught - over and over and over again. Testimonials of how God warmed Wesley's heart (even Bonhoeffer's heart) are shared in church as evidence of God as personal, not remote, distant and hidden. Catholics have told me that if I received Eucharist again, I'd become faith-filled and find the Real Presence.

Teresa's story should be a shockwave heard around the world of faith. If not her (she was not to receive comfort or God's presence), then why me or anyone else? But even more, why not confess these feelings publicly?

For instance: would it have been more "faith-filled" for a person like me to pretend belief during doubt, to wear a mask, to act as though I believed while I doubted? Is that the model Teresa might be giving us?

Teresa writes:

So many unanswered questions live within me afraid to uncover them — because of the blasphemy — If there be God — please forgive me — When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven — there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives & hurt my very soul. — I am told God loves me — and yet the reality of darkness & coldness & emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul. Did I make a mistake in surrendering blindly to the Call of the Sacred Heart?

We get a glimpse here. Blasphemy! The horrid word. Yes - exactly. That is why we hide doubt and belief is meant to be confessed publicly. But at what cost? What does that do to many who don't know the extent to which doubt is harbored even in the most holy of Christian examples?

Teresa persevered in her work (which could be described as faith, though that has not been the definition I've run into in most Christian contexts - confession of Jesus Christ as Lord, belief in the true doctrines of the RCC). She hid her doubts, learned to live with them, she acted as though God was real and with her despite a lack of experience to correspond with it (assuming the article is a fair representation of the book).

But there is a problem here that I think should be addressed theologically. When someone cries out to God (who purportedly knows all about us and could reach us as unique individuals) and eventually finds solace and comfort and another never does... what does that say about the responsiveness of God?

I wish we wouldn't run from the crisis for faith this ought to create, because theology could get a lot more robust and creative if we faced the disappointment it is to find out that we can’t know that we’ve ever apprehended God, that we can’t tell if he’s apprehended us, that our devotion and prayers don’t necessarily create “relationship” (the most popular way evangelical Christians, for instance, describe religion).

So I ask again: What is faith? If faith is the dogged persistence to hide doubts and live out precepts without any corresponding sense of their being true… well, wow. That's brand new news to me.

Is it good news? Is that the Gospel? Is that relationship and not religion? Is that what it means to be indwelt by the Holy Spirit? Is that what it means to receive the Real Presence?

I think these questions deserve more than a passing apologetic.

Mother Teresa's "Come Be My Light"

Remember how I've said repeatedly that a theology that doesn't take into account Christian's lack of experiences with God as part of its description of what it means to be Christian is not a robust theology? I never would have thought Mother Teresa would be exhibit A for that statement. A new book featuring 40 correspondences by Mother Teresa to her superiors over a 66 year period portrays a very different Teresa than the public face so many of us came to know and love.

Time magazine has posted a lengthy article that discusses what might be made of this lengthy dark night of the soul that lasted even longer than the 45 year one endured by St. John of the Cross.

The letters, many of them preserved against her wishes (she had requested that they be destroyed but was overruled by her church), reveal that for the last nearly half-century of her life she felt no presence of God whatsoever — or, as the book's compiler and editor, the Rev. Brian Kolodiejchuk, writes, "neither in her heart or in the eucharist."

That absence seems to have started at almost precisely the time she began tending the poor and dying in Calcutta, and — except for a five-week break in 1959 — never abated. Although perpetually cheery in public, the Teresa of the letters lived in a state of deep and abiding spiritual pain. In more than 40 communications, many of which have never before been published, she bemoans the "dryness," "darkness," "loneliness" and "torture" she is undergoing. She compares the experience to hell and at one point says it has driven her to doubt the existence of heaven and even of God. She is acutely aware of the discrepancy between her inner state and her public demeanor. "The smile," she writes, is "a mask" or "a cloak that covers everything." Similarly, she wonders whether she is engaged in verbal deception. "I spoke as if my very heart was in love with God — tender, personal love," she remarks to an adviser. "If you were [there], you would have said, 'What hypocrisy.'" Says the Rev. James Martin, an editor at the Jesuit magazine America and the author of My Life with the Saints, a book that dealt with far briefer reports in 2003 of Teresa's doubts: "I've never read a saint's life where the saint has such an intense spiritual darkness. No one knew she was that tormented." Recalls Kolodiejchuk, Come Be My Light's editor: "I read one letter to the Sisters [of Teresa's Missionaries of Charity], and their mouths just dropped open. It will give a whole new dimension to the way people understand her."

Postscript: This morning I clicked around on other blogs looking at the ways in which Christians are interpreting the revelations about Teresa. One blog sums it up saying we can't guarantee spiritual experiences, but must cling to Christ's promises and God's character. He goes on to say that we have the "hope of mercies that are new every morning amidst a long dark night."

I couldn't help but ask: What new mercies? A 66 year dark night doesn't really include daily morning new mercies, does it?

Another blog (by Ruth Tucker - author of Walking Away from Faith which I've read) said, "There were times when Mother Teresa was tormented. But it doesn’t have to be that way. We can come to terms with the belief and unbelief that coexists in our lives and know that we are not alone. Our prayer is simple: Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief."

What? I'm astounded at the idea that from the excerpts we read, someone could say that "it doesn't have to be that way." The reports so far (we'll read more when we have context and the book) is that it was that way for Teresa... unabated (except for a five week hiatus) in 66 years. I didn't have the impression that unbelief was the chief characteristic of her crisis. It was more existential in nature: how can a Christian devoted to God's service reconcile the absence of God's presence when companionship, new mercies, Real Presence (in the Eucharist) have been promised to the faithful yet denied to her?

And how useful is the prayer, "Lord I believe, help my unbelief" if you've never experienced his help in decades? What does that even mean?

I do consider Teresa heroic. Jon said this morning that it makes him admire Teresa for her courage to continue helping people which overcame her personal need to disclose her despair (and possibly end her work). She kept her despair well-concealed and confessed it only to those who were spiritually responsible for her.

Still, I'm sure more reminders that we are not to abandon hope that God will make "himself" known to us will flow in, utterly missing the point - Teresa didn't experience God for most of her life, felt despair because of it, yet kept at her mission anyway.

In Memoriam: Mary

I remember Mary. She wore the draping black lace veil over her hair during prayer. She put it on right as her husband, Colin, announced that it was time for the congregation to offer their prayers. Colin's French had a wonderful British quality to it. And distinctive to their church, he always allowed time for spontaneous congregational prayers saying simply after the announcements: "Prions."

Various church members would lift up their loved ones with impassioned voices - a sick aunt who needed surgery, a friend who moved out of town, a child about to wed. Some offered praises to God. Mary prayed in her Americanized French fluently. Her voice had a distinct quality to it - almost grating, yet tempered by kindness. Hard to describe except that I can still hear it in my head, both the French and English versions of it.

She and Colin welcomed me into their church family during my junior year abroad in Montpellier. They showed interest, they introduced me to their children, they had me out to their home for a meal (the only church family to do that besides the missionaries in training). Colin led the college Bible study I attended every Saturday night (and often drove me to it). He had this incredible way of fostering a lively atmosphere while managing to create a sincere attachment to the Bible and faith. As an Englishman in France, I found it remarkable how well loved he was.

Likewise, I'd see Mary after services intently conversing with other members of the church, her little veil tucked away with her Bible under her arm. She had an air of unhurried interest. And she always greeted me.

I asked her one time why she wore a veil and no one else in the church did (after all, she was a pastor's wife and usually congregations model themselves after their leaders). She replied simply: she didn't wear her veil as a matter of obligation, but because it drew her closer to God when she prayed. The point was how one felt related to God, not what one wore or didn't wear on one's head. (I wish I had taken that philosophy a little more to heart in the years immediately following my time at the Centre Biblique.)

I returned to the states in June, ready to complete my senior year in the fall. The Crows, who had foreign exchange students visit their church every year, didn't forget about me. In fact, they wrote to me, sent me Christmas cards. The following summer when I went on a mission trip to central Africa, little Centre Biblique was one of the few churches to support me. They sent 600 francs (about $100 at the time) - a most generous contribution.

On my way back from what was then Zaire, I stopped in to see Colin and Mary... and the church. They let me give a report in French to the gathered assembly. I still remember clicking along in my story when I noticed to my delight that I had been speaking French nearly fluently for ten minutes, and in front of an entire room of French people, and wasn't that amazing? and wasn't I doing so well? when all of the sudden, in my momentary self-congratulatory euphoria... I lost my place in the sentence.

I froze: a dangling French 'r' hanging off my tongue without any syllable to follow, eyelids blinking open, closed, open, completely at a loss for how to get to the end of the word let alone sentence. Dozens of pairs of suspicious French eyes stared at me, waiting. Oh no, I thought. I always knew I was one misspoken word away from confirming to the entire nation of France that I could not, in fact, speak their language well enough.

That's when I saw Mary smiling up at me, nodding encouragingly. Colin, in a smooth step forward, put his arm around my shoulders, chuckled and finished my thought on my behalf (whatever "pearl of wisdom" it was supposed to have been). The congregation broke into gentle laughter and I found a seat, grateful again to the Crows for being there at the right time.

I went home with the Crows that afternoon and stayed with them for three days (they even welcomed my traveling companion, Craig, who they'd never met). We ate the most delicious French dinners under the grape arbor in their backyard, kids joking and teasing, Mary laughing, fussing over details and serving, Colin happily hosting. What an image of it I still have!

I marked one such night in my memory promising myself that my future would hold a happy husband and outdoor dinners in summer with perfectly at ease, talkative teens. (I still think of the Crows when we do eat outside and enjoy each other.)

Each night after dinner and dessert, the teen girls and younger boy got ready for bed. Mary went from one bed to the next spending as long as each child needed to unwind and talk to his or her mom. Not even company prevented Mary from being available to her children.

As it went, the Crows were the ones who hooked me up with my mission agency (Frontiers) which eventually led to my meeting and marrying Jon. Mary's sister was married to the founder of the mission agency and ironically lived in the same community house as Jon. When Jon and I married and traveled through France, Jon was treated to a short stay with the Crows and the same wonderful outdoor dinners again.

Shortly thereafter, their kids started marrying and having babies. I've followed along all these years, knowing the Crows were about 15 years ahead of me in life. Somehow through it all, the Crows continued to care about keeping in touch with this forgettable foreign exchange student. Only they didn't forget.

Over the last three weeks, Colin has sent word to supporters that Mary has been suffering through radiation therapy to treat cancer and as a result, had brain swelling and a host of other ailments. In the midst of all the challenges Mary faced, Colin's own mother died in England the second week of August. And then, last week, the prayer requests became urgent.

Yesterday morning - an email pinged my in-box whose title merely said "Mary"... and I knew.

Colin phrased it like this:

Mary went to be with the Lord she loves this afternoon at 5pm... She passed away to her reward peacefully as we were holding her hand and praying. The loss is indescribable and certainly not what we were praying for or expecting but we trust that Jesus will be glorified in her departure as He was by her life.

Today, through tears and memories, I wished for it to be so for Mary who loved her Lord and lived in light of that love all her too-short life, and shared some of it with me.

So in my dream, I jumped from a speeding

car, onto the concrete, rolling to avoid broken bones, cuts and abrasions. I heaved myself upright, unharmed, and dusted my legs, when, "Yelp!"

A blur of images and confused thoughts.

I opened and closed my eyes.

Rocky?

I struggled to remember why Rocky barks in the wee hours of the morning except to ruin a perfectly good night's sleep. In a fog, I slid out of bed (like I do every morning to let him out to pee), and weaved toward the door, woozy. I reached for the stair rail to support my wobbly body as I gingerly descended our very steep, very slippery stairwell... and missed.

My hand nicked the wall, my feet shot out from under me and feet first, I skidded on my bottom, bumping the top of every step, sending the bottles of Lysol and hair spray flying (that had waited to be carried up the stairs) until finally I smacked the wood floors, arms hyper-extended taking the brunt of the fall, legs stiff, tail bone throbbing.

Yeah, I could so jump from a speeding car and walk away from it.

Falling away from faith Pt. 9

I'll be completing this series under this title with Part 10, but I'll continue to discuss issues drawn from this series and will change the title to reflect those changes.

A few emails have asked if I think "falling away" is an appropriate term for what has happened to me and others. I used that phrase because of what it means to those who are still in the more traditional formulations of the faith. It's often confusing to create new terms and then define them. What I've gone through fits the typical "idea" of "falling away" yet it also challenges it on some levels. So by using that title, I've given a signal about what kind of discussion this series will be, but I also hope I've challenged some of the assumptions of what falling away ultimately means or looks like.

I used to say that I had lost faith but never lost interest. That's still a workable distinction related to how I've changed in my relationship to Christianity. Still, we'll look at the word and idea of "faith" in another installment because the meaning of it has changed a bit for me as well.

Now for the next installment proper.

--

When I threw out the "Hail Mary" to Dr. Dewey about my concerns regarding the Pentateuch, I did so because I could tell that my thinking was still limited by how I'd been trained to think about the Bible. I didn't expect a response from Dr. Dewey, yet he sent one and it was at the time, completely surprising to me. I've excerpted the parts I thought would be useful here. The bits from my original email are in blue, Dewey's response is in black, my new comments are in red.

Anyway, we got into whether there is enough credible evidence for the exodus to verify it as a historical event. Clearly there isn't enough evidence to prove it happened. But there is also an absence of disproving evidence as well (which in the circles I come from is some sort of validation for the historical fact of the exodus event...).

If someone makes an assertion then one must deliver an argument; one cannot simply argue from the negative.

I haven't forgotten this comment. When I read now, I ask myself what the argument for something is. If there is no argument to be made, I resist drawing categoric conclusions.

...But then Dr. Melcher went further to say that we can glean spiritual truth from the story regardless of its historical veracity. The discussion even went so far as to affirm that God delivers spiritual truth through it whether or not the exodus actually happened.

Remember when we talked about "true fiction"?

I remembered the discussion about the Gospels and Paul's letters. It's not that the writers were lying, it's that they were shaping the narratives to deliver a message. I could relate to this a bit as a writer, since I find myself doing it all the time, never with the intent of lying or misrepresentation, but with an eye to delivering the message with as much power and insight as possible.

...Something that did not happen but the insight was what was at stake.

Remember the word "insight" because it changed everything for me.

Remember the ancient oral tradition wants to generate meaning -- not fact. At the same time the story tellers come from a time and place. There is an historical and social location for these "true fictions."

There is some evidence of covenantal formulae in the ancient east 14th to 12th centuries BCE; such treaties appear again around the 7th. So, the older argument is that one can link the covenantal formula with these artifacts. What does this mean? That some sort of covenantal treaty was possible, when during the period formerly known as the time of the judges. In the pre-monarchic times the hill peoples and some incoming nomadic tribes gathered in a federation against the urban Canaanite culture. This incipient revolt is possibly mirrored in the exodus tales.

This calm discussion of what might have happened in the historical context that mirrored the texts felt strangely soothing. It felt neither defensive nor destructive. Just curiously interesting.

This is when I started to get muddled. I asked her if the Jews and Christians of history didn't in fact believe that God actually did those miracles and saved the Jews from the Egyptians in that way. She said that they did but that that wasn't the primary point of the story.

The ancient people were "naive literalists" but be careful - for the term literalist only works truly with early 20th century Americans who read the printed Bible with modern scientific empirical eyes. What I mean is that the ancients took the stories and used them in their present and if the stories had meaning in the present --they would modify them if necessary --they would continue to use them.

The truth is, we do this still today, even with the Bible. We avoid certain stories and texts that make us uncomfortable and embrace others based on the meanings we generate from them.

...And what good is that "truth" anyway? Are these "beautiful ideas" sort of like the Greek ideals? Or is redemption (by God?) real? If it's real, how would we know it? Weren't these "miracles of old" God's evidence of his redeeming power for another age? And aren't we now stumped as to how to know or prove anything about God? And what good is redemption metaphorically anyway? What am I being redeemed of? from?

...Don't get caught up in the behavior implied in the overarching metaphor without discovering the way in which the metaphor plays out. You sense this in the story of Abraham and Isaac. This is a story that masks the culture's move from sacrifice of children (evidently a Canaanite ritual) to a substitution model. The tradition keeps the story going, but the horror is somewhat muted. It is good to feel the horror again, to see what sort of breakthrough the story was gesturing at.

...It's times like these that I'm convinced I've lost all faith in God or contact with anything invisible or spiritual. I feel like a material girl in a material world. If I can see the bible as ancient literature that is both beautiful and horrifying, interesting and revealing (about peoples and times and religion from another era), I'm okay with it.

The Holy = fear + fascination according to R. Otto. There need not be any morality attached.

This was a brand new concept to me and it explained a lot of what I hadn't understood about the God of the Hebrew Scriptures.

e.g., an automobile for many Americans is a sign of the holy - for the vehicle both attracts and causes caution --throw in a sexy babe or hunk and the fear/fascination is multiplied. But nothing moral just a sense of power running along the nerves. This is very close to much ancient sense of the holy. The Jewish prophets started connecting the story about a God who cares for slaves, for the no bodies, the throwaways, to the sense of the holy and a new chapter comes about...Buddha is making startling connections in his own way around that time too. Hmmmm.

For the first time, I got chills. Connecting a holy, amoral God to a God who cares for the nobodies brings about a crisis for the nature of God. The narratives cause us to reevaluate what we thought we knew about God and to redefine what holy means to us today.

...But the moment someone tells me that there is rich spiritual truth in a story for me today that probably doesn't represent historical reality, and the metaphor I'm supposed to appreciate means I'm endorsing partiality on God's side with a capital P, well, I'm lost. The bible becomes a source of real angst, anger and disappointment.

You are detecting the underside of the Bible. It is there and there is even more.... If God is only what we have in the Bible then you will want to get clear of such a beast. But the Bible itself is complicated with starts and stops about what the divine can be. The Hebrew scriptures already contain rebellious moments where the humans enter into the divine without leaving the earth. A poor way of putting it... Another way. God was real for them because God was there, present to them. Can we say that today? God is not in any book but in the Reality of our lives. Trouble is we tend to lead virtual lives. Wouldn't know Reality if it knocked...yet when it does well, it does. When the baby decides to come, when the water breaks, when the contractions start, you have to face Reality and go with the waves... The stories are told to help people identify the waves in their lives...the beauty and the horror...

I stopped cold when I read "God was real for them because God was there, present to them. Can we say that today? God is not in any book but in the Reality of our lives..." I knew that what I had been shedding was "virtuality."

And then to think of the stories in the Bible as helping people to identify the waves in their own lives, not just beauty, but horror too...

Grrrrrr.

Is this all because I used to be a literalist? :-(

YES, you are taking things, words seriously. But look around for the context. It is probably more fluid and more complicated. But it still comes from human beings who are trying to make sense of things within their limits...

Something clicked back in 2004. I saw for the first time that the Bible might be a resource for exploring what humans understood to be the nature of the divine at any given point in time rather than a word-perfect for all time description of how God was, is and will be (that also needed to be harmonized and reconciled within itself).

Additionally, the idea that the biblical writers were moved to communicate insight (more than convey history) profoundly impacted how I read all texts. It's not enough to give a thumbs' up or a thumbs' down as to whether the writings represented 20th century standards of historical veracity. Rather, an author's intention in most instances is to describe an experience (a vision, a belief, an event) while delivering meaning. Even if the insight is one with which we ultimately disagree, finding out what that insight addresses is useful for theological reflection rather than merely validating it historically or scientifically.

In Part 10, I'll look at other ways to read Scripture that help us get at the "insight" layer.

Diversity: good or bad for community?

I was reading along at Tod Bolsinger's blog this a.m. and thought his post about diversity combined with the short news segment clip was surprising and worth sharing here. Definitely listen to the end. It packs a punch.

I posted my thoughts in his comments, but listen to the clip first.