S2: Job. Not Gob. Job.

I have problems with Job.

Well, that may be unfair. I have problems with popular interpretations of Job. Is that better?

I can completely get behind why it was included in the Hebrew Scriptures and even later in the canon. Viewed as a collective groaning from a post-exilic Israel, Job provided explanations as to why horrible things happen to good people. The idea that good people – especially faithful worshippers of YHWH – would have tragedy befall them was incredibly confusing and painful and people crave explanations for unexplainable things. So, clearly, it is desirable to believe they are caught up in a giant cosmic spitting contest.

In some ways, Job is one of the books that represents the best wisdom of its time. There were things happening that were unexplainable, so they had to be explained. Satan’s participation is always a convenient explanation. However, we have different wisdom now. We know that some diseases have clear and definitive causes. We know that epidemics spring up without warning sometimes and that natural disasters are often not predictable until it is too late – but we know that the gods are not angry with Haiti when an earthquake happens.

In light of new wisdom, as it were, the traditional claims of the meaning of Job frustrate me. To believe that I have experienced the traumas that I have because God needed to prove something to Satan? Or – on a more macro scale – that the people of Rwanda needed to prove their faithfulness? Seriously?

One of the commentators in The Africana Bible spoke of how Job is an incredible encouragement to his community. He lists several African-American writers who interpret Job similarly and then offers this conclusion.

The lessons from each of these Africana witnesses to the significance of Job’s tale are undeniable. Although the will of God is not clearly discernible, although bad things do happen to good people, although suffering is often all but unbearable, we still are to ‘keep on keeping on.’ The night of our suffering may be long, and the reasons for our suffering may be beyond our comprehension and our control, but we take heart

Clearly, as a person concerned at all times with respecting the truths of anothers’ culture, I am not about to discount the witness of these believers. This is clearly valid and real for many people worldwide and not just those of the Africana persuasion.

But if I can’t grant the premise that God works that way – that he allows evil to be done to us for some ultimate greater purpose – how am I to interpret Job for application in my own existence?

Maybe I’m not supposed to. Maybe I should just allow that this paradigm of faith works for some people and not for others and understand that this was and is ancient theology that traces back – much like CS Lewis’ Deep Magic – to before the dawn of time.

And maybe it’s not something I’ll ever figure out. Because, if seminary has taught me anything, it’s that no one really has any idea about anything – we’re all just trying to figure it out the best we can.

 

i *heart* maps

I am a little obsessed with accumulating as many passport stamps and visas as humanly possible, so when I stumbled upon this widget, I had to fill it out. Other surveys have said that I’ve been to 23% of the world, so I’m not sure which one is accurate or how I lost a few percentage points and went more places, but what have you. I clearly still have MUCH of the world left to explore.

visited 40 countries (17.7%)
Create your own visited map of The World

Next to explore: India, Hong Kong, Columbia, Egypt & Turkey

visited 36 states (72%)
Create your own visited map of The United States

I keep threatening to just up and fly to Seattle to take a vacation. It just might happen soon…

 

modern psalmists: handling the silence of God

I have owned a lot of music albums – some complete junk, some good driving tunes, some connected to specific seasons. Some, however, were revolutionary to my existence. If you think I’m kidding, you clearly have not listened to enough music. I have several of these albums – the ones that can settle my soul no matter what storms are raging outside.

One such album is Andrew Peterson’s Love and Thunder. With the exception of one track, every song speaks to a deep part of my soul and informs a part of my story. The song “Silence of God”, however, is something on another level. It was the first piece of writing that allowed me to be angry and confused and told me that not everyone’s faith was puppies, sunshine and Jesus. Many of the people that I knew around me constantly told me that it was not allowed to question God or to be angry at what was happening in my world or to grieve the realities of the universe. I was instructed to “let go and let God” more times than I’d like to repeat. For the record – none of that advice was helpful, nor was necessarily theologically accurate. However, against the “voices of the mob”, came the peaceful voice of Andrew Peterson.

Assuring me that I was not alone in my sorrow or my frustration or my confusion; this song provided no answers. It is the “holy, lonesome echo”, after all, that silence of God. It is not something that can be explained away or prevented, it just is a reality of perception. Yes, I recognize that there are ample arguments to be made that God is not silent and is always active in the lives of humanity. However, there are times that seems like a cruel joke.

There is deep precedent in the Psalms of questioning the presence of God. Questions resound as to why God has forsaken the psalmists, wondering if God has left because of the psalmists actions or because God is a fickle being. These, of course, are sentiments expressed through the ages – which is why I include Andrew’s prose here.

If faith is to be valid and living and vibrant, doubt must be as well. Dissent is the highest form of patriotism and I believe that doubt is often the highest form of faith. It is only the ability to completely trust that the faith can hold and handle my questions that one can truly rest in being faithful.

It’s enough to drive a man crazy; it’ll break a man’s faith
It’s enough to make him wonder if he’s ever been sane
When he’s bleating for comfort from Thy staff and Thy rod
And the heaven’s only answer is the silence of God

It’ll shake a man’s timbers when he loses his heart
When he has to remember what broke him apart
This yoke may be easy, but this burden is not
When the crying fields are frozen by the silence of God

And if a man has got to listen to the voices of the mob
Who are reeling in the throes of all the happiness they’ve got
When they tell you all their troubles have been nailed up to that cross
Then what about the times when even followers get lost?
‘Cause we all get lost sometimes…

There’s a statue of Jesus on a monastery knoll
In the hills of Kentucky, all quiet and cold
And He’s kneeling in the garden, as silent as a Stone
All His friends are sleeping and He’s weeping all alone

And the man of all sorrows, he never forgot
What sorrow is carried by the hearts that he bought
So when the questions dissolve into the silence of God
The aching may remain, but the breaking does not
The aching may remain, but the breaking does not
In the holy, lonesome echo of the silence of God

 

…but we could use the love of God… (or: modern psalmists, day two)

the second installment in my modern psalmists series

As faithful readers know, I spent a bit of time living in the wee land of Northern Ireland. I wrote a lot about it while I was there, but in re-reading the thoughts that I was willing to throw down on paper while there – they are not even scratchings of how I was processing life around me. I have emotionally committed to myself this semester that I will be faithful to the story that land has created in me and become more willing to talk about how it has shaped my present and my future. This post is the beginning of some of that.

I suppose that there are levels to which I could argue that the below song by Brian Houston (found on his exceptional ‘Jesus and Justice’ record that everyone should own) encapsulates much of why I still cannot ‘move on’ from life there. I have spent the past three and a half years trying to explain to myself and those around me why the Church in Northern Ireland has behaved the way it has and why conflict looks the way it looks and why even the name ‘The Troubles’ is telling of the national processing process. I have not always been successful. But a large piece of my questioning is the idea of violence sanctioned by religious institutions and religious persons and how people can begin to claim that Yahweh is a God of sides and territories, of flags and colors. It is that reality that Brian is speaking to in this song.

Some of the images in this song are specific to the culture he is speaking to (Orange Collars are a specifically Northern Irish entity, for instance, as well as the other references to parades) – but the idea is universal. The ideas that divide us are often what are talked about the most. We spend much time debating Yahweh’s preferences without often taking into account the preferences and commands that are explicit. We are commanded to serve and to care and to offer hospitality and grace. We are called to love. I believe that’s what Brian is speaking to here. That the ultimate piece of the gospel that is non-negotiable is love. Discussing theology is grand and deciding doctrine is often necessary, but to do either at the sacrifice of love is ridiculous.

“We Don’t Need Religion” – Brian Houston

I see the people in the balconies, in the streets and in their cars

Party going animals and in the backer rooms and the bars

Saying “We don’t need religion, we don’t need religion”

I’ve been a timberjack, been a laborer, been a shipyard man and a shirker

I worked with builders building houses and heard a million McDonald’s workers

Saying “We don’t need religion, we don’t need religion,

We don’t need religion, but we could use the love of God”

Well I’ve got false prophets on my TV tell me this Union’s doomed

While the Spirit-filled believers shake up the floor space in the room

Saying “We don’t need religion, we don’t need religion”

Come on you preachers, you pastors, all you priests, nuns and scholars

Come on and walk down those roads

Without those robes, crucifixes and Orange Collars

You know we don’t need religion, you know we can’t feed religion

Well we don’t need religion, but we could use the love of God

So is it Saturday or is it Sunday, the fact is I’m never sure

Well, there’s a Sabbath in there someway

Why can’t we try Yom Kippur?

You know we don’t need religion, we don’t need religion

And while we’re all so busy fighting, using up God’s precious time

There’s a thousand starving homeless people saying

“Buddy, can you spare a dime?”

We can’t eat religion, we can’t eat religion,

We don’t need religion, but we could use the love of God

Amen

 

S2: modern psalmists

In class this week, we’re focusing on Psalms and I’ve been thinking a lot about what the Psalms were to the people that created them. It’s understood that the Psalms were written as the people’s response to God. It’s why they’re so diverse – multiple people wrote them over hundreds of years. While Ps 139 and 137 represent VASTLY different theologies and ideas about God and relationships – they’re both still valid views because they were held by real people. The psalms are the groanings of literate creation trying to put labels on mystery.

I believe we should view the Psalms as a living creation and in that vein, I want to offer up some of my favorite post-canon Psalmists over the next few days. They’re going to be a diverse group and some may not even be classified publicly as believers – but they offer up groanings and grumblings towards reality and I believe their theology is valid as it can inform mine. All truth is Kingdom truth; truth is incapable of being from a source other than Truth.

Today’s Psalmist is Foy Vance. My friend Sharon sent me the EP of his CD “Hope” and it quickly went in constant rotation. This song, “Gabriel and the Vagabond”, is the story about the archangel encountering some of society’s most disenfranchised.

There’s a man in the corner and his clothes are worn
And he’s holding out his hand
You could see in his eyes as the people walk by
He knows they don’t understand

Ya see they just think he’s gonna take their money
And go and spend it all on dope
Then a man stopped by and I saw a smile inside him
As he gently whispered hope

Well the tramp started to cry, just kept saying,
“Why? why? why?
Could you see I’m a dying tonight
Well I’m 32 and I’ve got this one pair of shoes
And a bad taste in my mouth
I think it’s clear to see that even God don’t love me
Or else why would He leave me this way.”

Then Gabriel just smiled and said be peaced my child
Salvation is here today

He got up to his feet and he sang Hallelujah
People were turning around in the street
He looked them in the eyes and he sang,
“Hallelujah
There’s someone here that you gotta meet
Someone you just gotta meet.”

When the vagabond turned around well without a sign
Gabriel just smiled and disappeared
Then he looked to the crowd and they were laughing out loud
But he could not see them fore tears
When his vision came round
There was a young girl on the ground
I knew she was fine and hard to cope
She never was a fighter until he laid beside her
And gently whispered hope

They got up to their feet and they sang Hallelujah
People in the street were turning around
They looked them in the eyes and they sang,
“Hallelujah
There’s someone here we have found”
They sang,
“Hallelujah, Hallelujah
We are the voices crying in the wilderness
Hallelujah, Hallelujah.”
The people in the street started their sins to confess
And a chorus of,
“Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Every knee will bow and every tongue confess
and the voice of one crying in the wilderness
crying
Hallelujah, Hallelujah”

One of the most important things that I think we can ascertain from this – glean from this psalmsist to inform our own life and worship – is that Gabriel did not whisper words of condemnation. He did not tell them all of the ways they were missing the mark or ways in which they were shaming themselves. He “laid down beside them and gently whispered hope”. Hope.

Some of the most powerful Psalms that have stood the test of time are ones that speak of hope. Hope that the diety to whom they pay homage will act on their behalf. Hope that life will be better tomorrow than it is today. Hope that hard work does pay off. Hope that death will be staved off by sacrifice. Hope that this is not all there is.

Hope has become a word that may have lost some of its meaning over the last year in our country. It has been bandied about for reasons positive and negative – so I’d like to invite you to pause and breathe the concept in. Part of the legacy of our faith has been based in hope – both in the resting and in the offering. At the essence of Christianity is hope – for new life, for reconciliation, for salvation. Isn’t it our job to offer hope? To lay down beside people in the midst of their tragedy and the midst of grief and gently whisper hope. To whisper that whatever their sitting in right now is not permanent – that their current story will not always be reality. To whisper hope that better is coming and that the pain will become duller.

Hope is what we offer and in some very real ways, hope is really all we have in the midst of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Hope conquers fear.

 

Summary: January

totally stolen from kari

Good Things That Happened in January

1. (On Cruise): Won $250 in Bingo!

2. (On Cruise): Read on Meaghan’s Bay, St. Thomas

3. (On Cruise): Tubed down the river in Dominica

4. (On Cruise): Learned what nutmeg jam tasted like and went to an awesome rum tasting in Grenada

5. (On Cruise): Read on the beach on Bonaire

6. (On Cruise): Had the best conch fritters in Aruba

7. (On Cruise): Won Scattegories! Seriously, we got gold medals!

8. (On Cruise): Sarah and I went to the best wine tasting ever, seriously

9. Got lots of reading done as we spent the day traveling back to Philly

10. Got lots of reading done was we traveled back to Waco

11. Saw Avatar with Sarah and Suz

12. First Day of Class! (Cross-Cultural & Scriptures 2) Also, the first Onion of the semester

13. Other First Day of Class! (Religion & Worldview: Islam & Story of Christian Mission)

14. Great lunch with Leslie at Simply Good

15. Decided to learn Spanish on Rosetta Stone in preparation for my possible trip to Columbia this summer

16.We went to see Lovely Bones and wished we hadn’t

17. Watched Vicar of Dibley as I went to sleep and remembered what it was like to be a temporary Anglican

18. Celebrated MLK Day by reading Letters from a Birmingham Jail

19. Sarah made homemade Tandoori Chicken and Dr. Stroope crashed dinner. This is also the night where we discussed that some people have ’supermarket’ hair

20. Great dinner with Stoner at Bangkok

21. Supernatural came back into our lives. This does not mean that we’re lame.

22. Truett Movie Night! We watched Saved and mocked ourselves

23. Finished Season Two of Chuck and screamed at his last line

24. We introduced Rue and Ziggy. This was an event.

25. We found out that Suzanne got into Oxford!! SERIOUSLY, OXFORD!!!

26. First night of the Onion where we talked about Deep River and I did the Moment of Zen

27. Suz’s Magic Birthday (27 on 27), marked by dinner at Chuy’s.

28. Great lunch at Bangkok with Jeff. I love friendship over food.

29. Went to my first SSW Alumni Council meeting and got to remember what it was like to be a social work student

30. We celebrated Suzanne with a Community themed party – everyone wore track pants and button down shirts and pretended to be Jeff Winger

31. Had our first India Team Playtime. Watched Bride & Prejudice and chatted.

 

“The Cove” : Does Cross-Cultural Also Demand Cross-Special?

Last week, in my attempt to watch all movies & documentaries generating Oscar buzz, I Netflixed a documentary called “The Cove”.  I quote IMDB for the synopsis:

In a sleepy lagoon off the coast of Japan lies a shocking secret that a few desperate men will stop at nothing to keep hidden from the world. In Taiji, Japan, former dolphin trainer Ric O’Barry has come to set things right after a long search for redemption. In the 1960s, it was O’Barry who captured and trained the 5 dolphins who played the title character in the international television sensation “Flipper.” One fateful day, a heartbroken Barry came to realize that these deeply sensitive, highly intelligent and self-aware creatures must never be subjected to human captivity again. This mission has brought him to Taiji, a town that appears to be devoted to the wonders and mysteries of the sleek, playful dolphins and whales that swim off their coast. But in a remote, glistening cove, surrounded by barbed wire and “Keep Out” signs, lies a dark reality. It is here, under cover of night, that the fishermen of Taiji, driven by a multi-billion dollar dolphin entertainment industry and an underhanded market for mercury-tainted dolphin meat, engage in an unseen hunt. The nature of what they do is so chilling and the consequences are so dangerous to human health that they will go to great lengths to halt anyone from seeing it.

It was fascinating and infuriating and an exceptionally well done film. The word on the street is that it and Food, Inc are the two frontrunners and I wholeheartedly agree.

Besides the obvious ecological implications of the book and the ways in which it should mobilize the Church to action (which was one of my questions – are there any ecological movements among the Japaneese Church?) – I found some interesting questions that relate to a conversation we’ve been having in Cross-Cultural.

In their defense of why humanity should do everything possible to save these creatures and stop the injustice that is occurring, one of the experts lead the discussion towards signs of intelligence in the species. He makes the point that we measure intelligence by IQ tests and GPA and other scholastic aptitudes, but questions whether it would be more appropriate to judge intelligence in other species in terms of self-awareness. A dolphin, for instance, is fully capable of making many decisions for itself and there is even recorded studies of dolphins consciously choosing suicide over captivity.

One gentleman spoke of our history of human-dolphin relations and the inappropriate things that have been done. He used the example of teaching dolphins American Sign Language for communication. He called this “barbaric” and “a form of colonialism and ethnocentrism” since dolphins do not have hands and can’t communicate back. He suggested instead communication through sonar sound waves, which dolphins could also participate in and express their opinions and needs.

The way the dolphin specialists and others talked about these issues were shockingly similar to the ways that my friends and I (and many others in the Global Worldviews concentration) speak about colonialists and some missionaries of yore. Domination and assumptions of stupidity based on poor assumptions about language lead to decades and even centuries of subjugation and tyranny. Which got me thinking…

Lamin Sanneh, in his work Encountering the West: Christianity and the Global Cultural Process: The African Dimension, he makes the point that missions greatest gift to native persons of the continent was the insistence on mother tongue translation and use. By empowering the people to use their own language, the missionaries instilled in the people a deep sense of personhood and nationalism. He makes the claim that to use a persons’ mother tongue is to give them dignity and to recognize them as members and participants of the global community.

All of this lead me to wonder if there are whole realms of cross-cultural living that we are missing. Now, there are boundaries to this and I will be the first in line to say that we are not called to all learn to speak dolphin or whale or what have you. And maybe I’m crazy. But to demand an understanding of respect on behalf of those who work with those species doesn’t seem to be unreasonable. Maybe the role of the Church is to take a stand against captivity and to discourage members from supporting organizations like SeaWorld that make money almost exclusively off captivity. I don’t know.

I do know that if we are to understand Creation as a dynamic relationship between all living things, then our responsibility is not only to ourselves and our families, but to the entire created order. If we are to be responsible members of the Kingdom, then we are also to be responsible members of the ecosystem. To be attentive to this will require work, I know. It will require more adjustments of priorities. However, when I hear of the wholesale slaughter of millions of dolphins for the profit of humans and the possible collapse of an ecosystem – I am not sure we can afford to continue along with business as usual. We must mobilize the Church. We must mobilize ourselves.

 

S2: Questions in Psalms

Objective Questions:

1. The Hebrew title for the Psalms is _______.

2. How many collections is the book normally divided into and what are those divisions?

3. Who was the scholar who largely disproved complete Davidic authorship?

4. The Songs of Ascents are located in Psalm _______.

Synthetic Questions:

1. A popular interpretation of the collection of Psalms is that they portray the voice of the common people in the conversation with God. They’re a snapshot of emotions and worship, theology and thought. Going on that idea; should we view the Psalms as a living document to which we add our own?

2. Continuing on the above supposition – the Psalms contain many dichotomies. They range from blaming God for troubles to praising Him for violent deaths of enemies. (Psalm 137 is especially troubling in that regard) How do we go forth from that and understand God’s interaction with humanity currently?

3. What do we think about Psalm 137 and the idea of murdering infants as worship?

4. In looking at the oft-quoted Ps 139, what does it say about having a holistic ethic of human life? This includes the way we treat fellow living creatures and not just our political opinions on choice.

 

S2: Nehemiah

For various reasons that I don’t need to go into here, I’ve been in many, many leadership seminars throughout my life. Ones that label themselves as “Christian” have – in my experience – often included some reference to Nehemiah and his method of rebuilding the walls. So, as I began to read Nehemiah this week for Scriptures – I assumed that it was a book entirely about leadership.

Shockingly enough, the Christian subculture missed the point a little.

It is about leadership – in the vague way that all of life is about leadership. It includes excellent speeches that inspire people and great comments about vision and other things that are necessary in leadership. And yes, Nehemiah was a good leader who accomplished his task of rebuilding the wall and reclaiming the identity of the Jewish people in a post-exhilic environment.

Or was he?

You see, part and parcel to rebuilding the identity was to define the people more by what they weren’t than by what they were. The themes of separatism, isolation and other-ness run rampant throughout the passage. The book portrays a way that the nation-state was reclaimed and it is a valid method to use. Much leadership and geopolitical theory is based on the idea that when you want to unify a people – give them a common enemy.

As Herbert Marbury says in his Ezra-Nehemiah article in The Africana Bible, “Expelling so-called ‘foreigners’ became a communal and public affirmation of cultural identity in the face of forces that threatened the community’s obliteration. The mass divorces prevented the transference of wealth and land to so-called ‘outsiders’ and preserved wealth in the hands of the collective.” The community was restored and the identity of the community was maintained. My question becomes, however, what kind of community did they create?

By building the community on the basis of insider/outsider – what did the theocratic & ethnic people of Israel communicate about YHWH to the outside world? What is the story from the point of view of the ejected women and children? How did they respond theologically to the exclusion? I recognize that marriage was not about love and was more about political alliances and such things – but still! They were ejected from a community! They were told they were dirty, unclean and unwanted. That does something to a persons’ psyche.

(I am – in this moment – less interested if it was the best political decision. I simply want to explore the emotional, psychological and theological ramifications of belong to or being expelled from such a community.)

As I reflect on this – my social worker self is asking constantly how I have created community. Have I excluded people intentionally? Regardless of whether they were based on valid and necessary realities – have I communicated unworth to someone by exclusion? The answer is invariably yes – I am sure that I have. Humanity harms each other in such ways consistently. So maybe I’m just blowing smoke and should admit that people will be excluded and they will be harmed and get over it. I just hope that other ways are possible and that I – and other members of the Kingdom – can move more gently through life and question our decisions from various perspectives. Blind hope, maybe, but hope.

 

groaning hope

I’ve been wanting to respond to Haiti in writing since it happened. I’ve wanted to respond to this travesty of humanity and to this hope. I have been avidly encouraging all persons to donate to Partners in Health; trusting that they have been in Haiti long before the cameras were and they’ll be there long after helping Haiti ceases to be trendy.

There’s been a lot of talk in the media and around kitchen tables and coffee shops that the culture of Haiti might have contributed to the devastation that grips the country. There’s been talk of blaming voodoo and talk of pointing fingers at the Haitian people. I find these comments to be horribly misguided, if well intentioned.

There are legitimate and traceable reasons for the routine and systematic tragedy of poverty in Haiti. Explained well in Nick Kristoff’s Op-Ed, so I won’t go into them again here. If you’re interested in further investigations into systemic poverty, Haitian culture or the understandings of disaster relief – I direct you to other sources.

After days of crafting responses and wondering what to say, it has come down to this – tragedy sucks.

Other than giving money and attempting to spread the word about healthy and productive responses – I have no response to this. How do we respond to the utter desolation of a city? How do we respond to people being pulled from rubble and families rent asunder? How do we respond?

As a member of the human race, I grieve the unnecessary and catastrophic destruction of life. I grieve children without parents and parents without children and communities that are irreparably destroyed. I grieve and I weep and I groan – because what words could I possibly have to react to this? I cannot help, I cannot solve, I cannot heal – and so I grieve. I raise my voice to the heavens and I wail that “this is not how it is supposed to be!”

After the groaning and grieving is over, however, I have to choose hope. I know many people feel paralyzed by problems and situations and trauma and they choose to let others handle it. I am simply not built that way – my response is always to have a response. So, in the midst of tragedy, I choose hope. I choose to hope that Haitians will rebuild their country and perhaps reverse some of the economic decisions their government has made. I choose to hope that humanity will not abandon this tiny nation and instead to empower the people of Haiti to create their own destiny. I choose to hope that life will and does triumph over death and that a new day is coming. I do and I must and I am choosing to hope.