The Internet Monk Archives

My Ancestors’ (not so great) Interaction with the Church (Part 1 – Reginald Fitzurse)

Pull up a chair, and put up your feet. It’s story time! I don’t know if you have ever researched your family tree, but I have had some success in finding out a fair bit about mine. Among the more interesting stories have been tales of conflict with the church. This is the first of what will be a series of three.

Let me start with the story of my great, great, great, etc. uncle, Reginald Fitzurse. If you have read or seen the play “Murder in the Cathedral”, by T.S. Eliot, you may very well already know the story. Reginald was a knight in the court of King Henry II of England (among other territories), way back in the 1160s. King Henry had an ongoing intensifying conflict with the Archbishop of Cantebury, Thomas Beckett. They spent the better part of five years trying to make life increasingly difficult for each other. Things came to a head in 1169 when Henry needed the services of the Archbishop.

By 1169, however, Henry had decided to crown his son Young Henry as king of England. This required the acquiescence of Becket as the Archbishop of Canterbury, traditionally the churchman with the right to conduct the ceremony. Furthermore, the whole Becket matter was an increasing international embarrassment to Henry. He began to take a more conciliatory tone with Becket but, when this failed, had Young Henry crowned anyway by the Archbishop of York. Becket was allowed to lay an interdict on England, forcing Henry back to negotiations; they finally came to terms in July 1170, and Becket returned to England in early December. Just when the dispute seemed resolved, however, Becket excommunicated another three supporters of Henry: the King was furious and infamously announced “What miserable drones and traitors have I nourished and promoted in my household, who let their lord be treated with such shameful contempt by a low-born clerk!” (Wikipedia – Henry II of England)

Reginald overheard that outburst and decided to take matters into his own hands. He and three other knights set off from France where the court was located, and met up again in England to plan their moves.

The conspirators crossed over to England, and gathered at Saltwood Castle, near Hythe. Saltwood was a possession of the Archbishop, but it had been usurped by Randolph de Brock, another of Beckets enemies. On the 29th of December, the Knights and their men rode forth from Saltwood to Canterbury, and sought out the Archbishop in his palace adjacent to the Cathedral. Bitter words and recriminations were exchanged in a fruitless interview. Later in the day the Knights again approached the palace with their weapons under their cloaks. The monks, anxious for their own safety as well as for their master, endeavoured to drag Becket through the cloisters into the sanctuary of the cathedral. He resisted, but they succeeded in getting him into the Northwest Transept, which is still known as the Martyrdom. They bolted the door behind them, but the Archbishop commanded it to be unbolted, lest the House of God be made a fortress. He began to make his way up the steps into the choir, where vespers were being sung, but as the knights burst in, he turned to meet them.

There was an altercation and a struggle in the gloom of the Transcept. FitzUrse called Becket “Traitor!”, and Becket retorted with “Pander”. The knights endeavoured in vain to drag the Archbishop out of the church. FitzUrse struck the first blow, a glancing one which injured the arm of an attendant monk. Tracey followed, and Le Breton smote the Archbishops skull with such violence that his sword was shattered on the stone of the pavement. Becket fell to the ground and was dispatched. The fourth knight, de Moreville, who had not struck a blow, was keeping back the townspeople who were pouring in from the knave. After the deed, the knights rushed out of the cathedral, waving their swords and shouting, “King’s Men…King’s Men”. They pillaged the palace, and rode away to South Malling, near Lewes, where he had a manor. From thence they withdrew to Yorkshire, and took refuge in de Moreville’s castle at Knaresborough. (Barham Family History)

“Christendom was outraged while the King publicly expressed remorse and engaged in public confession and penance” (Wikipedia – Reginal Fitzurse.) All four knights were excommunicated by the Pope on Easter day and were sentenced to do a pigrimage to the Holy Land. There is mixed evidence about what happened to Reginald after that. Some sources say that he died soon after in the Holy Land, while others state that returned to Ireland where he founded the McMahon clan.

The rest of the family became increasingly uncomfortable over time with the Fitzurse name. They owned a manor in a hamlet in Kent, England called Barham, which was in fact named after the family. Fitzurse means Son of Bear, and they lived in Bear Hamlet, shortened to Berhem or Barham. It wasn’t long before the family adopted the name “de Berham”, which eventually became Barham.

Barham is my Mother’s maiden name, and unlike “Bell” it is not a very common name. This has made it relatively easy to trace the name back from generation to generation.

So my most famous ancestor murdered an Archbishop and got excommunicated by the Pope. Next week I will talk about a “Barham” meeting a “Frey” and how another excommunication ensued over the wearing of a tie!

What interesting stories lie in your past? Have there been any interesting stories of conflict with the church going back several generations? As always your thoughts, comments, (and of course your own stories) are welcome.

Update: I have had a very busy day at work today with a big project due so I have not been able to comment. I have however been reading all your comments and have absolutely loved your stories!

A shepherd’s ambiguous apologetic

I confess. I have no apologetic.

There is no defending God. There is no proving his way is right. To do so would require that I understand God, that I can substantiate the claims of truth my faith calls me to hold.

I can explain what I believe well enough. I can demonstrate to a certain degree that my faith is reasonable and not the delusions of a crackpot. But I can’t prove anything. I can’t argue an airtight case. I can’t campaign for Jesus on a platform of certainty.

You see, all the “evidence” is ambiguous. It is capable of being interpreted in a variety of ways. What convinces one person to believe may lead another to have serious doubts.

Even the bedrock occurrence in the story of our faith — the resurrection of Jesus — was not what you would call a public event. It was unexpectedly discovered by a few common people in the hazy dawn of Easter morning. All of Jesus’ appearances were reserved for people who became his witnesses. It is their word we have to trust. I happen to be convinced that they were trustworthy and that they had no reason to invent a story so fantastic, but I can see why people might have doubts.

I suppose this is why some Christians feel the need to posit an inerrant Bible, a fully trustworthy revelation directly from the mouth of God that demonstrates in incontrovertible terms that it is TRUTH™. Thus, all we have to do is open up the book and — there it is! — a sure and certain foundation for our beliefs. However comfortable that might make believers feel, in reality it just creates another proposition Christians must defend. Proving the divine perfection of the Bible requires herculean efforts and, as centuries of dispute over Scripture’s nature, meaning, and interpretation show, the evidence here is muddy too.

So, I don’t really have an apologetic. At best, it’s ambiguous.

The other day I was thinking about the shepherds in Luke’s Christmas story. Surely they had a sense of certainty. Surely what they experienced was so unambiguous, so transformative, that they lived the rest of their lives in the assurance of faith. Surely God had proven himself to them. They beheld the angel hosts! They heard the gospel announced directly from heaven! They saw the baby Jesus in the flesh!

However, sometimes I wonder what happened next. The Gospel tells us they went back to work later that night. We never hear from them again. What was it like for the shepherds a week later? a month? ten or twenty years? I don’t know if they were around when Jesus went throughout Judea proclaiming the Kingdom. I’d like to think their faith was confirmed and strengthened over the years, perhaps by personal encounters with Jesus in his ministry.

On the other hand, it is possible they didn’t hear much about Jesus again, perhaps for the rest of their lives. If so, what would that long silence have communicated to them? Based on the angel’s message they would have expected, somewhere along the line, a Son of David to ascend the throne in Jerusalem, bringing lasting peace and relief from their enemies. An unambiguous fulfillment of God’s promise. But even if they did become part of the crowd and followed Jesus around Judea and Galilee, they never saw that happen, did they? How might they have reconciled that grand birth announcement with reality on the ground years later — an itinerant rabbi with nowhere to lay his head? And then, the cross? Some king. Some throne.

All this is pure speculation, of course, but I think it makes a point: In my opinion, Christians (and I include myself) have been far too cocksure in talking about Jesus and our faith. As though it’s about having a sense of certainty that carries us blissfully through life. As though what we believe and the reasons we believe are so clear, so transparent, so unambiguous that we just can’t imagine others being unable to see it.

I had a spiritual awakening in high school, and it was prompted by relationships I developed with a group of Christian young people in school and church. What I liked about them was that they were real. I saw their imperfections and could blow holes through their arguments. But I couldn’t get past their joy, their belief that life was worth living in spite of problems and doubts. There was something that kept them moving forward to embrace the goodness of life and faith and hope and love. They were pitiful at trying to explain it, but it was there. Ultimately, I found I couldn’t resist the song their lives sang to me.

So this is what I keep coming back to. Sometime long ago, on a dark night I heard angels sing. I saw the face of the Savior. And it was real.

My experience wasn’t nearly as spectacular as the show the shepherds witnessed. However, it just as effectively got my attention and caused me to change direction in ways that I suppose were as crazy as leaving your job in the middle of the night to go see a stranger’s newborn baby based on a heavenly vision.

But then, like the shepherds, I had to return to life, plain old life, everyday life.

Through the years I’ve had reason to doubt over and over again whether that experience was real. I have wondered whether the promises I received were genuine, or whether it might not all have been some adolescent fantasy born of hormones, naiveté, and group dynamics. It can get awfully ambiguous at times.

Whether or not the shepherds ever saw Jesus again, I can testify that since my epiphany, every once and awhile along the way I have encountered him. Thing is, he’s never what I expect. He constantly confuses me and makes me scratch my head. The more I try to define what he’s all about or what he’s doing in my life, the more mixed up I become. And when I go to speak, I fumble around for words to explain him, to express what he means to me, to put my finger on the gifts with which he has so graciously filled my life.

He’s real, and that’s about the best I can do.

And there you have it. My ambiguous apologetic.

Maybe you were hoping you’d read something today that would nail it all down for you, relieve your doubts, answer your questions, make it all certain.

Sorry. Just a shepherd here.

Most nights are pretty quiet.

Tokah’s Journey

Note from CM: Tokah is a friend. She has been a faithful reader and commenter here on IM for several years, and we’ve had the chance to meet and enjoy a meal together. Tokah has a unique life-perspective that has enriched this blog, from her participation in an Orthodox congregation to her physical challenges. A while back, when we were discussing LGBT issues, she wrote and asked if she could share a bit of her story. I welcomed the offer, but warned her that IM discussions on this subject often include commenters who are not always polite and affirming to all, and I would hate to see her get hurt. So she waited. The other day, she sent me the following post, which I urge you to read with careful consideration and with courtesy to the author, who was willing to share herself with us today. I will be watching the responses carefully and moderating more strictly today. Please listen and think before you post.

Continue reading “Tokah’s Journey”

IM Book Review: Disarming Scripture

Disarming Scripture: Cherry-Picking Liberals, Violence-Loving Conservatives, and Why We All Need to Learn to Read the Bible Like Jesus Did
Derek Flood
Metanoia Books (2014)

• • •

Note from CM: This book review is part of a “blog tour” to which the author invited me. Occasionally, publishers will send me books or authors will contact me and ask if I will review a new book. Most of the time I don’t accept — I don’t have time and I prefer to choose my own reading and writing material. But this one looked interesting, and I thought it might fit with some of our recent discussions about Scripture. Other contributors to IM in recent days, such as Peter Enns and Rob Grayson, have also offered their thoughts on the book. You can access a full list of those participating in the blog tour at Derek’s blog.

Here’s a publisher’s summary of the book’s contents:

Derek Flood’s new book Disarming Scripture has just been released this week. It deals with the problem of violence in Scripture, tackling a wide range of troubling passages—from commands to commit genocide and infanticide in the Old Testament to passages in the New Testament that have been used to justify slavery, child abuse, and state violence.

Moving beyond typical conservative and liberal approaches, which seek to either defend or whitewash over violence in the Bible, Disarming Scripture takes a surprising yet compelling approach: Learning to read Scripture like Jesus did.

Derek Flood also wrote Healing the Gospel: A Radical Vision for Grace, Justice, and the Cross. He blogs at The Rebel God and also at Red Letter Christians, Sojourners, and Huffington Post.

Continue reading “IM Book Review: Disarming Scripture”

iMonk Classic: Letters to Santa

Note from CM: Saturday was the observance of St. Nicholas Day. Nicholas was born in the third century in what is now southern Turkey. He dedicated his life to serving God and was made Bishop of Myra while still a young man. Bishop Nicholas became known throughout the land for his generosity to those in need, his love for children, and his concern for sailors and ships.

Today, in honor of St. Nicholas and in remembrance of all those who are “hoping, yearning, aching for a savior,” I offer an excerpt from a 2006 Christmas Eve sermon Michael Spencer gave at a Baptist church near his home. Since this is Advent and not yet Christmas Eve, I only include the part of the message that describes our longing, a sentiment Michael was very good at expressing.

• • •

Several years ago, our family began another tradition that has proven to be one of the highlights of Christmas for us: the reading of the unedited, uncorrected “Letters to Santa” printed in our local newspaper. The authors are local 2nd graders, and these letters, read dramatically, are absolutely the biggest laugh you can possibly imagine.

This year a boy asked for seven different kinds of carrots. Another child told Santa that last year’s situation of watching his brother get more toys simply couldn’t be repeated. They want lots of real guns, real four wheelers, and camouflage outfits. Second graders. This is Clay County, Kentucky, after all.

One child refused to write to Santa, instead writing to mom and dad and lecturing the teacher on the evils of believing in this sort of thing. (Some of my TR readers will be greatly pleased with this child.) Another child promised to leave spaghetti and sauce on the table, a real break from milk and cookies. I sense the influence of dad in that one.

Of course, most letters contained recitations of personal virtue and a summary record of good deeds. The words “very good” get quite a workout. One child said very 8 times in a row. OK. I get it.

On the other hand, a rare fellow said “Santa, would you check and see if I am on the naughty list? I think I am on the naughty list. I’m always getting into things I shouldn’t be getting into.” Now there’s a young person with the right idea.

I read these letters and I recall my own childhood. I vividly remember how Christmas would come and bring hope that, finally, dad would say yes instead of no. Finally, being poor wouldn’t be the reason I couldn’t have what other kids had. In that last week of the year, things would change and everything would be alright.

The myth of Santa Claus gripped me deeply and still affects me emotionally to this day. You see, there are other things in those children’s letters that I am not reading to you. If you know our area and culture, and if you read carefully, you will hear the story of poverty, broken families, absent parents, substance abuse and despair that lives in the hollers and off the highways of Appalachia. You will hear, in those letters to Santa, the human prayer that somehow, at the end of the year, all will be right again. That broken, ruined, imperfect lives will be touched with love and magic. Don’t we all know that letter? Don’t we all know that story?

We are, as human beings, an unfinished story, and we yearn for the last chapter to be written so that everything comes out all right.

We are a child without shoes, and we long to be clothed.

We are discordant notes, aching for resolution.

We are listening to the song of the angels, and we can hear the words “peace on earth,” but we cannot touch those angels and know that they, and their message, are real.

We are hoping, yearning, aching for a savior. Not often for THE savior, at least not most of us. But for a savior. For someone to come and say the cancer is gone. Someone to bring shoes, or a job. Someone to put us to bed without fighting, or let us hear the words “I’m sorry I hurt you.”

We are hoping that just beyond this life, we can touch another life. A life where so much isn’t wrong, and our hunger for happiness will not be constantly disappointed.

We are so close. So close we can see and hear and feel the perfect world in the faces of children, at weddings, when choirs sing, in movies and at meals. But we cannot reach that perfect world.

It is frustrating to not be able to go beyond the door; to be so close, yet so far.

Advent with Christina Rossetti (2)

Friday was Christina Rossetti’s birthday. She was born December 5, 1830. During this Advent season we are considering some of her seasonal poems, using them as material for meditation and contemplation as we prepare for celebrating the birth of Christ.

The following excerpt from Rossetti’s biographical page at The Poetry Foundation explains her religious affiliation and how it affected the poet in her adult life.

Caught up in the Tractarian or Oxford Movement when it reached London in the 1840s, the Rossettis shifted from an Evangelical to an Anglo-Catholic orientation, and this outlook influenced virtually all of Christina Rossetti’s poetry. She was also influenced by the poetics of the Oxford Movement, as is documented in the annotations and illustrations she added to her copy of John Keble’s The Christian Year (1827) and in her reading of poetry by Isaac Williams and John Henry Newman. For more than twenty years, beginning in 1843, she worshiped at Christ Church, Albany Street, where services were influenced by the innovations emanating from Oxford. The Reverend William Dodsworth, the priest there until his conversion to Catholicism in 1850, assumed a leading role as the Oxford Movement spread to London. In addition to coming under the religious influence of prominent Tractarians such as Dodsworth, W. J. E. Bennett, Henry W. Burrows, and E. B. Pusey, Rossetti had close personal ties with Burrows and Richard Frederick Littledale, a High Church theologian who became her spiritual adviser. The importance of Rossetti’s faith for her life and art can hardly be overstated. More than half of her poetic output is devotional, and the works of her later years in both poetry and prose are almost exclusively so. The inconstancy of human love, the vanity of earthly pleasures, renunciation, individual unworthiness, and the perfection of divine love are recurring themes in her poetry.

For more on the Oxford Movement, follow this link to an article at Pusey House.

Many of Christina Rossetti’s Advent and Christmas poems are lyrical meditations on the bleak landscapes of northern climes this time of year. These poems are fitting for this penitential season called Advent, when we lament the darkness in our hearts and this sinful world and voice our longings for God’s light, life, joy, and peace.

Here, for example, are two poignant stanzas from an 1858 poem she simply called, “Advent.” In addition to its reflections on the changing of seasons, I love its allusions and references to stories and passages in the First Testament.

We weep because the night is long,
We laugh for day shall rise,
We sing a slow contented song
And knock at Paradise.
Weeping we hold Him fast Who wept
For us, we hold Him fast;
And will not let Him go except
He bless us first or last.

Weeping we hold Him fast tonight;
We will not let Him go
Till daybreak smite our wearied sight
And summer smite the snow:
Then figs shall bud, and dove with dove
Shall coo the livelong day;
Then He shall say, “Arise, my love,
My fair one, come away.

Saturday Ramblings: Dec 6, 2014

Saturday Ramblings, December 6, 2014

About 15 degrees cooler, and I would be writing you from a winter wonderland. Here in central Indiana on Friday we were expecting 1″-2″ of rain and there were flood warnings throughout the region. No sleigh rides for a while, I’m afraid. We don’t even like taking the Rambler out in this weather — it has a bit of an electrical problem and doesn’t like the wet. And not even the snow tires would help in mud.

Saturday’s the day we’re going to get our Christmas tree, though, so I’m hoping the sky will stop falling by then. Next week we have school programs and work parties and a choir cantata, so we won’t have any time for decorating and then before you know it will be the weekend before Christmas and we’ll need to get ready for the mob that will descend upon our house this year. So we’re devoting this weekend to ol’ tannenbaum and other decorating inside and out.

That won’t keep us from rambling though. Unfortunately, this week I’m gonna have to drag you through some of the mud and muck that covers the circus grounds of religion in America.

What passes for preaching . . .

Bad eschatology and those who hawk it are alive and well. Greg Laurie, well known senior pastor of Harvest Christian Fellowship in Riverside, California preached last week on the “biblical” subject: “Israel, Iran, ISIS in Bible Prophecy.” At one point he focused on that scintillating question that is treated pervasively throughout scripture: Where is the United States of America in biblical prophecy?

Laurie believes that America’s absence in the global map described in the Revelations [sic] can be explained by one of two scenarios. “No one can say with certainty, but it would appear that we’re going to fade as a world power [because] maybe we fall in line as one of the confederated nations under the antichrist but the version I prefer the most is we would have the rapture and so many Americans would be taken to heaven that that would be the explanation for our demise as a nation.”

[Long pause of disbelief . . .]

Did he really just say that? Does he really think that this is a question the Bible addresses? Does he actually imagine that either of his explanations makes even a tiny amount of sense? Did thousands of people actually sit there and listen to this crap?

Did I really spend half of my adult life in circles where this would have been applauded as profound Bible teaching?

Here’s the strangest appeal to God’s will I’ve heard in awhile . . .

The wife of NFL player Ray Rice, who was knocked unconscious by her then-fiancé in an Atlantic City elevator, says the assault last February was part of God’s divine plan to raise awareness for domestic abuse in America. . . . “I feel like God chose me and Ray for a reason,” Rice said. “It was definitely to bring awareness to what people are going through every day.”

What a great message to the multitudes of abuse victims out there, huh? I guess now it’s a divine calling for defenseless victims to take one on the jaw from out-of-control, drunk bullies with the maturity of 13 year-olds.

This is just the newest way of avoiding the reality of domestic abuse through religious cliché. As Michael Spencer put it, “as everyone knows, we don’t have those kinds of problems. We’re Christians.” We get the snot beat out of us for Jesus. PTL.

Nothing communicates the humble message of Christmas like 1,039 people at the manger . . .

And here’s another spectacle. A few weeks ago some folks in Utah decided they wanted to break a year-old Guinness World Record and stage history’s largest live nativity. They ended up with over 1,000 participants, a camel, a donkey, and a couple of sheep, and now there is a new standard for mass numbers of living figures at a manger scene.

“We wanted to do it simply to show the world what Christmas is all about,” [producer Darrel] Eves said. “It is not all the presents, but it is about the true gift of Christmas — Jesus Christ.”

They got the idea of doing the live Nativity scene and began preparations.

“Within 12 hours we had a plan,” he said. And they got a lot of help.

“I truly believe that Heavenly Father had his hand in all this,” he said.

I do believe it was probably fun.

I have my doubts that it did anything to “show the world what Christmas is all about.”

The Puritans are alive! (and as ridiculous as ever) . . .

When I was a very young pastor, our church had the well known Sallman Head of Christ picture hanging on the wall behind the pulpit. I was fresh out of Bible college and starting to take an interest in reading authors who were Reformed and many of whom had definite Puritan leanings. Without any understanding of Christian history about art or iconoclastic controversies, I became persuaded in their interpretation of the Second Commandment against graven images and asked my congregation to remove the picture. We ended up with a compromise and it was placed on a wall in the back of the sanctuary. Strike another blow for narrow minded silliness.

Then this week, I read Megan Hill’s article, “Why Jesus Doesn’t Belong in the Christmas Décor,” on the CT her•meneutics blog:

But the recent controversy over what Jesus looked like (What color was his skin? His hair? His eyes?) highlights an important issue with such images of our Savior: we inevitably come to think, meditate, believe, and, yes, worship according to our mental or physical pictures.

Which is why I am compelled to avoid all images of Christ. From the statues of Jesus on people’s vehicle dashboards to illustrations on covers of theological books (which I wrap in brown paper), images of Jesus are embedded in even our culture at large.

Oh Megan. You wrap your theological books in brown paper?

Talk about sucking all the joy out of life. The problem with this puritanical God you serve is that he is disembodied, ethereal, a complete figment of your mind. He is a God who only knows how to use words and who expects people to live between their ears. He is too pure to engage the real world.

In other words, he bears no relation to the God revealed in the Bible, in the book of nature, in the image of God we humans bear, or in the One who became flesh and dwelt among us.

Tithes required: dead or alive . . .

Olivia Blair, 93, was a member of Fourth Missionary Baptist Church in Houston for 50 years, but had not attended services in years due to illness.Blair’s daughter, Barbara Day, reported that when her mother died over a week ago, she wanted Fourth Missionary pastor Walter Houston to officiate the funeral, but he refused.

Why? Because Mrs. Blair hadn’t paid her tithes and hadn’t attended services for some time. Probably because she was 93 years old, had been in a nursing home for 2 years and had been seriously ill for the past 10 years. But that’s beside the point, I guess. When asked, the pastor said if Blair or her family had really cared about the church, they could have at least sent in a dollar each week.

You gotta love this part of the church’s mission statement: “. . . “to show love one for another that others may know that we are the Lord’s Disciples.”

The “most pitiful understanding of the gospel” award of the week . . .

The award goes to Dr. Randy White, pastor of 1st Baptist Church, Katy, Texas. He took his part in an intramural conflict among the Southern Baptists by writing a couple of articles decrying his fellow Baptists’ preoccupation with racial reconciliation. White insists this subject has nothing to do with the gospel.

Hall begins answering his question about what the big deal with race is all about by telling us that, “all Christians should be mindful of the gospel’s demands for racial reconciliation and justice.” This kind of talk has become common in post-modern church-world. If we make it one of the “gospel’s demands” then we can’t really question it. But I will. Is racial reconciliation a demand of the gospel? Seems to me that racial reconciliation is a good thing and is a social issue, not a doctrinal or theological issue, and certainly not a “gospel demand.” If there is something Biblical that expresses racial reconciliation as a gospel demand, I’ve missed it.

Furthermore, he dismisses those who take these matters seriously by describing them like this: “. . . the Evangelical world is preaching kum-ba-ya sermons about race-relations.”

I have news for you, Dr. White. If you can’t see the horizontal reconciling aspects of the Gospel, that’s on you. Read your Bible, and for once do it without your narrow-minded, “personal relationship with Jesus” glasses on. Jesus came so that God’s will be done on earth as in heaven, and one day this whole creation, all nations, and people from every tongue, tribe, and nation will be utterly transformed. That’s the gospel, and it has little to do with you building your church and spouting your nonsense.

And if you think focusing on matters of race, justice, and peace is equivalent to silly, mushy sentimentality, you must have forgotten that 620,000 people died in a Civil War in this country, that Americans had to endure nearly 150 years of reconstruction, Jim Crow laws, great migrations of people away from regions of discrimination, a hard fought Civil Rights movement, riots, ghettos, and a host of social problems because people like you have so easily dismissed the importance of loving our neighbors as ourselves, treating them with dignity and respect, and insisting that every person receive justice and be given equal opportunity.

This is beyond circus stuff. This is serious.

And yes, it has to do with the gospel.

Ambiguity

Discuss.

Update: Only a few have commented on the word “Abiguity”. I am interested in hearing what people might think about why I used that word.

“10 Words” from the OT that guide my journey

Moses Receiving the Tablets of the Law, Chagall

Let me mention Peter Enns once more this week. A couple of days ago he ran a stimulating post called 10 Old Testament passages that shape how I think about God. It’s good stuff, and I wholeheartedly encourage you to read it.

Well, that got me thinking about what I might put on a list like that. So today, I will share my “Ten Words” — giving full credit to Pete for the idea.

In response through the comments, perhaps you might share a passage or two that shapes the way you think about God and faith and life. Hebrew Bible only today. We’ll pick up the New Testament on another occasion.

• • •

I will start with an excerpt from the first chapter in the Bible that I memorized.

Proverbs 2:1-5

My son, if thou wilt receive my words, and hide my commandments with thee; So that thou incline thine ear unto wisdom, and apply thine heart to understanding; Yea, if thou criest after knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for understanding; If thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasures; Then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God. (KJV)

Though I am an unabashed critic of naive biblicism, the great interest of my life has been to learn the Bible that I might know God through his living Word, Jesus. The words of the Bible are the primary means by which God communicates to me and I with God. Proverbs 2 describes the hunger I hope I’ll always have for a conversational relationship with God that leads to wisdom.

Exodus 20:2

I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery . . .

In Hebrew, the Ten Commandments are known as the “Ten Words.” And the Jews number them differently than Christians do. Christians start with the first commandment: “You shall have no other gods before me” (20:3). But the Jews have a better insight into them. They start with the first word: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt and slavery,” and that word is a word of pure, unadulterated, 200 proof grace. God’s doing always precedes mine. And my doing must always be performed as the action of one set free.

Psalm 27:4

One thing I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after:
to live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life,
to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple.

Another main preoccupation of my life and work has been worship with God’s people. I have taken a long, slow road of learning about the history and tradition of worship, breaking free from revivalism, practicing the liturgy, and so on. But from the beginning of my journey, there was this text. It invites me to follow the psalmist into a life of dwelling in God’s presence, discovering the inexpressible beauty of the King and his kingdom, and taking the place of a learner at his feet along with my brothers and sisters of faith. This one thing is needful.

I Kings 17:7

It happened after a while that the brook dried up, because there was no rain in the land.

At various wilderness times in my life, I have found comfort and help in the stories about Elijah. I’ll never forget the time this text jumped off the page at me when I was in a place of deep discouragement: “. . . the brook dried up.” Imagine the prophet sitting there alone day after day at the side of the brook, watching as it diminishes, worrying about dying of thirst. It was like God took a photograph of my inner world. He knew where I was.

Genesis 32:25

. . . he touched the socket of his thigh; so the socket of Jacob’s thigh was dislocated while he wrestled with him.

We walk best with God when he has put a limp in our step. Those who wrestle with God and prevail by clinging to him arise wounded and better off for it, though they appear weaker. May I never stop wrestling, clinging, limping.

Psalm 13:1-2

How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I bear pain in my soul,
and have sorrow in my heart all day long?
How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?

The Hebrew Bible is relentless in encouraging me to be real with God. Especially in those times when I’m in the wilderness and God seems absent, puzzling, or hostile toward me. That’s why it is filled with honest cries like Psalm 13, the classic lament. “How can we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?” another psalmist asked. By singing laments, that’s how.

Ecclesiastes 3:11-13

He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil—this is God’s gift to man.

Another passage from Ecclesiastes says, “Do not be too righteous, and do not act too wise; why should you destroy yourself?” Through the years, I’ve had to learn to loosen up. Enjoy life and the people in my life. Don’t take everything so seriously. Laugh at myself. Have a beer or a glass of wine. Don’t imagine that very much at all depends on me in the final analysis — especially if it needs fixed. I have a big God with a big plan that includes making people like me fully human. Might as well start practicing along the way.

Psalm 23

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life . . .

This is an obvious choice. I think most people would put this on a list of favorite, or most influential texts from the Hebrew Bible. But there is good reason for that. This incomparable meditation on God’s comprehensive care always yields new treasures when I take the time to meditate upon it. I think of it as the OT counterpart to the Lord’s Prayer — perfectly formed, and perfectly provided to form me.

• • •

The final two passages relate to my vocation. These texts have helped to shape my pastoral methodology, especially in my work as a hospice chaplain:

Proverbs 19:22

What is desirable in a man is his kindness.

Job 2:13

Then they sat down on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights with no one speaking a word to him, for they saw that his pain was very great.

Sympathetic presence and kindness. It is as simple and as hard as that.

Fundamental mistakes in reading Genesis 1-2

God creating the Sun, the Moon and the Stars, Jan Brueghel the Younger

Many of the debates people have about Genesis 1-2 and creation stay on a rhetorical level: “literal” vs. “metaphorical,” “historical” vs. “mythic,” concordant with modern science or representing Ancient Near East cosmology, and so on. Today I’d like to bypass all of that and look at a few interpretive issues in the text itself that have come to my attention over the years and have shaped my own perspectives on the Bible’s first creation accounts.

In what follows, I will list seven observations from the text in Genesis 1-2 for your consideration, giving brief explanatory comments after each one. It is hoped that this will help all of us as we approach these passages. You might want to have a Bible open in front of you. I recommend a good, more literal translation such as the NASB, NRSV, ESV, or KJV/NKJV.

• • •

A few fundamental mistakes we make in reading Genesis 1-2 . . .

1. Thinking the 7 days of creation describe when God created the universe.

The translation of Genesis 1:1 and its relationship to the rest of the chapter has always been an issue in interpretation. There are two basic options:

Gen 1:1 is a complete sentence — “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”
Gen 1:1 is a dependent clause linked to the main sentence in v. 2 — “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was without form and empty . . .”

If Genesis 1:1 is a complete sentence there are two options:

It is a summary of what is to follow.
It records God’s original creation of everything sometime before the 7 days.

Either way, the point to note is that in Genesis 1:2, before the 7 days, “the earth” and the raw material of the universe is already present. That means the “7 days” that follow are not describing when God “created” the universe but when he brought order to the already existing world so that it became “good.”

If Genesis 1:1 is a dependent clause, not a complete sentence, you have the same result. The world is already present and waiting to be put in order before the 7 days.

The 7 days of creation (Gen 1:2ff) do not describe God bringing the universe into existence, but portray God bringing order to an already existing world that is without form and empty.

2. Failing to recognize the highly stylized prose of Genesis 1:1-2:3.

We miss some of this in English, but even in our language, the prose of Genesis 1 reads like poetry or liturgy or some other form of embellished speech rather than simple historical narrative. For example, it follows a clear parallel structure. There is an exquisite balance between the first 3 days and the second 3 days. Verse 2 describes the earth as “without form and empty” (tohu wabohu). God brings “form” on days 1-3, God “fills” the earth on days 4-6. And he pronounces it all “good” (tov).

Each day also follows a highly structured pattern. And there is an intricate numerology here. The number “seven” is woven throughout the account and everything fits within patterns of seven, beginning with 1:1 which in Hebrew is 7 words. All this and more impacts our understanding of Genesis 1’s literary type (genre).

Whatever we might call it, the literary style of Genesis 1 goes far beyond the bounds of historical narrative and presents itself to the reader as literary material for meditation and contemplation rather than a bare historical report of information.

3. Missing connections to the rest of the Torah and the Hebrew Bible in these chapters.

These chapters introduce not only Genesis 1-11 and the book of Genesis, but also the entire Torah, indeed the whole Hebrew Bible. So many elements of later stories and laws are found herein. For example, the phrase “without form and empty” is used elsewhere to describe the wilderness. God forms the good land by separating the waters. The “lights” in the sky are “lamps,” the same word used for the lamps in the tabernacle. The “signs and seasons” they are for are not nature’s seasons in the Torah, but the seasons when Israel was to celebrate the feasts. Israel’s faithful adherence to the Torah will enable them to be fruitful, multiply and extend God’s blessing throughout the world. God’s own sabbath reflects Israel’s own observance. In chapter 2, Adam is created from clay by the same Potter who formed Israel. The Lord had not sent rain upon the earth, i.e. the flood. The geographical description of the Garden fits the later boundaries of the Promised Land. “Nakedness” and “shame” will be the exiles’ experience. The whole story of Adam and Eve tells Israel’s story. Created by God and placed in a good land, they are given God’s commands and encouraged to choose life. However, they lean on their own understanding and are exiled from the land.

The language and patterns of Genesis 1-2 suggest that a main purpose of these chapters is to foreshadow the story of Israel, and not just to give information about the creation of the world.

4. Conflating Genesis 1 and 2.

Even the most literal reading of these chapters reveals something that many people miss: Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 are NOT telling the same story. This is clear from the way chapter 2 begins. The text actually starts at 2:4 — “These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created.“ This is the first of ten such statements in Genesis that use the Hebrew word toledot and serve as headings for each new section in Genesis. Each one introduces a new development in the story that came before and describes events (or lines of relatives) that came after the previous material. In Genesis 2:4, we might colloquially translate this phrase: “This is what became of the heavens and the earth.” In the logic of the narrative, the story of the Garden is subsequent to the story of creation.

Many read Genesis 2 as if it is Genesis 1 remix. But it’s not. It tells what came to pass in the world God created in chapter 1.

Creation of Adam, Jan Brueghel the Younger

5. Confusing the adam in chapter 1 with the adam in chapter 2.

This grows out of the last point. The Hebrew word adam is used in different ways in chapter 1 and chapter 2. In 1:26-27, it describes “humankind” (as in the NRSV translation) in both its male and female aspects. In 2:7, it describes an individual male human being. Later in the text it appears to be used as that male’s name. Two different stories, two different “adams.” This lends credence to the interpretation that the adam in chapter 2 is one particular individual human out of the whole group of adam that God had already created in chapter 1, and not the actual first human being. His story is subsequent to that of creation (point 4).

God created humankind, male and female, in Genesis 1. God created a particular male in Genesis 2.

6. Conflating the Garden with the whole earth.

Here is yet another mistake that comes from conflating Genesis 1 with Genesis 2. People think that the Bible says the whole world was like the Garden in Eden — a paradise, perfect. But nowhere do these chapters equate the world at large with the Garden in particular. The whole world is called “good,” even “very good.” But it is not suggested that the whole world was “Edenic.” (In fact, a close reading raises questions about whether the Garden itself was as “Edenic” as we suppose — after all, the serpent was there!) The Garden was a special place, set apart. The text says that God himself planted it and put the adam there. The Garden is described in the text in terms that are later used of the tabernacle and Temple. These were designed to be God’s special dwelling place in the midst of the broader world around. The Garden likewise was holy space, set apart from the rest of the world.

If there is a “paradise” in these chapters, it is not the world as a whole, but God’s Garden, which he himself planted in Eden.

7. Missing the evidence that all was not right with the world.

Genesis 1 says God made world to be “very good.” Genesis 2 portrays a divine Garden in that world where humans lived “naked” and “unashamed.” But look more closely and you’ll see some shadows. The original state of the earth was a wilderness of darkness and raging waters. This suggests that there were elements in the world that God had to tame to bring order to creation. Other scriptures do not hesitate to name and describe these forces of chaos. When God creates humankind in 1:26-27, his commission to them includes “subduing” the earth. This militaristic word describes bringing one’s enemies to subjection, trampling them down. Certainly that strikes a minor note amid all the positive melody in Genesis 1. Humankind is portrayed as mortal from the beginning; immortality was only to be gained by eating from the Tree of Life. Humankind somehow has the capacity to disobey God. And then there’s that pesky serpent.

According to Genesis 1-2, the world God made was once fresh and new, but from the beginning there were also elements of darkness in the midst of the light.

• • •

These are some of the observations, taken directly from the text, that have shaped my view of the early chapters of Genesis. I have not delved into the relationship of these chapters to Ancient Near Eastern creation myths, the background, composition, and editing of the texts, or other questions that I think do indeed shed light on what these chapters are about. Today I simply wanted to show some of the insights that can come from a close reading of the text itself. Perhaps it will help you see why I can no longer take seriously so-called “literal” readings of Genesis (like the young earth creationists) or concordist readings (that seek to harmonize Genesis with modern science).