Sunday, September 07, 2008 You Are Here: theology  | 
 
 
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Some Preliminary Thoughts on Biblical Genocide and Poop-Smearing

 

by A. Le Donne

 
 
This is the latest installment of my crappy Bible passages series. I do hope that you, the reader, are at least as entertained as you are offended. A good balance of these is important for any proper exegesis of the Bible.
 
As I am between academic appointments, I’ve recently returned to a job that I had while writing my dissertation.  I work an all-night shift at a home for emotionally disturbed boys. This job has three virtues. 1) It puts a little money in my pocket—a very little.  2) It allows me ample time to research and write while the little buggers are sleeping.  3) It allows me to feel like I’m doing some good in the world and win sympathy from hot chicks. So I stay up all night and work on my writing projects between bed checks and psychotropic allotments.
 
My current writing project deals with crazy-ass notions of warfare in the Bible. Come to think of it, that might be a good title for the book: Crazy-Ass Notions of Warfare in the Hebrew Bible: A Psychotropic Hermeneutic…or not. I won’t go all biblical on you, except to remind you that the folks who passed on the sacred traditions of Torah claimed that God commanded them to commit genocide. This is to say that the God of the Bible is adamant that certain ethnic groups must be completely wiped out. You know, for religious reasons and stuff.
 
There is perhaps no problem more egregious for a biblical ethicists than this one. How can this God, who shows so much patience and compassion for humanity, be the same one who commands ethnic cleansing? Let me say straight away that whatever ethical back-bending I might do in this essay does not change the fact that this is simply craziness with a distinct ass orientation. What are we missing in our worldview that can possibly bridge the gap between our perspectives of God and theirs?
 
Maybe we can take a few steps toward understanding the ancient mindset by remembering that genocide was commendable back then. Archeologists have found several royal gravestones (called “steles”) that list the great achievements of the deceased. It is common for these lists to boast about the number of ethnic groups they have exterminated from the land. Genocide was considered praiseworthy.  I suppose that this fact doesn’t really help us, does it? If anything, this fact makes the ancients seem all the more alien. But we must remember that it was this worldview that mediated the first perceptions of the Hebrew God.
 
So this is the kind of thing I think and read and write about at 4AM. At about 5AM, I have to shift gears and start waking my demented sprites. They will need breakfast and medication and obscene doses of attention. The normal morning can actually be fun. Most of the boys are good natured (except when nobody is looking) and hilarious (if your sense of humor has room for the bizarre). But, on occasion, my job can be literally shitty.

This morning was on the shitty side. One of my imps is particularly messed up. Let’s call him Jeffrey (not his real name). Jeffrey is tiny for his age—he looks about eight but is really thirteen. He’s deceptively cute and he has special powers. One moment you’re enjoying the sunrise and the next you find yourself in a Greek vengeance myth. He’s also got superhuman strength and a penchant for assaulting the female staff.

Jeffrey is the very essence of an abused personality. My female coworkers are in constant danger of having their clothes ripped, their breasts groped and their nipples wrenched. All the while, he coos like a four-year-old, “mommy, mommy.” It doesn’t take a psychologist to figure out that the poor kid has mother issues. (I happen to have read his file, so I might be cheating here.) All this is to say that the abuse inflicted upon Jeffrey by his mother manifests itself in misogynic violence: He wants to hurt women.

This morning Jeffrey was assaulting an elderly coworker of mine. She calls me for help. He’s doing his “mommy, mommy” voice and trying to rip her shirt off. Every bit of his room is turned over. When he sees me enter the hallway, Jeffrey drops his pajama bottoms and begins to urinate all over the hardwood floor. The kid is smart as Napoleon!  Jeffrey knows that I won’t lay a hand on him until he’s emptied his bladder. He makes sure to point his little fire-hose skyward to get the most arcing distance. This intuitively applied bit of physics is a formidable defense. I’m no Napoleon, but I know that the best use of this time is to collect floor rags so to avoid his slippery booby-trap. He giggles innocently while I lay down my path to his chosen battleground.

Jeffrey is well aware of what happens next. I tell him in a firm voice that I am going to take him to the “time-out” room (it’s a room with blank walls and nothing inside that might be used as a weapon). He collapses in his smashed up room and whines, “But, why?” The nerve of him to ask me why! The genius of his button-pushing is simply awesome to behold. Superhuman powers, I tell you.

Jeffrey lets me pick him up by his armpits and escort him to the time-out room. Since I have no breasts on which to wreak havoc, I get a free pass. He doesn’t hate me because I don’t remind him of his mother. However, this doesn’t stop the half-naked fiend from pooping into his hand (how can he do this on a moment’s notice?)! He then began to smear his poop all over the white walls of the time-out room. Hey, when the muse speaks, the artist must create! Jeffrey is to defiance what Rembrandt was to marble.

When all is said and done, I can’t help but shake my head and curse his mother. Was the meth-pipe really to blame? What kind of mind-alteration could cause a person to do the things that this woman did to her son? One thing is certain. Her behavior didn’t begin with her. Just as Jeffrey is a reaction to his abuse, his mother was a reaction to something from her childhood. I haven’t read her file but I have no doubt that one exists.

In my darker moments I imagine what Jeffrey will be like as an adult. As much as I wish it weren’t true, there is a good chance that Jeffrey will become a rapist, perhaps a pedophile. I pray to God that my favorite poop-smearer will find some other way to project his pain. It’s possible that he will outgrow his misogyny, that he will reach beyond the hatred he has for his mother. But this is the real world and genuine transformation is rare. In ten years or so, Jeffrey might rape your daughter.

If this happens (hopefully “if” and not “when”), it will be Jeffrey’s fault. It will also be his mother’s fault and her father’s fault. In my darker moments, I imagine what it would be like to meet Jeffrey’s grandfather forty years ago. What would I do to this ignorant monster? What would I be justified in doing?

Even though I know what Jeffrey might do someday, I cannot wish him ill. He’s just a little kid with a poop crayon. Right now, he’s a little kid in my care. It is much easier to blame his mother. It is even easier to blame his hypothetical grandfather for what he might have done to this woman. Jeffrey’s grandfather is faceless in my mind, he is one-dimensional; he wears a black hat and has no name. Perhaps we’d all be better off if the bastard had no testicles.  Perhaps the girls who Jeffrey will stalk would thank somebody to put this faceless subhuman out of his misery.

Shall we return to the folks who wrote the Bible? It may or may not improve your opinion of biblical warfare to learn that the accounts of it were written several hundred years after the fact and almost always exaggerated. Many of the traditions passed along by Torah were stories of an idealized past. Is it then so hard to imagine that these stories included genocide?

Imagine that you are an ancient, war-torn Hebrew. Your villages are in constant danger of invasion. If it’s not the empire to the North, it’s the empire to the East. Every few years the powers shift and your village becomes a battleground. On a few occasions, your family is trapped and your daughters are raped in your kitchen (by the way, this kind of story happens all around the world everyday).

If this was your reality, might you imagine a past where the ancestors of these rapists were completely wiped out? The grandfathers of your captors have no faces, or names; they are evil in a simple, one-dimensional way. Might you be comforted by a history wherein these ancient monsters were cleansed from the land? Maybe such a story would be therapeutic, a way to deal with a horrific reality. Wouldn’t a just God allow such a story to be told?
 
Okay, so I am done back-bending. As much as I like to imagine a world where child abusers have been “cleansed” from the land, I just do not have the stomach for genocide, fictional or otherwise. The fact of the matter is that no evil is one-dimensional. Nobody simply wears a black hat. If I ever met Jeffrey’s grandfather, he’d probably have a face. He’d probably have Jeffrey’s eyes and chin. I wouldn’t be able to do him harm. I might not shake his hand though, especially if his walls are decorated in burnt umber.
 

 

Redemption by Contrast:

Toward a Pulp Theology

by A. Le Donne

 

I am asked this question by an evangelical friend of mine: “Who is the most sympathetically ‘Christian’ character in contemporary film?”  My response is immediate: “Oskar Schindler”.  Evangelical friend furrows his brow.  He’s a bit doubtful that Oskar Schindler is portrayed as a distinctly ‘Christian’ character.  I offer a brief protest of his definition of ‘Christian’ —he obviously has motive to define the category in evangelical terms.  My protest is duly noted and I move to plan-B.

 

Q: Who is the most sympathetically ‘Christian’ character in contemporary film?

A: Pulp Fiction’s Jules Winnfield.

 

Evangelical dude laughs; surely I must be joking.  Would that I wasn’t hindered by this ridiculous commitment to pacifism!  His pretty little mouth ought to be slapped with cultic zeal.  I am doomed to live amongst weak-stomached, quivering masses who avert their eyes from Tarantino in a misplaced attempt to see no evil.  These are the same folks who gloss over the grotesque portions of the Bible with allegory or Marcionite bravado.  Let it be said with certitude: Seeing no evil results in seeing no grace.

Grace is necessarily ironic.  It shouldn’t be reduced to a synonym for mercy.  Grace isn’t when you deserve jail and I set you free.  That is mercy.  Grace is when you deserve jail and I make you the chief of police.  It is the absolute opposite of ‘deserve.’  Grace is dangerously impractical.  It is not to be recommended in civil society lest we all be reduced to chaos.  But in the anarchic world of drug dealers, hit-men and crime bosses, grace becomes a live possibility.

For the uninitiated, Jules is a hired thug played by Samuel L. Jackson.  He’s as dispassionate as a sociopath and as passionate as a missionary.  He is the warm and lovely face of terror.  You laugh out loud alongside his wit and eyeballing logic.  He inspires empathy in a way that makes you want to spit on Hemmingway.  Jules is Tarantino’s magnum opus.

Jules is a cold blooded killer who waxes poetic and pauses for rim shots while he kills your best friend.  You laugh and then you cringe in shock… then you feel guilty for laughing… then you laugh again because you just can’t help yourself.  Worse still, Jules recites a biblical passage to crescendo right before he takes your life. "You ever read the Bible, Bret? ...there's a passage I got memorized:


Ezekiel 25:17:
"The path of the righteous man is beset on
all sides by the inequities of the
selfish and the tyranny of evil
men. Blessed is he who, in the
name of charity and good will,
shepherds the weak through the
valley of darkness, for he is truly
his brother's keeper and the finder
of lost children. And I will
strike down upon thee with great
vengeance and furious anger those
who attempt to poison and destroy
my brothers. And you will know my
name is the Lord when I lay my
vengeance upon you."
 

The appeal to the Bible by a Southern Californian assassin has an ironic effect.  In the cadence of it, Jules almost becomes a black preacher.  The use of the Bible in this way feels ironic.  Ironically, it isn’t ironic at all.  There is a double fake here.  See, the Bible is violent.  Really, really violent.  Moreover, it has been used to justify violence repeatedly throughout history.  What Jules does with this text is the same thing Cromwell did, the same thing Zionists do, the same thing that propelled the genocide of native America.  Jules is simply interpreting a violent passage toward a violent end.  Nothing could be less ironic (I’m pretty sure that there is a paradox to be teased out here; we’ll make that extra credit).  Jules reads himself into prophetic apocalyptic and becomes the very wrath of God.

           
 
 
 
 
Then a miracle happens.
           
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 

 

 

 

And Jules feels the touch of God.

           
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

And converts.

 

 

The above excerpt is a fantastic commentary on religious experience which I will have to unpack another time. What’s important at this point is the dramatic reversal of Jules’ life purpose. Vincent asks what Jules will do with his new, religious life. Jules matter of factly states that he will “walk the earth…”

  
                                  VINCENT
                       What do you mean, walk the earth?
 
                                  JULES
                       You know, like Caine in "KUNG FU."
                       Just walk from town to town, meet
                       people, get in adventures.
 
                                  VINCENT
                       How long do you intend to walk the
                       earth?
 
                                  JULES
                       Until God puts me where he want me
                       to be.
 
                                  VINCENT
                       What if he never does?
 
                                  JULES
                       If it takes forever, I'll wait
                       forever.
 
                                  VINCENT
                       So you decided to be a bum?
 
                                  JULES
                       I'll just be Jules, Vincent -- no
                       more, no less.
 

Good Lord, it’s just brilliant dialog!  If Quentin Tarantino wasn’t so damned ugly, I would kiss him like a basset hound.  This is the kind of silly, stupid, quixotic nonsense that only a new convert can understand. 

As the plot moves forward, we see that Jules is forced to reinterpret his favorite biblical passage.  He is no longer the wrath of God.  He has a new hermeneutic, a new way of interpreting his life’s purpose.  The converted Jules sees himself as a shepherd.  In the new paradigm, he will help the weak and guide the lost.  Notice that the biblical passage doesn’t change.  It isn’t discarded for the Sermon on the Mount.  Jules simply interprets the passage with new eyes.

That passage took on a new framing for me when I watched this film (by the way, this is a fictional translation of Ezekiel - the passage is fantastically misquoted).  Ezekiel becomes a trigger for Tarantino’s gun.  My official training is as a biblical scholar, so I suppose that I read the Bible more than most.  It’s easy to be desensitized to the Bible’s violence.  But watching Ezekiel from the pulpit of Pulp Fiction gave me new eyes.  Seeing that passage on the depraved lips of Jules put it in proper context.  What a ghastly thing, the wrath of God.  How can one read that phrase, “wrath of God,” and see no evil?  But it is the seeing of evil that provides the only worthy backdrop for the seeing of grace.  In an act of complete absurdity, Jules converts and grace lands upon the most unlikely candidate.

This brings me to a ghastly bit of revelation.  In the Hebrew Bible (what Christians call the Old Testament), there is a great deal of discussion about sacrifice, about which kind is acceptable and which isn’t.  There are a handful of passages that condemn human sacrifice (Mic 6:6-8; Jer 19:4-6).  In these passages, God instructs Israel never to do what worshippers of “Molech” do.  Worshippers of the god Molech ritually sacrifice their firstborn sons.  Israel is commanded not to sacrifice their sons.  But in order for this command to make sense it must be contrasted with another command.  In Exodus 22:29, the voice of God instructs, “You shall not delay sacrificing from your harvest and your vintage. The firstborn of your sons you shall give to Me.”

This is a clear command to sacrifice every first fruit, even the firstborn son must be killed on the altar of Israel’s God.  Pause for effect.  That’s right, this is a biblical instruction to kill babies. 

It appears that this command was followed by the Jewish Kings Ahaz and Manassah (2 Kgs 16:3; 21:6).  With this in mind, we are forced to see the story of Abraham and Isaac with new eyes: Abraham is commanded to tie up his son, cut his throat and burn him on the altar of God.  Although Isaac is redeemed, Abraham is praised for his willingness to give up his first born son. 

Passages like Exodus 22:29 betray the historical probability that the early Hebrews practiced human sacrifice and that they believed it was ordained by God.  What sort of God are we worshipping here?  He is the warm and lovely face of terror.  In the face of such terror, Pulp Fiction’s sodomy scene seems tame.

Tarantino’s second storyline follows another killer named Butch. Bruce Willis’ character is employed for legalized violence; Butch is a boxer.  He is bribed to feign defeat for the benefit of gamblers.  Instead, he double fakes everybody by winning so decisively that he kills his opponent.  He is remorseless.  Butch has placed a few bets of his own and becomes a rich man—if only he can run and hide fast enough. 

Marcellus Wallace, played by Ving Rhames, is the crime boss whose been duped. Wallace chases our hero into the belly of the whale.  Both cat and mouse find themselves in the cellar of hillbilly rapists.  This is the scene that prompted many well intentioned evangelicals to walk out of the theater.  There is no "warm and lovely" here.  No empathy is inspired.  You find yourself in what the psalmist calls “the pit”.  Here, in utter darkness, Tarantino brings you to the depth of depravity.

In an absurd twist of fate, Butch finds himself tied with shoddy ropes.  He breaks free and leaves his would be murderer in the hands of the rapists.  Marcellus Wallace, merciless crime boss, will never see the light of day again and Butch escapes.  He climbs the stairs and emerges from the pit ready to run.  Unexpectedly, ironically, this mercenary killer decides to save the gangster who wants him dead.

Before returning to the cellar, Butch looks around for a weapon. He finds a samurai sword hanging on the wall.  Samurais don’t kill for money, they are defenders.  Much like Kung Fu’s Caine, they practice violence to defend the defenseless.  Except in this case, Marcellus Wallace probably deserves punishment rather than salvation.  Butch saves Mr. Wallace and reconciles with him.  On his way out, Butch happens upon the keys to a motorcycle.  He mounts the bike and rides off to freedom.  Painted on the side of the motorcycle is a single, shiny word: Grace.

I wonder how many evangelicals missed the grace metaphor because they were busy being offended by the depravity.

Back to the Bible. I won’t blame you if you find yourself hostile to the God of the Bible at this point.  What kind of terrible God requires infanticide?  The very idea is offensive.  But if you close your Bible after reading Exodus 22, you might miss Exodus 34:19-20:

        “The first son from every womb belongs to Me, and all your male livestock,         the first son from cattle and sheep. You shall redeem the firstborn son with a         lamb… You shall redeem all the firstborn of your sons…

This passage reinterprets the command to sacrifice human life.  Exodus 34 reframes the sacrificial system with the concept of redemption.  Instead of binding and killing human children, God asks for lambs instead.  This is redemption by way of contrast.  The lamb is redemptive because of what would have been lost otherwise.  It is only when chapter 34 is contrasted with chapter 22 that we understand the magnitude of this redemption.  Once we have seen the depravity, we gain the eyes to see grace.

No doubt, this raises questions about the nature of God.  Did God ever really demand human sacrifice?  I would suggest that the Bible represents the human struggle to understand God.  God is first perceived through the eyes of Molech worship.  God then becomes clearer in contrast to Molech.  In Micah, we learn to contrast both images of a bloodthirsty God with this one:

        With what shall I come before the Lord and bow down before the exalted             God? Shall I come before him with sacrifices, with year old calves? Will the         Lord be pleased with thousands of rams … Shall I offer my firstborn son for         my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He has                 showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you?         To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. (Micah         6:6-8).

Finding the God of the Bible often requires a descent into dark places.  Theology by contrast is messy business.  There is no neat and systematic way to disentangle God from the darkly tinted perceptions of God.  The Bible is archaic, offensive, schizophrenic and R-rated.  It is the kind of pulp where there is just enough chaos to display grace in all of its absurdity.
 

An Inconvenient Deity

A Comparison between the Modern “Green” Mindset and the Ancient Concept of Divine Violence

by A. Le Donne

So I finally got around to watching Al Gore’s shockumentary. I must say that it was compelling. I do have a mild case of doubt of his representation of the “scientific consensus”, but the overall presentation was effective.  I'm not an ecologist, but I did buy my daughter a Gorillas-in-the-Mist Barbie. 

After I watched it, I gave some serious thought to purchasing eco-friendly light bulbs (about 5 seconds worth) and patted myself on the back for being so progressively handsome. I even watched the special features using the battery-stretch feature on my laptop. So Al Gore gets one thumb up and I get the other for watching.

After my two hour excursion, I decided to get back to work. I (and two colleagues) have recently embarked on a new book about violence in the Bible. The project is a major undertaking to say the least. Violence is rampant in the biblical narrative.  It is endorsed, commanded and committed by God over and over again. It is the single most vexing problem of biblical ethics. And for a wannabe pacifist like me, this picture of God is all the more inconvenient. In these early stages of writing, I am just trying to find a foothold to begin my climb. Imagine my surprise when I stuck my foot right into Al Gore’s mouth!

One of the films arguments is that hurricanes tend to pick up more destructive power when they spin over warmer waters. For example, Katrina was only a class-1 hurricane over Florida and then built up significant velocity over the Gulf of Mexico. By the time it hit New Orleans, Katrina was a category-5. 

Gore gives several other examples of massive hurricane destruction as a result of global warming. His point is that global warming exacerbates natural disasters (he makes a similar point about wildfires in the special features).  In the green mindset, there is a clear reciprocity between human violence against nature and nature’s violence against human life.

This mindset is very much in line with how many theologians define Sin. Sin is any action or inaction that causes violence against Shalom. In this case, Shalom is the idea of perfect relationships. In accordance with God’s intended Shalom, I ought to have healthy relationships with my environment, fellow peoples and my Creator. If any of these relationships is damaged, the perfect balance of Shalom is compromised.

The newer, greener version of this mythology is the simple emphasis on our collective relationship with Gaia. Mother Earth deserves our utmost respect for her balance and natural order. But while She nourishes us, she is not a co-dependant Mother. We cross Her at our own peril. If we disrespect our Mother, she might apply an old-fashioned spanking. Sometimes big mama chucks a boom-a-rang highheel at us ingrates. If we pump CO2 into the atmosphere, we pay the consequences with our lives.  

In many ancient worldviews (including that of the biblical authors), acts of nature were most often associated with divine temperaments, wills and motives.  Adam and Eve distort creation and YHWH responds by cursing the Land.  Noah’s folk get violent and YHWH responds with a natural disaster.  The men of Sodom and Gomorrah attempt to assault “messengers from Heaven” and Heaven responds with fire. Pharaoh enslaves God’s people and God responds with environmental plagues. A violent rush of water drowns Pharaoh’s cavalry. In all of these examples, violence against Shalom results in natural disasters that are attributed to God.

I wonder if there is a parallel here. Both worldviews see environmental disasters as the “natural” result of human violence against Shalom. This brings me to the key parallel: Modern environmentalists do not accuse the Earth of malevolence—they see disasters as the logical consequence of environmental Sin. I wonder if the ancient Hebrew mind might have seen things much the same: God was not to be blamed for divine acts of violence; such disasters were the logical consequence of their collective Sin.

This, of course, does not solve the problem of violence in the Bible. The honest theological reader must be offended. Try as we may to include the nonviolent teachings of Hebrew wisdom literature, the God of the Bible is still a warrior. Try as we may to include Jesus’ revolutionary teachings of passive resistance, the God of his parables is still a death-penalty-issuing Judge.  Separating ethic from metaphor is tricky business in both cases. My comparison with the green mindset assuages none of the above.

If my comparison is interesting at all, it still does very little. But maybe it slows our tendency to condemn the ancients from the enlightenment’s bully-pulpit. Perhaps we are too quick to ask, “How can you worship a God who responds to violence with violence?!” Perhaps the ancients simply projected upon God what they saw as reality in nature, this being that violent causes result in violent effects. 

Who am I to accuse God or Earth of malevolence when the CO2 is in my own eye? I’m not suggesting that we let God off the hook.  I am simply saying that our visions of the divine are a bit smoggy in the first place.

 

 

A Poem by Christin M. Rice

 

 An Evolving Discussion

by Bradley Summerfield

The problem with the entire debate between creationists and evolutionists is that each side is not only wrong, they are completely out of their element. Both camps make claims that they have no right to make. More importantly, each is launching arguments that have little warrant to their interests. 

           The mistake of dogmatic evolutionists like Richard Dawkins is that they do not know what science is, and they therefore do not know what its limitations are. Science is quite simply a way of gaining knowledge about the natural world through a process of careful observation and experimentation. It represents one of the highest forms of human intellectual accomplishment, but there are some questions that science simply cannot answer. For example, the question “What do scientists do?” could be answered scientifically - one could do an observational study of a group of scientists and record their behavior in a journal. But questions like “Why does science work?” or “Why should I trust the results of this experiment?” are simply not scientific. There is no testable or falsifiable hypothesis that can be formed from questions like these. Therefore, there is no experiment to be performed, no calculations to be made. The questions are not amenable to the scientific method.

             The question of why science works so well is a philosophical, not scientific, puzzle. The scientific method of gaining knowledge relies upon the premise that similar causes will always produce similar effects. It requires that nature is fundamentally stable and constant. But why should we believe that? Why should we continue to trust that the rules of nature are constant and unchanging? “Just because it always has been so” is not enough, since that would be a circular argument. As philosophers have pointed out for centuries, there is no way to prove that the sun will rise in the west tomorrow without first assuming that nature follows predictable, constant rules.  The fact is that there is no scientific proof available to verify the legitimacy of the fundamental premise of science. We have to take it on faith.
 
            On questions about the origins of human life, the questions “What happened?” and “Can this be explained by natural processes?” are scientific. There are observational and experimental ways to investigate them. The question “Why did this happen?” or “Can you prove that this all happened by naturalistic processes only?” are not. It is not possible to devise experimental or observational studies to investigate questions of meaning. But this doesn’t mean that the concept of meaning is therefore meaningless. It simply means that it must be explored through nonscientific means. Evolution may be a fact, like gravity. But neither evolution nor gravity can prove why they are a fact. For that we turn to philosophy.
 
            The dogmatic creationists are no less mistaken than the dogmatic naturalists. Just as those on the “pro-evolution” side try to use material facts to back up immaterial claims such as “there is no design to life,” those who oppose them try to use them to prove that the world is meaningful. They point to the gaps in current evolutionary theory and say that these gaps require the presence of an intelligent designer. And then they claim that this view ought to be taught in science classes. But of course this is just as unscientific as the claim that evolution proves that there is no God. There is no experiment or study that can prove either side right or wrong. It is not a scientific question.
 
            The saddest thing about the fact that 45% percent of Americans say that they believe that the book of Genesis explains the scientific mechanisms of creation is not that they are abjectly ignorant about science, though that is quite sad. It is that they are abjectly ignorant about their own religious tradition. The notion that the Bible is supposed to be read as a scientific treatise is less than 100 years old. Christians from Augustine to Luther believed that the Biblical accounts of Creation were written to address questions of “why” rather than "how". Up until Darwin came along, very few Christians gave much thought to whether God really conjured up the Earth over 168 hours 5500 years ago or not. It really didn’t matter to them, just as it shouldn’t matter to us now.
 
            The fact that we now have a little better understanding of the physical laws and processes that govern the universe doesn’t make the existence of the universe itself any less mysterious or fantastic. To suggest that belief in the Big Bang or the Theory of Natural Selection somehow negates faith in God is an absurd non sequitur. Understanding that a great painting is made of thousands of tiny brush strokes does not make it less meaningful, or less of a masterpiece. Quite the opposite.
 
            If you lay awake trying to understand whether there is any ultimate meaning to human life, don’t go to evolutionary biology for answers. Similarly, if you are looking to understand electricity or magnetism you ought not go to the Bible. If you want to be an opthamologist don’t spit in the dirt and rub it into a blind person’s eyes like Jesus did. He was not a scientist, and the point of his stories is not to provide scientific teaching.
 
            Evolution clearly, inarguably, happened. The Earth is unquestionably older than the genealogies of Adam as recorded in the Bible would suggest if taken literally. So what? Does that mean that God doesn’t exist or the Bible isn’t true? It would be great if schools could explore questions like these in a meaningful and respectful way. They are, after all, foundational to human existence. But they are not scientific, and neither science nor religion is served when the two are mixed up.
 

 
FUCK! I’m an evangelist…!

anonymous

***Editor's Foreword: The present article has been kept anonymous to protect the innocent. As the title of this piece indicates, the subject matter is of a scandalous nature and might tarnish the reputation of an otherwise upstanding and talented Master of Divinity. Of course, there is no scandal involved when a Princeton graduate uses the word Fuck; but for a Princeton grad to use the word Ev*ngelist, well, the shock of it is enough to poke our readers' eyes out. Culture-Voice.com therefore issues our strongest caution. We advise the use of protective goggles when reading the following article.***

Honestly, I don’t mean any disrespect. I realize it’s a bit unconventional of an epiphany. But welcome to my life. My spiritual epiphanies seem to come announced by profanity these days.  Like this one.

I was driving, thinking.  For the past four years or so I’ve been going through a rather intense experience of stalking my calling—or perhaps, of it stalking me. Either way, it’s been intense.

It was Tuesday night. I was on my way to a meeting. It was dark out. None of those details are relevant to the story. It wouldn’t be any different if it had been a Wednesday during the day and I was at the beach. But detail is important, if it is my own, so I need you to know the context, relevant or not.

“I guess, when it comes down to it, what I really am is a communicator,” I thought to myself. It may have been out loud, I can’t remember for sure. I was alone in the car, so there’s a very good chance that I was talking out loud to myself.

“But what is it that I am trying to communicate?” I asked myself. These two-way conversations between myself (sometimes more than two ways, but I’d rather discuss those with my therapist) and myself are not all that uncommon. I’m an only child—I grew up playing games like Monopoly against myself (I’d cheat so that I would be sure to win) so maintaining both sides of a conversation seems like a natural progression.

“I think what I am trying to communicate is…” and at that point I was a bit stumped. What is it that I am so unceasingly, so completely compelled to communicate? Because it’s definitely as strong as ‘compelled.’ I can’t help it. If you drop me into a situation, I will try to share that experience with others, to communicate it, in words and in images. But it’s not just communication I’m after. No. Because I’m not telling you just for your information. I’m telling you to change you, in some way. I’m telling you in order to convert you. I think that’s about when it hit me.

“FUCK!  I’m an evangelist…!”  The thing is, I don’t really swear in my normal life. Just in my spiritual epiphanies.  I never claimed to be normal (as the previously mentioned cheating to beat myself in Monopoly may have already revealed). I laughed as it came out of my mouth—this one was definitely out loud.  Who uses the f-word in the same sentence as evangelist, except, possibly, someone yelling at one of those guys with a megaphone on the street corner.

But that was it. That was the answer. I feel compelled to communicate, to be a communicator. Through that communication I want to convert you. It’s not okay for me to just tell you about something. I want you to be changed by it, transformed. I want you to see and experience the world differently for me having told you. I’m not okay with you staying the same.

But evangelism is a word that I discarded way back when along with my idea that Jesus came to the world so that I would be a good kid and not drink or smoke or swear (guess that’s out) or do drugs like those other kids did.  Evangelism, actually, had become more of a bad word than its four-letter sentence companion. Evangelist?! You’ve got to be crazy.

So I went home (after the meeting, still in the dark on that Tuesday night) and I googled it. First up was the wikipedia site. After the Four Evangelists and some Latter Day Saints definition I found what I was looking for—a person who enthusiastically promotes or supports something (e.g. technology evangelist).  That was it. That was me. That was my calling.

But even better than the wikipedia entry was an article called “The Art of Evangelism” by Guy Kawasaki. Kawasaki searched a job website for the word ‘evangelist’ and found 611 entries—none of them were for churches.   If ‘the world’ can have evangelists, why can’t the church? It’s like we are a little bit late on the cool bandwagon. We threw out ‘evangelism’ thinking it was too churchy and offensive.  But not only is it not offensive, but it’s actually been embraced.

The problem is, I’m not sure it makes me any more comfortable with the term. An evangelist?! Does that mean I need to invest in a megaphone? Do I have to become socially awkward? Do I have to get in people’s faces and ask them how ‘their walk’ is going? Or can I just be someone who enthusiastically promotes or supports something?

And if I can, what exactly is that something that I’m enthusiastically promoting?  It’s not the church, that’s for sure. Maybe it’s God, but that feels a bit intangible. This is not just an exercise for an article—I’m really asking, what is that something? Can I be an evangelist without knowing the subject of the something? Or does an evangelist have to know what it is that she is promoting? Seems like it might be easier to know. Otherwise it might turn into a Saturday Night Live skit where anything you walk past you start spontaneously ‘promoting,’ like an involuntary reflex.  That could get awkward fast.

Maybe that something will have to wait for another night, another drive, and another string of profanity. For now, when people ask me who I am and what I do, I’m going to try to choke out my response, “I’m an evangelist.”

 

God has no Plan for Me

by CC O’Lorin

 
Don’t get me wrong, I know what I’m supposed to believe. I know what I’ll teach my children: God loves you and has a plan for you. So, let’s be clear what this is from the start. This is my honest attempt to reconcile what I know should be true with what I’ve actually come to believe. And, since I’ve claimed honesty (stupid thing to do), I should add that I honestly hope that I convince nobody to believe what I do. I hope that you, the reader, recognize all the things I’ve missed. I want to be wrong; I just don’t think that I am.
 
I used to think that God calls some people to do one particular thing. Abraham, pick up and go! Esther, it’s up to you! Jesus, there is no other way! Obi-wan, you’re our only hope! That sort of thing.
 
Still others, I figured, don’t have clear instructions. For these people, God’s plan for their lives may not require a change in career or a trip to Nineveh. In this way, their calling is not what we would think as a “vocation” (connotative value rather than etymological value). Still, these folk are “called” to be transformative people in whatever or wherever they land.
 
That is what I used to think.
 
I used to see myself in both categories. God had a clear direction for my life – I was supposed to become a teacher. I’d been given a gift to share – so I thought. I’d been given a talent to invest – so it was preached to me. But in the here and now, until I become a teacher, God wants me to live in a certain way – to preach the gospel always and if necessary, use words.
 
But I’m of the mind now that God doesn’t do self-help. God seems only to call individuals to do individual things because those little vocations do something important for a larger community of people. In other words, God doesn’t really care what job I get or don’t get. God only gets involved in that kind of thing when it benefits the greater community. I suppose that I’m trying to say that God doesn’t care what happens to me; he cares about what happens to us.
 
Perhaps the “self-help God” of my previous theology was created from Western Individualism. We convinced ourselves that our Daddy loved us so much that he really wanted us to succeed – to score that winning goal. “That’s my boy!” he’d say to the other gods. Of course, the doting Daddy paradigm sounds nice. To suggest a different paradigm is a tough sell because the only apparent alternative is the “dead-beat dad” paradigm of Deism. “What? My kid scored a goal? Hey, wait a minute, according to my sperm donor’s contract, you can’t tell me things like that!”
 
Let me suggest an alternative: God, the King.
 
Remember that God doesn’t give a rip about Jonah’s sense of fulfillment. After all, there was an entire city of marauding rapists to save! God the king sent one of his subjects to advance his kingdom. End of story. Jonah doesn’t get a big hug at the end. Jonah gives God the finger and God says, “Fine Jonah, your well-being isn’t even on my list of things-to-do this millennia.” In essence, the single vine that grows and then withers is God’s reciprocal middle finger to Jonah.
 
Remember that God doesn’t really care about individual soldiers in the Hebrew Bible. Wars happen. People fight them. People die. While the Bible never tells us that God gets any pleasure from war, it never tells us God weeps for every life slain. (Allow me to sidestep the problem this creates for wannabe pacifists like me.) King’s don’t have this luxury; kings fight wars to advance their own agendas – hopefully for the good of the many. The God of the Bible loves his people, not the individual persons.
 
For God so loved the what? The world (=cosmos, or universe) says the famous verse.
 
So what about Jesus? Wasn’t his main thing about how God loves me? Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so? Actually, no. Jesus’ preaching career was built upon the message that God’s kingdom had come and is coming. Jesus came preaching God as king.
 
King’s don’t whisper sweet tenders in our ears. King’s don’t kiss our band-aids. They give marching orders. Moreover, they don’t sit down with each individual subject and hash out individual mission plans.
 
Okay, so I know that there are other theological metaphors to choose from: Artist, Lover, Warrior, Shepherd. Which brings me to our most glaring exception. In the parable of the lost sheep, Jesus tells of a good shepherd who leaves the entire flock for a single stray. So I’m willing to grant that God does occasionally show special attention to individuals. But keep in mind that if we read ourselves into this parable, we’re goddamned sheep! Sheep are mindless buffoons. They’re meant to be kept in flocks so they’re easier to keep track of. Shepherds whack them with sticks when they stray from the group. This parable seems to convey that God cares that individual sheep stay with the flock.
 
I run to the desert and yell toward the Heavens, “My God, my God! Why hast thou forsaken my life-direction!” God replies, “Uh, aren’t you supposed to be with the other sheep?”
 
If you love me, feed my sheep, says Jesus to Peter. Odd answer. It’s the wrong thing to tell somebody who has just told you that they love you. If I say that “I love you,” you’re supposed to say “I love you too.” Jesus seems to be redefining his relationship with Peter. Peter says I love you. Jesus redirects him. Perhaps our relationship with God is entirely dependent upon our relationship with each other. Or so the parable of the final parting of the sheep and goats seems to indicate.
 
Here is my point. God’s plan for humanity is for her collective restoration. The kingdom of God is the transformation of culture, the redemption of creation. God doesn’t have a plan for my life. God has a plan for the entire creation, of which I happen to be a part. And a small part at that.
 
In all honesty, I do not think that God cares whether I suffer or not. God cares about the suffering of his children. God wants me to be on that assignment without regard of my personal well-being. God cares that I am speaking for the voiceless, feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, fighting oppression. God’s kingdom demands that I find the meaning for my life in the life of the collective. And I don’t even like sheep! I’ve looked into their eyes, there’s nothing there.
 

We are created to be in relationships. Apart from these relationships we lose our identity, our meaning, our purpose. It is a difficult thing to admit but I just don’t believe that God has a unique purpose for my life apart from his general purpose for peace on Earth and goodwill toward humankind. God has no plan for me apart from a big picture Plan for us.

 

Christin M. Rice had responded to the above article:

 A couple of years back, a book entitled The Purpose Driven Life came out.  It swept the churchy parts of the nation, and was readily available in every Wal Mart.  It, to be quite frank, made me want to vomit a little.  According to the book, your purpose in life seemed to be conscripted by following the 40 chapters of methodical devotional steps, and starting all over when you got to the end.  Juxtapose that with Oprah’s theology, the Follow Your Bliss approach to vocation.  This too is a highly individualistic approach to life: very fuzzy, very likable.  “Doing what you love,” seems so desirable.  It should be kept in mind though that love is often really damn hard.  Conjure an image in your mind of someone you have loved for quite some time and remember all the challenging parts—it’s enough to make you wish there were a textbook of 40 ways to love so you had some kind of navigational trail to follow when things got murky.

      I’m a both/and kind of girl when it comes to vocation: I think it is both individual, and that is also always for the benefit of the collective.  And if I followed my own logic, the collective would expand past the human collective as well.  The twist is that we are shaped individually in our participation/exploration/integration of our vocation.  Like a möbius strip, one cannot be separated from the other, and where the starting point might be one day, it need not be the same the next. 

 

Erin Dunigan has responded to the above article:

What if it’s both?

Why can’t it be both?

Why does God either have to care for my specific, individualized, western, somewhat narcissistic and personalized to me plan for my life, to the exclusion of some greater good, or else care so much about the greater good that I am merely collateral damage in the war for a just society?

Isn’t this inherent in God’s orginal ‘call’ of Abraham? (Well, actually, Abram, since he didn’t get the extra ‘ha’ until later.) The whole, “Go from your country and your kindred to a galaxy far, far away and I will bless you so that you will be a blessing?”

But it seems that we always seem to make it one or the other. Those who want to say, “ask Jesus into your heart as your personal Lord and Savior and you will be blessed,” while somehow that whole ‘so that you will be a blessing’ thing seems to get lost in the cheering of the angels in heaven over one lost soul who is found.

Or the other side of the pendulum swing are those whose faces are contorted with the seriousness of their call to be a blessing to the voiceless and fighting oppression, so that their own suffering for the cause becomes proof of their atta boy from the Big Guy Upstairs.

What if it’s both?

Why can’t it be both?

Or is that just sheepish?

 

Dr. O'Lorin has offered the following rejoinder:

It's hard to argue with a both/and. And both Dunigan and Rice suggest a both/and approach to both collective and individual vocation. I think that they are both right and a little bit not right. I'm all for believing that I can find my individual life's purpose in the life of the collective. What I don't believe is that this purpose is ultimately for me, to help me find fulfilment, or to set me apart as unique. The fact that I am unique is a fact of creation and genetics. It certainly is not dependent upon whether I become a dentist or a debutant.

So I agree with both responses so long as we're clear on the consequenses of this theology: If God does have a specific purpose for my life, it must be found in the general plans he has for creation and kingdom. It cannot be found apart from them. It may, in fact, make me miserable. God doesn't do self help. So Ms. Rice is right to vomit a little.

So a both/and works for me but there is also a crucial either/or here. I think this is where both Dunigan and Rice are a little bit not right. I think that once you see your value in the community, your individual indentity is obscured. Our individualism must be defined in direct counter-relationship to our communalism. I.e. something has to give: Either I find my identity in self-embetterment or I find it in self-sacrifice. "He must increase and I must decrease." And please don't jump to paradox on me. Let the statement keep it's teeth for a little while....

Okay fine. Self-sacrifice can indeed bring about self-embetterment. But knowing that there will be personal benefits to my sacrifice negates the nature of sacrifice. Thus making self-sacrifice impossible. Wouldn't this all be easier if God just didn't give a damn and we were all random bits of matter?

Huston Smith and Religious Universalism

by Anthony Le Donne, PhD

I recently attended a lecture given by Huston Smith. Smith is best known for his book The Religions of Man (retitled The World’s Religions in recent years) and is widely celebrated as the world’s foremost scholar of comparative religion. Just to illustrate his popularity Smith was introduced by Grateful Dead Drummer, Bill Kreutzmann. The two were so chummy that Smith played the role of surrogate father.

Smith spoke briefly of his newest book, The Soul of Christianity: Restoring the Great Tradition. One of his more adamant points was that the Christian tradition has been largely “watered down” by so-called “liberal churches” that chafe against tradition. (It seems that when one ripens to 87 years and loses their sense hearing they can use such divisive terms without worry of reprisal.)  I was very intrigued by this as it was coming from a life-long adherent of religious Universalism. You don’t get more theologically liberal. Throughout his career Smith has been very outspoken in this regard, arguing that all of the eight major religions have authentic paths to the Divine.

There is no doubt that Universalism is en vogue in Berkeley and Smith’s life work has been a major influence. Born and raised in an ideological satellite of Berkeley myself, it must be said that Buddhism is still the king of cool on University Ave. If you want to impress girls on “Holy Hill” your best bet is still Buddhism, but Universalism isn’t too far behind. So imagine my surprise when the Fonzi of Universalism mounted a soapbox for Christian orthodoxy! Smith maintained that he practices all of the eight major world religions but was raised a Christian and still spends his Sunday’s at his local church. (Smith claimed that his favorite yoga positions were now impossible at his age.) He spoke of the divine nature of Christ and the value of the Eucharist.

One of his more insightful comments was that religion deals in the language of metaphor, story and symbol in the same way that science deals in language of quantum-mechanics. His point was that it is impossible for scientists to describe the nature of an atom without using technical language. In the same way, it is impossible to speak of the nature of God without using the language of religion. Smith went on to describe the similarity between religions with the metaphor of phonetics. Borrowing from his old M.I.T. colleague Noam Chomsky, he claimed that all human language shares the same base principals. Smith likened religion to this phenomenon, saying that all of the major religions share a common core. Smith’s case was put so simply that it was difficult to disagree. But ever since my first comparative religion class at Community College (Smith was required reading), this approach to religion hasn’t rung true to me. Now I think I know why.       

I think Smith is right. World religions are like language. There are features common to the human experience in all forms of religion. But as a student of religion, I am most concerned with what makes a system of worship distinctive. If one wants to speak the language of another culture, one better be prepared to learn the differences along with the commonalities. The fact of the matter is that each religion is unique. By reducing all religions to their lowest common denominator, we lose the ability to intelligently communicate with other cultures. It is not enough to look into the face of another religion and see your own staring back at you. It is also necessary to acknowledge that the face of the other is special, not like any other.

So I want to heed Smith’s advice and begin by embracing traditional religion. In a culture where we sample religion like Costco freebees, perhaps the first step away from isolation and alienation is the decision to belong, not only to a community, but a millennia old tradition.

 
 

Thomas is Just Alright With Me

by Stephen Ausburne

 

Growing up in Sunday School, whenever I would wonder aloud if all this Heaven stuff was worth singing about I was warned not to be a "Doubting Thomas".  Can't be a "Doubting Thomas" cuz that would make Jesus sad.  The truth of the matter is, ol' Tommy Boy got a bad rap.  And because of this bad rap, many well intentioned Bibologists are wandering around stubbing their spiritual toes because of an ill-conceived notion of blind faith. 

 

In actuality, nobody likes the phrase "blind faith" any more. It's passé, like “it’s all good.” Nonetheless black and blue spiritual toenails are falling off more than ever. Most often, when people appeal to "faith" they still mean "blind faith". Whenever I am exhorted to "take it on faith", it's usually because a reasonable answer seems like too much trouble. What I'm really being told is, "You're about to think your way into hell boy... if it don't make sense, it's cuz you're trying to make sense of it!" (it works better with a Cajun accent and a mouth full of peanut butter).

 

I am inclined to ask, "Why stop at blind?  Let's have a deaf and mute faith as well." Mute Christians, at least, would be much less embarrassing.

 

It is preposterous for me to entertain the notion that I must make my most significant life choice based on "taking someone's word for it."  Am I then supposed to go out and preach the good news that you too (with faith and a little bit of pixie dust) can become an ignoramus? Or should I just answer the philosophical questions of reasonable folk with the ever useful, "Don't ask, it's bigger than you”?  For crap's sake, heaven is either going to be filled with morons or completely empty.   

 

This idea of blind faith runs contrary to the entire approach to the earliest spreading of the good news (see 2 Peter 1:16 for a summation of how it went down).  Evidence, historical data, and rational testimony lead to knowledge of God. There are extensive examples of this, where the rock stars of Scripture demonstrate that, before they believe in God/Jesus, they had to have some sort of knowledge of Him.    

 

Where does the fallacy of blind faith come from?  I suggest that its origins lie in a common misunderstanding by Christians reading the ending of John 20 where my man Tommy's unlikely journey into infamy begins. 

 

Thomas, upon hearing from the other disciples that Jesus has indeed risen from the dead, states that he must see and touch the scars from crucifixion to know for sure (John 20:25).  Later in the account, Jesus appears before Thomas and encourages him to do whatever necessary to cross the bridge of belief (John 20:27).  The story goes on that Thomas believes and then Jesus makes a comment regarding the Thomas situation.  Here is where the Sunday School translation goes awry.  The verse (John 20:29, NIV style) goes a little something like this:  

 

Jesus said to him, Because you have seen Me, have you believed?  Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed.   

 

There is a tendency to jump on the first sentence and read it as if Jesus is aghast and in full on sarcastic rebuke mode.  This reading makes the next sentence an extra special blessing on those who "don't see" and yet still believe.  Let me explain clearly for my Christian audience. 

Don't see = Blind
Believe = Faith
Blessed = Awesomeness 
Blind + Faith = Awesomeness 
Thomas = Doubter = Not Awesome = Sucks 

To interpret in this way is to miss the point entirely.  For supporting evidence, I will give you the same chapter, earlier verse.  After Jesus appears to the disciples and gives them the patented, "Peace be with you" in verse 19, verse 20 tells us:   

 

And when He had said this, He showed them both His hands and His side. The disciples then rejoiced when they saw the Lord. 

 

He provided physical pro