jlmorel

[jlmorel]

Theology of Disability

Every day of my life I look into eyes that don’t see mine.  I carry on one-sided conversations, only guessing what might be going on in the mind of the other in response to what I say, seeking any kind of a sign or expression that my guess is correct.  I live each day with the responsibility of being so connected to the body of another that I have to move for that other and bath that other and feed that other and wipe that other’s bottom after a BM.  The other is my own daughter, born with severe and multiple disabilities. She has severe brain damage and she is blind.  I have many things to say about my experience with her, but I am often asked what I have to say about the theology of disability.  In other words, what should the church do about disability?  How do we reconcile the conflict between acknowledging the real problem and pain of disability and maintaining trust and faith in God? How do I go on living in hope?

Following are a few brief (not fully developed) thoughts I throw out here for consideration:

1)  One of the most profound impacts from a life lived with disability is that of isolation.  If the faith community can just understand that much, it would make a huge difference in the lives of the disabled and their families.  It is one thing to have an accessible facility.  It is another to have a program specially designed for individuals with special needs.  However, even having special programs that are set up with good intentions to “teach about God at a level that they can understand” is fairly condescending and in itself a form of isolation from even the community of God.  People with special needs are often pigeon-holed away into whichever corner classroom happens to be available for the time being, and they are not fully incorporated into the community as a whole.  They may be learning about God’s love from specially designed curriculum, but they are not experiencing God’s fully inclusive, compassionate love lived out within the community.  How much more would they learn about God’s love from the experience of being a fully integrated part of the fellowship?  How much better it would be if God’s churched not only found in their hearts to reach out to the disabled, but did so in a way so as to bring them naturally into the community as a whole?  Both the individual and the community learn from and benefit from that kind of incorporation.  I believe this is the biblical model, as portrayed in the story of David and Mephibosheth, in the account of Jesus and the leper, in the story of lowering the paralytic through the roof into the center of the room where Jesus was. Those individuals were brought to the king’s very table, back into community, and into the center of what God is doing.

2)  Thinking theologically (rather than ecclesiologically ), I am often surprised that disability is a subject that has become a separate topic from the rest of the suffering that is experienced in a broken world.  It’s all a part of the same.  The Christian worldview holds that God created a perfect world, but that all changed at the Fall.  It was as if there was a crack in the universe when we humans tried to take things into our own hands and chose disobedience.  From that point on, things have not been right and God has been about the business of restoring all creation back to His original purposes, all the while “the whole creation groans” (Rom 8:22). And so cell mitosis doesn’t go as it should, microorganisms destroy brain cells, bodies are broken by accidents or acts of war. In addition, the land doesn’t bear its fruit, there is enmity between God’s creatures, and natural disasters destroy.  Because of the Fall, the impoverished go hungry, children are sold into sex-slavery, and hate, violence and greed abound.  

We have the promise of God that all will be restored and is being restored.  We have the resurrection of Jesus Christ as the guarantee of that, as he is the first to receive the full restoration of the body and he has promised to return and come into His own kingdom.  That is the good news and the hope to which we all must cling.  As Paul says in Romans 8:18, we must consider that these present sufferings are not even to be compared to the glory that will be revealed in us!.  So, those of us who suffer now from the disability of bodies that don’t work quite the way they were intended live with the promise of God that this will be restored.  Some of that restoration is happening in the present, as medical advances provide God’s healing to more and more of humanity and as human hearts become more globally conscious of the needs of others and decide to act on that consciousness for the betterment of the world.  The complete restoration hope lies in the day when every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, when He comes into His Kingdom.  That is when my daughter will get her new, incorruptible body.  She has (we have) to trust God and look toward that day in expectation.  

3) Of great concern, aside from the brokenness of the bodies of the disabled (not at all diminishing the great suffering these beloved people experience) is the brokenness and disability of our human hearts (every one of us!) which continue to cause, or at least continue to allow, so much suffering in the world today.  Here again, it is only in the Gospel of Jesus Christ that we can hope for a better world and God’s restoration of even our very heart.

Lord, Thy will be done, Thy Kingdom come.

 I invite your input and responses.

[jlmorel]

Shelter from the Storm

Dad sat in his overstuffed chair by the fire, flipping open the newspaper.  Mom and the kids were bundling up for the snowy night outside.

“Are you sure you don’t want to go with us, honey?  After all, it’s Christmas Eve.”

“Nah.  You know I don’t get into that sort of thing.  –Just a bunch of overzealous Christians getting together at some awful hour of the night during a snowstorm to pass a candle around.  No, no thank you.”

“Okay, suit yourself,” Mom conceded, as she guided the children out the door and towards the country church down the road.

The silence of the night was stunning.  Except for the snap of burning embers and the rustle of newspaper, the peace of midnight filled the house.  Soft light glowed from the parlor lamp near the front window, and ornaments bedecking the Christmas tree reflected the warmth of its light.

Suddenly, silence broke as an abrupt thud came from the direction of the window… and then another.  Dad startled and turned about only to see a handful of birds outside in the snow, throwing themselves against the window. It was obvious to him they were following the light to find warm shelter from the storm.

Dad knew that only a few yards away the door to the barn stood open, offering generous refuge to the shivering birds

Why can’t they see that?” he thought to himself.  “If only they could find their way to the barn, they’d be safe, but they’ll die in the cold if they don’t find the way in.”

As he watched helplessly, he began to wish there were some way he could change himself into a bird so that he could communicate with the others and show them the way to warmth and safety.  

It was then, in the dark of that cold winter night that he slowly began to comprehend what Christmas was really all about. God came to us in Jesus to show us the way to warmth and safely and eternal life.

May you have a very blessed Christmas.

[jlmorel]

The Welcome Mat

There are so many opinions, facts and figures, and political arguments going on right now about the Syrian refugee crisis it can make your head spin.  Who’s right?  Who’s putting out misinformation or bending the facts to their favor?  Who is just plain fear mongering?  With all of the impassioned rhetoric being thrown around, one wonders if the terrorists may be winning the battle by causing fear to well up in our hearts and minds so much that we turn on each other enough to cause our own weakness and, eventually, demise by our own hands.  Rather than having to decide which news agency to trust or which political figure to support, I thought it prudent and in keeping with the mind of faith to consider what the Bible might have to say about the refugee crisis and how it might apply to our response.

Alright.  Admittedly, the Bible doesn’t speak directly into the Syrian Refugee Crisis of 2015, but these writings, written by wise men and women who were inspired by God, the maker and head of the universe, have precepts that can guide our minds and hearts to understand and act on world issues today with integrity, wisdom and uprightness.

The Old Testament

In the narratives of the Old Testament we see that the ancient Israelites were no strangers to the idea of seeking refuge from oppressive powers.  In fact, they were themselves refugees from enslaving Egypt. When they were freed by way of mass exodus, they found themselves fleeing, without a home, wandering and encamping in a wilderness for a generation before finally settling in the land God had promised.  During this time of homelessness, the Law was given as a way to establish and develop governance and a culture for the people of God, who by that time had little frame of reference for either.  It is within this Law of Moses that we find guidelines and regulations that lift up the importance of hospitality to the stranger.  In fact, this is a theme through much of the Old Testament and one of the Hebrew Scripture’s most important ethical values.  While there is no specific mention of “hospitality” in The Law and The Prophets, it does speak often of the “sojourner,” or “stranger,” and there are many places in the narratives where acts of hospitality are clearly valued. In Genesis 18:1-16, we see evidence of the importance of showing hospitality in Abraham’s and Sarah’s gracious service to the three Men of God who come to visit.  In the same way, in Genesis 19 Lot shows self-giving hospitality to the two angelic visitors.  Rebekah was welcoming and giving to Abraham’s servant, which was considered to be a sign that she was favored and chosen by God above others to be Isaac’s wife. Rebekah’s brother, Laban, showed similar service to family members by welcoming Jacob.

Moses fled Pharaoh’s wrath and settled among the Midianites.  Their hospitality to him was an example of the right thing to do (Exodus 2:20).  The protection the prostitute Rahab of Jericho offered the two Israelites spies was enough to save her and her family from annihilation (Joshua 2, 6:22-25). Elijah found a safe haven in the home of the widow of Zarephath, which was enough to save her and her son (1 Kings 17).

The Law clearly declares in Exodus 22:21 “And you shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” And again, in Exodus 23:9, “And you shall not oppress a stranger, since you yourselves know the feelings of a stranger, for you also were strangers in the land of Egypt.”  Further, Leviticus 19:10 states, “nor shall you glean your vineyard nor shall you gather the fallen fruit of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the needy and for the stranger,” and Leviticus 19:34 goes on, “The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you were aliens in the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God.” Deuteronomy 26:12 continues with “When you have finished paying all the tithe of your increase in the third year, the year of tithing, then you shall give it to the Levite, to the stranger, to the orphan and to the widow, that they may eat in your towns, and be satisfied.” Those are pretty straightforward and powerful commands, the obedience of which counted Israelites as righteous.

Conversely, it was frowned upon when Sihon, king of Heshbon did not let the Israelites pass through (Numbers 21:23).  His inhospitable treatment of the Israelite refugees brought him into defeat by their armies.  Likewise, Deuteronomy 23:3-4 states that “No Ammonites or Moabites shall enter the assembly of the Lord…”  Why? “…because they did not meet you with food and water on the way when you came out of Egypt.”

In some of these Old Testement examples of hospitality we see extended family showing hospitality to other family members.  In our desire to protect those we love, we are tempted to think that hospitality should be only offered to those within our own “tribe,” our own people.  It is important to note, as the prominent theologian Valdemar Janzen does, that in the Old Testament, showing hospitality goes further than providing a meal and water and a place to sleep only to those in our own group.  Many of the Old Testament examples of hospitality to the sojourner go beyond the tribe or Israelite territory.

Access to land and food does not only take the form of God-given possession.  People do not live by their own land and its produce or profit, but also by the graciously extended produce of the land of others, in time of need.  Hospitality is an ethical component of the family paradigm that is hard for modern Western readers to appreciate in its full weight and significance.  It may help us to remember that travel, in the ancient world, was only undertaken for grave reasons, often negative in nature, such as flight from persecution or search for food and survival.  Hospitality, under those circumstances, has little to do with modern tourism, but embraces the biblical equivalent to our policies regarding refugees, immigration, welfare, and social security.  (Waldemar Janzen, Old Testament Ethics, Louisville: John Knox Press, 1994, 42.

Hospitality was crucial for God’s plan and His kingdom of love to proceed and expand outside of the community of Israel to the entire world.  This was God’s commission to the Israelites: that they live in such a way as to draw all nations to God.  It was not a commission to isolate themselves for the sake of their own people and purity (although that is what the Israelites began to do).  It was a mandate to proclaim God to the world through actions and obedience to Love.

The New Testament

In the New Testament of Christian Scripture, Jesus himself is recorded as having referred to the Levitical texts, which call us to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18). One expert in the details of the Law, trying to weasel out of the responsibility that comes with such a radical statement, questioned Jesus, “Ah, yes, but just exactly who is my neighbor?” Jesus’ response is surprising. Most of us are familiar with the basics of the story of The Good Samaritan that Jesus tells (found Mark 12, Matthew 22, and Luke 10).  But the details are what are surprising.  The Samaritans were considered half-breed heretics by the Jews of Jesus’ day.  You could even say they were enemies, inbred with the invading enemy Assyrians.  They were so hated that Jewish travelers would go far out of their way to avoid passing through their territory in central Israel.

In Jesus’ story, being loving to one’s neighbor was not pictured by a righteous Jew doing the right thing and caring for an injured Samaritan.  No.  It can be presumed that the man who was mugged and left for dead was probably supposed to represent a Jew traveling the steep and windy path between Jerusalem and Jericho.  In a reversal of expectations, it was a perceived enemy who was the one who did right and took care of the injured Jew.  The enemy turned out to be the example of a neighbor, the one we should love as ourselves.

This teaching falls under the same vein as Jesus’ teaching on the Mount as recorded in Matthew 5.  

“You have heard that it was said, ‘you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’  But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you in order that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward have you?  Do not even the tax gatherers do the same?  And if you greet your brothers only, what do you do more than others?  Do not even the Gentiles do the same?  Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”  (Matthew 5:43-48)

In giving this commandment, Jesus is continuing the commandment originally given to the Israelites and now passed on to Jesus-followers: to reflect God’s righteousness to the world, drawing all people to Him.  According to this teaching of Jesus, we are to do so by showing love to everyone, even our enemies.   And how do we love them?  Well, according to those Old Testament passages we already looked at, one way is to show hospitality and be gracious, providing for their needs.

Jesus’ beloved disciple, John, puts this love of enemies in another light for us. In the first letter we have of John he wrote,

And we have come to know and have believed the love that God has for us.  God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.  By this, love is perfected with us, that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world.  There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves (lit. has) punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love.  (1 John 4:16-18)

He then adds in verse 21 “And this commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God should love his brother, also.”

The Apostle Paul has something to say about this, too.  In his letter to the Galatians, who were embroiled in discrimination issues, he wrote, “For the whole Law is fulfilled in one word, in the statement, ‘you shall love your neighbor as yourself.’  But if you bite and devour one another take care lest you be consumed by one another” (Galatians 5:14-15).  Clearly loving others is the central component to Judeo-Christian thought and practice. Notice Paul also warns us about not being unified in love.

Conclusion

So where has this brought us?  Hospitality, especially to a stranger in distress, is a biblical value.  We are not to fear the stranger, but are to reflect God’s love to all the world, including even our enemies.  We may find that the one we consider to be our enemy is actually the more righteous neighbor.

It is estimated and accepted fairly widely that at least 10 percent of Syrians are Christians, meaning that a greater percentage than that are Christian Syrian refugees fleeing their Syrian persecutors.  By turning away refugees or refusing to show them welcoming hospitality and protection, we are turning away many fellow Christians, those with our own tribe. However, those who are not Christians are still our neighbors, to whom we are to demonstrate God’s gracious love. We may even find that it is our Muslim Syrian neighbor who is more loving and righteous than we!

Can we trust that God can and will work through our acts of love, kindness and hospitality?  Can we trust that God is in control and can we let His love work its change in this world through our actions?  Or will we fall prey to fear and choose to turn our backs? Or worse, allow our fears to break us apart?  

If you choose to trust in God’s plan of love, what will you do to support efforts for refugee resettlement?

Here are a few ideas:

Give to the UN Refugee Agency

Provide support through Save the Children

Support political leaders who promote asylum measures

Offer housing and assistance (a spare room?)

Give to Karam Foundation, offering education to Syrian kids in Turkey

Provide emergency shelter through ShelterBox

[jlmorel]

Ranting on Judgment

The Gospel according to Matthew, Chapter 7 has a hold on me and won’t let go, especially the first few verses:

Do not judge lest you be judged.  For in the way you judge, you will be judged; and by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you.  And why do you look at the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?  Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ and behold, the log is in your own eye?  You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye. (Matthew 7:1-5)

First of all, that part about the log in my own eye slaps humility in my face, because it forces me to face the fact that I, too, am flawed and a sinner – more so than I want to admit freely.  It warns with caution against my thinking that I am so good as to be able to become the moral judge of others.  It reminds me that there is a higher power, one known as grace, which I can speak into others’ lives.  It brings us all onto an equal level, where we are less about pointing out the flaws of others, and more about working together to improve all of our lives in community, starting by removing the log from our own eyes and then helping others remove the speck.  

However, I have seen recent events in the news that have invoked in me a feeling of frustration about an apparent resistance to judging.  There have been some heinous acts occurring in our own country and around the world to which the immediate Facebook response seems to be, “God bless them, though, because I am a sinner, too, and cannot judge.”  I don’t believe this is what Jesus was saying.  I echo the sentiment of Rob Bell when I say that I can be very glad that God is not only a God of love and mercy, but also a God of judgment. I want God to judge that rape is bad. I want God to make it clear that the massacre of churchgoers is not to be accepted.  I want God to put the “evil” stamp on genocide.

It is pretty clear that in this part of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus was speaking to those who, in those days, considered themselves to be the ultimate moral judges of others, those whose goal in life was to follow the rule book of the Law to every last detail and to point out when others were not living up to God’s supposed expectations.  According to the gospels, Jesus accused the Pharisees on numerous occasions of appointing themselves the judges of others.  He pretty much said they needed to take a good look at themselves and their ways, pointing out that they had it all wrong – that mercy wins out over judging others for offenses or failures.

However, Jesus was not teaching that we should not judge the evil that exists in the world.  He did not teach that there was never a right or wrong and to permit all things, embracing them in love.  True, there is a difference between judging the act and judging the person.  Jesus told us to love our enemies and pray for them. But was he teaching us that it is wrong to hold them accountable for the evil they commit?  While I am glad that one of the first responses of the families that lost dear family members in the hate shooting at the AME church in South Carolina this week was to speak a message of forgiveness to the young man who committed the murders (I’m not sure I could have been so strong), he is still responsible for his terrible deeds and this country should be in shock and, yes, even angry about his evil act of violence.  Dare I say it?  We can be free to judge against such “moral failures,” “breaches of the Social Contract,” “Evil.” We should, as community, seek to purge such hatred and violence against the innocent.  We can hold the perpetrator accountable.  We can do so and feel justified in doing so, as we name what God himself would judge.  Only then can we move forward and attempt to help individuals into rehabilitation or onto the right course.  This is how community, in love, works to “remove the speck.”  Jesus gives us the permission to do so right in this passage, as long as we are humble enough to first make sure we are pursuing the right way in our own life first.

The danger?  There is an awful lot of gray area.   I think that’s also what Jesus is saying.  Just be careful, be humble, seek to clean up your own act, don’t make it your goal in life to be a self-appointed judge over others, and always lean on the side of mercy.  -But there are times when judgment and removal of evil is not only permissible, but the right thing to do.

[jlmorel]

#6 Timbrrrrrr!!!

My friend and I were involved in a lively conversation a few days ago.  We were discussing some of the terrible things going on in the world and sharing our opinion about just what should be done.  It was clear to me that our differences stemmed from our very different worldviews.  He is a humanist.  I am a Christian.  Our worldviews are defined by how we answer four basic questions:  Where am I?  Who am I? What’s wrong? And What’s the fix?  My friend and I answer these questions differently.  Interestingly, I realized that the way I answer at least the first three of these questions is defined by just three short chapters of poem at the very beginning of Genesis.  Fascinating.  That is how central those short passages are to the Judeo-Christian way of understanding reality and the world.

In my previous blogs I’ve gone over some of how we would answer those first two questions.  We are living in a loving God’s well-ordered creation.  We are a part of the creation, made to be in relationship with God, to care for the Earth, and to reflect God’s image to the world.

Genesis 3 then helps us to understand and answer the third question – So what went wrong?  What was it really that happened in the Garden?  Was it really just about snacking on fruit?  (Remember, this is an epic poem that uses word pictures to succinctly and brilliantly describe things that are beyond words.)

Some extreme feminists, Gnostics, and Humanists would argue that this story shows Eve to be a heroine because she brought knowledge to humankind.  They would see human knowledge as a part of the “fix” to our problems.  Other folks seem to believe that there was some “carnal knowledge” involved, and that therefore sex is bad and the cause of sin and evil in the world.  But the Judeo-Christian faith sees it differently.  This chapter is central to our understanding of the world, ourselves and God.  It’s that important.  So let’s look at it briefly and try to define what that passage is really trying to say to us.

One of the first things we notice is that temptation comes to Eve in a way we can all relate to – that small whisper in the ear that suggests that an alternative way to God’s way may be the better way.  Eve rightly responds to temptation by quoting God’s word.  That’s a good practice that we can learn from.  In fact, in Matthew Chapter 3, which recalls Jesus’ own temptation by the Devil in the wilderness, Jesus also responds to the temptation by quoting God’s Word in the Holy Scriptures.  We do well to copy Jesus when we find ourselves tempted by something other than God’s plan.  In order to do that, though, we need to have the Word of God implanted in our hearts so we can bring it up when needed.  This is where Eve falters.  She responds to the temptation by quoting God, but she actually stumbles a bit and ends up misquoting what God is reported to actually have said.  Compare the two verses:

Gen 2:16-17  And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” *

Gen 3:2-3  And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’”

In this story when Eve stumbles over God’s actual words, and therefore mistrusts her ability to quote God correctly, the gateway is opened for the serpent to lead her to mistrust God’s word altogether. 

Gen 3:4-5  But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die.  For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God…”

It’s a very subtle, but very real, twist of truth.  It is a tool that the serpent character of the story, who represents Evil, uses to get both Adam and Eve to the goal he’s really after: the man and woman begin to doubt and actually mistrust God and God’s motives.  They choose, instead, to trust themselves and their own judgment.  They want to put themselves in God’s place and take control.  This is what the Christian worldview understands to be the real cause of what is wrong with the world.  The “Fall” of humankind into sin happens when we choose to disregard God and God’s good plan for us, and instead we grasp at taking control.  In other words, we put ourselves in God’s place.  In addition, that act of trying to mess with the good order of things the way God intended not only caused a rift between humankind and God, it caused the whole of creation to be sort of out of order.  Some of the most natural things in the world don’t work quite as they were originally meant to work.  Being “fruitful and multiplying” (i.e., having babies) was originally meant as a command of blessing, but now it will cause great pain.  (Again, remember that this is a poem that uses word pictures to describe bigger ideas.)  Fields will now grow thistles and thorns, and humans will find that the very basics of life will be difficult work.  In other words, things don’t work right because the created order of things with the loving God in His place at the top has been upset.  Things have gone wrong because we would like to be in control and reach the height of God.

The problem is, that’s impossible.

So what’s the fix?  The answer to that fourth question is what the rest of the entire Bible is all about.  We cannot reach God, so God had it in His plan all along to reach us, through a little baby, born in poor conditions in Bethlehem, who would one day restore order and make things right.  Jesus.  Will you relinquish trying to take control, putting yourself in God’s place, and let him be loving Lord of your life?

Some random notes on Genesis 3:

1) Look at God’s response in Genesis 3:9.  “Adam, where are you?” He didn’t throw lightening bolts.  He didn’t immediately start blaming or getting angry.  He came to a hurting human being who knew he had done wrong (verse 7: naked = exposed) and invited him to share first and explain what was going on.   How kind.  How loving. We can learn from this to approach in a similar fashion those we know who are hurting or feeling the consequences of their wrongdoings.  When we don’t know what words to say, when we don’t want to come across as judgmental or blaming or angry, when we want to show the person forgiving love, we can just start by saying, “Friend, where are you?”

2) Take a look at Adam’s response.  Finger pointing.  He even blames God for giving him the woman who led him to do this terrible thing!  Do you know this person?  Can you say that the person in the mirror is related to him?  We all do it.  It’s in our nature, apparently.  However, honestly accepting responsibility for our own actions is the beginning of healing and restoration.  Praise God!

    * See Romans 6:23 and James 1:15

[jlmorel]

"... focus not on the question of which human beings God is going to take to heaven and how he is going to do it, but on the question of how God is going to redeem and renew his creation through human beings and how he is going to rescue those humans themselves as part of the process but not as the point of it all.

-NT Wright, Surprised by Hope

(You've got to read this book!)

[jlmorel]

#5 A Big Fat First Wedding!

Being a romantic, I just love a wedding!  I love the flowers, the romance, the clothes.  The bigger and whiter and fluffier the dress the better.  I’ve had the privilege of officiating some weddings and have loved every minute of them, but they do raise some questions.  Have you ever wondered where some of those strange wedding traditions like a parade of bridesmaids come from?  -and what about the father “giving away” his daughter? Isn’t that demeaning to the modern bride and objectifying her as a possession?  Read on.

In my last blog, I tried to give some perspective to the creation story/poem of Genesis.  Let’s continue to dive into the next chapter of Genesis as the story is more clearly defined and we find out even more about God’s care and purpose for us as humans… And it involves a wedding!  Where we left off, God had completed his loving and powerful act of creation, entrusting human beings with the care of the creation.

Then in the very next chapter, we take a step back into the sixth day of creation again and look at it with a bit more detail.  Man was alone.  That was the first thing in creation that was deemed “not good.” “It is not good that the man is alone” (Gen 2:18).  It seems that part of being created in the image of God includes being created for relationship – relationship with God AND with other humans.  This is made evident by the parade of creatures who come to the first man in an attempt to find a mate, none of which are found to be suitable.  Then, along comes the woman, and the man essentially exclaims, “Now THAT’s what I’m talkin’ about!”

I am in gratitude to Brett Simmon’s brilliant message a few years ago which pointed out how this whole scene is played out again and again at every traditional Christian wedding.  Just think about it for a minute… We decorate the venue with beautiful flowers all around, creating a virtual Garden of Eden.  Then the man stands up front as a parade passes in front of him: flower girls, ring bearers, and bridesmaids.  It is clear that not one of them is the suitable partner for the groom.  Then enters the woman, and the man seems to stand a little taller.  Traditionally, the bride’s father, in the role of the Heavenly Father, then presents the bride to the groom, and she comes to stand at the his side.

By the way, that last bit is significant.  In the poem the couple, whether understood to be truly the first two human beings to walk the earth, or interpretations of God’s creation, come to represent the very beginnings of humankind.  From the very beginning, the woman, according to the account, was made from the man’s side near his heart to stand at his side (not under his feet or over his head).  It’s so sad that for thousands of years this passage has been used to subordinate women.  Yes, in verse 18, God says he’s going to make a “helper” for the man.  The Hebrew word here is ezer.  It’s a word that’s used elsewhere in the Bible.  Let’s take a look at a few other verses with that word:

Exodus 18:4b “The God of my father was my help (ezer), and delivered me from the sword of Pharoah.”

Psalm 33:20  Our soul waits for the LORD; He is our help (ezer) and our shield.

Psalm 70:5  But I am afflicted and needy; Hasten to me, O God!  You are my help (ezer) and my deliverer; O LORD, do not delay.

Psalm 121:2 My help (ezer) comes from the LORD, Who made heaven and earth.

And in Hosea 13:9, God is quoted as using that word for Himself.  “It is your destruction, O Israel, That you are against Me, against your help (ezer).”

There are many more.

So what do you notice about how that word ezer is used?  In these verses and others, ezer applies to God and is in no way used to subordinate God to man.  So, why would we think the woman was created to be subordinate?  No, she comes alongside… the perfect match to work together with the man in their joint assignment of caring for the earth.  Beautiful.

And so this scene plays out again and again as we humans continue seeking and finding suitable mates.  The final act of growing into adulthood is when we leave the home of our fathers and mothers and create our own lives with our mate, holding fast (note that in verse 24 the mans clings to the wife – perhaps another poke in the eye of the subordination theory.) “And they shall become one flesh.”  There is such innocence and promise in the last verse of Chapter 2, “And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.”  It’s so much like the end of a wedding ceremony, when the happy couple, all smiles, floats hand-in-hand up through the center of their family and friends, off to start this new and perfect life together. 

You gotta love that moment. 

But let’s face it… in the back of everyone’s mind is, “Will they make it?”  Why is that?  I think Chapter 3 of Genesis holds the answer.  I would love to hear from you about any interpretations you may have heard or read about just what happened between Adam, Eve, the “serpent,” and God.  We’ll discuss it in next week’s blog…

[jlmorel]

#4 The Beginning

Have you ever asked yourself, “How could God have created the universe in just six 24-hour days?” “What about the dinosaurs?” “How does Genesis fit with scientific facts or theory?” 

In previous posts, I set out to lay a foundation for approaching the Bible in a way that may help us to understand it a bit better.  So, let’s try to put some of these things into practice.  Where to begin?  Why not the beginning?

The creation account found in the first part of Genesis is probably one of the most well-known of all of the ancient biblical texts.  And yet, I am often surprised by the various ways it has been interpreted.  Much of this seems to come from approaching the text from a modern or post-modern perspective.  From that perspective, it raises questions like those above. The problem is that perhaps we are asking the wrong questions of the text.

The ancient mind did not think along these lines.  The ancient mind was not as interested in chronology as with meaning.  The ancient mind was not a linear thinker, but cyclical or circular.  So, to understand the creation story of Genesis, we do better to try to approach it from an ancient mindset or perspective.  And, since the first part of Genesis includes storytelling/poetry, we would do well to know if there are other stories/poems about creation that were popular at the time to which we could compare it.  I could write an entire book on the subject, and many people have.  But since this is just a blog, I’ll make this brief.

There were other creation stories that the ancient Hebrew people would have been familiar with.  You may have had to read the Epic of Gilgamesh in high school.  It’s an ancient story of early man and the gods from Mesopotamia that dates as far back as 1800 BCE (Genesis has been dated between 1000 BCE and 1500 BCE).  There is another Mesopotamian piece called Enuma Elish that is dated somewhere around the same time as Genesis.  I would like to encourage you to take a look at this website and read just the first part of the Enuma Elish (if not all of it) to familiarize yourself with the work: http://www.ancient.eu/article/225/.  The introduction is helpful and the translation is recognized as sound.

I’ve mentioned before that what stand out to me as important are not so much the similarities, but the differences we find in various accounts.  Let’s start with things we notice about Enuma Elish, remembering that the ancient Hebrews would have been familiar with at least parts of this story/poem.  From a distant overview, we can see that the poem is a way of lifting praises to the god of the city of Babylon, Marduk.  But as we look closer, we read that before anything else existed, there was a god …and a goddess, Apsu and Tiamat.  Other gods were then begotten when these two “shared their waters” (I’ll let you interpret that on your own).  But there was strife in the celestial family.  The lesser gods were basically loud and obnoxious.  From there we find evil plots and schemes, rage, trickery and violent murder.  There are battles, storms, “chaos-spreading” winds, monsters, and merciless weapons.  There is fear, horrible dismemberment, gross sexuality, terror, untruth, and magic.  Then, in the midst of all of that, out of murderous blood, human was created to live in the service of the 600 gods so they might rest.

While there are a few similarities (before heaven and earth, there was a heavenly being that created everything from nothing, and at the end of creation the God/gods rested), for the most part, the poem of the first part of Genesis offered a very different story than the one ancient people of the Middle East knew. First of all, this God was One.  And then, to begin the act of creation, all it took was a Word.  God spoke.  No violence, no sex.  “Let there be…,” - words of gentle power.  And there was light and it was… good.  What a breath of fresh air this would have been to those accustomed to hearing creation stories of violence.  And then creation continues in cycles and with order and purpose and goodness.  Finally, human was created with a connection to the earth and given an honorable position of being in the very image of God.  Rather than being in the service of the gods, human was given the responsibility of caring for all creation.

This God of the Hebrews was different.  Very different.  It wasn’t because God did it in six “days” that may or may not have been 24-hour periods, -or perhaps eons.  That really is not a point of the story that would have stood out to the ancient audience who first heard it.  Instead, in the Genesis poem, creation was good and done with cyclical order and with purpose. Moreover, humans are invited to live in close, loving relationship with God, the Creator and Provider.  Wow.  That would have been mind-blowing!

So we see then, that the context of the ancient mind and other ancient literature and culture matter to the interpretation of the creation story in Genesis.  The text is written in an ancient poetic form of repetition, rhyming thoughts rather than the sounds of words.  It was not necessarily, therefore, written as a scientific description of how the earth was born and how humans showed up on this ball in space.  Let’s set aside our modern concepts and questions and celebrate this amazing story that emphasizes the goodness and power of the One True God, and our invitation to love and reflect that God to all of creation!  Glory!

[jlmorel]

#3 Best Practices: Part Three - Down in Front!

As we prepare to study the books of the Christian faith, I mentioned that there are certain things we need to keep in mind.  First, the scriptures were inspired by God and written by humans within a certain context.  Second, the words themselves have many layers and comprise a variety of genres.  Finally, - and this one is often the most difficult to keep in mind - as we read the Bible, we bring to it our own context, paradigms, preconceptions, emotions, culture, biases, race, gender, experiences, assumptions, frame of reference, educational level, economic status, geographic location, etc.  What’s sitting in front of the text can effect the interpretation.  A white man struggling in a Midwest inner city may read a verse in the Bible differently than an Hispanic professional woman living in the suburbs in Connecticut, who may read it differently than a black youth in Uganda.  Because of your own context, you may understand the words of the text in a different way than your neighbor.  Take a few moments right now to jot down some of the different parts of who you are that you bring with you when you sit down to read the Bible.

This is not necessarily a bad thing.  The Holy Spirit can and does use the words of the Scriptures to speak into the particular circumstances of our lives.  God specializes in meeting us where we are.  Sometimes, we can read and read and read a passage and it sort of flies by us, but then there’s the day when the same passage just jumps out at us as if God is shouting into the circumstances in our life and challenges us or blesses us in a personal way.

We can also learn a lot by hearing from others about how they read the text.  For example, my head almost exploded when I started reading commentaries written by feminists.  I don’t consider myself a full-on feminist, but at the same time I’ll admit to being from a long line of strong women.  I had been a part of a conservative conference of churches for a long time, and I had been taught through active teaching and also through church culture and practices that there are only a few ways in which a woman could take on a leadership role in the church.  Basically, it came down to women’s ministry, children’s ministry, and hospitality.  Then I read some alternative interpretations of key passages which suggested that a male-dominated church leadership had been reading its own agenda into some of the texts and using them to mandate male-only leadership in the church.  If true, how sad that that would keep 50% of the population from using their God-given gifts to share God’s Good News to the world!  How freeing for me to realize that perhaps, after all, there is a place for me to use my gifts as a teacher to the adults in the church!  I’m sure we’ll cover this topic later, but I share it now just to illustrate how important it is to realize that we may be reading things into the text because of who is sitting in front of the text – ourselves.

We just need to be very aware of what we are bringing into the mix and be careful not to read things into the text that were never meant to be there.  Once again, this is where commentaries help tremendously.  We not only get connected to the context, (what’s “behind-the-text”) and also find some guidance to understanding the genre and words of the text.  In addition, we gain an appreciation for the wideness and richness of the text.  Others can bring more to our own reading by taking us outside of our own life circumstances (what’s in-front-of-the-text) and helping us to approach the text from other perspectives.  The key to commentaries is to stick with the ones that are written by scholars who have done their homework.

All that said, I have one more thing...  I commend you for coming with me on this “Mind of Faith” journey.  Martin Luther, as one of the leaders of the Reformation in the 15th century did us all a big favor by being among the first to get the Bible into the hands of the common people in their common language.  It was another of the reformers, William Tyndale, who proclaimed that a boy who pushes the plow would know more of the scriptures (than the religious leaders).  Until that time, it was only the clergy that had access to the Holy Scriptures.  What a great blessing!  But also, what a great responsibility!  As I said at the start, these are ancient writings, written in dead languages within a culture and ancient mindset different from our own.  Therefore, we should enter into our study with reverence and a sense of responsibility to diligently learn to read the Bible well.

Let’s begin, then, to love God more fully with all of our heart, strength, soul, – and mind!

  Next Blog – “The Beginning.”

[jlmorel]

#2 Best Practices: Part Two - Text Me!

In today’s submission we’ll take a look at the second layer of “best practices” we can use when we do Bible study with a mind of faith.  This layer has to do with the text itself.  There are a few things to keep in mind about just the text, or the words, in the Bible.  We have to consider what kind of writing we are looking at, and also respect the language barrier.  Then, we appreciate the different kinds of content that might be held within the text, and, finally, take care to place each piece within the whole.

 Let me ask a question, just for your consideration.  What would happen if you were to read your history textbook for school in the same way you read the news headlines on CNN.com?  Or if you were to read a love letter from your significant other in the same way you read an instruction manual for your new barbeque?  In the first case, chaos and confusion could ensue because you might believe the USA was about to be invaded by the Red Coats from England.  In the second, you might really be missing out on some wonderful and tender moments of the heart.  That’s because each of these things you read belong to different genres – different kinds of writings.  There are many different genres we interact with every day: poetry, road signs, installation instructions, drama, history, letters, Facebook posts, databases, and fictional novels.  The list goes on and on and on.  If we were to read these different genres in the same way, life would become very confusing, indeed!

 It’s not too hard to understand, then, that the 66 “books” in the Bible are a compilation of many different genres as well.  There are poems, history, lists, wise sayings, prophesy, personal letters, rules, storytelling, instruction manuals, parables, song lyrics, and so on.  So, it is of utmost importance that we recognize the genre of the text we are reading, or we run the great risk of getting confused or misinterpreting what the text is saying about God and about us.  For instance, I know people who take pride in the fact that they read every word of the Bible completely literally.  That’s too bad, because by doing so they will miss some of the beauty of the word pictures that are present in the poetic works, and thus also the impact and intended meaning of the text.

 So, one of the “best practices” when approaching the Bible is to keep in mind what sort of genre you are reading.  Once again, when you do so you will find more richness in the scriptures than you ever realized.  Even some of those tedious census lists might become a little easier to read through (though I’m making no promises)  because you recognize that you don’t read them in the same way you would the commandments of God or the books of the prophets. Most importantly, if you read according to the correct genre, you will begin to grasp the bigger picture of what has been written.

 In addition to keeping the genre in mind, when approaching the text of the Bible, we also do well to consider the language.  I don’t expect you to go learn the nuances of biblical Hebrew, but it is really important to remember that these writings are ancient, written in ancient foreign languages that are now no longer spoken.  Scholars across the centuries have done a marvelous job at putting the puzzles together and pulling out the meaning of the words.  Translators have also done some remarkable work.  Still, the fact that the texts were written in an ancient language within an ancient worldview can, admittedly, create a bit of a barrier to our understanding.  There are some tools you can use to help you get into the language a little more in order to more fully grasp a concept or thought.  I’ll be sharing some of those in a later post.

 What’s more, there are three types of content you can find in biblical text, and often they overlap.  I guess the fact that these are spiritual writings makes it no surprise that the words of the Bible have something theological to say -- something to say about God and about our relationship to God.  Therefore, the words make claims on our worldview and our faith.  We always want to be asking ourselves, “What is this telling me about God?” and “What is this telling me about myself?”

 Another type of content is history.  There are many people who read these texts, not for what they have to say about God, but for what they have to say about the past experiences of human beings.  This, of course, ties in closely with what I have written previously about context.  There is a lot to be said for listening to the experiences of people who have gone before us.  We learn a lot from how they interpreted those experiences.

 Then there is the pure aesthetic beauty of the writings.  Who isn’t moved deeply within at the words of Psalm 23?  We lose some of the beauty of the original writings because of translation, but many biblical translators have clearly put a lot of effort into trying to preserve the beauty.  Likewise, reading the Gospel of Mark as a work having been written by one of the greatest storytellers in history brings a new appreciation for the artistry of the literary dimensions of the book and, therefore, the message it brings.  When we realize that the first part of Genesis is actually more like an epic poem, we stop asking the wrong questions of the text (Chronology, dinosaurs, etc.) and become amazed by what it has to say about who God is!  

 Finally, there is a context within the text.  I don’t mean the historical, social, political, etc, contexts I discuss before.  I mean that the verses were not written in isolation from each other.  There is a relationship between each verse and the verses that come before and the verses that come after.  Those surrounding verses will lead us to a better understanding of what the words are telling us.  Reading an entire section around the passage we are studying helps us stay within the subject and helps to prevent us from making the mistakes of reading things into the words that aren’t there.

 When we sit down to read the Bible, before anything else, let’s try to consider what kind of genre we’re reading.  We also want to have a healthy appreciation for the ancient languages and translations from which we are reading.  In addition, recognizing the three elements of the text (theology, historicity, and aesthetic beauty) helps us to fully appreciate its richness.  And please let’s not attempt to interpret what the words are saying without first consulting the words that come before and after.  The second layer of the best practices: the Text.

My next blog will be about the third layer of "best practices" in reading the Bible: What's going on "in front of" the text.

[jlmorel]

#1 Best Practices: Part One - What's the Context?

As we begin to look together into the Scriptures and use our minds to gain more understanding of who God is, there are a few foundational things we want to keep in mind from the start.  The very first is to remember that the Bible is a lot more than just an instructional guide with rules of how we should live our lives – what to do and what not to do.  It is also not a book of magic, full of words that if spoken in the right way under the right circumstances can cause God to bend the Laws of Nature to our desires.  It is, rather, a collection of “books” (more like a library) written by at least 40 different human authors whom God used to put into words God’s own self-revelation of who He is and what He’s up to.[i]  God met these various people within the social, historical, and political context in which they lived, and much of what is written is the author’s understanding of who God is as seen through the lens of his or her own context while still being inspired by God (lit., God-breathed).

That said, the first “best practice” of approaching the Bible is to read it with an understanding of the context in which it was written.  Let me explain by sharing a story about my childhood.  When I was in middle school, my friend and I were virtually inseparable.  We were a couple of silly, giggly girls.  We were so close that we developed our own sort of language which only the two of us understood.  All we had to do was repeat a string of letters and we would understand perfectly what it meant.  Each letter represented the first letter of a word in a sentence that made reference to some inside joke or past experience.  One of us would look at the other and pronounce, “B.A.C.U!” and we would both be sent into peals of laughter.  We understood each other perfectly well.  Others, of course, thought we were out of our minds.  –And no, I will never divulge to you what those four letters meant (“Boys are cute, usually”?  “Batman acts crazy underwater”  “Better ask a college undergraduate”?  Nope, I’m not going to tell.).  My point is that my friend and I understood perfectly what the letters meant because we both “spoke” that language and we both lived in the same context of our shared experiences and silliness.  Others had a hard time understanding us because they lived outside of that context.  Had they known our history and learned about the experiences of our times together, and had they studied our language, they could have joined us in many rounds of laughter.

So it is when it comes to reading the Bible with understanding.  The saying goes, “text without context is pretext.”  The “books” were written in ancient times within an ancient, middle-eastern paradigm.  For example, in order to understand what Paul was saying in his letters to the various churches (and even Peter in 2 Peter 3 said that Paul is hard to understand!) we must take into consideration the Jewish expectation of Messiah and redemption/vindication.  Without that, you won’t get Paul.  We must also have a grasp of what was going on within the Roman Empire at the time.  Only when we hold up what God has done through Jesus The Son against that backdrop can we more fully understand what Paul was teaching.  The more you understand about what was going on behind the text, the more the text will open up to you and become clearer and more full of meaning. 

We often forget about this and try to force the text to fit our own modern or post-modern context.  The problem is that the words weren’t written directly for our context.  I’m not saying the words don’t apply to us.  I am saying that only by reading the words from within their own original context can we grasp the full meaning of what was written and THEN apply the words to our lives.  Beware of trying to force the words of the ancient scriptures to fit our own context.

This is why reading the Bible with the help of study guides and commentaries is so important.  There are people who have studied the ancient languages and are experts in the ancient historical, political and social contexts of the biblical texts.  Please start with a good study Bible.  Zondervan publications are a reasonable start.  The next step would be to get a commentary on whatever book in the Bible you want to study.  It’s like being able to sit at the feet of very smart people to learn from them. This can be as simple as Reading the Bible Book by Book by Gordon Fee, or as comprehensive as the thick volumes on Matthew by Dale Bruner.  There is a user-friendly set of commentaries on the New Testament books by NT Wright called NT for Everyone.  All of the above will help you begin to read the books of the Bible from within the context in which they were written.  You will be amazed at how the smallest step toward understanding context will open up this most remarkable library of books called the Bible.  As a result, God will show Himself to be bigger and far greater and more wonderful than we could previously have imagined!

My next blog will be Part Two of Best Practices, when we’ll take a look at a second layer of reading the scriptures well.

[i] I am very aware and sorry that the English language lacks a gender-free pronoun.  I chose to refer to God with the male pronoun for the most part because I don’t want to use “it” to refer to God – that’s just too impersonal and objectifies God.  It’s also too awkward to use the more lengthy “Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier” that is often used in gender-free references to God.  Finally, I believe Jesus is one of the three persons of the triune God, was male when he walked on Earth, and referred to the Creator as “Father.”  I guess that leaves the possibility open that Holy Spirit is the more feminine personality of the Trinity (at least I like to think of it that way).  Anyway, if you have difficulty with the male pronoun for God, please accept my apologies and look past it to the deeper message I want to get across in my articles.  Thank you.

[jlmorel]

My Life's Mission

My life's mission is to nurture and inspire faith, beauty and hope in those God brings along my path.

-Janet Morel