Living Psalm 13

Return to Sender

2006-02-27T16:02:00.000-08:00

I don't live here anymore. I've up and moved to twentyfeet.blogspot.com, and I've taken my posts with me. (Rather than start a new blog from scratch and abandon my old posts to a defunct site, I decided to pack up the whole kit and kaboodle and take it along. Hopefully it'll work.) Please update your links.

And just in case you missed it the first time:
Click here to go to my new Blog.

A Moving Experience

2006-02-25T19:37:00.000-08:00

Which sounds like "moving" means poignant or emotional or sonthing (for you Jonas), but it actually means changing locations. Sorry. You've probably heard that one a dozen times before. Maybe some of you haven't, and you think I'm clever. Well I'm not.

I know two posts in two days is almost unheard of for me, but I figured I'd better give you the heads up. See, I've never like the name "Living Psalm 13". It just sounds... you know, stupid. I picked it kind of spur of the moment when I created my blog and I was never particularly pleased with it. Moreover, the psalm itself has (inevitably) become less relevant to me since I latched onto it nearly two years ago. So I'm ditching it.

The next post here will be to let you know that your links and bloglines feeds are out of date. (What's that? You don't use bloglines? Why the crap not?)

So take a last look around, say goodbye to the little angel-wrestling guy in the bottom corner, and prepare yourself for a new blog with a new title and a new (and even more gorgeous) template.

Seriously, it's gonna be hot.

The God of Wrath

2005-09-27T17:28:00.000-07:00

[This post still exists at this address because it was linked to by an outside source. The rest of Jacob's blog can be found at his new address: twentyfeet.blogspot.com.]

By now you've probably heard at least one fundamentalist group claim that the flood is God's judgment against New Orleans for Mardi Gras and other such wickedness. Various people have brought these claims to my attention, expressing their horror, disgust, disbelief and so forth, both at the idea of God destroying a city out of wrath and at those who have the heartlessness and gall to suggest it.

These claims of judgment immediately reminded me of a book of apologetics I browsed over the summer (Evidence that Demands a Verdict), specifically the chapter detailing the fulfillments of certain Biblical prophesies. These prophecies turned out to be almost exclusively about the violent destruction of wicked cities.

A quick scan of the prophetic books of the Old Testament reveals a remarkable fixation on judgment. One who reads these books might be forgiven for thinking that God spends most of his time pouring out wrath on immoral cities and nations. In a similar vein are the stories of the great flood in which God drowned all of mankind, the incineration of Sodom and Gomorrah, the ten plagues on Egypt, Joshua's genocidal conquest of the Promised Land, David's raiding parties (in which he left no woman or child alive), and the mass killing at the climax of Esther. If you read through the Bible it's hard not to notice God's habit of pouring out destruction on cities and nations as a whole (to say nothing of punishing children for their father's or even distant ancestor's sins). Mention this to most Christians and they'll tell you something about how God is just, or how it would be wrong not to punish evil people for their wrongdoing, or how actions have natural consequences...

Maybe you think the Egyptians (all of them, as a race) had it coming to them for enslaving the Israelites. Maybe you can explain why it was necessary or even compassionate for Jewish warriors to wipe out whole tribes, down to the last woman and child. Maybe you believe that we are "fallen" and God is holy, and this somehow gives him the right to wipe out "evil" cities. Maybe in your mind this is enough for Tyre, Sidon or Ashkelon. Is it enough for New Orleans?

Watch the News. See destruction. See grief. See the dead, the dying and the desolate. See the rich in safety and the poor in misery. See the statistics, and then see the people who make them up. See chaos. See despair. See the ruin and carnage created by a hurricane - an "act of God". Drink it in, feel it, and then tell me that a good and righteous God is punishing these people for their wickedness.

I don't believe you can. And I don't believe you could praise the God who destroyed Tyre, Sidon or Ashkelon, if you had been there. If you could see in the pages of your Bible what you see on the nightly news, if the genocide and destruction could be real to you, I think you would take a different view of Christianity and it's God. Your Bible stories are the stories of New Orleans, South-East Asia, September 11th, Somalia, Rwanda and the Holocaust, told by those who claim catastrophes as the judgment of an vengeful God. Your Bible is soaked with the blood of the dead and the doomed. You Bible is the chronicle of the conquests of the Lord of Hosts.

I cannot tell you if Katrina is the wrath of the Christian God. But I can tell you that He has orchestrated countless similar disasters. Do not forget this, Christian. Do not ignore it or excuse it or conceal it. You must deal with this fact if you believe your Bible: your God is a god who slaughters nations, destroys cities, and takes vengeance on children for their father's sins. Your God is a god of wrath.

Tell me, Christian, (because I carry this same burden) how do you deal with this knowledge?

Moving Beyond the Bible

2005-06-27T16:49:00.000-07:00

[This post still exists at this address because it was linked to by an outside source. The rest of Jacob's blog can be found at his new address: twentyfeet.blogspot.com.]

So in Buddhism there's this idea that not everything the Buddha taught was "true". Rather, he taught what was expedient, or useful and relevant to his audience. I really think they're on to something. Applying this to the Bible, it's easy to see why God didn't give the Israelites at Mt Sinai the same moral guidelines he gave through Jesus later on, or that he convicts various people of today. You can't just walk in to a culture and say, "Everything about the way you're thinking and acting is wrong. We need to tear this down and rebuild everything from scratch, and it's going to look like nothing you've ever seen." People just can't handle that. So it's baby steps: baby steps to treating women humanely, baby steps to seeing women as equals before God, baby steps to treating women as equals in society.

Most Christians are quite willing to admit that not all the laws given to ancient Israel are still applicable or sufficient. In fact, most of us would be appalled by the barbarism of a society like the one crafted by God himself (as some of us believe) all those years ago. And I'm not talking about the pagan, lawless society that Israel so quickly and repeatedly became - I mean a hypothetical Jewish society based entirely on the laws given to Moses. These laws simply wouldn't work in modern western society. They were beneficial for the time and place, but we've moved past that now.

I can see you all nodding in agreement. But now let me suggest that maybe we've also moved beyond the New Testament's teachings in some areas too. You don't like that? Why? It can't be that the laws given by Jesus are more authoritative - not if the Jewish laws were put in place by the Father. By all accounts, the transcendent God who created the Jewish laws is just as Holy and omniscient as the Son of Man who preaches in the Gospels. So why do we view the Father's laws as transient and the Son's as permanent? Because the Son was the final revelation of God? That makes sense. If there have only been two revelations of God (and his laws) to humanity, it makes sense that our religious and moral lives be defined and contained by the second. But what about that other person of God? You know... the Holy Spirit? (Can you see where I'm going with this?)

Ok, I admit I'm the first to downplay and discount the Holy Spirit and his supposed work in my life. I'm one of those who trusts my own experience and common sense over the Bible, and doing so in this case means that I have very little interest in the Spirit. But supposing I took every word of the Bible to be true, (though of course not your interpretation of every word) I think it still makes hella sense for the Bible not to be the be-all and end-all of Divine revelation. If the revelation of the Law from the Father is trumped by the later revelation of grace from the Son, shouldn't it follow that the present revelation from the Spirit through our consciences trumps the stuff in the Bible? Why should we feel bound to live entirely according to Biblical teachings, especially when the Bible gives little indication of being intended as a divine rule book? Why should we feel obligated to give chapter-and-verse support for every moral conviction we espouse? (Isn't this dishonest - pretending to be building all our morals on the foundation scripture when in reality we're forcing scripture to fit our inherent ethical convictions?) If you really believe that you are indwelt and empowered by God himself, why is your inner voice subservient to the written records of past revelations? Sure, there should be some kind of consistency, but we shouldn't be afraid to own up to the kind of divinely influenced yet culture-specific morality that was pioneered explicitly by God with the "New Covenant".

You want a precedent for the Spirit inspiring shifts in Christian moral thinking? How about the Epistles? Even within a generation of Jesus' death, even when Christians had access through the Apostles to all his teachings (not just the ones found in the canonical gospels), this revelation was insufficient to address all moral and spiritual questions. (No slight to Jesus, it's just that he didn't personally give orders for every possible scenario. How could he? Why would he?) The Apostles, guided by the spirit, took it upon themselves to both interpret the teachings of Christ and add to them, where necessary. They did this for their culture and their issues, so why should we hesitate to do it for ours?

I'm not suggesting that we throw out the Bible, any more than the early Church threw out the law of Moses. But let's see it for what it is: books written by men (guided by God) to address the issues of their day, just as we (guided by God) address ours. Let's see it as a reference point, as guidelines, but not as a holy rule-book that transcends all cultures and covers every issue, nor as the final word on any matter. I'm not suggesting we throw caution to the wind and chase after every hedonistic or idealistic whim, but lets stop seeing God as a stodgy old man who grumps about anything that's changed in the past 2000 years. I love the Bible. The Bible is good. But it shouldn't be the final word.