Waiting for justice with bated breath

19
Apr

This is an intense time. It’s a painful time. It’s a period of difficult conversations, a tragic pandemic, and senseless loss of life at the hands of those who are sworn to protect us.

It’s overwhelming.

It’s disheartening.

In the face of all this it’s hard to know what to do, even as you feel the need to DO SOMETHING.

Sometimes the “something” is giving yourself time and space to go for a walk outside.

Sometimes it’s joining others to stand against injustice and violence.

Most often for me, it’s using paint to process those multilayered things on the inside onto a multilayered page on the outside.

Impromptu tools that got whipped out in response to the awful news of the killing of Daunte Wright in Brooklyn Center, MN.

Dear People of Color, You deserve so much better.

When I am able to settle down and consider that God might also have an interest in the goings-on, I remember that prayers don’t have to follow a certain formula (whew! ’cause that ship has sailed) or contain a specific order (again, that would be a losing game). It can be a great heaving sigh, weeping, rage, crying out. Even the act of turning my face in the direction of prayer is good enough…which is lucky because there are many days when that’s just about all I can muster.

What I know for sure is that God is close to the brokenhearted.

God is interested in justice.

God will mend that which is broken.

But how long, oh Lord, as the Good Book says. How long?

Question: Jesus, what does love require of me?

Answer: To act justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God. -Micah 6:8

Its somewhat ironic that this is the final breath prayer of the whole series started by Osheta Moore. And I’m getting to the end of this documentation as the jury has just started their deliberations in the Derrick Chauvin trial of the murder of Mr. George Floyd. Mr. Floyd, who had the air choked out of him by a police officer, who cried “I can’t breathe” much like we’ve heard other black men cry out at the hands of police officers. Don’t mis-hear me: I’m not here to argue whether there are any good police officers — although I think we need to take a long look at how we got where we are, which must include looking at racist policies. Primarily right now, I’m asking white people like me to acknowledge the reality that police officers (most oftentimes white police officers) have exerted unjustified force that caused the death of individuals of color. I can’t even begin to bring the recent killing of 13-year-old Adam Toldeo in Chicago into this; it breaks my mothering heart into fragments.

So I will continue to turn my face towards God. In my prayers I’ll argue, ignore, lambaste, wrestle, lament, and implore. I’m not sure what I think about what are the external results of prayer, but I know it’s attuning my heart with God’s heart (I think that’s a song?) and so, helping me do good in the world.

Please join me in praying for Minnesota., and specifically for our brothers and sisters of color who have been denied justice too many times.

Amen and amen.

Special thanks to Osheta Moore and her breath prayers that inspired this entire thing. She’s got a forthcoming book you should watch for and consider pre-ordering: Dear White Peacemakers from Herald Press. It will be released in May, 2021.

Breath prayers: for those tragic times when breath prayers are all you’ve got

20
Mar

Breath prayers are very useful in times of distress, in times of heartache, in times of grief. In those times, it’s often all you can do to muster any energy at all, and the thought of praying might be difficult, especially if something you desperately, earnestly prayed for did not happen, or when the dense darkness seems like it might never ebb.

In those times you might still want to believe in the faith you formerly had, but something shifted. The assurance you had might feel wobbly, uncertain. You have enough experience to know that faith doesn’t always run hot, and there are seasons of dryness that don’t last forever even though they feel that way. A breath prayer is a way of joining back into that larger choir of faith and trusting that its voice is large enough to carry the song.

Then someone commits a heinous act. And it hits even harder because it’s someone who espouses a belief in that same faith, as it did last week in Atlanta.

I want to disassociate from that faith collective. The last four years have already given so many reasons to argue about the state of the church in society, the upside down way the American church has come to be represented and/or co-opted. And now a white man buys a gun and that same day goes to two separate locations and shoots eight people, six of whom are of Asian descent. I know we’re holding off on labelling anything and the situation might be complex…but it seems like there’s something there to label.

Everything in you cries out in pain, in outrage. Why do people engage in these acts of violence against one another?

There are so many layers to this atrocity. It’s disheartening to see people get caught up in arguing whether it was one kind of crime or another. One thing we should be able to agree on is that when disparaging language is used against a people group from leaders in high positions, those words influence people, inspiring them to higher goals or unleashing latent bigotry. Those words matter.

Your heart is with the oppressed. / Align my heart with yours.

And now there’s news of a terrible mass shooting in Colorado. I’m afraid to find out more.

A breath prayer seems like a very meager offering, but in the face of such a culmination of hatefulness, it’s a fine, golden thread of connection to something bigger.

Holy Light, Let me learn your name in all languages.

This blackout poem from Rumi says…

To say more of your names: you are the one who was with us at the beginning, telling secrets in the first house. / We were afraid, but then we found your flame. / That city, with friends, friendship. The standing apart, or right in the middle, resembling both. / You are those stories. / You bring dawn to the end of the night. / Beauty that originates. Praise and the light-connecting ligaments that hold this earth.

That’s what a breath prayer is right now in this dark time. It is a way of remembering there is a dawn at the end of night. It is a trust in the light-connecting ligaments that holds this earth.

For right now, that’s got to be enough, because on the surface there doesn’t appear to by a lot of anything else to hold on to.

These breath prayers were inspired by Osheta Moore. She has provided most of them, and I have supplemented a few of my own when I missed her. You can read the introduction here.

Handling hot emotions as we wait

2
Nov

This is an intense period in society here in the United States. There are strong feelings on all sides. As a general position in any situation, I dislike conflict, so any election season is tiring. You can probably guess (and I bet I’m not alone) that it’s been a lo-o-o-ong few months. I’m finding it hard to stay detached from the campaign and the results. The values I thought we shared as a nation have turned out to be negotiable and quickly cast aside, seemingly in a cheap swap for fear. Rather than being fringe positions held by outliers and discouraged by social norms, the president has normalized bigotry and tribalism (I think that’s fair to say), and has emboldened those who share his views. Some of the people I love dearly are sure to vote for him.

*My kids noticed these Biden campaign signs in a dumpster*.

Sometimes I feel pretty angry about it all.

This is a beautiful post by a friend of mine, Misty, who talks about art and anger, and I’d love to have you check it out. It’s easy to think of anger as being destructive or negative, and sometimes it is. But it doesn’t have to be. It’s similar to the idea of being “not fragile like a flower, fragile like a bomb.” Anger doesn’t have to be something that renders a person frothing and senseless. It can be a catalyst, an animating force that moves us to action.

*A breath prayer. Maybe you, like me, need to be reminded to breathe today.*

My friend Misty skillfully articulates the process of disappointment and heartbreak that so many people have experienced broadly by discovering their (our) own complicity in systems of oppression, and then specifically addresses disappointment with the white evangelical church. You can pop over to read it by clicking here.

One of the things we can try to do on the other side of this election is to listen to one another. That was a theme of the 2016 election and the success of 45; people who felt discounted thought someone was finally listening to them. It’s so easy to create cardboard cut-outs of one another, a mentality of ‘you voted for so-and-so which means you agree with everything they say’. Some folks are less reflective or analytical, and they vote the way they’ve always voted simply because that’s what they do.

It does seem like a fair question to ask if someone holds the same priorities as “their candidate” but things are often more nuanced than they’re presented in the quick bites we get in headlines. When we are given an either/or scenario, one that eschews both/and, it inherently limits the common ground we’ll be able to find. It might take some time to get the whole story. I’m willing to allow for that, and I think everyone is capable of growth and change. Change doesn’t happen overnight.

However, it means everyone should be listening, not only one side or the other. And when people decry the discriminatory policies and hate-mongering rhetoric of the administration, their voices and perspectives should be heard.

As for that in-between time we currently inhabit, we need grace, patience, and the willingness to continue open conversations, even when that’s uncomfortable. Do we need to have potentially awkward and hard discussions with people who hold different views than we do? Do we need invest in becoming more aware of and involved in the political process? Should we evaluate the goals we’d like to achieve and how can we help reach them? I think the resounding answer is yes.

Personally, while we wait I’m eating a blueberry muffin and a special coffee that’s flavored with honey and cinnamon. I’m being aware of my physical posture and checking in with my shoulders and eyebrows. I will be trying to limit how click-crazy I get and often I allow myself to check the results. Maybe I’ll take a peek at lunchtime but then I’ll try to wait until late afternoon before I look again. [That’s a lie: I’ve already checked two more times. But I can TRY to look LESS than I would otherwise.]

Then I’m going to make a plan for putting my anger into action, a plan for making change. If this election is showing us something, it’s showing us that the last four years have not been objectionable for almost half of the United States. I want to do something to change that.

In the meantime, we can all remember to breathe.

Earth Day and Plastic Anxiety: Bad News and Practical Baby Steps

22
Apr

As if we do not have enough to be concerned about right now in our collective Coronoavirus lives, I’m here to be your unhappy little elf who comes around at night dropping wet tissues and bad news under your pillow.

I missed the memo

Did you know that…

Only like 10% of the plastics we’ve sent to be recycled have even been recycled SINCE THE 1980’s!!?
Remember how recycling plastic started getting traction when there was more plastic starting to be used? Guess who started the campaign to get people to recycle their plastics? The plastic industry.
The Twist: The plastic industry started touting plastic recycling programs so that people would be willing to use more plastic, all the while knowing that plastic couldn’t succesfully be recycled in the quantities the industry would generate.

I am not playing around; this information stopped me in my tracks and hung over my head for the next few days. You can read the main face-slapping article here. The Environmental Protection Agency has a report that details the generation of plastics along with the recycling, combustion, and composting (haha) of plastics through 2017. [Don’t forget that the EPA director just prior to the current director Andrew Wheeler was Scott Pruitt, who Tr$mp appointed and who was a former coal lobbyist and had to resign due to questionable ethics. Dicey.] One of the charts shows that 75% of plastics go to landfills, and 8% go to recycling; however, if the stuff that goes to recycling doesn’t even get recycled, that means that 83% of all the plastics generated in 2017 went to landfills. The other 17% was BURNED (with energy caputured supposedly but still, it was burned, which emits toxic chemicals into the atmosphere).

The BBC did a report that detailed the benefits and detriments of burning plastics or putting them in landfills. No great options there. We’ve been able to turn a blind eye to this problem because we shipped our plastic recyclables to China for years until in 2018 they decided they were no longer going to take care of our problem for us. So finally it’s caught up to us and we have to actually address the problem of what to do with our plastics.

How did I miss this information? It wasn’t because I wasn’t paying attention. I’ve been a dilligent recycler for years. Maybe everyone else already knew the current situation with the amount of plastic that is not recycled even though we put it in the recycling bin and it gets picked up every other week?? I certainly didn’t know the depressing specifics, but maybe others did and that’s why there’s the proposed Green New Deal and (I’m not equating these two, just giving examples) folks who knit all their own clothes and live off-grid who are willing to go extremes to get in the way of industries who are hell-bent on ignoring the impact of their actions. It might be the only way to get the attention of the general public who, like me until recently, genuinely think they’re doing their part by washing their plastic yogurt containers and putting them in the recycling can.

What the heck can we do about it?

Becoming aware of our dependence on plastic is a really important first step. When we stop and pay attention we quickly realize so much stuff comes in plastic in one form or another, either the item itself or the packaging it’s sold inside, we will realize it’s ev-ery-where. So.much.plastic.

The step that follows soon after is to ask what to do if you want to not only recycle less plastic (since *gulp* it might not even be getting recycled anyway) but use less plastic.

For example, there’s been a movement lately to use fewer plastic straws. I’ve noticed some places do not offer a straw unless you request one. Some are moving to paper straws. There are now metal straws you can buy complete with it’s own tiny cleaning brush.

What else?

We are somewhat limited because with the COVID-19 crisis we aren’t allowed to bring reuable bags to any stores, and nobody wants to let us bring in refillable containers for fear of spreading the virus.

It’s great to make our own personal changes, such as moving towards using glass or metal containers, bypassing plastic utinsels, or trying to refill bottles of shampoo by purchasing it in bulk from community co-ops (you can click here to go to a directory of co-ops so you can find one near you). But if we really want to make change, we need to make sure companies and corporations know our consumer preferences/demands. They’ve got lobbyists who are working against legislative bills that would limit plastic packaging, so you know they’ve got a stake in keeping things status quo.

This article puts forth the idea that it’s time for a revolution of dedication to sustainability and social responsiblity — a pretty inspiring type of revolution!

I’m still very new to this so it’s easy for me to get disheartened by my own consumption and culpability. But I love the quote from Maya Angelou: “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” I think that’s a perfect motto for this new awareness of plastic usage. And on Earth Day, it seems like a perfect motto to help make a start.

[As I find resources I will pass them along. And if you have practical ways you’ve reduced your plastic consumption, please feel free to share your practices here.]

Charleston, Voices and Fear

20
Jun

There has been a lot of appalling news in the last two days, news of death and racism in a place that offered sanctuary to the very person who betrayed nine innocent people to their deaths. He sat there, basking in Mother Emanuel’s hospitality, and then opened fire. He came into a place that has traditionally been a place of refuge and basically defiled that sense of safety.

What can I offer to this conversation?

What words can a white woman add to make one whit of difference in the face of such monumental tragedy?

We are not made for fear, friends. We’re not made for despair. We’re made for so much more.

Events such as natural disasters, a child diagnosed with a chronic disease or health condition, a violent crime, a national crisis, these make us ask where the light is or what our society’s coming to. When brothers and sisters in a church are gunned down, it makes me ask where God was. Someone can try to answer that God was in the midst of the victims. Maybe He was. Maybe this evil man would have taken even more lives. What I know is that we need not fear one another, though we may not look the same. And people who are white like I am need to assert our voices in opposition to racism, be it overt or subtle. And if we fear that which we do not know, then it’s time to get educated. We need to know our history and acknowledge our implicit role in a system that has been discriminatory and has given whites advantages that we’ve profited from without even noticing.

What I know for sure is that God has not given us a spirit of fear.

Even when it feels like the fear is crawling up the back of our necks, even when it makes breathing hard, or makes a hard, cold little home in our chests.

God has not given us a spirit of fear.

That also means we can’t be afraid to wade into the conversation, afraid we’ll say something wrong or we’ll offend someone. If I come as a learner, asking to be invited to the conversation so I can listen and become aware, that’s an entirely different posture than coming in to negate someone’s position or make myself come of looking shiny and free from playing any negative role.

That said, we should hear voice of people of color who are living the experience. Please read what these good people are writing about the Charleston killings, and about the issue of race in the United States.

Osheta Moore at Shalom in the City

Austin Channing Brown

A’Driane Nieves curates amazing articles and pieces and writes about it here.

If you’re on Twitter, you can follow Deray McKesson.

If you want to “do something” to help Emmanuel AME Church minister to it’s congregation and continue its ministry in Charleston, you can consider donating to one of these organizations.

Let’s be in prayer for Charleston, for Emanuel Church, and for the families of these nine victims. And if you needed a soundtrack of inspiration, I’m leaving you with a throwback song that pops into my head whenever I think about not living in fear. Click here for musical fortitude in the face of darkness.

Be well, and live in freedom and love today.

Edited to add: this Amazing reading list , which comes from the African American Intellectual History Society website. Here’s their introduction of the reading list:

Here is a list of selected readings that educators can use to broach conversations in the classroom about the horrendous events that unfolded in Charleston, South Carolina this week. These readings provide valuable information about the history of racial violence in this country and contextualize the history of race relations in South Carolina and the United States in general. They also offer insights on race, racial identities, global white supremacy and black resistance. All readings are arranged by date of publication. This list is not meant to be exhaustive; please check out the #Charlestonsyllabus hashtag and the Goodreads List for additional readings.

If this is God’s economy, I might want to go Off-Grid

20
Jan

The kingdom of heaven is a flurry of paradoxes. Paradoxi? Paradeux? Anyway, multiple instances of a paradox, such as:

Lose your life to gain it.
Become like a little child as an adult.
The last shall be first.

These things don’t make a lot of sense until they are exemplified by Jesus, and then they become clearer. Even then, it takes a long time and many occasions of re-learning to figure how they work themselves out in our own lives.

Here’s one that gets some air time as people grow up in the church:

“I have told you these things so that in me you will have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)

From this and from the church tradition I come from, we are taught to expect challenges, persecution, disappointments, and other stuff-of-life. We are also taught to remember that ultimately these present circumstances are conquerable, or at least we can endure through hardships, because Jesus lived through life and ultimately overcame death. We don’t go through these things alone, because the Holy Spirit, The Comforter, walks alongside us.

We’re taught that because Jesus’ turned on its ear the natural sequence of things (i.e. dead and you stay dead) that means He can help us overcome any circumstance we’re facing. If Jesus overcame death, then we don’t even need to trouble ourselves with worrying about anything as severe as that (which is really supposed to be a minor hiccup in the overall journey of our souls if we have “dealt with our salvation”), much less anything smaller in scope.

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As part of the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew 5:45 Jesus says that God “causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” It’s stated in the context of loving one’s enemies, a.k.a. out-loving pagans and tax collectors who love the people who love them and greet their own people.

In my own church tradition, this passage has been used to focus on loving those who are hard to love, rather than focusing on provision in the natural order being given to people who are unjust. ‘Cause really, who wants to think about nice things being given to mean people? Sometimes the question comes up, “why do good things happen to bad people?” but we like to gloss over that one with the assumption they’re cheating the system somehow, they’ll prosper in this life but pay for it eventually. This justice system is supposed to cut short the question, and somehow people are left to almost hope the jerks DON’T end up following Jesus because then they will have double cheated the system, a “they’ll get theirs eventually” mentality. Sick huh?

And yet, the recurring question people often have is: “Why do bad things happen to good people?” The answer given is, often citing the book of Job, is “Who do we think we are to question God’s decisions?” or “Why not?”

I’ll tell you why not, and I bet quite a few other people can tell you why not as well.

Because it seems to me that while God doesn’t “owe” any human anything, it wouldn’t hurt the balance of the universe to throw a bone to someone who has actively worked to advance the Kingdom for his entire adult life.

It would be a rad miracle if a committed follower of God would be healed and that miracle could further the faith of others, being able to be sited as evidence of God’s provision for the people who serve Him well.

Because in a world filled with corruption, abuse, manipulation and malice, a person who is free from those things is a keeper, someone who’s existence you want to prolong.

That’s why not.

Or, if you’d rather, lets step back from the long goodbye and work with something serious but less “complete” — say, chronic illness.

How is it that God can’t see His way to giving a pass to people who love Him, people who are innocent, people who are young, people who maybe made some mistakes but admitted it and got things cleaned up, figured out, squared away?

How is it that a person who is doing their best to live right and follow God is allowed to suffer?

Or if you’d like, zoom out even further. How can it be that groups inflict horrific abuses against other people, who’s only “crime” is not believing the same things as their oppressors? Who’s only disobedience is wanting to go to school and learn to read regardless of gender or age? Who’s only “offense” is being born with a certain skin color? Why are these people allowed to be attacked, afflicted, and abused in ways my heart can’t begin to imagine possible?

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Provided by Death to Stock Photos

If this is God’s economy, I want to go off-grid. If this is the way God protects the innocent, then who needs that type of anti-protection? If this is the way God sets the world a-turning and then sits on His anthropomorphic hands, then how can a person in good conscience worship such a God?

It’s a crisis.

It’s a questioning of everything you’ve up-until-now taken as true.

It’s an untethering from the shore you thought to be solid, a setting adrift into a lonely ocean filled with perils. And the place you left for the Holy Spirit to accompany you because that’s what you were assured, that place remains empty.

We are tested to our breaking point. We are pushed past our own endurance. We are asked to remain faithful in the face of all the evidence showing us that it’s a one-sided contract.

And yet…

My heart turns to prayer. Instinctively. Without stopping to reason out whether it makes sense or not. Without asking if it actually “changes things” like the old bumper stickers claimed. Is this a result of long-term conditioning or genuine spiritual instincts? Am I so desperate that in order to not do nothing I return to prayer even if it’s prayer to a God that’s got me spittin’ mad?

There’s no good answer. My faith is so entwined with my life that even when I’m mad, doubting, or complacent my posture continues to be turned towards Jesus. In spite of myself, when I am ready to wash my hands of big-g God, I want to still work something out with Jesus. Somehow I feel that He gets it, that He can make it clear to the Father, between Jesus and the Holy Spirit they can make God come around and DO SOMETHING. Maybe it won’t be something for me specifically, in fact I’m coming to realize it probably WON’T be for me. But that doesn’t mean it won’t happen. That doesn’t mean that Good can’t still act and act swiftly. Somewhere in our collective subconscious, we still hear God’s whispers of hope and kindness, even on a small scale, within our own circles of influence.

So I won’t go totally off-grid, not yet. I will wrestle with God and faith and be as honest as I can about how crappy everything seems, because God can handle that. God can handle me, in all my contrary, questioning, fight-picking. And believe me, if He can handle me, I’m 100% sure He can handle you.

Do questions like these make you want to duck for cover? Does your faith allow for questioning or doubts? What do you do when life doesn’t line up with the beliefs you’ve held for a long time? I’d love to hear some of your story in the comments.

I’m Taking Death and Suffering Personally

26
Mar

Every death I hear about is now personally connected to me, whether or not it is actually someone I’m close to. I’m not arrogant enough to think I will maintain this level of sensitivity, but right now I embrace all hardship and suffering as an affront to my own person. And death and suffering are suddenly everywhere.

In the past six months…

A friend I had in college died, leaving behind a husband and two children. This was a healthy woman, a woman my age, a woman I had not talked to face to face in more than a decade. I felt her loss keenly.

My uncle is considering drastic steps to combat his multiple, complex health issues, and I count his suffering as one of my own.

My sister-in-law lost her grandmother, and I grieve almost as if it had been my own grandmother.

My grandfather passed away and even though he was 94, it was quick and unexpected.

And now, after a controversial decision and a drastic reversal by a hugely respected charity organization, the level of polarization within the Christian community was revealed.

What are these dark thoughts of inevitability, impending doom and constant bracing for the worst? What is it that makes my heart feel clenched and heavy?

My sister named what I could not: despair.

Isn’t that Melodramatic?

Despair sounds like a pretty drastic word. I think of it being used in a scene from Princess Bride when the albino henchman with the raspy voice starts telling the heroes their location: the Depths of Despair.

I used to be aware of danger, but didn’t bother with the possibility of it coming to me. We bought life insurance, but didn’t really discuss the possibility that one of us would actually DIE. It was all theoretical, and to dwell on it felt pessimistic (and honestly, it really didn’t occur to me to dwell on it anyway – it just wasn’t in my mind). There’s almost always something positive to find, even in the midst of hardships. Sometimes you have to zoom waaaay in to notice it, but the positive is in there somewhere.

Is this what was meant in Romans 12:15, “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep”? Have I only chosen to listen to the latter all these years, ignoring the challenge to enter into weeping?

Weeping makes me all red, puffy and exhausted. It makes my throat hurt. I’m not a pretty or dainty weeper, and it might be paired with wailing when it happens. It is probably uncomfortable for any parties who witness the weeping, but I’m glad to say that it is only a small number of people who have been subjected to it. (I’m sure you’d be happy to have avoided it if you knew what it looked like.)

Other translations of the verse mentioned above use the word “mourn” and today I feel the burden of the world, and a sense of mourning.

Some may say that word too is dramatic, too extreme for the circumstances.

I disagree.

Mourning is just right.

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There are events so significant, their scope so broad in impact that mourning and despair are the only appropriate words.

Tonight, I am focused on the betrayal so many believers feel, on both sides of the issue. Some felt so betrayed by World Vision’s decision to allow gay married couples to be on staff that they withdrew their sponsorship and condemned both the decision and reiterated their abhorrence for homosexual people. People on the other side of the issue got their turn to feel betrayed when the organization reversed its decision, and asserted that they’d make sure their employees signed a document agreeing to a specific lifestyle code.

It feels like the final glove has been thrown down in the ongoing battle. Knives have been drawn in a fist fight. There is no room for middle ground anymore. How can either side try to meet in the middle and agree to disagree when the reactions have been so extreme? Such vehement spewing of un-love in the name of love makes me question if there can be – or should be – reconciliation after such a display. Where can we go from here?

Despair.

Fracture.

Heartache.

Sorrow.

Sorry I don’t have a tidy end to this post. I would ask that in discussing this, we all keep each other’s humanity at the forefront of our minds, and treat one another with utmost respect in any comments we offer, knowing that we come at this from very different angles.

Can We Talk? Questions about the Bible

7
May

Bible Study 2 (Photo credit: DrGBB)

I’m starting a new occasional series called Can We Talk? The plan is to address questions that we often times don’t want to bring up because of the reaction we expect. This is a place to discuss those important (and probably some unimportant) issues that ruffle people’s feathers. Our first topic? The Bible.

May I ask you some honest questions about the Bible?

Would you be willing to actually entertain these questions, not just give an automatic rebuttal because you fear one question might lead to an undoing of a whole belief system?

I already know I’m supposed to accept some things on faith.

I already know His ways are not our ways.

I already know one day for us could be like a thousand years for Him.

Sometimes it seems that if a person is allowed to voice their observations about inconsistencies, bizzare-ities or just straight-up contradictions in the Bible, people feel threatened by it, as if the questions are a leaking contagion of unbelief that can spread with the faintest breathing of a question. It’s airborne, you know.

But can we admit that some of the stuff in the Bible is just plain weird?

For example, why would God send a plague of snakes to bite the Israelites, whom He had just brought out of Egypt, and the remedy? Look at a bronze snake on a stick. Does that not seem like He is asking them to make and worship an idol? But when they make a bronze calf of their own, He gets mightily mad and people get smote.

If that one’s not your cup of tea, how about the commandment against murder? I realize that you could argue what type of offense could equal murder (first degree, premeditated, etc.) but it seems to me that war is murder on a huge scale. God sends the Israelites to war lots of times, and the Bible is very matter of fact about how hard the Israelites won. Sometimes they won war huge.

“That’s all Old Testament stuff,” you object. “Nobody gets that stuff. Just focus on the New Testament.”

Is that fair?

I think it’s pretty typical of Christians. We focus on the Jesus stuff and ignore the messy, inconsistent and confusing stuff that comes before. Ignoring the entire first half of the Bible only gives part of the picture. (We also forget that Jesus was Jewish, but that’s something for another day.)

Please allow me to mention a concept that might make sense of the Old Testament if you’ve ever been tempted to pitch it in favor of a slimmed down, easy to pack, New-Testament-only Bible. I don’t know if it is a cop out or a perfect explanation.

Image from the Book of Kells, a 1200 year old book. Category:Illuminated manuscript images (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Progressive Revelation.

Don’t let it give you the heebie jeebies, folks. It doesn’t bite.

Is it intellectually tenable that God would reveal Himself in ways a society could comprehend, woo them by speaking their language and then, when they’ve acclimatized to the existence of God, reveal a little more about Himself, something that is a little different than what they’re used to? It’s not a bait and switch. It’s more like not revealing everything about yourself on a first date.

I’m sure some people would push this past the traditional cannon of the Bible and say that if it is allowed that progressive revelation is a possibility, that opens up future revelation, in that Christ is not the end game. Could someone else claim on this premise to be the next revelation of God? Probably, and some probably have (would Mormanism possibly fit this category?). Does that mean the principle is faulty? I don’t think so…but I’m still trying to figure out all the implications.

I’m not questioning Jesus’ death and resurrection, sacrifice and redemption of humankind, but I don’t think it automatically diminishes the Bible’s potency if some of it is metaphorical. Maybe we can agree that the Bible might not have to be taken literally in order to be just as valid, the principles just as important, the person of Christ just as redemptive.

What do you think? Do you think much about the Bible? Do you accept it as being completely literal? Do you pay much attention to the Old Testament?