Wearing My Alien-Proof Perfume

Tags

children, creationists, education, homeschooling, Kahil Gibran, parenting

Most of you know that I am transported from time to time into other universes. This is never with my consent, but I’ve grown to accept it. My brain cannot process certain insanities on planet Earth, and so it probably is a good thing.

Last night, I awoke from dear slumber, realizing that for sure, the axis of the earth had tilted just a smidgen quite suddenly. The reason?

Why, McDonald’s has closed its doors in Iceland. Indeed, a near panic has ensued as frantic Icelandicers, or Icelandics? rush to get their last fix. So goes America’s best hope of supersizing  the rest of the world to it’s obesity level. It is a government plan put in play to prove what we all know already, America is exceptional, and fat drives it!

It seems impossible to conceive that McDonalds could suffer such a set back. I mean, let the banks close, let the hospitals overflow, let the fields run empty of potatoes, but good God,  how can humanity continue with any human not within ten minutes of a Ronald Mickey D? The sheer inhumanity of the thing is enough to make one choke with tears.

I figured that from that, everything else would go downhill. And it seemed to. The other day, I was reading the remarks of a creationist, who so happily and proudly proclaimed that she had used a particular creation site to extensive use during her homeschooling days. Does this mean that there are zero requirements for homeschooling to get that diploma?

I mean, do ya just call the state education department, and say, “send me one of dem diplomas. I’s ejucated nows?” Are there no standards of any kind? Or is this part of the great lie that creationist parents put their kids through? Here’s what you need to say to get the grade, but pssst, we don’t believe any of that is true. Is this not child abuse?

I can point to any number of people today who were told such lies as kids. Most all of them have since rejected their parents theology, in favor of none, sad to say. And they of course now know better about science as well. I find it sad, and it makes me mad. We are something like 31 in the world now in science and math, and we can thank in some part such intellectually bankrupt parents who have driven their kids into a scienceless world all in the name of feeling good emotionally. Shame on them. Believe what you want, but you’re kids–they are not property to be used as your emotional crutch.

I think this sums things up rather well.

Your children are not your children,

They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts.

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,

which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

you may strive to like them, but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,

and He bends you with His might

that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;

For even as He loves the arrow that flies,

so He loves the bow that is stable.

                                       Kahil Gibran

I guess I come down on the side that parents have a duty to teach their kids morals and ethics, and how to use their minds with discriminating care. We need kids who can think critically and separate the chaff from the wheat. We don’t need to teach them what to think so much as how to think. Then we need to expose them to as varied a world as possible, and to as much varied thought as possible. It is up to them, in communion with their conscience and/or God to decide what to make of it all.

Humans are incredibly resilient. We, most of us that is, turn out okay, even against rather heavy odds against us. That doesn’t mean and shouldn’t mean that parenting is largely not important. It is. And we have become complacent to the fact that most of us turn out okay, and so nothing need watch over the parenting that goes on. But surely, we owe our kids more than to be raised as automatons of ideologically locked down humans. We owe them the true freedom of thought unhindered by psychologically driven mindsets essential to the parent, but not necessarily needed by the child.

Why we have never felt the need for parenting classes as the norm is beyond me. The wreckage of relationships is all around for the viewing. Can’t we do better than this? Are we going to live forever in the land where parent/child relationships are so sacrosanct as to be untouchable absent physical abuse? Do we not care that emotional and educational abuse are rampant in many of our homes? Is there not a better way?

Just My ‘Magination, Runnin’

Tags

conservatives, happiness, liberals, life in the meadow, psychology, social concerns

Those of us who live in the country, are very conscious of our fashion. You may have guessed this already from plenty of pictures which show us in fine farmer garb–the one piece denim bib is a great example. Functional and oh so elegant. Just a bow tie clip-on for the t-shirt and you are ready for any dinner party.

The other day, I was fashionably clad in my rubber muddies, walkin’ through the watery muck of the lane, when my brother-in-law caught up to me on his backhoe. He had been hauling some hay to the cattle who did  not have have benefit of the corn silage, since the fields were still not done due to crap weather.

As he shut off the motor and opened the cab, I saw that he too was clad in rubber muddies and but for the size, no doubt, they were identical to mine.

I mused on this fine sense of  the fashionista shared by us both, when I realized upon heading back down the hill into the timber that the trees were indeed nearly bare of leaves. “Damn, it seems he was right again!” This to mean, the Contrarian, who but a few short weeks ago had predicted in Nostradamus fashion, “I think we are going to lose our leaves this year.”

Not to be all depressed and such, since last early spring, he confidently predicted that we would have leaves this year, and of course, that too transpired.  The Contrarian is proving himself to be quite good at this prognostication business. One is tempted to say the same of many things in the bible, until one learns that often, the book in question with its “prediction” was written well after the event in question happened. At least the Contrarian announces his predictions well in advance.

Anyway, such thoughts give rise to still more ideas and sneaky partially worked out theories. I’m always happy when I see that I’m not alone in devising such philosophical questions of the month. This morning, Charlie Gibson, late of GMA and now nearly late of the Nightly News, was interviewing John Irving, the writer. Gibson in one of his better moments, asked, “Do you think one can find real happiness in one’s own imagination?”

What prompted this jaw dropping, stop in the street kind of question, is anyone’s guess. Yet it seemed to me, worthy of some thought. I think that you can, and in fact some people do. Then again, some can’t and some don’t.

Do you construct day-dreaming scenarios of lives unlived? I mean do you have a dream house/job/spouse/hobby/you name it, that you construct delicately and with precision, making it all just perfect? Is it your place to escape the cares and turmoils of the day? Is it a place where Johnny Depp falls in love with you, forgetting that you are nearly though not quite old enough to be his mother? Does Halle Berry hang on your every word while sipping Dom Perignon?

I can see how such worlds could be happy. Truly I can. I rather suspect that liberals engage in such mind play more so than Republicans. Just a guess. No polling or scientific evidence. But there is evidence that liberals are more unhappy than Republicans. We tend to take on the woes of the world and grouse about them. We have guilt as to what we have, given that so many have almost nothing. We can’t compartmentalize as well it seems as Republicans apparently can.

We probably drink more and drug more and sex more, though that last may truly be wrong. Republicans with their public stance on morality and their dirty little minds creating all kinds of kinky plays which they all too often cannot help but attempt to act out, may in fact engage in more sexual naughtiness than liberals. I dunno.

But escapism is escapism as they say, and so I suspect more liberals have a fantasy get away that allows them to unwind from the mean little world that we inhabit every day. And perhaps there, we do find the happiness we are so prone to deny ourselves in reality.

Someone the other day suggested that liberals “talk a good game” but that somehow we don’t live it. Actually, I think its the conservatives who act rather differently than they talk. The evidence seems on our side. I have a ton of liberal friends (Facebook proved that) and a huge number of them are very actively engaged in regular service to their communities through food pantries, homeless shelters, health care clinics, and such. They aren’t paid, they just do it, because they have to do something to help. Our unhappiness at the state of affairs in the world forces us to engage and make a difference, no matter how small that might be.

I’m not suggesting that conservatives don’t do charity work, but I suspect they see it somewhat differently than liberals do. I could be wrong on that. I’m wrong on a lot of things. But I feel comfortable in saying it. I hear way too much about how we “have to have  the poor” as a means by which the rest of us can perfect our salvation, to think any differently. And then there is the failure of most conservatives to agree to anything that smacks of redistributing wealth in this country to make life reasonable for ALL. They start raising words like, lazy, and pulling oneself up by one’s boot straps. (I checked, and my muddies don’t have any boot straps by the way.)

Just so ya know, this is what you get when I’m sun deprived. It’s SAD isn’t it?

Having to Rethink Everything Now

Tags

dirt, dust, housework, science

I could be wrong, but I rather suspect that kids love science. I mean ever see how kid’s eyes light up when some cool scientist mixes a brew of this and that, and it bubbles and volcanoes out of the beaker? Or turns an unearthly hue of green? I dare say no kid is bug-eyed over Silas Marner or the capital of Georgia the way they ooh and ahh over “magic” tricks in the science lab.

I confess that I respect with deep appreciation the scientific method and all that it has produced for mankind. I don’t worship it, as some of the right wing crazies would have it. That is just their inane  way of being defensive for their hypocrisy of loving the kind that makes their life comfortable and hating the kind that messes with their interpretation of life, the universe and everything.

And who can forget, all those long years ago one William Proxmire who used to make regular sport of science expenditures that went for what he thought were “frivolous” research. Who cares whether bed bugs breed in sunlight or only in the deep darkness of night? Why are tree frogs never more than three feet from a tree in the rain forest?

What Proxmire, who claimed he was trying to protect the American taxpayer against being gouged for waste of time pet projects, didn’t realize, is that many of these what sound like absurd research projects often, down the road, produce information that is most useful to humankind. Yep, and the beauty of it from the scientists point of view is that there is really no good way of knowing what might be important in thirty, eighty, or two hundred and forty years.

And there is such a thing as obtaining information for its own sake and fleshing out the story of human existence to the greatest degree possible.

But I confess, that sometimes, even I wonder about the efficacy of this study or that. And sometimes the results, touted as “stop the presses” seem rather shall we say obvious? to me?

Such is the case with a story from Science Digest today.  The study, was of some importance to me, a home cleaner, pusher of dirt around. Where in the heck does all that dust come from? I mean we live a full 1/2 mile from the road. I recall, living in suburbia in my childhood, albeit on a rock road, the wafts of dusty air billowed off the road with each passing car, and in summer, directly in the front door. That made sense. But how does this dust collect when I am deep within the wooded splendor of the meadow?

The scientists report that, hold on to your hats kids, most dust, about 60% originates from OUTSIDE!!!!! Yes, you heard that right. Outside. I mean who would have guessed. The choices were, inside, and outside. It was a safe bet that outside is where more dirt is than inside right? I mean I can see it tracked in by dogs every day. Muddy little paw prints, and the cats patter in and out the kitchen door soon making a trail of tiny little prints. I can read tea leaves. I can figure this out.

But scientists were surprised. So they say. It would appear likely that most scientists, (those studying dust at least) don’t dust. So I guess it must come as a shock. I dunno. It seems like a waste of time and money to tell me the obvious. And I’m being polite, remembering the company. I’m not telling you what the dust consists of!

Okay, I will. It’s dirt, from OUTSIDE. Oh and some of it is human skin. Yech…now that does turn a tummy or two doesn’t it? Who wants to think about that? Nobody, except those that get off on showing microscopic “pictures” of counter tops with (shudder) fecal material.

It makes me want to run right out and throw away the butter that the cat licked yesterday. I mean really!

The Contrarian claims that the kids of the people who came to cart away dead horses and pigs and cows were the healthiest of all. Ya gotta eat a peck of dirt before ya die, said the Contrarian’s grandmother, and one likes to take solace in that. I’m not dirty, lazy, and so forth, I’m merely being healthy. We follow the ten second rule like everyone else. If you pick it up off the floor within ten seconds, nothing had time to latch on. It’s still clean!

They claim that there are bad things in the air, like lead and arsenic, and these land on objects. Not so good for items you lick. Dogs lick a lot of things, including themselves, but I always was told that dog mouths are much cleaner than our own. So I figure the dog is taking the chance in giving me a licky kiss.

So, I don’t know what to do at this point. Maybe we need to rethink where we build our showers. Perhaps they need be outside, on the porch. Then we can track less of the “dust” in. Kinda not such fun in the winter, but nobody will object much in the summer months. In fact the dirty old man down the street, hey he just might take to walking by your house a lot more often if you are singing in the shower on the porch.

It left me scratching my head, and wondering what to do. If you have any answers that don’t involve any more housework, I’d like to hear ’em. I don’t like housework. Didn’t I tell ya that?

What She Said

Tags

"just say no", Franken, GOP, John McCain, Jon Stewart, net neutrality, peace, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, Susie Essman, UN, War

The GOP has been using some version of “just say no” for some time now. One is tempted to ask, “how’s that workin’ for ya?”

From Pumas on, they’ve been banking on the “nope, no way” constituency to materialize into a real force. So far, it’s been a wash. The Pumas as you recall, were all those women who were Hillary supporters who were supposed to flock to the GOP once McCain chose that woman for all seasons, Sarah Palin as his running liar.

The Pumas of course never materialized, and Sarah soon grew wearisome to a thinking public.

Since the election last year, it has been the unmitigated decision of the Rethug leadership to simply oppose everything. And it seems, like Nancy Reagan’s anti drug program, not to be making much difference, other than to make them look clearly what they are: crybabies and bad sports who trade public welfare for being contrary.

They oppose the extension of hate crimes legislation,  although we have had it for decades now without the world coming to an end. Some Rethugs found themselves opposing legislation proposed by Franken which would eliminate a contractual prohibition to sue rapists who worked for the company. I mean do you really want to be publicly on the wrong side of that one? “NO, I think Haliburton should be able to keep women from suing Haliburton employees who rape them. After all, profits must prevail!”

Similarly, when you look at net neutrality legislation, what do you find? Yep, you guessed it, the Rethugs are against it. As someone said, all you need do is look who subsidizes the Republican by way of contributions to know whose side he or she is on. I mean who doesn’t want the Internet free of priority speeds for certain companies?

And then there is my favorite of all, posts on Facebook. One of our less than stellar brains posted a report on how many wars and deaths had occurred since the United Nations had been instituted. The lead headline for the piece was something like “How’s that peace doing for ya?” Well, first of all, dumbed down, the UN has not started any wars and has not aggressively set out to kill anyone. They try to STOP wars and aggression. Not exactly their fault that they are not internationally supported by the member nations in peacekeeping. I mean, seriously, are you not for peace? I thought that was kinda a Christian thing as well as a mature human thing. Maybe I’m wrong.

Then we have the utter slimy behavior of the right wing pundits. I mean, the rank and file, the middle of the road, read SANE Republicans can’t even complain about the insulting load of bull that is barfed out upon the great illiterate uneducated tiny tots of the electorate. Lindsay Graham, who admittedly seldom comes up for air by pulling his head out of McCain’s backside, tried to complain about Beck, only to be booed off the floor at the next town hall meeting he attended. The crazy minority, most of which are holding up their bibles as pitchforks, won’t allow any criticism of the idiot brigade.

So, of course they feed them the swill they wish and damned be the facts. This has been demonstrated again and again with Hannity. He cuts comments and re-pastes them to say what he wants, even though the speaker clearly meant otherwise and said so DIRECTLY. Now we have Rush, quoting from a “paper” allegedly written by Barack Obama in college. The paper was critical of the constitution and was leaning toward socialism. Of course Rush was near orgasmic in his outrage. When a sycophant whispered in his ear that the paper was a hoax, he refused to apologize, but merely said, “well, we know he really believes this stuff anyway.” And the folks who listen to Rush, not being educated or even mentally average, lap it up in their unknowing bewildered world.

Finally we were watching Jon Stewart last night, hands down the best actual pundit in the business these days. He had on Susie Essman, of Curb your Enthusiasm. Susie suggested, and I had said the same, that Sarah Palin and folks like her, who continue to insist that dinosaurs and man walked hand in hand in our not so distant past, against ALL the evidence, should be prevented from using technology.

I agree wholeheartedly. Now I know that the illogical nut case can’t understand the hypocrisy of being okay with some science and vilifying other science, sometimes even when they overlap, as in medicine (which they like) and evolutionary biology (which they don’t) but the rest of us can. You can’t pick science as “good” when it transports you across town, allows you to call other countries, lets you surf the net, and cook dinner in minutes instead of hours, but then claim that science is some monstrous behemoth of atheistic mumbo jumbo designed to hate God and his Word. We know you are being disingenuous, but at least we do admit, you don’t get it, because you don’t have the smarts to get it.

All this being said, it’s not really a complaint. It’s really a  big thank you Republicans. You continue to satisfy your extraordinarily weird collection of misfit followers, but you totally turn off the middle and the left. Having five percent of the electorate in your pocket doesn’t win elections. So keep up the usual swill. I hear Bachmann and King and others of the “crazier than any loon” brigade has introduced legislation to commend and honor all those who marched against taxes. Good luck. Those two are good for another ten votes every time they open their mouths.

And so it goes. Just sayin.’

Those That Have Ears–HEAR!

Tags

Bartimaeus, bible, faith, gospels, healing, Jesus, Mark, poor, social concerns

 

Image shamelessly stolen from MadPriest at "...I could be wrong"

I love going to church every Sunday. I seem to always find peace and a certain enlightenment there week to week. I deeply appreciate the congregation I am a part of. So many dedicated and hard working people.

I admit I am blessed to be in it. And yesterday’s liturgy had powerful teaching for us all.

The other day, I focused on Job, one of my favorite books of the bible. Today, I wish to revisit Mark’s treatment of the story of Bartimaeus, in chapter ten.

Mark is an interesting gospel. Written perhaps around 70 CE, and perhaps from the environs around a just fallen Jerusalem, his audience must have lived in some fear. The Romans were overrunning everywhere, and a small band of Jesus followers threatened no doubt that Empire even more than the traditional Jews with their strange practices.

Mark prepares his audience for further sacrifice, in fact making it clear that their lot in life may well be harsh and dangerous. They may only get their reward in death. Here we find the suffering servant at it’s best. Some suggest that Mark is the most reliable gospel we have, arriving first and before other gospel writers started to tailor their writings to reflect the emergent church and taking into account the realities of the day.

I tend to think that might be true, and that makes the story of Bartimaeus somehow more urgent, more real to us. Poor Bartimaeus, a man apparently not born blind, but certainly now so, begging for his food and shelter, unwanted, unclean, marginalized in a society built on class. Bartimaeus was the bottom of the barrel, just the kind of person Jesus tended to seek out.

He is helped or manages to find his way to the roadside where he has heard presumably that the faith healer Jesus will soon pass along. He hears the crowd approaching, and when he is sure that it is indeed him, he shouts out–“Jesus, Son of David, have pity on me.”

The  crowd jostles him, and urges him to be quiet. We must assume that at least some of these are followers. Some indeed are disciples. We are close to Jerusalem,  close to the end, and these disciples have been with Jesus nearly three years at this point. No voice is heard in opposition to the stern words to Bartimaeus. Until Jesus, hearing, calls him forth. Then the crowd turns on a dime and also calls encouragement to the blind man.

This is the focus of the periscope. There have been a number of stories about blindness in Mark, both literal and figurative. Jesus has been telling his disciples of his coming passion and death. He has tried to explain to them that the they must serve–that is their greatness. They don’t get it. They never get it, not until the end. They remain on this road to Jericho, blind too.

They are insiders, privileged to be with the Master all this time, learning and watching, listening and one would hope, meditating on the wonders they behold, from this man/God. Yet, they raise no voice against the crowd “quieters.” They are serious, about the business of travel. They wish no slow down by some beggar along the way.

Until Jesus, once again radicalizes the scene. He stops, he calls, he heals, and then he moves on again toward his destiny.

Bartimaeus, asks to be made whole. Don’t we wish we were? Why are we ready to deny wholeness to another because it is inconvenient, time consuming, bothersome. We are asked to get our hands dirty. The poor don’t dress well, don’t smell very good, they are often unattractive.

Did Bartimaeus become blind because of sin? Certainly most in his society believed that he must have. Perhaps the disciples still did as well. But Jesus knew better. He asked Bartimaeus no questions of “qualification.” He didn’t call Bartimaeus to meet some standard of worthiness. One can argue, no doubt, that Jesus knew the answers, but that but begs the question. If Jesus has nothing to tell us about our humanity, then his teachings are worthless, mere platitudes to mere humans.

So we must conclude that such things did not matter to Jesus. What mattered to Jesus was one thing: do we have faith? If we do, then we deserve our healing. And perhaps, even when we don’t. There were other healings, many in fact, wherein no question was posed about faith. No all the healed were conscience at the time. But even when they were, Jesus never stated faith as a prerequisite. It merely made his job easier. Perhaps in reality, Jesus sought sincerity.

As Church, as people, we must ask the question of ourselves. Are we as insiders putting up stumbling blocks to the outsider who comes in need? Do we establish standards of entitlement? Are we turning away Bartimaeus on a regular basis because we have concluded he is unworthy of our charity? Do we have the right to ask at all? Is this not up to our God to fathom–the one who has known us in the womb, and knows our every thought? Who are we to judge?

Jesus radically turned upside down nearly everything he touched. He gave us a new way of looking at the world and relating to it and to each other. That is and should always be our focus. I am told that yesterday ONE BILLION people went to sleep without adequate nutrition. We grow enough for everyone, but ONE SIXTH of our population is hungry.

How many Bartimaeus’s out there are we turning away and denying? How many are you?

Marriage and Civil Union

Tags

bible, civil union, fundamentalism, God, marriage

It seems to me, that if you are going to call someone a “hater of God’s word” then you have some obligation to know a tiny bit of what you propose to talk about.

At least that’s as I see it, and I have fairly loose requirements for giving opinions on most things. But a bit of actual knowledge seems appropriate lest you end up looking foolish as one person does.

The other day, I went to Facebook and was reading down my “friends” links. Friends is a broad term here, including a few high school classmates that I have come to see as fairly wrong headed in their thinking. Name that fundamentalist, creationist, YEC’er, birther, hater of all things Obama, and anti any government program which purports to assist the poor through taxes, something they don’t want apparently to contribute to.

In any case, the link was to an article about Cass Sustein, regulatory czar, who said that the government would be better off getting out of the marriage business and restricting unions to state civil contracts. Marriage should be something exclusive to religious institutions and other private groups.

Now one would think that the great uneducated wingnut right might agree. After all, they are mostly opposed to anything that involves government oversight–be it health care, business regulation, hate crime legislation. They are agin it all. So they should be for this. But think again. Logic has never played a part in the mind of a fundie.

Instead we are told that such persons who favor this are “hateful of God’s word.” Such a remark shows a complete and utter lack of any knowledge about the institution or the bible. No where as far as I can recall is there anything that purports to be a marriage that is conducted as a religious ceremony. Even the “marriage at Cana” seems bereft of any suggestion of religious involvement.

And surely this is the true when we look at history. What we find is that marriage was from the beginning a contract between the parties. Neither Greek nor Roman governments intervened in the marriage contract. Both marriage and divorce were by mutual agreement.

In the early Christian era, marriage also had nothing to do with the church.  In the 6th century in Europe, marriages were often polygamist in orientation and this was true of those who were baptised. Marriages were often considered political at the upper ranks. This mutual agreement system worked up until the 14th century as the common practice among all people.

I am told that people asked for and were ultimately granted a “blessing” that was conducted on the front of the church steps, but never inside the church proper. Finally, the church began registering these civil unions, but were in no manner required to do so. The state took no interest at all in such arrangements.

The Council of Trent, acting to counter the Reformation decreed that all marriages hence forth must be conducted by a priest to be “sacramental,” meaning recognized by the church as legal. The Anglican church permitted the normative “civil union” as late at 1753, when a formal church ceremony was required.

Although there are references within the Hebrew Scriptures that under certain circumstances, a brother might be required to “marry” a brother’s widow, such were not ceremonies involving the rabbi it seems, but rather mutual statements by the parties of intent to be “husband and wife.”

So any suggestion that someone who argues that we should return to a system whereby the state gets out of the “marriage” business, is on very firm historical ground. This is true for both Christians and non-Christians. It is also true that such a person is on firm ground as it relates to scripture. There is simply no provision for the church or synagogue to be enmeshed in the contractual obligations until a few hundred years ago.

It is simply the case that all “marriages” by mutual agreement were considered as “sanctified” in some sense by God. And the early and middle Christian communities never saw reason to involve the church in the process at all, for centuries thereafter. It seems rather that it was the wishes of the couples themselves which pushed for “blessing” and the church followed in some manner to fight the Reformation. Calvin did call for both state and church involvement, but that was in the 18th century.

Those that wish to vilify such a move today, have no basis for claiming that such a person or persons are “hateful of God’s Word” as it were. The Contrarian, who has long espoused such a belief, demands apology, though no doubt he will wait a long time to get one from the wonkettes who serve up every kind of untruth in order to express their hatred of all things Obama.

The Radical Old Testament

Tags

bible, climate change, environment, God, Jesus, Job, justice, social change, theology

When God insists, I acquiesce. Either that, or God hounds me until I do. So it makes a lot of sense to give in immediately.

Such happened this morning as I prepared for my facilitating of the last of Job and Mark in the lectionary for tomorrow.

In reading a homiletical treatment of Job, I discovered something I had not realized: namely that Job became something of a radical after his transforming experience with God.

For those of you who don’t recall, I refer you to chapter 42:13-15. God has given all back to Job and more, blessing him with sons and daughters. The daughters are uncharacteristically named and in verse 15, they are given inheritance rights “like their brothers.”

I’ve never caught this before. That Job became radicalized by his encounter, giving to his daughters what was not common in those days, perhaps mostly unheard of, the right to inherit like the boys. They are raised from their lowly status as female and given a certain equality.

For those who think that the closing epilogue of Job serves to resurrect the cause and effect of retributive justice again, you are most certainly wrong. God upholds in fact Job’s protest against it both to his friends and God himself. Job is transformed by his personal encounter, realizing that this God of whom he once had  learned,  he now sees directly as participating at least in his misery.

And Job sees, perhaps as a shocking aha moment, that it is humans who must do the work of justice, rather than leave it to God. And so he does so in his new life after sorrow.

One of the dumbest most absurd explanations I have ever heard is from a bible thumping woman who claimed that global warming was a hoax perpetuated by “money and power” interests. We shall ignore the stupidity of failing to see that the oil cartel and various other industries who pollute with abandon, also are money and power interests who have a vested interest in not changing laws that would cut into their profit margin. They are the main perpetrators of the “nothing wrong here boss” idea of climate change.

But the biblicist announced that after the Flood, when God said that he would never destroy the earth again, well that means that nothing CAN destroy the earth, including silly notions of man-made behavior that destroys the ecosystem, making the planet uninhabitable for humans and most other life.

This refers to Gen 8:22, wherein God says: As long as the earth endures: seed-time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease. (We’ll skip too the relative nature of this statement. Winters of no freezing and summers of drought and 90’s is a season, it just may not be a nice one.) What is essential to read here is that this is preceded by God stating that never again will HE act to destroy. He makes no mention of others acting or failing to act to protect the earth.

Additionally and most importantly, it is clear throughout Genesis that God places man as his steward upon the land to care for it and all it contains. We are to act as God’s regents in the world. Time and time again, God reminds us of this. If God’s creation is good as he announced, than our stewardship must include protecting it against harm, especially harm caused by our own actions in “subduing” and bringing under our authority the earth itself.

A friend of mine has a “green” bible, wherein the text is in green whenever there is mention of environmentally favorable wording. Job seems full of such greening. God again and again speaks lovingly of his creation.

It is the height of stupidity and worse yet arrogance, to stand by and “let God” take care of it. God has made it clear that we, as his regents, have responsibilities too. We are not as it were “potted plants” to sit and consume and abuse the world, confident that daddy will clean up after us. That is sheer absurdity and mocks the very God we praise.

I had often thought of the Hebrew Scriptures as the history of a people’s walk with their God. As such, it is instructive on many levels, yet I never thought of it as a particularly radicalized document. No doubt, as we learn from Job’s “friends” it is not. They were assured that old and well-worn beliefs in retributive justice were at work. They continued to prod Job about his “sins.” They were echoing the beliefs of their time and of their history.

Yet, if we look closely, we can see, that even then, the amazing encounters between creature and Creator often led to  new radicalized views of the world and how life is to be conducted. Who would not argue for instance that Lamech’s overkill (no pun intended) at a small slight was significantly changed by the eye for eye doctrine, bringing retribution at least into some sort of equality with the gravity of the offense?

This of course, all would come as a great shock to the sola scriptura folks who never read ALL the bible in equality, but pick and choose in the most ugly cafeteria style, those verses that support their own particular needed worldview and reject or “forget” all the verses that speak to a new way of seeing and a new way of relating.

Don’t get me started on Mark’s treatment of Bartimaeus in the New Testament. Perhaps I’ll chew on that tomorrow. It calls to shame the bible thumpers who consistently find reasons why we don’t need to address social needs of the poor on a national scale. Jesus was the most radical of all, and yet they seem to have hardly known him. They are more like disciples than they realize.