Before the time of Christendom and State Religion

 

Once upon a time

Before the time of Christendom and State Religion

When followers of The Way were subversives and outlaws 

No longer under The Law

Yet fulfilling it

Commited to the Rule of Law

Yet recognising a higher ruler

Before the time of status building

Disciples of a dead Messiah 

Broke the mould with inner fire

Broke taboos, erupted Life

Sold ancestral lands for sharing

Wouldn't bow to racial lines

snippet

"Is God love?"

 My reply to this blog

 

 https://www.psephizo.com/biblical-studies/is-it-true-to-say-that-god-is-love/#comments

 

Liz Figures

February 24, 2021 at 4:23 pm

a) I think we leave judgement out of our definition of God’s love at great peril.

In child protection services it’s well known that a parent may say to a child ‘I love you’ and demonstrate that affection in many ways, but if that child has disclosed to that parent that it’s being abused by a third party yet the parent doesn’t act to bring justice and safety the child is often left with a severe feeling of abandonment known as ‘failure to protect’. The child may well feel more lifelong animosity to the person who ‘failed to protect’ than the one who actually perpetrated the acts.

Similarly with other authority figures, when they commit or even allow to go unchallenged various injustices the victims feel an even greater sense of betrayal.

Hence the inherent conflict in people’s arguments – on the one hand they want a ‘hands off’ God so they can do what ever they like but still enjoy his love and benefits but on the other hand are angry with him when other people or ‘life’ (often others at one step removed) are unfair, somehow they still feel the ‘failure to protect’. Hence deep down the need to know that there will be ultimate justice.

but

b) I find it very powerful that in Exodus 34 when God has that particular opportunity to say what ever he likes about himself and this is the definitive chance to describe himself as he wants to be seen he talks about being compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and overflowing in love in the loving-kindness sense. He also punishes and blesses. Punishment only lasts a few generations (the length of time the epigenetic effects consequences last?) Blessing goes on and on and on. I feel this is all so clearly reflected in the life of Jesus. And the 1 Cor 13 summary. Love is patient and kind …

I think the fudge over the NT translation love is a serious error. I think “loving-kindness” for agape reflecting the OT word and concept could help.

I also think we need to be taking the hell-fear and judgmentalism approach out of preaching and church life, which both basically take God himself out of the equation making frightened-ness about suffering and fearing of human ostracism the primary motors of the pressure we put on people to convert and behave.

c) As for the “banal measure of how I feel”, I do basically agree in theory. The problem, and a very major one, is that the discussion does not come in a vacuum. I think that as Evangelicals we have been pretty heavy handed, handing out condemnation and rigidity when even a modicum of loving-kindness would have gone a very long way. I’m afraid I’ve known too many people who were put off God because of us. If you look at why people are still leaving church despite still having faith it’s very telling. Some may balk at the idea of calling bullying rigid sermons, thoughtless judgemental patronising pastoral advice, or isolating excluding cliquish congregational behaviour as ‘spiritual abuse’ but it seems to have that effect on it’s victims just as much as any other emotional abuse or coercive control. It makes me think of the bullying sheep in Ezekiel, also the sheep-looking wolves in Acts.

I feel the church needs to overbalance in the opposite direction for while just to right the wrongs of previous generations. We need to exercise our ‘compassion muscles’ much more than our self justification ones, even if the desire for right doctrine, soundness and respect for the Bible were in themselves a counter swing against the excesses of liberalism etc.

I do understand that the previous over-leaning the other way meant for example, a very soggy self contented church that needed the counterbalance of Finney et al However in view of the damage I’ve seen from our over zealous evangelicalism and the balance I feel exists in Bible – (I desire love not sacrifice etc etc) I think that it’s impossible to over emphasise that God is love/loving-kindness.

I get very moved reading the first letter of John. More important than which John wrote it, is to me, the way it’s written. This isn’t literary analysis of course but it’s impassioned pleas make me think of an elderly apostle who, of all the complex and amazing things he’s shared is reduced to just repeating over and over that for all your right-ness, saying you love God, it’s rubbish if you don’t loving-kindness your brother. Like Paul’s frustration with the Corinthians’ rightness giving dissonant resonances.

Of course this reaction has a personal element underlying it. What would I and so many others I’ve encountered along this de-churched road have given for a few words of kindness, a little thought beyond perceived right-ness. You recently published a post that I can’t just find by the ex Shaftesbury guy who looked into where his old congregation went. He echoed the findings of STEVE AISTHORPE who looked for his old fellow congregants when he returned from mission in Nepal. We have to listen carefully and prayerfully to these voices otherwise we just go round repeating the same errors and undermine the very church we say we’re trying to build. Yes, God is love can be a trite reply to important theological concerns but I don’t think replying yes God is love but … is the best reply. I feel we need a good deal of pride swallowing to compensate for the Pharisaical damage we’ve done to the gospel first. Once we outdo them in love maybe then we can take them to court.

The Journey (Ruth)

A refugee journey

(Based on the Bible book of Ruth, an ancestor of Jesus)



No rain. No rain. Still no rain.


Harvests failed. Hunger drove us out. We crossed borders looking for relief. We wanted only the simple dignity of earning a day's wage, of feeding our families. We trekked, dusty and worn.


I am Naomi. In my own language my name means joy. What irony that was to become.


Now I am weary and full of years, but at that time we were young and willing. We worked hard. We worked long hours doing the jobs they didn't want. We learned their language and customs. We made a home and a life. The day came when could arrange marriages for our sons. What a proud day. What a happy day.


Then the sickness came to our village. My husband's body, weak with hard labour, was quickly overcome. We wept deeply for our loss.


Our sons worked even harder. Their future was my hope. We kept saving for the weddings. We kept our heads high. More people died. Labour shortages. Work was harder but wages rose. Then disaster again knocked at our door. One son after the other was taken sick and died.


We were now 3 widows in one household. How could I, broken in health and heart, produce more sons to honour our promise to those two young women? I revoked their contract and gave them freedom to find new husbands. I decided to return to the land of my birth. Though little more than a beggar I needed to be among my own.


I sold what we had left to pay safe passage with a trading caravan. Well, I say safe. How safe has it ever been for women travelling alone? But it was a risk I had to take.


I said goodbye to the girls but they wouldn't let me go. Finally one agreed to return to her parents but Ruth held on to me. Stubbornly she begged me, "I will go with you. Your people will become my people, your God will become my God."


In my grey mood I said some hard things to her. I told her there would be only shame waiting for us, returning with no working men and no foreign money. But still she came. She hung on to this dried up depressed shell of a woman. She made me eat when food felt like dust in my mouth. She made me walk when all I wanted was to curl up and die too. She trusted in my God, whose very name I was cursing in my despair.


We came to the land of my ancestors. Old friends and family shook their heads when they saw me. When they greeted us I said "Don't call me Naomi, joy. My new name is Mara, bitterness. I have gone sour with grief." There was no welcome party. We had brought no honour in our homecoming.


According to the customs of my land, laid down by our God in his laws, the poor must be provided for. They harvest round field edges, grain left standing for this purpose. We call our God "The Living God" because although we have times and places for meeting him, we can't confine him to them. He hates when the weak are neglected and oppressed. He shows himself to be full of grace and compassion, slow to anger and completely reliable in his love. He gives legal rights even to women, foreigners and those in need, a rarity in my day and age.


So Ruth went to work in the field of a relative of my late husband. Being a good man, Boaz instructed his workers to leave her extra grain, to make sure she was unharmed and to give food to her. In time, in order to provide for us fully he negotiated to take her as his wife. I could give him no bridal gift but according to our laws if she marries a family member he can take over some ancestral land in my late husband's name so we brought him a blessing and our honour was restored.


Now, finally settled in her new land, Ruth gave birth to a son. More honour. I had not smiled since my loss in that distant place. I had journeyed in deep depression. When dear Ruth put the baby in my arms, at long last I laughed and sobbed all at once. I was flooded with joy and hope for the future. Our God had rescued me from distress and shame through the faithfulness of this young woman. May his name be praised.

Review : Revelation, Ian Paul

Revelation: An Introduction And Commentary (Tyndale New Testament Commentary Book 0)
by

Ian Paul

Liz Figures's review

Aug 15, 2020  ·  

For me this is the straight forward, down to earth, no nonsense approach I was looking for. It is what one would expect from a mathematician, which was Ian Paul's line of study I believe before becoming a theologian. It did make me think a little of reading the book on poetry by Steven Fry, but a commentary should dissect, and dissect Ian Paul does, whilst also giving a refreshing overview of the whole, and communicating his own sense of worship and awe that the text inspires.

I am now reconciled to number significance and word counting in particular. In the past I'd encountered it more as superstition - 3 means this - (er, says who?) but here it is shown to be part of a literary language used consciously by the writer, much like the composer of the sonnet or ode is not only transported in wonder at their subject matter but mathematically works out the stanza lengths and rhyme locations to carry the content, adding extra layers to the meaning for those in the know. It seems it was a Jewish literary device to use certain words a set number of times in a text. And what a relief to find that 666 would have been quite clear to the initial hearers and was probably never intended to have the magical terror with which it has been imbued in our popular culture, at least according to this author, although the message was still a very serious warning not to be taken lightly.

I think one of the author's aims may have been to reduce the superstition and misplaced anxiety often linked with this book of the Bible (I have a vivid memory of coming in one evening to find my normally very level headed room-mate at university sitting on the edge of her bed in tears of fear having read Hal Lindsey). For me this was successful. I was struck by the repeated reminders that this work was probably intended to be comforting as well as a warning to the initial hearers, the opposite of the anxiogenic use it has been put to.

I still don't like the word eschatological and not just because it accumulates too many consonants at the front of the word which feels like having to walk barefoot over shingle before finally getting to the sea, but because of the association with all sorts of whacky theology. I think we need to start afresh with a simpler word phrase with less history and overtones, using translated not transliterated words like last, end, far or final.

As far as judgment goes he underlines God's characteristic approach to justice which he calls "lex talionis" which he defines as :"He gives to people only what they have given to others" and "God only gives to others what they deserve if they refuse the gift they do not deserve." An eminently sensible approach not matched in some more classic views of hell and judgement as defined, I discovered latterly, by Greek and Norse concepts of an afterlife torture for the wicked and as portrayed on the Medieval frieze on my beloved Lincoln Cathedral West Front with the torturer being the very one who Revelation says will be destroyed.


I found his regular references to genre helpful. Having recently watched almost all the 'making of' videos of Game of Thrones out of curiosity to see what all of the fuss was about, the great throne room setting for the large part of the action in Revelation was particularly vivid. I was happily led on a Google rabbit hole exploration about angels after his fairly brief but clear description of their role and found myself reading up about stock characters and plot devices in Greek plays (which he then gets on to, but I was inordinately satisfied to have found out for myself lol) and lo and behold there are the messengers (angels, which I would have preferred to not have been transliterated, can't have everything) and heralds (trumpets) along with letters (scrolls), and we all know about ancient Greek pottery so the bowls seem pretty logical too, all being as familiar to audiences at the time as the staff and equipment in the bar at The Queen Vic is to modern soap watchers or the language of sleuths, witnesses, clues to adepts of the murder mystery genre.

He then draws out layer after layer of allusion to the then current cultural references of Roman myths, along with a good dose of Roman Empire and Emperor cult language. Then there's the Old Testament references which come in nearly every verse, - very familiar to anyone raised in a Jewish environment, a closed book to outsiders readers and thus ideal for communicating the subversive message i.e. The Emperor isn't the real overlord, Jesus is; The Emperor can't come up with the goods on his promises, he has neither the power nor the niceness to do it, so don't be seduced into compromising with him.

That said, Ian Paul does not tie Revelation to just being a political cartoon/religious coded message against The Empire of the time but as he says in his introduction :"Although there are clear connexions made with the specific realities of Roman imperial power, the metaphorical description that John offers us provides a critique of all human imperial aspiration." (p34)

I liked his tables comparing groups of words, and the helpful summaries of what he thinks Revelation is also not saying for words and concepts like Satan, the Millennium, Beast etc etc Obviously he can't recapitulate on all the vast literature around and he has taken a particular line that not everyone will agree with but given the nature of the task I think this was always going to be inevitable. In my opinion he's made a readable book of it, that is accessible as a go to first source for the serious Bible reader and balanced jump off point to more detailed researches.

 

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3496750000

Coveting

I had a thought recently about coveting. It’s always puzzled me as at the level of just being envious of something that someone else owns it seems different from the other commandments and yes, “just” a heart issue.

However I was observing the behaviour of our 2 dogs. The least dominant one was lying on something and the other decided she wanted it. She stood there, a bit too close, clearly in eye line until the less dominant complied and reluctantly gave up the coveted position. The more dominant is capable of getting the less dominant to concede almost anything just by staring or standing too close for comfort. I’ve never seen any actual violence between them yet the power relationship is clear.

I’ve come to believe that coveting has more to do with coercion and power relationships than just heart desire.

Some thoughts on John 9 and 10 , Shepherds and Pharisees

My thoughts following on from this great blog post https://www.psephizo.com/biblical-studies/jesus-the-shepherd-gives-life-in-abundance-john-10

Shepherds

I was also pondering through following your comment about shepherds not being social outcasts. I was wondering if both could be true.
By the nature of their work and distance from civilisation in dryer regions where extensive travel may be necessary, lack of amenities, lack of mixed company maybe hands on shepherds could be uncouth “hill-billies” toughened by a hard life.
In comparison the Jewish ancestors were the owners of huge flocks that required employees to mind the animals, (though obviously they’d still know about sheep) – as in Abraham and Lot’s men that ended up in arguments. The Jewish identity revolved around this type of being shepherds of course, a) the caste system of being the right blood who were pastoralists first arable second and not part of the “rabble” that came with them who were put to utilities work of drawing water and hewing firewood and b) which then led on to land ownership being strictly limited by OT law with even land sold to non-members of the clans having to be returned at the Jubilee thus favouring the shepherds with a shepherd God still further.
As I think about it is there even a distinction made about key patriarchs who have the dynastic herders aristocracy blood but also have more extensive hands-on sheep experience – like Jacob, David who was out with the sheep (but funnily enough all his older brothers were to hand to meet the distinguished visitor), Moses?
In which case ‘good’ shepherd is a very alive distinction and maybe Jesus, in bringing them back to the nitty-gritty of good sheep care practices is another indirect way (let alone all the direct ways he uses too) of casting aspersions on their governing of the people in a way that just sees flocks and folks as mere agricultural and social capital.

Pharisees

Been mulling over along with some other stuff. As recommended I read the whole of John 9 and 10 to see the picture frame. Well, fuller picture.
This isn’t theology, its my reaction of course, but I was left with such and ache reading it. An groan for the Pharisees not at them. It’s probably anthropomorphism to see them like a tree full of sparrows, (sadly now a rarer sight) that appear to be like siblings constantly bickering, almost a sign of affection like puppies doing rough and tumble with a safe other before having to defend themselves for real in the big world but enough to drive parents mad. But here it’s not children but adults who should have grown out of it, who should have bigger battles to fight, not each for himself but one for all, all for one.
I’m afraid it’s the feeling I get about us Evangelicals. We have to get things right, decide if they’re sound, keep on working it out. That’s our gift. I don’t even have a problem with lots of denominations. We’re Protestants, we need to defend our right to think, to think it through and to act on what we find. But the flip side is the bickering and judging. Biting each other. Not seeing wood for trees.
I’m sure no Pharisee was happy about the suggestion that some of them were robbers or even worse, hired hands. I’m sure no self respecting Evangelical would want to think of ourselves like that either. We’re all Elijah aren’t we, the one who stayed faithful when everyone else has drifted off into idols and liberalism.
What really gutted me was, well 2 things. One is
“5 But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognise a stranger’s voice.’”
Since I’ve been searching for fellowship via the internet (about 15 years) not only I’ve found huge huge amounts of the bickering of course, enough to totally put me off all so called Christian debate for a long while, but an astonishing number of disaffected Christians, many of whom have kept their faith but who are actively running from churches because of our judgemental, controlling abusive behaviour. Not running away from yokes and burdens, rather looking for more reasonable ones. There was that research in New Zealand and then Steve Ainsworth’s amazing offering in Scotland that shows it’s largely not God who’s putting people off.
Secondly there’s the verses just before our passage.
40-41 “Some Pharisees who were with him heard him say this and asked, ‘What? Are we blind too?’ Jesus said, ‘If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.”
We claim we can see but we bicker on and on. And while we argue about how to reach the lost the lost get loster and we argue about worship when we should leap to worship even if all we get to help us is Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.

Psalm 121 The hills, The Royal Guard

Some thoughts on Psalm 121 in reaction to this great blog post https://www.psephizo.com/biblical-studies/looking-to-god-for-help-in-psalm-121/comment-page-1/#comment-377080

PS Later addition, it seems this particular psalm might not have been written by David after all but in his style or tagged with his name. Doh! Another great theory bites the dust ... or not as the case may be.

The issue of the hills

Starting with this vivid retorical question.


I currently live in a little town at a low point where 2 small river valleys meet. They call it a cuvette, bowl (same word as used for a toilet bowl) and in 3 directions all you can see is  hill. This made it a difficult position to attack in the past as you only have to put guards at the passes. This also gives it an excellent microclimate as rain clouds get driven to one side or the other but their water still comes via the streams and rivers off the hills. I suspect that on a bigger scale Jerusalem, as indeed Rome, had similar benefits.

But it's an odd thing, when you're going around the place just how little we do actually lift our eyes up. I sometimes do it and think, Oh wow, a hill! Coming from Eastern England and then living near Flanders what an odd experience. It makes me think of Phillip Larkin saying about old Hull "Ships up streets" this is hills up streets. My first reaction was a slight claustrophobia, but regularly driving home from work coming up from the Rhone valley, over the top into our little cuvette started to feel symbolically a very safe thing to do and I had a regular comforting prayer image in my mind of being like a chick nestled in a big farmer hand, with God's hand being like the valley I was driving down into.

But in this psalm the image is different. He's not looking to the hills to save him, he's looking for reinforcements or supplies to arrive over the tops of the hills.

If David wrote it I suppose he would have been fairly newly installed in Jerusalem of course, though it's later use was as fan song to sing 'in the bus' ie in the caravan by pilgirims. I've not read this anywhere but when I did a word study on 'king' and looked at when it was first applied to God I found Samuel addressing God as Sovereign Lord. Then I found David's prayers and psalms call God King.

Given that it's a Song of Ascents, so to sung by pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem, it feels to me like reflection on the fact that although this wonderful and relatively new capital city seems in an extraordinarily safe situation, that even she can't depnd on that for her safety. After all, David conquered her so she's not invincible.

It reminds me about not just relying on what I find humanly comfortable, as in the end I could just as easily end up trapped in the valley, or trapped in the false sense of security given by my material comforts.

I think this Cv19 outbreak is showing up just how unreliable some of our survival strategies can be faced with something where the best and safest behaviour is quite counter intuitive. We want to huddle. Out of the question. We want to brave it out and carry on as normal. Unthinkable.

The Guard Poem

After the intitial question the poem with 3 uses of one noun - the guard or the keeper, then 3 uses of the verb.


I wonder if the 'problem' of the hills is a distraction from the larger sense of this song.

What if the picture was more to do with David reflecting on the novelty of being royalty in his new capital city but bearing in mind the caution of his promoter, Samuel, he too wants to emphasise that it's God that's king over all.

For me what jumps out of the picture is the image of a sheikh with a body guard on one side and a parasol holder on the other.

When I did a word study on "king" I found the first references to God being one were Samuel saying "Sovereign Lord". Then David making all his royal allusions to God.

It makes me wonder if both, being conscious that kings weren't really God's choice, were trying to underline that just because the country suddenly has a classic (for the time) monarchy with the much desired standing army to make them feel safe, in fact that's not really where the nation's security comes from.

I wonder if they both felt the need to counterbalance the spin shown so clearly in Judges that it was a king that would give vision and bring order and security to the nation. So they, well David in particular, kept using royal pictures in his prayers and worship songs to keep people focussed on God and off himself. Expectations of him and his successors could have been unrealisticly high, even worse, his own expectations of himself and he'd seen what happened to his father-in-law Saul.  I really respect his humanity and his humility. He's saying - you want me to be your king, your guard, your shepherd, your judge but God is my king, guard, shepherd, judge, so even under me you're really under him.

Despite the emphasis on pilgrimage to Jerusalem for worship I'm sure people would have looked to the new monarchy, it's palaces, rituals and official for shows of pomp, status and national pride so they could now compete with neighbouring kingdoms and hold their heads up. The sheep people are no longer just hicks who only manage to strike back at their powerful neighbours' raids once a generation. They'd no longer be in the shadow of those amazing Phoenician trading cities along their west coast, a humble milk cow for the Philistine raiders.

I don't think the picture is quite as weak as our modern view would make it, with God being merely a body guard and shade holder. I suspect they were very high status jobs being in permanent intimate contact with a king, a situation of total trust. I think David is saying I'm not looking for reinforcements from outside, or even the city's amazing geographical location as security, as I have The Lord as personal guard.

I think this sort of close personalising of God's role fits with The Shepherd image too. All designed to balance the fact that they would soon have a temple to focus on as well as a king to rely on and maybe David was very aware in his own life how he didn't want to loose the close, even intimate faith he and his followers had had in his adventures and wanderings.

The pilgrims singing this would have a powerful picture in their heads as it starts in the first person singular - the great David himself has given them this reassurance as they travel through well known bandit territory in the foothills leading towards Jerusalem (Good Samaritan country, also the first reason for founding the Knights Templar for protecting pilgrims in that self same region albeit so many years later) - as David had relied on God to be his closest body guard (imperial guard) he was saying that God was not locked up in the temple only accessible to priests through the rituals they were on their way to participate in.

I find this all particularly helpful and relevant at our time in history where we're looking to scientists to come up with solutions, doctors to fix us, governments to manage the national crisis. And so we should, that's fine, it's their job. But to see beyond that to the one in whom we put our ultimate trust puts the whole thing in quite a different perspective. I look up to the hills to see if they're managing to keep out the enemy, and are reinforements are coming. But in my heart of hearts I know my ultimate guide, guard, government, is God.