So little time...

I apologize for so much time between posts. Not that what I am saying is earth shaking or worth noting. I am very aware of that. I also hope others aren't adopting my viewpoints on things. I'd hate to influence someone with the ramblings here. But I have made some statements that I should return to and clarify if I can. And I will attempt to do that, just not tonight.

I have changed my signature line on my outgoing emails to say "Rise above common rhetoric James 5.12 Bruce’s paraphrase." As you know James 5.12 KJV reads "But above all things, my brethren, swear not, neither by heaven, neither by the earth, neither by any other oath: but let your yea be yea; and your nay, nay; lest ye fall into condemnation."

I am on a campaign at work to clean up the language of the associates, especially the language of the management. Too many of the management have very base language skills and a narrow assortment of gutter vocabulary to choose from. Even the top of the management ladder who claims to be a Christian uses unbecoming language when excited or angry.

I have at time spoken out in defense of what I regard as "my space" but have recently began to speak out for all space. Company rules forbid consumption of alcohol on the property and all tobacco products within the store. Use of tobacco is permitted on the parking lot, although employees are strongly encouraged to not use tobacco anywhere on the property. That is also mostly ignored by the employees. But the bad language is carried into the building as well as the smutty and suggestive verbiage.

So I have decided that I do not want to pretend I am unaffected by bad language or talk, and at the risk of offending someone I am going on the offensive. I have already walked away from a number of customers who insisted on profanity. I have said, sharply, "Excuse me?" at times and actually been apologized to on occasion. And I appreciate the apology. Although I also think it is somewhat hypocritical to say something like, "Oh, that's OK." I am hoping to respond with a polite "Apology accepted." As a person I don't believe I have to put up with bad language. We'll see what the company thinks about it if someone ever takes offense and reports me, huh?

Work schedule is the principle reason for long periods of silence here. But not totally. I have continued to read but haven't been able in my head to formulate a succinct or lucid summary of what I am understanding. So I haven't been internally urged to write. Maybe soon.

Thanks for the feedback. It reminds me to be clearer and more careful.

Discontent

There are times when I have been writing this blog that I felt like I have been digging a grave for myself. I realize that some, or a lot, of my discoveries that I have been describing here go against the grain of nominal denominational beliefs. I often wish I my brother had lived longer and he and I could have found a way to be in closer communication so I could have had his viewpoint. I also know he had no theological background other than sitting at our mother’s knee and listening to ministers she approved of. So I probably would not have had any correlation for my discoveries. I often wonder what some of my dearest friends in the faith think. I don’t hear from them here. I realize I’ve been a little too clear about not hearing objections. Because what I write here are just processes, not faith decisions. I don’t want to estrange my friends in the faith, for sure.

An affirmation of sorts came my way at the end of yesterday’s sermon by our pastor, Kerry. I have known a number of ministers in my life, but only a few have touched me deeply. One is my uncle, Lum. I am pretty sure a more sincere minister of the gospel never lived. Uncle Lum is from my vantage point, an introvert. I imagine it took a large gift of grace to make a minister out of him. There are others, but currently I have to say our pastor now, Kerry Willis, has proved to be the most caring and insightful minister we have been privileged to know.

In Kerry’s benediction yesterday he quoted these words, “May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half truths, and superficial relationships, so that you may live deep within your heart. “

In an email he sent to me with the benediction he said the prayer was from a Franciscan benediction.

Discomfort at easy answers. Discomfort at half truths. So that I may live deep within my heart. I need time with this. Time to think it through. Time to let it mature. Time to let it encompass my thinking so that it impacts my actions. I want to be more careful of what I read and believe. And I want to be careful to not let go of truth in order to grasp what seems to be truth.

Somehow in all of my thrashing around God sends me amazing truths by way of these men. And I understand I will be eternally grateful.

How can I but be disquieted and uncomfortable when on every side I see the lost? Why am I on this quest? It can’t be for me.

Not for the Squeamish

A movie that I have yet to see is A Few Good Men. Yes, I know it has been out for nearly 17 years now. But I seldom get to the movies, and when I do it is for very special movies.

The reason I mention A Few Good Men is because of the familiar line by Colonel Jessep, “You can’t handle the truth!”

I just read through Kugel’s lengthy overview of the Psalms. I say overview because he references a number of biblical scholars dating back many centuries that have examined the Psalms in their original language and have reached conclusions that startle me. And I can tell that there is a lot more to their individual research than is presented by Kugel. The discoveries don’t surprise me. Not at this point anyway. But the fact that their discoveries don’t have wider acceptance really surprises me. Especially in the ranks of those in highly honored places of leadership in denominations. I hear ministers and lay people talk about men and women who are believed to be very informed on the scriptures but those persons don’t seem to be aware of the discoveries I am finding, Or, big word in this case, or they have decided the discoveries are either illegitimate or would cause too much chaos within the church body.

In a very condensed version, most scholars believe very firmly, that the Psalms were not written by David. There are a host of reasons, from titles to the Psalms to events referenced in the Psalms that happened hundreds of years after David lived. Most scholars believe that the Psalms were written to be used sort of like memorized prayers. The Catholic Church uses memorized prayers for just about anything mankind encounters. I am definitely not opposed to memorized prayers, unless it supplants true communion with God in prayer, especially private “in your closet” type prayer.

An examination of the Psalms yields the understanding that there is a Psalm for most of the events and situations modern man encounters. They are not so specific that they can’t be applied to many similar situations, but they are specific enough to get to the core of the intended reason for prayer and praise.

The most amazing thing I am learning from this Bible is that the human part of the authorship is not close to what we have been led to believe. It appears that Moses was not a historian or a writer. It appears that David had too much on his plate to have written more than a couple or few Psalms if any. On looking closely at the scriptures we find 3 separate accounts of Saul becoming king of Israel. Then following closely we find 3 totally different accounts of David’s ascension to the same throne.

There are 2 separate and different accounts of creation. And much of this information has been seamed together to be read as a continuous story. It looks more and more to me like stories from a host of authors from different viewpoints and with different agendas.

And this reminds me of Colonel Jessep. I wonder how much of the truth about our Bible Christians can handle? What if David was not the king described in the Bible? What if Moses didn’t really live but is a combination of a number of men of his time? Would those facts tear my faith apart? Is my faith the Bible or is my faith Christ? How much of real truth about ancient writings can my faith take? What if the world is as old as scientist believe it is? What if creation took a thousand million years? Does that take my faith away?

Well, for me, no. I am approaching a line of thinking that contends the Bible is a story about God's relationship with man, but only part of the Bible. I think, and this thinking is certainly in the preliminary stages, that part of what we call the Bible is about God and God's relationship with man, but there is a lot of extra baggage included. And it is the extra baggage that has caused us so much pain and division. Too much incongruent history and legends, too many writers included, and way too much too much meddling in what God expects of His people.

King James would have done the world a much bigger service by not tampering with the scriptures. Paul should have had his letters burned. And John the revelator should have kept his dreams to himself.

Comfy?

Several words need to be defined and put into setting so that I can more clearly use them to explain some of the things I have been discovering in my latest readings. Some of them will, no doubt, be familiar to most. Perhaps the two most familiar will be polytheistic and monotheistic. Poly, being of course, many and mono being singular. Theistic refers to a supreme being, i.e., God. To say one is monotheistic is to say they believe there is only one God.

Two words that might not be so familiar are syncretism and etiological. The first, syncretism, means to attempt reconciliation of differing, maybe even opposing, principles, practices or parties as in philosophy or religion. Etiological pertains to causes or origins.

In other words, syncretism is the process by which different accounts of previous events can be made to fit together complementary. In many such process proceedings both sides will have to give some ground, be willing to compromise, perhaps agree to disagree on points, but arrive at an agreement that allows the two sides to coexist without conflict. The case in point may be events or even the existence of peoples.

Etiologic is the reason behind the event or condition being observed. If you have a cold, most doctors will offer a possible scenario for your infection, but will not dwell too much on the possible means of infection. He or she will, instead, concentrate on either curing you or at least making you comfortable while your body heals itself. An epidemiologist, on the other hand, would not be so interested in effecting a cure as in resolving how you contacted the cold in the first place. An epidemiologist then is involved in seeking the etiology behind your cold. Many biblical scholars believe that writers of scripture that became canon were heavily involved in creating an etiological process to explain the current events, processes and procedures the peoples of faith were involved in on a daily basis.

For example, when one would question why the celebration of the Passover, the keepers of the holy books would explain why using very old stories, tales and possibly a bit of stretching of facts and details, leaving out complicating parts and perhaps even bolstering the story a bit with fabricated events and people that may in fact be bits and pieces of other real events and persons. Sort of a mixing of tales to produce a tale that was more in line with what the writer wished was the background to the then modern question.

Not lying, not pure fabrication, but a blending and bending of things. After all, it had all been passed down orally from generation to generation for many generations, who is to say that the exact story remained intact anyway?

With that being put forth, I want to share on this blog, and explore some of the thought processes that have been mine as I sort through Kugel’s mindset on reading the bible.

A number of things have come to my attention through this book that I am quite sure mainstream Christianity never encounters. Probably the biggest encounter was the belief by many biblical scholars that the early books of the Bible were written at a very late date, certainly not any time close to when the events were believed to have occurred. That means that the “patriarchs” of the earliest books may be understood and pictured very differently than they really were.

There are a number of biblical scholars who are convinced that many of these “patriarchs” are most likely inventions of later writers. It is for sure, for instance, that the Pentateuch was not written by one person, whether named Moses or not. Most biblical scholars believe that Moses had no hand in the writings at all, but that the first 5 books of the cannon of scriptures were written by at least 4 and possibly 5 different writers.

The second largest encounter was that many biblical scholars believe that the earliest peoples, who became known at a later time as Israelites, were not monotheistic, but polytheistic. Many scholars have taken the ten commandments apart in their original language and concluded that while YHWH God may have given the familiar rules to his people and said “Thou shall have no other gods before me” it did not mean they couldn’t have other gods. But it did mean the other gods would be secondary to the one God, YHWH.

In other words, if you want a god of harvest, a god of sowing, a god of plenty, a god of safety, etc, it was OK. Just remember that I am the chief god, the god who is jealous of your worship and praise.

Many biblical scholars believe that much of the Pentateuch is partly events of very early times that have been told and retold, massaged and adapted, elaborated upon and updated with changes in lifestyles and societal norms, and partly pure fabrication to provide “etiological” substantiation for situations, practices and observances of the current day in which those events were being told or discussed.

With my being raised in a fellowship of believers that take the Bible pretty much literally, you might wonder if these opinions of men and women known as scholars of scripture would adversely impact my personal beliefs. Some who have been following along are, I am sure, wondering. Especially those who have known me for some time.

Actually, an amazing quantity of what I am reading fits to some degree suspicions that I began to have as early as the eighth grade. I know I have referenced the eighth grade before, but in case you missed it, I’ll recap it.

Eighth grade for me began in September 1962. I turned 13 in July before school started. Thirteen is for a lot of young people right in the time of their lives when an awareness of a lot of things begin to change somewhat. Puberty is beginning to set in, if not already set. A sense of knowing when others are being truthful or not begins to be sharpened. The ability to “look through” a façade or “masks” that people put on is developing. A heightened sense of seeing what is happening around them, almost in slow motion, is becoming second nature. In fact, this sense seems to be with us at its peak for a short time in our lives.

Eighth grade in the school system I was raised in was the middle grade of what was then known as “Jr. High School.” We weren’t considered high school young adults, yet, but we were expected to act a little more mature, be a little more mature, and be ready to consider more mature material and exposure than elementary school children.

In the school system in which I was educated eighth grade was the time when upper level mathematics, literature and science were introduced. Eighth grade saw me in an English class that began to consider literature from a world perspective. Eighth grade was geometry, a new way to consider mathematically the shapes and designs not only in man made things, but within nature as well. And eighth grade was for those in this school system the first foray into natural science. Science that included exploring cell structure, cellular reproduction, cell mutation and cellular diversification to galactic properties including births, lives and deaths of stars. We dissected frogs, worms and cats. And we looked at an ever expanding universe and considered if it was now expanding, from where did it start, and how did it start?

The dichotomy of sitting in an almost enraptured state of amazement in these three subjects verses the rigid sameness of what I was being told in church was brain piercing. It began to divide my thought processes with a deep rooted fear that the people of faith around me may be right in their simplistic view of the world and the emerging greater fear that they were poisoned with a thought process killing agent of some kind. I began to see the process not only affecting the way they regarded new discoveries but in the way they perceived the very creator they regarded with a terrible apprehension of offending by questioning the creation.

Of course I could not, in the eighth grade, have verbalized this in any understandable way to others. I did try. Oh how I tried. But the knowledge and vocabulary were not mine then. I was looked upon as trouble and “lost. “

Lost, a very convenient word. It covers so many situations and circumstances. I was the lost one. The lost son. The lost brother. The sheep out of the fold. The 1 of the 90 and 9. The coin of great value lost in the house.

And it began in the eighth grade. It began to take on a life form of its own, this lostness. I evoked not only prayers in the closet, but prayers in public, some in the presence of the lost one. Heart wrenching, tear stained and voice distorting prayers. Time slowly added a form of shunning. Along with the constant prayers and whispered conversations was the resolve of many to not include this lost one until reconciliation was effected.

No reaching out for understanding of the lost one. No attempt at syncretism. No walking in the lost one’s shoes.

So do you want to rethink that question? The one about the opinions of men and women known as scholars of scripture adversely impacting my personal beliefs?

No. They haven’t. At three score years, not a lot impacts me.

Blessings. And thanks if you stayed with this until now. Would you like a cold drink?

Snow covering

The snow is coming down here in Mount Sidney just across the field from I-81 mile marker 233 or so. It began snowing here at about 4:44 this afternoon and has steadily increased in volume since then. It is now 7:20 and we may have an inch or inch and a half on the ground. Really pretty. When I see snow I am always reminded of scripture. KJV scripture, of course. What else would I know? Snow is mentioned 24 times scattered from Exodus to Revelation, but only in 14 books of the Bible. Snow was not generally a part of the normal every day vocabulary of the writers of text that became our bible. I'm sure most people living in biblical locations knew of snow, but many or most would not have experienced snow. I found the word snow stumped my interpreter in the Butere Church of God in Butere, Kenya. He had to be helped by the village chief. Funny.

Most biblical references to snow are in consideration of it's color of pure white. Only a few reference snow in consideration of its cold. And none reference snow in consideration of how it blankets everything and hides the imperfections in all it covers. And that is what always seems to set my mind in motion. How that something so gentle, so insignificant as a snow flake, so quietly, and yet so quickly can cover the landscape to the point where all of the shapes and colors begin to blend into one glistening, incredibly beautiful carpet of pure lack of color altogether and loss of individual shape. Earth's scars fade, man's work is swallowed up. Patterns and grids and boundaries and divides and ownership are blended in together until it all belongs to the eye. From horizon to horizon, white, nothingness, pathless, directionless. Individuality gone. Sameness takes charge of everything.

Scars covered. Limits disguised. Dark pits buried. Stains whitened. As snow. Soft, gentle, pure, weightless, perfect miracles of snow flakes, bound together and stuck together to the point that it takes tools of steel and machines of fire to clear it away.

Psalms 51.7 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

We open presents in the morning. Hope you saved some. Or did you not dream of a white Christmas? Same on you, oh ye of little faith. We are only 40days behind. What is 40 days in biblical terms? Nothing. A whisper. A breeze. A snowflake.