Death "Vs" Life

So who wins? Is it life or death? 

Christianity would argue life - God triumphantly squashed death in his resurrection of Christ. It's a repeat of the life Vs death motif. 

Morbid atheists might say that death "wins" - it has the final say on our short lives in the chronological sense.

But is it one verses the other? First let's question the notion of death winning at all regardless of our faith position. You could score it very differently. If we accept that death is a natural course of events and that it might be a terrible sense of less that accompanies those that are still alive when a loved one passes, we can still look at that life and say that life won. If I die at 80, then every single day I didn't die, life "won". That's 365 x 80 to 1. Choose the time increment you wish. Life wins.

The morbid atheist might retort that why should you stop the clock there, the person remains dead for trillions of years beyond that, so death "wins". But death is not winning once a person has died, it signals the end of the "competition" for that individual from a phenomenological perspective.

Where death would truly win would be to step outside of a quantitative assessment and to look at how life is lived qualitatively. Christians talk of a future perfect Kingdom of life and love invading, infiltrating the present. Eschatology also has an extraordinary sort of suction power at its essence ushering in the future into the here and now. Conversely, living an empty dead life now also ushers in the death to come.

So it seems that life may win quantitatively and qualitatively - should we embrace it. 

Faith and faith communities, aimless thankfulness and alternative God hypotheses

 Maybe I could offer myself as a religious experiment. I've stepped away from church life now for about a year and have found my faith floundering not for the first time. My experience of family is being battered afresh a few years after I was essentially exiled from my family via a divorce with one of my children seriously unwell and in hospital for months now. I hang on to a form of prayer that basically rejects that God is:

- in any sense particularly male (ouch for the Father metaphor)

- one who acts "supernaturally" in our world in response to our prayers (another big ouch)

- particularly clear in the Bible or in the world about quite what God's "being faithful" actually means. 

What does it mean to say that he never abandons believers? Could it be something about humans exercising faith in a communally brokered religious environment, and chalking that up humbly to the great Other? The point I'm trying to get to I think is this: that you are not really "allowed" to not believe when part of a faith community where faith is the literal and absolute core of what joins the members together in the first place. It is enacted collectively and individually in worship, teaching, acts of service and imagining a better faith-filled world. But step out of that faith-community and the mind mechanics seem to function differently.

Part of me tries to reassure myself: I cannot let my whole spiritual part of my identity disintegrate simply because I find some atheist arguments more compelling - these proponents will unlikely ever extend that same sense of connectedness and concern with me than a religiously convicted soul. A deep spiritual life is indeed worth more than gold, much, much more. Maybe as much as family even, my holy grail that my independence seems to shun (that said, the two operate on entirely different playing fields, so I apologise for the allusion). I also have heard myself more than once utter that I would remain within the Christian tradition probably until I bid farewell to this Earth. I still think that is true - we need form. We can't write the book of life ourselves.

I'd like now to get to a fundamental paradox I have found about faith in God. Faith, a firm awareness of a divine, loving, guiding presence, is I am certain a very good thing. It helps my mental health, encourages empathy, acts of kindness, keeps me tracking more healthily on my heart issues (greed, pride, lust, and more). I never let go of Luther's alleged definition of faith. Faith is prayer. Just now, I asserted just as firmly, that I no longer sense that a personal God would intervene supernaturally in response to our prayers. Now, that is a very different thing to say than saying that prayers are pointless or do not participate in a hugely transformative movement in the world, binding millions of people in a fundamental mission of "good", even if a great deal of it is a rather self-centered version of that good. The paradox gains extra clarity when we shift from petitionary prayer to thanksgiving prayer. 

Studies are unequivocal on the relationship to gratitude and happiness. If our personal happiness or even our species' happiness is important to us, then gratitude seems to be locked into the deal. So from this standpoint, we need to be teaching ourselves and demonstrating our gratitude to others, completely without respect to any religious context. Thankful humans, but thanking who?

Sliding back into my faith slippers, I say thank you God, as I caught myself saying on a jog this evening, for putting this incredible person into my life, my partner T. She is a...."godsend"! I can't imagine any other human being quite able to handle my irksomeness. And as I allow that thanks to spread through my being - a somewhat larger and more spacious idea than my mind, and probably also including my body - my affective appreciation also grows. The instance of prayer is an articulation of recognition that I am indeed a fortunate person and that things could be much worse.

And yet it could very well be that there is no independently self-reflecting perfect being running the show. So regardless of their spiritual roots for people like me wanting to remain alive spiritually but very unsure of the real-world realities of a literal personal deity, considerable work seems needed to make practical sense within the community of myself and within my other relationships.

Maybe it's time to recognise a slightly different hypotheses of God, like Philip Goff's limited God. Let's have a look at his position soon, right here on Faith & Scripture.

Take care.

Breaking the endless circle of judgement

"Stop judging me!"

... the verdict is in, you judge other people too much. We all do. Even when we think the words or feel the trapped feeling the words "stop judging me", we are instantaneously swept along in a current of judgement, caught up in that movement. I literally judge the person for judging me. So how on earth do we step out of the floodwaters of judgement?

Jesus had some advice on this, maybe there's something in it we could use.

"If Christianity is true"

OK so have you ever heard this statement? 

1,280,000 hits. What could be meant by such a statement? What could be wrong with it? How could we redeem it?

On the first point - what does it mean - we encounter an observation that also hits on what is wrong with it: ambiguity. It can mean a variety of things, depending on its context. 

In apologetics debates, it seems to be used quite interchangeably with something roughly akin to "Jesus rose again after his death at the cross", sometimes vaguely intertwined with "oh, and miracles really happen" (or happened).

But that cut-paste is very poor indeed. No mention of a loving creator-God, a life centred on His goodness, of a future hope, of many, many things that are at the rather bulky heart of "Christianity", even if we approach the word in a fairly theological sense.

However, just as Kristen Kobes du Mez realised in writing  Jesus and John Wayne, theological definitions do not give satisfying explanations of what we observe. In particular, she notes the seemingly impossible mass vote for Donald Trump from evangelicals despite Trumps un-"christian" lifestyle and alternative understanding of truth. The only way to understand such cultural tendencies is to see these groupings (or labels) as fundamentally cultural rather than theological.

So how could we redeem it? Perhaps the vague gesturing is to something much more multicoloured, beautiful and cultural than cold historical events. 

Firstly, to consider these rather than other miraculous events (biblical or otherwise) as to be of such central significance is to pay respect to centuries of religious tradition on which the modern believer stands. That is deep, draws individuals into a rich history to which they belong. Secondly, the resurrection story speaks as a validation narrative of the goodness of God as still accessible in believers' difficult lives. Not just a vague goodness, but a concrete, enacted, realised, redeeming goodness. Thirdly, the Christianity is true motif can serve as a bridge between an exciting historical event and the Christian cultural life of a follower. It's actually the glue between the two.

...And They Crucified Him

 JOHN STOTT shrewdly points out a vast difference in detail between the detailed pre-crucifixion scenes and the description of the crucifixion itself. No evangelist really explained in any way what happened at this point, not even Mark who is perhaps the most explicit when it comes to Jesus' pain.

This discovery I feel could reinforce the view about other reliable eye witness testimony just before and after the crucifixion itself, like the discussion between Pontius Pilate and his wife.

Being small

Being small.

I have pondered the challenge of very small breakthroughs being the way of "the kingdom of God". I was reminded of a belief I held more strongly before, lying dormant perhaps during some terribly-low times, that all glory (and "crowns" etc) are to be returned to the Source. 

But WHAT a challenge for someone if their sense of self-confidence has hit all time lows? If they are shown gratitude or some small honour, can they give up that scrap when they are dying of self-esteem starvation? Maybe that is the point, Jesus doesn’t want us to think in terms of scraps of food. Or keep us in a posture of a beggar: please appreciate the thing I did and make me feel special for a few seconds!

From the perspective of how our sense of self-confidence and our security within relationships, giving back the scrap of honour to God and others might actually constitute a more satisfying and enduring internal meal. It really might be worth, then, not taking full credit! 

Mark 4:30 is the famous mustard seed metaphorical story, it speaks to me in fresh ways about being small and a deeper, more fulfilling and longer-term sense of being visible and useful. It takes a lot of time. I'm not there yet. Each time I try to jump at the getting-recognised thing it just has me whooshing back to the start-line, like a giant game of snakes and ladders!

Give credit, my soul, and be well.

Image: https://stevesbiblemeditations.com/2013/12/12/casting-crowns-revelation-49-11/

Laws, statutes, precepts, commands, ordinances, what is it with all this legal jargon and how should we parse it?

Currently in the process of some initial checks on my Non-Religious Bible Psalms project, I noticed some interesting parallels between Psalm 19 and Psalm 119. Apart from sharing a very similar number, we see first in Psalm 19:7-9 and then in more detail in Psalm 119 a whole array of legal terminology that is not easy to translate, especially if we want a reader to find it believable that anyone could find such a thing as an "ordinance" exciting or delightful.

One of the initial things that has had me puzzled is the order in which the Psalmist unpacks his message. Given that he starts in Psalm 19:7 with GOD's Torah, we might be permitted to think that he is going from big to little, but that is not always immediately clear. From the most overarching and society-directing to the individual minutia GOD's words/instructions/insights/instincts/lessons/judgements are fantastic?

This is the order the Psalmist takes it here:

1. TORAH, traditionally rendered "the law of the LORD" (7a)
2. EDOT, traditionally rendered "the statutes of the LORD" (7b)
3. PIQQUDIM, traditionally rendered "the precepts of the LORD" (8a)
4. MISWOT, traditionally rendered "the command[ment]s of the LORD" (8b)

[interlude on the YIRAT/fear of the LORD (9a)], then 

        5. MISHPATIM, traditionally rendered "the ordinances of the LORD" (9b)

(Later in Psalm 119 we will also have huqqim, dabar and imrah.)

So what is going on here, do we have our big-to-little? Or what other thought patterns can we discern? Torah is indeed the benchmark for the Hebrews and so it makes sense to begin here. Where commentators can go is then to say there is no need to think in terms of "big to small", because the Torah comprises all the following points anyway. If this were the case, then we might want to ask the question, how come all the following verses do not switch subject? Ie: The Torah of Yahweh is perfect... the Edut of the Torah are trustworthy... That is not what we see. Rather we see each legal item attached directly to Yahweh himself.

So how big is Number 2, EDOT? The English-favoured term, statutes, are pretty high up. Unlike the Torah, of which there is just one (as far as I am aware), God's whole legal framework for his healthy society, these are nationwide laws. So far so good, although there is a sense of 'warning' about EDOT that might be necessary to factor in for more meaningful translation.

Next, 3. PIQQUDIM. The translated term of "precepts" is a more local enactment of something higher. So yes, we do seem to observe a pattern of big-to-small.

4. MISWOT seems to betray the pattern, however, since we have spoken commands, often of divine origin. Maybe the betrayal is not so great, however. Remember what was said about how all the verses might point to the Torah after 7a? Well, just because MISWOT is usually a divine command does not mean that it should be higher up the pecking order especially because they are all directly linked to Yahweh himself. So the real transition that is happening is that we now move from something that was intended to be written as a written part of the legal structure of Yahweh's society to something that was intended to be recorded as a spoken clarification or a contextualised instruction from Yahweh, that would have future ramifications. So written to spoken could be seen as a progression in this sense.

Then we have the fear interjection, which I do not particularly find fitting here (sorry Mr. Psalmist!) as it seems to interrupt the flow. After that, the pattern is restored where we have our potential candidate for the most localised outworking of GOD's wonderful clarity for flourishing society, 5. MISHPATIM, "a judge's statement of what should have taken place in a particular case" (Wilson, NIV Application Commentary). It seems to me that the order is more or less intact, with the rather awkard interjection needing some consideration. Do we desire that translations contain awkward structure when the intention is for poetic beauty to reflect the beauty of the subject? I would suggest that at least for some translation purposes that the answer is in the negative.

So before we tackle a non-religious rendering of the passage, first we need to think about positioning of the fear clause. My suggestion would be to make it 11c. In the NIV this would read:

By them (all these laws and guidelines by God for his people) is your servant warned;

    in keeping them there is great reward

        [for] the fear of the LORD is pure, enduring forever.

Although I was originally intent on reordering some of the other parts slightly, I believe we can maintain original "big-to-local" thought as follows:

7. a. LOVE’s way is like it,

Reviving the soul after a long cold night.

7. b. LOVE instincts in us can be trusted,

Making even the inexperienced among us seem like wise sages.

8. a. LOVE paths are bang on and lead to real joy in the community.

8. b. LOVE’s words are pure and literally light up our gaze.

9. b. LOVE insights are solid and consistently right.

Note that the "it" of 7.a. serves as a nice connector to the whole preceding section of God's wonderous creative order, the conclusion of which was the sun's gracious sharing of its life-giving heat as it journeys from horizon to the other.

Obviously, a lot more to be said, but I think that will have to do for today.