Thursday, July 02, 2009

The Unintended Consequences of Charity

I think most people are fine with giving money to poor people, as long as the recipients of their charity stay poor. If, somehow, someone poor manages to pull themselves up out of poverty, and acquire more wealth than their benefactors--look out. That seems to be what’s happening in the case of the Extreme Makeover house that has gone up for sale.

I’m glad that most of the response to the family’s decision to sell has been positive. Those whose hearts are in the right place seem to recognize that the warm fuzzies we get from giving are only part of the reason for charity. I love what Ms. Sosbe says: “...I didn’t do it to benefit me. We did it to benefit them.”

Our family has been following the Dave Ramsey plan for about four and a half years now. While his theology bothers me, his method is great. He gives people hope. If the Hassalls can get out from under the suffocating burden of debt, great for them! That’s the goal of charitable giving, right? To empower people, to give them options. “Feed a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day,” goes the cliche. “Teach him to fish and he’ll eat forever.”

My suspicion is that there are a lot of people who volunteered to work on the house who are looking at their car payments and Visa bills and recognizing now that they are more trapped than the Hassalls. Maybe this is an opportunity for them to recognize their own poverty or their slavery to our consumer culture. When we are motivated to give out of a sense of our own sense of noblesse oblige (we are helping them), it reinforces our social status. We get to remain superior. It is a kind of conspicuous consumption disguised as charity. Coming alongside someone in solidarity is something entirely different. Christians assert that in Jesus, God poured God’s own self out and became poor for our sake. Jesus didn’t just toss us some cheap grace from a heavenly throne to make himself feel better.

Wednesday, July 01, 2009

Creative Covers: Gob does Mr. Sandman

I first heard this playing Stubbs the Zombie. Excellent stuff.

Monday, June 29, 2009

Monday Morning Bible Haiku: Genesis 18

Bargaining, pleading,
Abe holds God accountable.
How could we do less? 

Saturday, June 27, 2009

Calvin’s Comeback

John Petty of Progressive Involvement puts it better than I ever could: Calvin’s comeback vastly overrated. 

Friday, June 26, 2009

Blowin’ in the Wind

At one point Jesus turns to the crowds and asks them why they went to see John the Baptist. “What did you go to see?” he asks. “A reed shaken by the wind?”

I’d never paid much attention to this phrase until I ran across a similar metaphor in 1 Kings 14:15, where it describes God’s judgment against Israel for the sins of King Jeroboam: “The Lord will strike Israel. As a reed is shaken in the water, he will root up Israel out of this good land and scatter them beyond the Euphrates.” (I think the sentence makes more sense punctuated this way, though I’m no Hebrew scholar). Another place a shaking reed shows up is in 3 Maccabees, when God punishes Ptolemy for daring to enter the Temple by smiting him with seizures: “He shook him on this side and that, as a reed is shaken by the wind.”

So when Jesus asks if they went out to see a “reed shaking in the wind,” perhaps he’s not merely asking the rhetorical question “did you go out to see something ordinary?” A reed shaking in the wind may imply either convulsing with seizures or preaching hellfire and brimstone; in other words, someone is pitching a fit. Maybe he’s insinuating that they may have been rubberneckers, going out to hear or see the wrath of God fall upon Israel or upon this madman in the wilderness. Maybe one way to phrase the question would be: “why did you go out to see John? To watch someone convulse with seizures? To see a celebrity? No, you went out to see a real, honest-to-God prophet.”

Jesus’ words allude to the credibility problem that preachers have always had. Preachers often become fit-throwers or fancy dressers. A credible prophet is something quite different. 

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Rick Steves’ Documentary on Iran

Creative Covers: Paul Anka does Smells Like Teen Spirit

Paul Anka sings “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Finger-snappin’ fun.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

The Iron Smelter

One commonplace expression in the Bible is the description of the Hebrews being taken out of Egypt and ”out of the iron-smelter.” At first I thought that this was a simple anachronism. The Hebrews were a bronze-age culture (which is one reason why the Philistines, who were an iron-age culture, gave them such trouble). There were no iron smelters in Egypt when Moses allegedly led them out. But after seeing it repeated in 1 Kings and Jeremiah I have a different notion: Egypt is the iron smelter. The metaphor suggests that the Hebrews who emerged from it were like iron.

The phrase is still an anachronism if you believe that Moses is the one who wrote Deuteronomy. Again, we’re talking about a bronze-age culture. It would be like Abe Lincoln referring to freeing American slaves from their automobile factories.

Still, it’s a powerful metaphor for an oppressive regime, generating slag and carbon monoxide. Where do we see iron-smelters today?

Monday, June 22, 2009

Monday Morning Bible Haiku: Genesis 17

Meet God and be changed
Abram receives a new name
Loses his foreskin

Friday, June 19, 2009

More “Aha!” Moments With the Bible

When I was in grad school at Vanderbilt, my homiletics professor, Susan Bond, taught me a way to read a text that I’ve used ever since. It has become such a habit, in fact, that I have a hard time reading the Bible any other way. You read the text four times.

1. The Naive Reading -You pretend that you are looking at the text for the first time. You underline or highlight anything that jumps out at you. Place names, characters, things you find odd or important. Jot down any questions you might have. Pay special attention to roadblocks or things that seem to derail the text.

2. The Poetic Reading - You look closely at the language. Pay special attention to repetition, metaphor, and places the text seems to break into sections.

3. The Rhetorical Reading - You look at the argument of the text. What is the author’s point? What is at stake for the writer? How does the author deploy certain kinds of rhetoric to affect the reader?

4. Reading with Commentaries - You turn to the scholarship on the text.

Even if I don’t do four separate readings, I incorporate these lenses into my usual Bible reading. Then several years ago I started using colored gel pens to highlight when I read the Bible. I use red primarily for roadblocks or things I find surprising, disturbing, or contradictory (which I use mostly on my naive reading). I use green for things I like or for things that seem important thematically. I use purple for language and structural points. I recently started using blue for social justice issues.

As I’ve continued with the Bible in 90 Days Challenge, I’ve hit upon some more things that deserve comment.

1. Joab is a total badass. Thoroughly gangsta.

2. The Kings of Israel have a penchant for getting their kit off during religious ecstasy. Not just David, but also Saul. There are several other passages which suggest that these were priest-kings. The religio-political status of the ruler of Israel was much more fuzzy than it became later. The priesthood threw its political weight behind David (especially after Saul massacred them for their perceived betrayal). 

3. It was advantageous for the priesthood to monopolize religious power at the Temple in Jerusalem, but before worship became centralized, people were putting up altars and sacrificing to YHWH all over the place. YHWH and Baal (pictured left) were not necessarily distinct entities (which is why Saul named his son “Meribaal") until the priestly monopoly declared it so. I think there are two movements going on here. One is syncretism, in which one religion gradually adopts aspects of another. But the other movement is differentiation, in which nuances are hashed out. Israel’s God is defined as “not-Baal.” This also raised the question of “purity” of religion, since all religions borrow, to some extent, from others. The only way to maintain that one’s religion is “pure” is if it is handed down by God. While the Bible does depict YHWH-worship as originating with YHWH, and identifies Israel as YHWH’s people, it also takes plenty of opportunities to show that God is also Lord of other nations, other peoples, and reveals God’s self to people like Baalam, and chooses the kings of other nations. Regardless, the priests who were in favor of differentiation were in Jerusalem. The priests in favor of syncretism were outside Jerusalem.

3.5 Although David seems to have respected that the ark was God’s throne and refrained from making idols himself, he wasn’t above stealing them from the Philistines. This apparently bothered the author of Chronicles so much that he changed the story and had David burn them. Now, you could argue that 2 Samuel passage doesn’t say David didn’t burn them, but then I’m just going to look at you funny and tsk. Capturing idols was standard practice, just the way the Philistines captured the ark.

4. As I noted last time, human sacrifice was not uncommon. Late in his career, David impales the sons of Saul “before the Lord.” This is not only politically expedient, but it apparently appeases God who ends the famine in the land.

5. And poor Rizpah! She must be one of the most put-upon women ever. David was directly or indirectly responsible for the death of nearly every man in her family.

6. I’ve sung the praise song “I Will Call Upon the Lord” before, but it’s happy clapping tune doesn’t reflect at all David’s song that inspired it. “I will call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised/ and I am saved from my enemies.” Calling upon YHWH had a very specific context: the use of silver trumpets (in Numbers 10:2), which you use when the adversary oppresses you, “so that you may be remembered before the Lord your God and be saved from your enemies.” Calling upon the Lord evokes the fanfare that calls YHWH himself to battle, who comes riding on a cherub, shooting arrows of lightning at the enemy... just like Baal. This is not a song to be sung in a major key in a happy tune. This is more like something written by Coheed and Cambria.

7. The story of Saul consulting the Medium at Endor? Creepy. The Urim and Thummim were what Saul and David consulted when they “inquired of the Lord.” You ask a yes or no question, the priest pulls out one of these rocks, and that’s your answer. It’s a bit like a Magic 8 Ball, or maybe more like flipping a quarter. If I were going to make a movie of this scene, I’d have Saul ask a question, the priest flips a quarter… and it lands on its edge. Saul asks again, the priest flips the quarter… and it lands on edge again. I mean, the text says God won’t answer him. If you are using some kind of divination then the tea leaves, the Magic 8-Ball, the flipped quarter, have to tell you something, even if by chance. This would be like you shaking the Magic 8-Ball and it comes up not “Reply Hazy, Ask Again” but instead “Go $#%@ Yourself.” That alone would be terrifying. God has specifically chosen not to tell you a blessed thing. Where do you turn? 

Monday, June 15, 2009

The Mean Daddy

If you are familiar with the “pet movie” genre, which generally features adorable kids whose hearts ache to own their very own non-human companion, you’ve probably noticed a stock character I call the “mean daddy.” It is almost always the daddy, and he does not like dogs. Or cats. Or turtles. Or whoever the protagonist of the movie is.

The kids come up to the daddy and they say, “But why, Daddy? Why can’t we have a dog/cat/turtle?”

“A dog/cat/turtle is a big responsibility,” he says. “You have to walk it and clean up after it and teach it obedience. How about a goldfish?”

“A goldfish!?” they reply, rolling their eyes.

Then the mom/other sympathetic adult authority figure says, “Gosh, [insert name], would it really be that bad to have a dog/cat/turtle?”

“Look,” the mean daddy says desperately, “I don’t want to have to clean up messes/schedule animal sitters for trips out of town, [et cetera] for the dozen or so years this animal is on the planet.”

Eventually, of course, after various hijinks and capers, the mean daddy finds the protagonist animal endearing, or the animal saves the family from burglars/fire/cult members/financial ruin. There will be some incident in which the mean daddy gets pushed into a pool/wedding cake/mud puddle/sewage treatment plant. The camera will zoom in for a close-up of his impotent rage.

What I find most distressing about this caricature is that I must admit to myself that I, like it or not, have become the mean daddy.

Today I arrive home to find that our octogenarian dog has managed to defecate in our living room in an intricate pattern that reminds me of the systematic floor-covering strategy of a Roomba. If you can imagine a grid of 12-inch squares upon our white carpet, there would be at least one dark brown turd in the center of each square, oriented in a spiral pattern. It is truly a testimony to the power of mammalian evolution that this creature with a brain the size of a deck of cards is able to do the complex geometry necessary to cover the maximum surface area of a floor with his excrement. He has mastered the approach we call “poo on the move,” where he manages simultaneously a) to sniff, b) to waddle wherever his nose leads and c) to drop logs of varying lengths behind him. He reminds me of a multitasking CEO who paces, clipping his nails, while dictating to his secretary. The dog watches me while I march about the living room, cleaning up his poo using the inverted-plastic-bag method, muttering to myself. He has one paw crossed over the other and stares, regally, like Anubis surveying the liturgy of pagan priests.

He doesn’t have much longer in this world, I realize, and I will be sorry when he’s gone. If nothing else, he’s expanded my repertoire and my appreciation of synonyms for dookie. I dread the day when my son, who will be 8 or 9, the age when literature and film love to pit the hero child against their tyrant father, comes to me and asks, “Daddy, can we get a puppy?” Then I will know that my journey from real life to cartoon is complete, and I will read from my script: “A dog is a big responsibility...”

And for the next fourteen years I will stay away from pools, wedding cakes, mud puddles, and sewage treatment plants. And I will begin stocking up on plastic shopping bags. 

Thursday, June 11, 2009

“Aha” Moments with the Bible

I’m trying to read the Bible cover-to-cover in 90 days. I have generally dismissed such feats as spiritual or academic bravado, but the discipline of daily reading big chunks of scripture has forced me to confront and rethink some of the themes of the Bible.

1. The biggest theme is just the absolute theological poverty of the Deuteronomistic history. This is the view that God punishes Israel for their idolatry, and rewards them for following God’s commands. It makes sense only as a coping strategy for dealing with national tragedy. People saw their sanctuary burned, their best and brightest led away in exile, and they had to struggle with the question, “If we are God’s chosen people, why has God abandoned us to this terrible fate?” Answer: “We were unfaithful.” So they recast history to explain their guilt. This is the same approach televangelists use to explain hurricane Katrina or 9-11.

2. Problem is, this theology makes God look like a jerk. Even if you buy into the Deuteronomistic view of history, you have to face the fact that God is someone who goes back on a promise. Listen to this one: “YHWH will bring you back in ships to Egypt by a route that I promised you would never see again; and there you shall offer yourselves for sale to your enemies as male and female slaves, but there will be no buyer” (Deut 28:68). It’s a sort of reverse Exodus, and a powerful image. But it makes God out to be duplicitous. So God is a God who goes back on promises. Oh, and there’s this: “He is a jealous God; he will not forgive your transgressions or your sins” (Josh 24:19). Together with the terrible consequences outlined in Deuteronomy 28 (which include starving people eating their own babies, and mothers eating their own afterbirth), and the language about Israel itself becoming “utterly destroyed” just as they supposedly destroyed their enemies, it’s pretty clear that what we’ve got are multiple authors with different views of God. This view, by the way, is firmly repudiated by Jesus in Luke 13.

2.5 The penalty for serving other gods is… serving other gods (Deut 25-28).

3. At the same time, there are some amazingly progressive passages about fairness and social justice. Aliens receive the same law as Israelites (Deut 27:19), and God is especially concerned with the poor, widows and orphans. Micah 6:8 is anticipated by Deuteronomy 10:12-22.

4. God eats blood. No, seriously. The life of a creature is in its blood, and blood is always to be returned to God. If innocent blood is spilled, it contaminates the land. Blood has to be spilled according to certain rules to avoid contamination and remove contamination. This affects everything from menstruation and birth to murder to the worship of pagan gods with blood offerings.

5. Though God does not ask for or condone human sacrifice, human beings are sacrificed: in enemy towns dedicated to destruction as an offering to God, in the killing of the priests who offer incense in improper ways. The priests who die from God’s fire make their utensils holy (Num 16:36-38). The firstborn of Egypt are killed by God and through their deaths the firstborn of Israel are made holy (Num 3:13).

6. When Rahab hangs the crimson thread in her window, the language is almost parallel to the Passover (Josh 2:17-19). Stay in your house, and this marker will spare you from death. With the crossing of the Jordan that follows, it’s almost a chiastic structure.

7. When the High Priest dies, those who have shed innocent blood accidentally can leave the cities of refuge and return home. Presumably this is because the death of the High Priest resets the sin meter, and the land is pure again. In this way, the High Priest himself becomes a sort of atoning sacrifice (Num 35:28). I had never connected this idea with the imagery of Jesus as High Priest in Hebrews 5. The author doesn’t make this connection, but I think it’s pretty powerful: the death of the High Priest means the murderers can go home. The death of Jesus means we murderers are set free from the avenger of blood.

8. I stumbled across another Vulgar Bible item: Joshua 15:13-19 details the story of Othniel’s daughter. The story seemed odd, so I checked the New Interpreter’s Commentary. Apparently, it may be a story about diarrhea.

9. Yet another historical and theological contradiction: Joshua 21:43-45 is a comment about how God was completely faithful in giving all the land promised to Israel. Except--and this is an important observation which has a direct impact on the current Israeli / Palestinian conflict--it did NOT extend from the Red Sea to the Euphrates, as mentioned in Josh 1:4. Since there are currently right-wing paramilitary Israelis who identify themselves with the Israelites in Joshua who claim that God has given them all the territory from the Red Sea to the Euphrates, I think it’s pretty significant that this passage says the job was done when it was half-done. To me, this reaffirms that there is no justification - political or religious - for continued Israeli settlements in the West Bank. You cannot use the Deuteronomistic history as a charter for contemporary politics.

10. The Jerusalem priesthood was very careful to maintain a monopoly on religious life. Any sacrificial center outside Jerusalem, even if it was ostensibly dedicated to YHWH, was a potential threat (Joshua 22). Exodus 31 even reflects the concern by giving the artisans who work on the tabernacle a hierarchy: first Bezalel of Judah, and then Oholiab of Dan--because the sacrificial center in Dan in Israel competed with the Temple in Jerusalem in Judah.

11. Reading the way the Exodus history was constructed makes me more aware of how our own history is constructed. The mythological aspects of the Founding Fathers, and stories of How the West Was Won, and the tragic and religious language used to describe the Civil War, all spring from the same impulse. We make our history into religious history in part to justify our place in it. It doesn’t mean the ideas and events are not true. Just that the stories always have an agenda. For example, textbooks describe the genocide of Native Americans as the tragic but inevitable price of progress.

To me, this makes the Hebrew Bible more compelling and authoritative. What I find astonishing is how multiple views of history and perspectives of God manage to find their way into the text, and how the whole document manages to become holy not in spite of those contradictions, but because of them. Passages like Joshua 23:7 and Deuteronomy 23:3, which forbid marrying foreign women, stand side-by-side with the book of Ruth. As I’ve said before, if you want a Holy Scripture that’s completely consistent, unambiguous, dictated by a divine being to a single author, the Koran or the Book of Mormon may be a better option for you. If you choose the Bible, you’re in for a mess. 

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

The Paradoxes of Poverty

There have been two really good articles about poverty in recent weeks. Both have direct bearing on church life.

First is ”The High Cost of Being Poor.” When I was in grad school, in pseudo-poverty, my wife and I would often remark on how expensive it was to be poor. If you are poor, you cannot afford reliable transportation. If you own a car, you cannot pay for important car repairs which mean that you have more serious mechanical problems later. If your car breaks down on the way to work, you may be fired. Because you are fired, you cannot pay your water bill. When your water bill gets cut off, you have to pay a reconnect fee. If you cannot pay the fee, your landlord may kick you out if paying for utilities is part of the condition of your rent. And on and on it goes. You wind up paying more.

I remember walking outside one day and looking at our balding tires and realizing that we were one blow-out away from financial ruin. I couldn’t afford $60 to replace them.

I read a comment in which someone said, “that may be true, but poor people in the U.S. are much better off than poor people elsewhere.” I think this is a basic misunderstanding about poverty. Being poor is not just about being dollar-poor. It is about structures which make it difficult for people to participate in society. Poor people both in Bolivia and in Birmingham might not have access to a car. But someone in Bolivia can ride their bicycle on the road without being mowed down by an SUV. Moreover, the local market is not disproportionately expensive compared to the market in the suburbs. I’m not arguing that it’s better to be poor in La Paz than in Birmingham. But there are factors here which conspire to prevent people from climbing out of poverty. Sales tax on groceries is one good example. Industrious, hard-working people do climb out of poverty in both places. But plenty of industrious, hard-working people cannot.

The other article is about poverty and giving. People who work in churches and nonprofits already know this, but it’s nice to see some research to back it up. Poor people are more generous than rich people. The lowest quintile give an average of more than 4% of their income. That percentage drops as income increases. The wealthiest quintile give little more than 2% of their income.

I think the article misses an important idea about why the poor may be more generous. There’s a passage in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn in which Francie has a ritual of smelling and stirring her coffee, and then pouring it slowly down the sink. When her aunt asks her mother why she doesn’t stop her, she replies, “if that’s what makes her feel rich, then let her do with it what she wants.” I think generosity is one thing that makes us feel rich. If you are poor, being generous may be one of the few ways that you can exercise power in your world. 

Monday, May 18, 2009

Monday Morning Bible Haiku: Genesis 16

A runaway slave
Lonely mother, thirsty son
The first Handmaid’s Tale

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

James B. Janknegt

Check out these cool modern interpretations of parables and other religious themes at this artist’s site. I’m especially fond of the Last Judgment and his parables. Also the Flight Into Egypt. Heck, it’s all good.