Since Glenn Beck keeps ranting about left-leaning Christians* who use the word “social justice” to advance their agenda, I thought I’d also point out a few other groups who have infiltrated the church, many of whom use the Bible to support their agendas:
These people are inside your church! Some of them are clergy! Scary!
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*He didn’t actually say “left-leaning” - he said “communist” and “Nazi.” That’s part of what makes this particularly dishonest. He knows very well what he’s talking about: Christians who support healthcare reform and justice for the poor because they believe in the Biblical mandate to love their neighbor with more than superficial charity.
I really hope he keeps talking about this. The more he talks the more transparent he becomes.
Edit (3-13-2010): Credit where credit is due: Lewis Archer was the first person I heard the phrase “self-avowed, practicing evangelical” from. Now I think I want a bumper sticker with that phrase.
10. No braving the malls looking for Lent gifts
9. No pressure to send “Merry Ash Wednesday” cards
8. No explaining why using chi-rho isn’t “X-ing Jesus out” of Lent
7. No dominionist fundagelicals trying to fight culture wars by putting “Jesus resisting temptation in the wilderness” displays on public property
6. No celebrity holiday albums
5. No Ash Wednesday sitcom specials
4. No saccharine email forwards about “the true meaning” of Ash Wednesday
3. No tacky Ash Wednesday sweaters
2. “Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return” extremely difficult to use in consumer marketing strategies
1. Nobody ever says, “Ash Wednesday is really all about the children.”
You say in the beginning of the book that you would like to convince people that creationism is not a feasible or a viable belief system, but you also make it clear that you’re not a big fan of creationists.
That’s putting it mildly, yes.
Doesn’t that make it difficult for a creationist to read this book without feeling insulted? Won’t that hurt your goal?
No, I’m not really aiming it at creationists. I don’t think they read books anyway, except for one book. It’s aimed at the intelligent layperson who does read books and who vaguely knows a little bit about evolution and who vaguely knows that there are creationists and maybe even vaguely thinks that he’s a creationist himself, but who is curious and wants to know the evidence.
The part that rankled was “except for one book.” What Dawkins doesn’t understand is that most creationists don’t read the Bible. In fact, I’ve found that literalists of any stripe do not read the Bible much because they believe they already know what it says. What they tend to do is read the same collection of inspirational memory verses over and over again.
It used to bother me that so many people show such a stunning lack of curiosity about the Bible. But then I realized that curiosity takes work, and requires a scientific openness to seek answers. If either Biblical literalists or Dawkins took the time to actually read the creation accounts in Genesis:
1. They would notice that the creation orders are different.
2. Their curiosity might lead them to look for other differences (language, style, etc.)
3. They would seek out sources that might be able to explain the differences (pastors, commentaries, scholars)
4. They would look for dissenting opinions
5. They would formulate their own reason for the differences in light of the available evidence (e.g., these stories were written by two different authors for two different audiences).
As I said, curiosity takes work. Literalists dismiss their curiosity by simply saying, “it’s the Word of God, sometimes it’s hard to understand, but I’ll just accept it on faith.” They just don’t think about it.
Dawkins doesn’t have such an excuse. He is supposed to be a scientist, for crying out loud, but he just accepts the literalists’ interpretation of the Bible. He even thinks they read it! If there is anything like a list of scientific sins, I think one of them would be lack of curiosity.
1. Thou shalt not be incurious
2. Thou shalt make thy methods discernible to all
3. Thou shalt not falsify evidence or results
etc.
Curmudgeonly Lectionary Reflections - Feeding the 5000
Speaking as a fairly mainstream liberal white Protestant, I am so sick of this story and its typical liberal white Protestant allegorical interpretation. In the usual reading, we (the church) are the disciples, and Jesus tells us to feed the hungry, and we think we can’t, so Jesus says try anyway, so we try and lo and behold, a miracle! Blah, blah, blah. Because, you know, it’s all about us.
Another problem I have with the usual reading is that we have to pretend to be surprised, and it becomes a story about how much we believe. Really, you know about Jesus, don’t you? He heals people, walks on water, and raises the dead. Are we supposed to be wowed that he can produce pita bread out of thin air?
So I want to put on my curmudgeonly preacher persona and wave my cane and yell at the kids singing Kum-Ba-Yah to get off my lawn. I really like Mark’s version more than John’s so I’ll start there.
1. In Mark’s version, Jesus invites the disciples to come away to a deserted place all by themselves. Mark says this twice, in 6:31 and in 6:32. Mark has a fairly conservative economy of words, so when he says something twice, he means it. Dripping with sarcasm, his disciples say, “hey, teacher. Since we’re here at this deserted place of yours, how about sending them away to get something to eat?” Nice relaxing spot you picked, Jesus! I love that Mark lets us see the disciples get sarcastic with Jesus.
2. Now, most preachers will say that this crowd is made up of the poor and downtrodden, and they don’t have any money, and the miracle is about feeding the hungry. Hogwash! These people have money. The disciples say plainly, “send them away so that they can buy themselves something to eat.” The text does not tell us they were poor, sad, chronically hungry, or anything of the sort. It says they were like sheep without a shepherd. I suppose because we think of sheep as fleecy white innocent creatures, we automatically go into churchy mode and think that the sheep need someone to take care of them and feed them.
But the “sheep without a shepherd” comment is a reference to 1 Kings 22:17, in which Israel’s army without its king is compared to “sheep without a shepherd.” This crowd is not a bunch of hungry people looking for food. This is the army of Israel looking for a king! They want leadership, not bread. Also, the feeding of the masses recalls Elisha’s feeding of his own disciples in 2 Kings 4:42. These aren’t a bunch of poor downtrodden people. They are a prophetic army.
3. I’m glad I wasn’t there. Had I been there, I would not be thinking charitable thoughts. Here come all these people, interrupting my intimate spiritual time with Jesus. I mean, they just ran around a lake in order to go hear this guy talk. Is there not a sensible person among these 5000 who thought, “hey, maybe I should pack a lunch?” This is Galilee, circa 30 AD. There are no drive-thru windows, people! Plan ahead! It’s part of being a grown-up!
4. In John’s version (6:5-7), the disciples’ testy exchange with Jesus’ is replaced with this laid-back Socratic dialogue. “Where are we going to buy bread for all these people?” Because in John, the disciples aren’t idiots and jerks (which is why I could never have cut it with John’s crew).
5. John gives us a little kid who has 5 barley loaves and 2 fish. In pulpits all over the country on Sunday, this little boy will be the hero of the story. I’m sorry, but does nobody else think that 5 barley loaves and 2 fish is a LOT of food for a kid to eat? Maybe if the kid is 6’2” and weighs 240 pounds, this would be a reasonable dinner. Right, right, someone is going to pull out some obscure historical reference that they were small loaves. Whatever. Just consider this: what if it isn’t his food? Is he the only one out of 5000 adults who packed a lunch? Or is he supposed to be delivering this food to someone else? I like to imagine that there’s one guy in the crowd saying, “hey! that’s the kid who I hired to go get my takeout!” Or maybe the kid drives up in a beat-up Honda hatchback. He gets out and approaches the crowd of 5000. He looks at the order slip in his hand and asks, “hey… somebody order a pizza?”
6. Preachers are going to be falling all over themselves to allegorize this story and explain what the miracle means and will miss possibly the most obvious part of the story: Jesus eats with 5000 people. He shares food with an army. Eating together is a sign of friendship, and sharing the same piece of food is way of declaring eternal loyalty, as when Judas dips his bread into Jesus’ dish in John 13:26. If you break your Twinkie in half and give me part of it, you have just declared that you and I are like family, and we have a bond that cannot be broken. The one who eats with hookers and seditionists and thugs just made himself friends with 5000 people at once, because they all shared the same food.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think this is THE point of the story. I don’t think there is only one right reading, and I don’t think it is simply a eucharistic allegory. But the militaristic language is there, the reference to Elisha’s disciples is there, and John ends the story with the people saying, “this is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world.” The very next line is, “When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself.” The prophet shows up, recruits an army, and leaves.
Edit: Ooh! Ooh! I’ve got another one. In Mark they sit on the grass in groups of fifties and hundreds. Go ahead, look up “fifties and hundreds” in your concordance. You’ll find it’s a reference to leadership and military organization in Exodus, Deuteronomy, and Kings.
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.
I have a backlog of 1000 church and religion blogs that I haven’t read in months. I just got to the point where I find discussions of church and what’s wrong with it tiresome. And apart from a few exceptions, most of the theologizing I was reading also left me tired. I get much more of a charge from looking at art blogs or reading about innovative people doing cool things.
The stuff I want to read isn’t out there. It’s in me. I’ve just got to get it out.
Rats! I missed Cheese-Paring Day. I’ve never actually been able to get the hang of using this kind of slicer. I usually wind up raking the skin off of my knuckles or removing the very top of my thumb. Maybe I’m not holding the cheese right?
Just in case you got a plush uterus for Christmas - there’s been a recall.
And if you’ve been wondering if you are within the blast radius of a nuclear weapon, or if you’ve been pondering escape routes, you can check here to get a look at your chances. Or I can save you some time - they aren’t good.
One passage of the Talmud, concerning how to carry a purse if sunset on Sabbath eve overtakes one who is traveling, runs thus:
If there is a Gentile with him, he must give his purse to the Gentile.
Why not put it on the ass in the first place? Because concerning the ass there is a commandment to let it rest, but no such commandment exists for a Gentile.
How is the case if the man had accompanying him an ass, a deaf-mute, an idiot, and a minor? To whom must he give his purse in that event? He must put it on the ass.
Why so? Because the deaf-mute and the minor are human beings, and he might by accident give it to an Israelite who was not a deaf-mute or a minor.
How is it if he had with him a deaf-mute and an idiot only? He must give it to the idiot, because a deaf-mute has more sense than an idiot.
How is it with an idiot and a minor? He must give it to the idiot.
And so to this day we continue to give our money to asses and idiots.
A conversation at Tuesday morning Bible study about my electric car conversion plans:
“So how much experience do you have working on cars?”
“My skill at automobile mechanics is surpassed only by my knowledge of electricity.”
“Then I don’t see how this plan could possible fail!”
Just for motivation, here is Bill Nye the Science Guy’s rant on human transportation. It starts at about 4:25
Photography was not a hobby that ever really appealed to me. I could appreciate a good photograph - a nice composition, the stark textures revealed in a black-and-white - but I was always skeptical of photography as a “real” art form. After all, anyone can take a photograph, and if you take enough photos, eventually one will be great. When I perused a gallery, I’d often see “abstract” photos that looked like someone had an accident with developer. Photography just never cranked my tractor.
Then a couple of years ago I read about pinhole cameras, and how easy it was to make one. I looked at some photos made with circular cameras on the internet and decided that the next time we emptied an oatmeal box I would turn it into a camera.
This has been a lot of fun. I like the really long exposure times, which run from anywhere from a couple of seconds to several hours. I like the distortion you can impose on a picture. I like the fact that you are using the simple principles of lightwaves moving through a hole to make a picture.
I like pinhole photography because of its distortions and accidents. Fast-moving objects disappear completely. Slower-moving people turn into ghosts. A curved camera warps the visible space.
I ponder these images and ask, “are these really distortions? Or are they simply another facet of reality?” The photo paper doesn’t lie. This is a record of photons traveling through a hole at a particular angle at a particular time. These photos record movement. Viewed from outside of time, perhaps human beings don’t look like the flesh-and-blood creatures we know, but trails of light, snaking in and around each other and their environments. I’ve also wondered about what human beings would look like in geologic time. I imagine time-lapse photos of cities rising from pristine valleys and crumbling into heaps of stone again and again.
As I’ve learned more about the ins and outs of making photos and developing them, I’ve come to see how complex photography is. To get a good portrait, you cannot merely freeze someone’s face in a certain way. You have to capture our experience of their face. The face is fluid. It never stays still. The eyes blink, the mouth contorts, the nostrils flare. You can take a hundred pictures and never get one that “captures” someone’s face, because our idea of their face is a composite of all of their expressions, idiosyncrasies, and angles.
So I’ve come to appreciate photography more by getting down to the basics. Lighting. Perspective. Framing. Composition. Texture. To me, these are the very things that also make good theology. The other thing is that about 90% of the time, the results aren’t that great. But it’s the learning, and the rare occasion of getting it right that has more to do with luck, or chance, or grace, that makes it fun.
Not only are we going to make every sentence eighteen words too long so that when it is read out loud it must be chopped up in unnatural places before the speaker runs of breath, but we will also finish as many sentences as possible with a triad like this next one so that our declarations will sound authoritative, well-reasoned, and final. We are going to use passive verbs at every opportunity, even when an obvious active verb is at hand, and we will fill each sentence with fluff, redundancy, and repetition to help us reach our target word counts.
I built a pinhole camera out of an oatmeal box. The rounded container creates a great wide-angle effect. The pinhole is about .0017 inch in diameter - that’s an f-stop of something like 265. I exposed it for 8 seconds using photo paper. Considering that it was windy and the box was shaking slightly, I think it took a good pic. In the pic I’m actually holding the shutter - a piece of gaffer’s tape - in my right hand. I peeled it off and walked over to that spot, then walked back and re-applied it.
There’s something cool about how low-tech a pinhole camera is. In this digital age, it’s a lot of fun to make a camera with found and recycled materials, and to develop a photo by dipping it into toxic chemicals. It’s about as basic and primitive as you can get. Who needs a $600 digital SLR? (Well, I want one anyway, but this is still cool).
There’s something about framing a photograph that can seem sacramental, if it’s done well. The one I took, at right, is not one of those photos. But this is.
