Abraham. The Mesopotamian man who heard a voice in his head one day and became the Patriarch of three religions. I was thinking about him this morning and was struck by the two completely different persons he is painted to be.
When God told Abraham He wanted to strike down Sodom and Gomorrah for their wickedness, Abraham asked him to spare it if there were 50 good people there. When God told him there weren't 50 good people there, Abraham asked him to spare it for the sake of 10 good people there.
Let me make sure the weight of this has sunk in. Abraham questioned the Lord and Creator of the Universe, the all-powerful, all-knowing Jehovah. Twice. Because he wanted to save the lives of good people, he haggled with the Almighty. Not only that, but the Almighty seemed to take him seriously, not only responding to his requests, but eventually saving Lot and his family. This seems to be a truly heroic side of Abraham.
Later, God asked Abraham to take his only son Isaac up to the mountain, tie him up, and slit his throat as a sacrifice. Without a word of protest, Abraham took his son up the mountain, tied him up, and would have sacrificed him without a peep if an angel of the Lord had not intervened. The same Abraham who questioned God over the destruction of a city full of guilty men said nothing when asked to kill his innocent son with his own hands. Kierkegaard called this a tremendous act of the "teleological suspension of the ethical," of putting God before reason. Abraham, in his estimation, was a true "Knight of Faith", a hero in different terms.
Both of these pictures paint Abraham as a man of significant courage, yet they are completely opposite of each other. Why would Abraham question God over a somewhat rational (though perhaps over-the-top) action, and yet say nothing in the face of seeming absurdity (and a far greater personal cost)? Will the real Abraham please stand up? I suspect there are different layers of textual tradition here that are put forth as one voice. But if these stories truly come from the same author, and Abraham is supposed to be an exemplar for a person devoted to God, when should one question and when should one obey?
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Wheat and Chaff
Sometime after the arrest of John the Baptist and the scattering of his followers, Jesus of Nazareth began his own public ministry, preaching, as John did, that God was going to reenter human history and turn the world upside-down, and he was going to do it soon.
What would you do if you knew that God was coming to mete out cosmic justice, to separate the wheat from the chaff, and that he'd been watching and taking notes the whole time? Naturally, you'd want to put your house in order. You'd want your moral and spiritual life to be in tip-top shape when the Big Guy came to look things over.
This is what Jesus and John were urging of everyone: repent. Renounce your wicked ways and start treating each other right, because if you don't, you'll be sorry when the Bossman arrives. This was Bentham's Panopticon 2000 years earlier, except that for the devout Jews John and Jesus, someone really was watching.
It's common knowledge that Jesus' audience generally wasn't the rich or the pious. He spoke to the poor, the criminals, the vagrants, the tax collectors, the lepers- in other words, people who had likely done some things (by choice or by necessity) that they weren't proud of, and knew that God certainly wouldn't like. When they heard Jesus' message, they probably assumed that God, who knows all, had already seen their misdeeds and written their names on his cosmic list. If He was coming soon, they were screwed, so why change?
To me, many of Jesus' parables address this issue by highlighting a reversal of expectations. The wayward son is welcomed home with joy and feasting; the gutter trash of the town get invited to a wedding feast, the shepherd is concerned about one sheep that strayed; the workers who started later get paid the same as those who started earlier. The message of these parables seems to be "It's not too late."
This is a radical notion of forgiveness that is difficult to swallow. It doesn't seem in line with our traditional notions of justice and fairness. The worker who works less should get paid less; the son who disobeys should not be treated better than the one who obeyed. A whole flock of sheep should not be put in danger in order to save one.
And yet, if everyone who has done wrong in their lives feels as though they cannot turn back, the world of the righteous would shrink to almost nothing. Jesus understood that forgiveness and hope are essential to justice and repentance here on earth.
But do we now offer forgiveness (or simply forget transgressions) so easily that some people will say sorry until they're blue in the face without really changing? Nowadays, it seems lucky to even get an apology, sincere or not. After 2000 years, the notion that God is coming soon with his axe and his winnowing rod seems to have lost some of its punch. Jesus and John were not content to wait for God and let him sort things out. They wanted people to enact their own transformations. In the absence of the threat of sulfur and brimstone, how do you make people want to do the right thing?
What would you do if you knew that God was coming to mete out cosmic justice, to separate the wheat from the chaff, and that he'd been watching and taking notes the whole time? Naturally, you'd want to put your house in order. You'd want your moral and spiritual life to be in tip-top shape when the Big Guy came to look things over.
This is what Jesus and John were urging of everyone: repent. Renounce your wicked ways and start treating each other right, because if you don't, you'll be sorry when the Bossman arrives. This was Bentham's Panopticon 2000 years earlier, except that for the devout Jews John and Jesus, someone really was watching.
It's common knowledge that Jesus' audience generally wasn't the rich or the pious. He spoke to the poor, the criminals, the vagrants, the tax collectors, the lepers- in other words, people who had likely done some things (by choice or by necessity) that they weren't proud of, and knew that God certainly wouldn't like. When they heard Jesus' message, they probably assumed that God, who knows all, had already seen their misdeeds and written their names on his cosmic list. If He was coming soon, they were screwed, so why change?
To me, many of Jesus' parables address this issue by highlighting a reversal of expectations. The wayward son is welcomed home with joy and feasting; the gutter trash of the town get invited to a wedding feast, the shepherd is concerned about one sheep that strayed; the workers who started later get paid the same as those who started earlier. The message of these parables seems to be "It's not too late."
This is a radical notion of forgiveness that is difficult to swallow. It doesn't seem in line with our traditional notions of justice and fairness. The worker who works less should get paid less; the son who disobeys should not be treated better than the one who obeyed. A whole flock of sheep should not be put in danger in order to save one.
And yet, if everyone who has done wrong in their lives feels as though they cannot turn back, the world of the righteous would shrink to almost nothing. Jesus understood that forgiveness and hope are essential to justice and repentance here on earth.
But do we now offer forgiveness (or simply forget transgressions) so easily that some people will say sorry until they're blue in the face without really changing? Nowadays, it seems lucky to even get an apology, sincere or not. After 2000 years, the notion that God is coming soon with his axe and his winnowing rod seems to have lost some of its punch. Jesus and John were not content to wait for God and let him sort things out. They wanted people to enact their own transformations. In the absence of the threat of sulfur and brimstone, how do you make people want to do the right thing?
Saturday, July 5, 2008
What is the grass?
I just got done visiting my father's grave for the first time since we buried him last month.
The gravestone is not finished yet, so there is just a modest marker with his name on it. A coffin-shaped square of freshly-turned soil leaves little to the imagination as to where exactly my father's body lies.
Walt Whitman said that grass is the "uncut hair of graves". Until the grass seeds begin to sprout, Dad's grave site will be as bald as his head.
The next time I am able to visit, the grave may be covered in snow. It may not be until next summer that I can see him coated in lush greenness. I look forward to laying in that grass and reading dad some Whitman from his dog-eared copy of Leaves of Grass.
My father worked in Education his entire life, sometimes as a teacher. What was there in him is there in me; but I work with a different population than he usually did. Is it my job to make them appreciate Whitman the way I do or to show them through Whitman how to appreciate something else? Can we really say, with the economy in the crapper and the United States ranking far below most first-world countries in test scores, that "appreciation" is a luxury our kids can afford? I'm not sure, but I did think that would be a good way to transition a very personal post into a professionally relevant reflection.
The gravestone is not finished yet, so there is just a modest marker with his name on it. A coffin-shaped square of freshly-turned soil leaves little to the imagination as to where exactly my father's body lies.
Walt Whitman said that grass is the "uncut hair of graves". Until the grass seeds begin to sprout, Dad's grave site will be as bald as his head.
The next time I am able to visit, the grave may be covered in snow. It may not be until next summer that I can see him coated in lush greenness. I look forward to laying in that grass and reading dad some Whitman from his dog-eared copy of Leaves of Grass.
My father worked in Education his entire life, sometimes as a teacher. What was there in him is there in me; but I work with a different population than he usually did. Is it my job to make them appreciate Whitman the way I do or to show them through Whitman how to appreciate something else? Can we really say, with the economy in the crapper and the United States ranking far below most first-world countries in test scores, that "appreciation" is a luxury our kids can afford? I'm not sure, but I did think that would be a good way to transition a very personal post into a professionally relevant reflection.
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