Transformational Power

Today's question is: Do you share Joseph’s perspective that a tragic event can be turned by God to a providential purpose?

The short answer is: yes.

The long answer is this: I don't think God creates hardship and heartache in our lives. I don't believe "everything happens for a reason." God doesn't cause a bad thing to happen so that a better thing can happen down the line. However, I do believe that God can transform our hardship and heartache into goodness and joy. Sometimes, the best God can bring about from a bad experience is our lesson learned. Sometimes, that's enough.

It's a fine line between believing in the transformational power of God and predestination. That fine line is a significant one, however.

PS If you are following along in the workbook, you may have noticed I skipped a question about Israel...I'm thinking on it....I'll get back to you.

Truth and Myth

Today's question is: How can something be true without being factually true? How is the truth of history different from the truth of myth?

Poems, song lyrics, fairy tales, children's stories, movie plots....all examples of things that can be incredibly, undoubtedly true without being factual. Take the book "To Kill a Mockingbird", for instance. Some of the characters hint at real people Harper Lee knew in her childhood, but the story is fictitious. And yet, "To Kill a Mockingbird" is one of the truest books I've ever read. Things can be true without being factual.

It's how the truth of myth differs from the truth of history. The truth of history relies on empirical, provable facts. The truth of myth relies on notions that extend beyond facts.

Which Christmas Story do you Want me to Tell?

Today's question is: Read the birth narratives of Jesus in the four gospels. What do you think each author wants us to know about Jesus by telling the story the way he does? How are the messages similar/different?

Wow. This is such a good exercise for us! The birth narratives are so different from one another. Each one emphasizes something different and reveals something about each community that produced that particular gospel.

Here's the quick and dirty on each of the birth narratives and what they might mean:

Matthew starts with a genealogy that traces Jesus, through King David, back to Abraham. It concludes with the visit from the Wise Men and the flight to Egypt. So, my bet is that Matthew's community wanted to emphasize the kingliness of Jesus.

Mark's gospel doesn't have a birth narrative. (Did you know that?) Instead, this gospel begins with John the Baptizer and the baptism of Jesus, two sentences about 40days Jesus spent in the wilderness being tempted, the launch of his ministry and calling the first disciples. Mark gets down to business. So, my hunch is that the Markian community wanted to emphasize Jesus' ministry and the urgency that surrounds it in the storytelling.

Luke's gospel gives the back story on the births of Jesus and John. This is the most magical of the birth narratives because it's the one with all the angels. Form Gabriel to the throngs of angels singing to the shepherds in the hills, this story is chalked full of them. That's why I think the Lukeian community wanted to emphasize the holiness of Jesus. At the same time, the emphasis on Mary uplifts his humanity and royalty - it's through Mary that Jesus' roots can be traced back to King David.

The gospel according to John also lacks a birth narrative. Instead, we find that beautiful poetry about the Word being with God. Without a doubt, the folks who wrote this gospel must have wanted to emphasize the divinity of Jesus the Savior.

With a Capital "W"

Today's question is: What does it mean for you to call the Bible “the Word of God?” What doesn’t it mean for you?

Flipping through an art history book long ago, I came across a painting of Saint so-and-so writing the Bible. In this depiction, an ethereal hand reaches down out of the heavens. It grasps the saint's hand and the quill pen therein. The painting was commissioned as a teaching tool - to let the common folk know that this book contained The Word of God as written by God himself.

This is not what I think of when I think of the Bible being The Word of God with a capital "W".

When I think of the Bible being the Word of God, I think of the millions of faithful people who, for millenia, have looked to the words of the Bible to reveal something about the "character and will of God" as Marcus Borg puts it. In those stories, letters and poems, there are profound glimpses of who God is, how God works, what we can expect from God, and what God expects of us.

Something Sacred

Today's question is: Does the process of how the Bible was developed and the history of how it became viewed as authoritative by the church affect your views on the sacred status of scripture?

The short answer to this question is: nope, not at all.

The long answer is this: half the battle is accepting the fact that the Bible did not drop from the sky one day, whole, intact and perfect. Once we understand how the canonization process worked, we've taken a big step. But, there's still another hurdle. The canonization was a messy, imperfect process. It's hard to be at peace with that.

As one of my Seminary professors often said about scripture, "We are passive recipients of someone else's choices." I try to keep that very ambiguous fact in balance with the fact that this book has been trusted for millennia. When tragedies occur, when we are at a loss to explain what happens in life, when people have been at a loss for words, time and again, people have gone to the Bible to find words of comfort, assurance and insight.

What's important when reading scripture is that we remain open to the movement of the Spirit. We must ask how God is still speaking to us today in the text. Does God have a Word for us today? That's the question that transforms just another book into something sacred.

For the Bible Tells Me So

Today's question: How has your own understanding of the Bible changed over the course of your life?

Even though no one in my immediate family was a literalist when it came to scripture, I am pretty sure I went through a literal phase when I was younger. But, then again, I literally thought Santa Claus was real too. We tend to be literal creatures as children. At some point, we figure out that the world is not always what it seems. We also figure out how, as children, to take the grain of truth from a story while simultaneously understanding that it's just a story. But, for some of us, we aren't able to do that with the Bible. We set the Bible apart and can't seem to say, "I don't know if it happened in exactly this way, but I know this is true."

In college, I took a lot of theology classes and learned to love the meaning of the text beyond the literal word on the page. I craved the way we approached texts in school as something to be dissected. But, that made my devotional reading of scripture take a nose dive. It took years for me to be able to let me experience interact with the text on face value. Most days, I do a combination of both. But, always, i have to open myself up to the presence of the Holy Spirit in reading, asking god to "add blessing" to my reading and understanding of the text.