Climate Change

This is the first of two week six discussion questions from my Spring 2022 course Making Sense of Theology through Pathways Theological Education. (The second discussion doesn't fit this format well.)

Apply the elements of critical thinking from Chapter 8: description, analysis, framing a view, judgment, and response, to propose a denominational policy for addressing the tension between climate change science and the needs of people from traditional coal producing areas.

This example is really about two seperate, but related issues. One issue is that human activities are producing climate change and if we want to keep the earth livable, we need to make changes, particularly in how we produce and consume energy. The other issue is about how we as a country treat the people in traditional coal producing areas. I lived on the edge of coal country when I was a kid and even in the 1970's the supply of high quality, reasonably accessible coal to mine in the US was running out. The industry was having to switch to mining in more dangerous mines (and mining has never been anything but very dangerous), mining lower quality coal that didn't work for some things (particularly industrial use), and mining in ways that are more expensive and more destructive to the environment. All of these factors were already leading to a reduction in coal mining and a search for alternatives. The news about climate change has only sped up something that was already happening. The concern Don Perdue expresses in the New York Times - "There is widespread bitterness about the country taking our coal for all these years when it needed us, and then simply saying goodbye." - is not just about climate change. We asked generations of Americans to sacrifice their bodies and lives in coal mines to run the industry and utilities of this country so others could profit and now are leaving those people and those areas with less than they started with. We need to be realistic that the era of King Coal is over, while also treating the people left behind with equity and compassion. 

As far as a denominational policy, since there are two issues, there are two paths that need to be taken, but they can be related. We as a denomination can determine that we will prioritize using renewable energy - whether that means putting in our own solar panels, buying renewable, encouraging our municipal systems to invest in solar, wind, and water power, or providing loans for community members to put in solar. We should also focus on reducing our energy needs, and helping our communities reduce energy needs. As far as supporting people in coal producing areas, we can provide scholarships and particularly practical assistance to people from those areas to train to do other work. Practical assistance is an area where even the poorest congregations can help - for example, helping people who are first generation college students know what to do to apply and thrive in college (this could be done remotely) and welcoming and supporting individuals and families who may be in the area to study or complete internships. We can also prioritize purchasing needed items from new industries in coal producing areas - this might include things like solar panels, meeting both goals at once. 

Church

This is the first of two week five discussion questions from my Spring 2022 courseMaking Sense of Theology through Pathways Theological Education.

What role has the church played in your life? How would you respond to the young person who asks, “Do I have to belong to a church to be a Christian?”

One of my early memories is my dedication. It was Christmas Eve and I was 5 or 6. In our church at the time, part of dedication is the adult members of the church pledging to be there for the child growing up and I remember being impressed that all these adults cared for me. My family weren't always regular church goers, but whenever we went, I still felt part of the community. As an adult, I worked weekends and started attending my denominations church by mail and joined a then 'experimental' mailing list, which became a very active small group for almost 20 years, and several of us are still in contact. Even when I started getting weekends off, I found such satisfaction in my small group that I continued with that church. More recently I joined an online church start and we have an amazing community via Discord, with an almost daily . I am also part of my mom's regional small group from the denomination I grew up in, at 52, I'm the baby. They meet once a month and that's the weekend I usually visit her. I love hearing from my elders and I'm trying to get one of my mom's friends to write her autobiography, because she has had some amazing experiences, particularly around the UU denomination, her father was a groundbreaking minister and as a result she got to meet all sorts of people who came to visit him, she also went to Europe after World War 2 with the Universalist Service Committee to work in a refugee camp. I love my church families and they have helped me and my family through a lot of rough times.

However, as valuable as my church community has been to me, if asked whether you have to belong to a church to be a Christian, my response would be no. While my church experience has been almost uniformly good, I know not everyone is that lucky. In fact, I know many people for whom church has been a source of pain or even spiritual abuse. It's easy to say, well, those are just bad churches, but I think it's important that we as Christians take more responsibility for such things and acknowledge that church is not always a healthy experience and that every church has the possibility of being a bad experience for someone. All it takes is one leader behaving badly or even looking away when members treat others badly to do damage. As I said, my church experiences have been good, but I refused to attend youth group in high school and if I went to church, went to the regular services after being bullied in Sunday School as a middle schooler and not feeling like I had any other options to avoid it. In the UUA, youth group is actually older than our denomination, because the two main denominations that consolidated had a combined youth group for decades. While attending church as a teen and college student opened opportunities for me (I was co-director of social concerns for our church and teaching adult Religious Education at 19 or 20), not attending youth group also closed some. If I had just quit participating at all, it would have closed more. (Ironically, I'm the only person from my middle-school Sunday School class who still has ties to the UU church.) For people whose experiences are mostly bad, finding a better church may be too painful or they may need to heal first. However, Brown is right, the community that we participate in does influence who we are. I think it is necessary to have a spiritual community to be a Christian, but what that community is can vary. It might be a church, it might be a small group, it might be a Bible study. It may be in person, by phone, on Zoom or Google Meet or in some sort of social media. It might be extremely interactive or only slightly (in her later years, my grandmother's main spiritual community was being part, with some of her in-person friends of a large group of listeners to a radio Bible study.) What the community is is unimportant, that it is community is what matters.

Brown on Sin and Salvation

This is the first of two week four discussion questions from my Spring 2022 course Making Sense of Theology through Pathways Theological Education.

What insights from this week’s readings (Stone and Duke, Ch 6, "The Human Condition" and Brown, Chs 6, "Sin" and 7 "Salvation") were most helpful or inspiring for you? What aspects, if any, where troubling or challenging for you?

I found Brown's discussion of sin to be very useful and on target with my experiences. He points out pride is "excessive self-regard in relation to others" and taking more than your fair share. "Sensuality" is not about taking excessive joy in things of the body, but rather thinking less of yourself than yourself than you should. Traditional definitions of sensuality mean that you have to do some fancy footwork somewhere to draw a line between appreciating God's good creation with our bodies and senses and viewing sensuality as a sin, the fact that this avoids that problem is a mark in its favor that doesn't depend on the fact that defining sin in this way might make me personally less of a sinner. (One of my Bible school professors taught than when you read something and it feels difficult and you just want to dismiss it, you should sit with that idea for a while and think about whether it's wrong or you're wrong; but I think it's just as or more important to sit with things that just sound good and align with our prejudices for a while too.) While it is easy to come up with examples of people who harm others because they think they deserve more, I was also reminded of kids I saw in the 90's who had been taught that their self-esteem was so important they had trouble doing any self-reflection that wasn't positive because they hadn't had that experience. This isn't to say that they'd never been told they were bad or wrong, but they had only been taught to look at what in their life they were doing well, never what they could improve or were unhappy with. (That's also setting kids up for failure.) And I certainly know plenty of people who never ask for what they need and always give to others. As I think about this, I'm having trouble thinking of examples of things that don't fit this framework, which I think is a good sign. Most of us, of course, fall in the middle, sometimes taking too much, sometimes not taking enough. I have previously heard the definition that sin is "falling short" and I like that definition, but I think this one has more depth.

I wanted to write about the discussion in Brown about the problem of our not doing what we should, which is similar to "falling short", but mostly, I've sat with the fact that I need to think about that more for almost a week now and don't actually have anything to verbalize. I've finally settled on putting a note on my calendar to read it again in month, because I feel like there is more there for me.

I also have some concern with Brown's discussion of salvation. I very much like it. I tend to want to agree with it, but I have reservations because it is very rational and I think we lose something important about Christianity when we ignore the transcendent too much. (This definitely goes the other way too, we lose something important when we forget the practical parts of Christianity.)

 

Salvation

This is the second of two week four discussion questions from my Spring 2022 course Making Sense of Theology through Pathways Theological Education.

Compare and contrast the Trimble's experience (Stone and Duke, Chapter 5) of “re-finding” themselves to that of Zacchaeus’ experience of salvation? How do these experiences relate or not relate to your life?

So, I'm not sure we are comparing apples to apples here. If you read the story of Zacchaeus' interaction with Jesus in the CEB translation (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%2019%3A1-10&version=CEB), the verbs use the present tense when Zacchaeus talks about giving to the poor and paying back those he wrongs four-fold. So the story perhaps is not that of Zacchaeus' salvation, but Jesus's public acknowledgement that he already is. (And the notes in The Jewish Annotated New Testament point this way as well.) Read this way, the story goes like this:

Jesus is coming to town, and Zacchaeus is excited about the opportunity to see him. (And this excitement itself may be a sign of the fact that Zacchaeus is already saved.) Because he is short and the crowds are large, Zacchaeus finds a tree to climb for a good view. Jesus sees Zacchaeus in the crowd, recognizes him and speaks to him. (Again, Jesus recognizing Zacchaeus may also be a sign that Zacchaeus is already saved.) The crowd, not Jesus, identifies Zacchaeus as a sinner. Zacchaeus defends himself, explaining why he believes he is not a sinner. Jesus acknowledges this and tells the crowd that he (Salvation) is there because Zacchaeus is already a member of the community. In this reading, Zacchaeus was only lost because the community wasn't including him.

The Trimble story, on the other hand, is fairly straight forward. People find something that helps them and isn't (obviously) in conflict with their faith and they attribute it to being a necessary or important tool for faith for everyone. Sometimes, whatever it is that is actually a helpful tool for some people. (I'm reminded of the planner fad - a planner can help me do my daily prayer and bible reading along with my other daily tasks, one of my friends finds it essential for staying on track with that, other people may find it useful for their secular life only, or not useful at all.) Sometimes, it's pretty much unrelated - I've seen this happen with diets, workout plans, even business opportunities, but self-help books and programs are super common sources of this type of confusion.  I think we even do this with things we would all agree are part of Christian life. I think we'd agree that things like church attendance, Bible reading and study, and prayer are all tools for being Christian, but we can get caught up in the details of doing those things instead of loving our neighbor, loving God, forgiving, ...

I think the main difference between these two situations, regardless of whether we interpret Zacchaeus' experience as salvation in that moment or acknowledgement of existing salvation, is that Zacchaeus' salvation involves action. He does more than the average person to make sure he sees Jesus. He gives generously to charity. He makes amends in a concrete way. The Trimbles' renewal is about attitude. The only actions they mention are holding hands and giving thanks. Zacchaeus' salvation moves him to do differently. The Trimbles are only thinking differently.

I think this lines up with my own life. When I really change my mind about something, it almost always somehow results in changed behavior. It might not be as drastic or impressive as Zacchaeus' behavior, but there is a difference over time. For beliefs I'm serious about, I can point at behaviors I do as a result (and sometimes, honestly, places I know I fall short in changing behavior to line up with new beliefs - behavioral changes are hard sometimes, you can't just believe them into being or we wouldn't have problems like addiction.)

God's Nature, Will, Power, Presence, and Activity

For purposes of this blog, I almost left this in draft forever mode, because I'm not happy with it but had to finish something to turn in. But in the end, I decided to hit post because there is value in doing the best we can today.

This is the second of two week three discussion questions from my Spring 2022 course Making Sense of Theology through Pathways Theological Education.

What is your understanding of God’s nature, will, power, presence, and activity in the world? 

My first thought on reading this prompt was "Wow, that's asking A LOT!" On further thought, my reaction is just to say "I don't know." And while I actually am going to try to answer to the best of my current thought and ability, I think it's important to sit with that "I don't know" a bit. Out of those things, I only need to know a subset of two of them. I need to know that God's nature is fundamentally good  and I need to know God's will to the extent that it is a factor in my actions. I address the bit about God needing to be good to be relevant more in my reflection paper, but in general, if we don't believe God is good (or I guess powerful and evil), I think God is or should be irrelevant in our lives. Once we determine God is relevant, I think actions (living in accord with or doing God's will) are more important than theory. I do believe loving God (or anyone) should inspire me to want to get to know them better, but as Christians, I think sometimes we use following that desire (and plain old human curiosity) as an excuse to avoid the hard parts of doing what loving God calls us to do. Similarly, I think eschatology is often used in the same way, it's not that we shouldn't study these things, but we should study them because our love of God and love of the Bible make us want to know more, not because the study is more interesting to us than other less fun parts of our Christian walk. I also think theory can help us act or know how to act. I also think that "I don't know" is an underrated answer to a lot of these questions or any question about God.

Because I think it's the most important of these, I'm going to start with God's will. I believe Micah 6:8, "Only to do justice; And to love goodness; And to walk modestly with your God;" (JPS85), is a good start on God's will.  I think it is also God's will that we love God with everything we've got and love our neighbor as ourself.  As I talked about last week, I think forgiveness is part of God's will, both for us to forgive and for God to forgive us. I know that people often say that things like praise and worship, prayer, or Bible study is God's will. I haven't seen any arguments for that that are particularly compelling. I think those are things that (hopefully) help us do God's will, but I think they are more means than ends. I'm aware I'm leaving open a lot of questions in terms of the big picture of why God created the cosmos in the first place, but I am content to leave those as open questions, in part because as I discuss with God's nature, I think it's beyond human understanding. But also, I don't find a lot of mystery in having a desire to create. If humans are made in God's image, it's not surprising that God too would have an impulse to create. I do not think God has everything planned out in advance and we are only puppets acting on God's will, nor do I think our having free will (which I both think is overrated and a doubtful assumption) is a valid explanation for, well, really anything, but especially not any real or perceived shortcomings in any of the factors we are discussing here.

I think God's nature is beyond human understanding. I believe there will be a future time, which I refer to as the next life, where that will change, but in the meantime, my understanding is by definition going to be incomplete and approximate and I'm mostly content with that. I also think that we (different people) can hold different (incomplete) understandings of God's nature, possibly even seemingly incompatible understandings of God's nature and they can both be right. Just as we read that the Gospels are different witnesses' views of Jesus and we can learn from that, we should also be able to learn from differences in how we each see God's nature, rather than insist that we must all think the same way. (That's not to say there can't be false views, but disagreements don't necessarily imply falsehood.) I do believe that God is good and God works from a place of love (or as my grandma's favorite Bible verse puts it, God is love.) I think my friend's pastor puts it well when he says "It's not 'everything that God does is good', but 'God uses everything for good.'" When I was a child, my neighbor showed my sister and I her white carnations and told us that you will never find an all white carnation, they always have a little bit of red or another color hidden underneath (or even obvious) and that this is a message from God that nothing is or can be perfect. I've always taken a lot of comfort in that. I think perhaps, it may also be a message that applies to God. God is also not perfect (and by extension not all powerful or maybe power and perfection are unrelated.) Or maybe something about perfection breaks the universe. 

I do believe God is active in the world in some way. I'm not entirely sure how. I found the approach discussed in Brown that God is moving along with us, changed by us as we are changed by God, all living in relationship together, to be compelling. I also subscribe to the embedded theology that God does change in relationship to God's experience with us, because I fairly regularly point to the places in and around the story of Noah where God regrets or thinks better of past behavior and acts as a result. I need to think more about how this affects other beliefs. For instance, I think it conflicts with the "official" story of why it is completely acceptable for my international, multi-time zone church to do communion on Zoom (which involves the timelessness of God.) I'm not actually personally invested in that, because my personal theology of sacraments is that meaning and intention are more important than anything else and that for communion in particular we should probably either be doing more often and more casually (every time we eat - splitting the stable of the meal and sharing it with everyone around us) or only rarely and even more formally (to make it more meaningful.) However, as part of the church council I'm invested in having something that works for our congregation and doesn't make life overly difficult for our volunteer, bi-vocational minister.

I do think that when God intervenes in the world it is more likely to be small promptings than large flashy miracles. Maybe the age of miracles is over or maybe they just weren't that effective and God has learned better. I don't think prayer prompts God to act as much as it acts as a support of one another and prompts us to act as the people of God.

I'm sure I've left some things out here, because again, it's a big question.

Jesus

This is the first of two week three discussion questions from my Spring 2022 course Making Sense of Theology through Pathways Theological Education.

What do you believe about Jesus and how does this affect your life?

The most important thing I believe about Jesus is that trying to follow his example, the words and deeds that we know about, makes me a better human being. This would be true regardless of anything else about him: He could be no more (less) the child of God than I am. He could be only mortal and not divine. He could be just a prophet, (as one of my dearest high school friends, a devout Muslim believes.) He could have stayed dead. I would still be better at the essential task of being human for following him. That doesn't mean that I don't believe in the parts that "transcend materialistic views of reality", to quote the CUA statement of beliefs, it's just that they aren't necessary for a lot of what I think is important about Jesus and how Jesus affects my day to day life. Jesus modeled a way of living and preached a society where we treat each other justly and was so committed to it that he was willing to die rather than break his principles. All of that is compelling in an of itself. But then, beyond that, we have the supernatural parts that add emphasis in ways I know I haven't fully explored yet. In a recent week's commentary in Wil Gafney's Year W lectionary, she says "Each of Jesus's miracles is an epiphany."(p. 63) She's talking about how his miracles link him back to prior miraculous events and the prophets involved. I'm thinking that they are also epiphanies as to how we should be in the world. Jesus can create something from nothing, he uses it to feed hungry people. A lot of the resurrections and healings that we see Jesus committing (and several of the ones they remind us of) are about propping up the community. In my Bible study this week we were looking at the story of Tabitha using Gafney's Year W and the Women's Bible Commentary (2nd and 3rd editions). This isn't a Jesus miracle, it's Peter following in Jesus's footsteps. At first glance, Tabitha is important because she's a disciple and she's bankrolling things. It's easy to say, well, she's important because she's the financial support. But then you look in more detail and Tabitha is supporting the widows of the community who are the mourners and supporters of those who are grieving, which is time is everyone. There are whole layers of community support where Tabitha is central. That's who gets restored to the community.

Unlike a lot of my friends, I wasn't raised with an embedded theology of hell and damnation, although as an American, I was certainly raised in a society where theologically suspect images that owe more to Dante than the Bible are everywhere and places queer kids are likely to hang out are going to be targeted by people preaching that they will go to that hell. And I've seen that death can be a friend or a comforter as much as something to be feared. My personal thoughts about the end of this life are not fear, with or without a promise of a better life ahead. So, to me, Jesus's resurrection to give his community hope and pointers to continue is more compelling than the fact that he has defeated death. That's not to say those things aren't important to my / our / the community, I think they really are. It's that that is not where I ever needed to be restored to community. 

What I do find more personally compelling (and more difficult) than the idea that through Jesus death has been overcome, is the promise of radical forgiveness. I take seriously Jesus's words that we should forgive as we have been forgiven and his actions in doing the same. (One can argue that this is Jesus defying sin for and with us, I don't generally find that a useful label, even if I generally think it's true.) I strive (and fail) to forgive for more than trivial things, but Jesus's example shines through as how to do that.

A bit of an aside, I think that one of the reasons we don't bring people into community - and I would include things like the fact that there are people sleeping on the streets of my town and we, as a community, seem to think that's not worth changing our ways in order to change, has to do with forgiveness (and also sin as Brown talks about it, thinking too much or little of ourselves). On a group level, when we don't take care of people in our community, it means either we think too much of ourselves and think we deserve to have more than they do or it means that we can't forgive them if they are given something that we have to work for. (It gets a little more complicated on an individual level as we interact with the constraints of the group.)

Authority of The Bible

This is the first of two week two discussion questions from my Spring 2022 course Making Sense of Theology through Pathways Theological Education.

What is your understanding about the authority of the Bible? How do you respond to those close to you who have a very different understanding? What role does the Bible play in your life?

This line from chapter 2 of Brown completely changed my thinking on the authority of the Bible:

The Bible is the progressive Christian’s authority because in our engagement with it we are authored as Christians.  (p. 25)

 This really speaks to me because it allows us to embrace the Bible, faults and all, without having to specifically address and explain away those faults, except on our own time as it supports us to do so. It also leaves room for acknowledging in our lives the very real ways the Bible may have harmed us or been used as a tool for  harm. I regularly refer people to Mandy Rice's Queerituality and the lesson that "You can’t just unthink religious harm. You have to live your way beyond it." and I think this way of looking at the authority of the Bible supports following her research that focusing on gotcha verses is unlikely to improve your spirituality. And as Robin Perry (writing as MacDonald) says in the Evangelical Universalist "Virtually all the key Christian beliefs have some texts that run against them." (p 37), so pretty much whatever you believe, someone can find a gotcha verse if you let things devolve to proof texting. The Bible is the instruction book and history book of our faith. It isn't always clear and it's often contradictory (I would say on purpose, to remind us that we need to always take things in context.) The idea of our engagement with the Bible authoring us as Christians makes more obvious the role of the Holy Spirit in our reading. It also gives us agency, we can choose our level of interaction with the Bible at any given time.

How I deal with people who have a different understanding of the Bible than I do varies depending on the situation. Just because I don't find an understanding compelling doesn't mean that it isn't valid and I try to keep that in mind. I've noticed that in many of the situation where I meet people with a different viewpoint than I have, they aren't actually interested in having discussions about the Bible, they want to give Bible polemics and I just don't participate. (Although I wouldn't rule out chanting over some of the hateful polemicists who show up as "street preachers" on the University campus and at events.) In the church groups I moderate online, people who only want to give polemics and not have discussions or only discuss ideas with the intent of convincing others and are not open to the possibility of learning something themselves are referred to other places (usually a Facebook blog post sharing group started by some people in my denomination) and then heavily moderated and eventually blocked from posting at all if they continue to treat the group as their audience not their conversation partners. If I want to read the Bible in community, we don't necessarily have to agree on how we see the Bible to read together, share verses we found meaningful, and attempt to help each other with confusing passages. We don't have to agree to help each other pick up references to other books and stories or to act as accountability partners for actually reading. If people are trying to discuss but get stuck on only discussing gotcha verses, I usually point to Rice or Perry (depending on the person and the topic). If people are trying to discuss but get too stuck on literalism or inerrancy, I like to get them talking about "swords into plowshares" and "plowshares into swords". I have noticed that in spending more time talking with people with a more literalist viewpoint than I have, I have become more willing to assume something might be literal rather than metaphorical than I was before. 

My life tends to be better when it includes regular Bible study, though I am not always regular about it. I'm not sure if that is something innate to the Bible or because it implies a routine of some sort. There is also something compelling about wrestling with a text that so many others have and are wrestling with. I also think it is our best source of knowledge about Jesus and his words and actions. Aside from the supernatural and miraculous aspects of Jesus's life and deeds, I think learning and following his example is a really good way to be a better human both alone and in community. I think you might be able to argue that the rest of the Bible could be replaced with tradition and the Holy Spirit (although we would lose so much, including the rich well of knowledge from the Old Testament to Jesus references) and we could still have something valuable that is recognizable as Christianity, but I think those stories are crucial.

Death With Dignity

This is the second of two week two discussion questions from my Spring 2022 course Making Sense of Theology through Pathways Theological Education.

Read and respond to the case: “Proposed Death with Dignity Referendum.”

Imagine that your state has a referendum on the ballot legalizing physician-assisted end of life, a.k.a. euthanasia, similar to laws passed in Oregon and California.

Content Warning: Obviously this isn't an easy topic, but my discussion of it ended up being way more graphic about causes of death and murder than I expected would be necessary.

 I'm going to start with the fact that since I'm from Oregon, where we twice voted as a state to allow death with dignity, I am seeped in an embedded theology that of course this is good. Since part of that embedded culture is that we often use the word suicide, usually with modifiers, to refer to choosing one's time of death when we know painful death is coming soon, I'm going to use that term here. Rather than the argument given in the assignment that "this is not suicide because something else, often cancer, is the true cause of death," what I hear is simply an acknowledgement that people "died of cancer" or "had cancer and died." I know that my Catholic family members, who do, in general, consider suicide a sin, do not consider this to be sinful. (Also, while it is entirely off topic, I don't think there is any Christian excuse to treat suicide as anything other than a death due to illness regardless of whether it was due to an attempt to avoid a quickly advancing painful death due to cancer or mental illness, that just ends up being hurtful to survivors and keeps those who are struggling from reaching out to religious community.) And, honestly, I think death with dignity passed in Oregon and Washington because we already had a culture where suicide (and in some cases infanticide) in the face of painful death was considered a valid choice. The main issue was we didn't have access to processes that were reliable, didn't leave the family with extra trauma and could still be carried out when patients were physically very weak from their illness. I won't go into the stories I've heard from the 50's, 60's  and 70's, but I personally have never heard condemnation of someone who choose their time of death rather than waiting for "natural death." When I asked a friend who grew up in a rural area if this was the same in their area, he immediately told me that it was called "shotgun therapy" in his area and several of his grandparents' friends made that choice. My dad was essentially offered euthanasia as an option at his brain cancer diagnosis in 1985 in a Catholic hospital by an oncologist who straight out told him that whether or not he choose the treatment he was offering (out of several options), to keep his number as he was available for end of life care and was specifically willing to give as much pain meds as necessary to keep someone comfortable even if that dose came with a risk of stopping breathing if that was what the patient wanted. If I recall correctly, this conversation took place in full hearing of my whole family and several family friends. At least in Oregon, we have a long tradition of individuals being able to choose euthanasia.

My thoughts on this are mostly pragmatic, which probably qualifies as anthropologically based, but I'll go into that in further detail later. Reflecting on what I know about the differences in how people died and whether or not I know anyone who used legal assisted to suicide to die, has actually convinced me that regardless of what I believed divine revelation to say, I would be generally in favor of the law allowing people to choose euthanasia legally. This is because when I reflect on my grandparents generation, almost all of whom died before physician assisted suicide was available in Oregon, Washington and California; I know of several people who choose to end their life on their own, knowing that a painful death was coming. All of these people choose a method that was messy and traumatic for their family. Of my parent's generation, many of who are dying now, I only know of one who choose euthanasia, the father of a friend. Statistics in Oregon show that a significant number of people who get a prescription for assisted suicide, either do not fill the prescription or do not use it. This is believed to be, in part, because for some people, just having the option makes them less stressed and more comfortable waiting as long as they have any good times. I suspect that the reason the numbers of suicide in the face of coming deaths I hear about now that assisted suicide is legal is that most of the methods people used in the past required them to be much more well and fit when they took action than physician assisted suicide does today. People today can wait longer and may die naturally in the meantime in a manner they still find to be good. (I would be remiss if I did not note that people whose illnesses do or are likely to involve swallowing problems regularly show up in the media asking for further assistance to be legal for them, because they don't want to have to choose between ending their life earlier than necessary and having to take whatever pain their body chooses to dole out after they cannot swallow anymore.)  

Continuing on a pragmatic basis, concerns about misuse of these laws are something I think everyone shares. But, unfortunately, neither allowing nor denying death with dignity stops the murders of seriously ill and disabled people in our communities. Yesterday (March 1) was Disability Day of Mourning, a day for mourning disabled people who were killed by a family member or caregiver. According to https://disability-memorial.org/, last year, 5 disabled people were murdered by their caregivers in Oregon, Washington and California. (I'm using those states because they line up with where all the incidents of suicide to prevent painful death I've mentioned above took place and all states with laws allowing individuals to choose euthanasia for themselves.) The numbers are likely much higher, because such deaths are often only investigated when they are obvious. I don't think this means we shouldn't worry about misuse of death with dignity laws, and such laws should continue to include checks and balances, but our concern for unnecessary deaths of sick and disabled people needs to start long before death with dignity laws. For instance, the COVID epidemic saw a push in England for all sorts of people with disabilities to be marked as DNR (Do Not Resuscitate), regardless of their feelings on the matter, solely on the basis of disabilities and not any differences in their likelihood of benefiting from advanced life saving measures. In the US, many states crisis standards of care for medical care when hospitals and medical professionals are overwhelmed were also found to discriminate against people with disabilities, deprioritizing their care for reasons unrelated to survivability or need.

I want to specifically address the argument suggested in opposition to "Only God decides when we die." If God can keep Daniel and his friends safe in the flaming furnace or the lion's den, God can certainly make some meds not work. I'm not saying we should tempt God, but I don't believe God is so limited that we need to avoid possibly getting in God's way. I also think this argument is not necessarily in good faith, because some of the same groups I see touting arguments like this also believe in trying to bring about events their reading of dispensationalism lists as necessary precursors to the second coming. You can't have it both ways. Also, I think arguments like this are often harmful to faith. If "Only God decides when we die", many of those who witness a painful, drawn-out death wonder why God would be so cruel as to wait. Avoiding this type of statement doesn't solve the problem of theodicy, it doesn't reinforce concerns about it either.

As far as my pragmatism about this issue possibly implying an anthropologically based rather than divine revelation based outlook, while I start with looking at how humans are affected, my reason for doing so is based on the belief that humans are made in God's image and all of the many teachings in the Bible about loving our neighbor. Our neighbor is not just our fellow Christian, not only Christians are made in God's image. When we make legal decisions based on ethics, certainly our Christian beliefs might inform them, but if our neighbor is not a Christian, we are not called to force them to behave as a Christian, we are called to love them. (We can argue separately how and when the great commission might call us to do more in the way of evangelism than love our neighbor.) When we try to legislate what we believe to be God's will, we are acting as if we believe our human laws can enforce behavior that God cannot. Treating law as stronger than God's will is idolatry.  This isn't to say that we shouldn't have any laws or any laws that align with God's will, but we should do so in the spirit of Article 3 of the Winchester Profession "We believe that holiness and true happiness are inseparably connected, and that believers ought to be careful to maintain order and practice good works; for these things are good and profitable unto men."  Additionally,  I believe that any type of harm reduction technique falls in the category of loving our neighbor and this does seem to be harm reduction. (I would argue that the "first do no harm" statement often attributed to the Hippocratic oath is not in fact followed, doctors regularly have to choose harm reduction. I am alive today because 9 months ago a doctor cut a huge chunk of infected flesh out of my leg, knowing that he only had about an 80% chance of success if he did and that even if he was successful I might not have full use of my leg, but also knowing that if he didn't I would surely die a painful death. That is harm reduction, not doing no harm.)

I will say that whether or not an individual Christian should avail themselves of assisted suicide in the face of certain and painful death is a separate question and while we can advise our fellow Christians on this topic, we also need to leave space for them to listen to the Holy Spirit, recognize that what the Holy Spirit tells us to do for us may not be what the Spirit tells them, and love them, not condemn them.

Progressive Christianity

 This is the second of two week 1 discussion questions from my Spring 2022 course Making Sense of Theology through Pathways Theological Education.

How would you describe progressive Christianity for an inquiring parishioner? What particularly resonated for you in Brown’s discussion of it in Chapter 1 and what, if anything, troubled or challenged you about it?

I thought Chapter 1 of Brown was amazing. I'm very much looking forward to reading the rest of the book. I saved the following quote to refer to in one of my required CUA polity papers:

Progressive Christianity is not a “you just have to believe it” point of view. But neither, for us, are good reasons the same as “proofs.” They are not the kind of argument the conclusion of which any reasonable person will necessarily accept if he or she understands the argument. Good reasons don’t force assent. I will put it this way: “Good reasons” are reasons for believing something that a person who does not share that belief can nevertheless respect. They are reasons that someone else thinks to be credible even if they are not compelling for him or her.

 I think that this idea of good reasons rather than proofs is a key to understanding progressive Christianity and how it differs from both fundamentalism and liberal Christianity. I would explain progressive Christianity as follows:

Progressive Christianity comes from a baseline of assuming that we are well-intentioned Christian believers, trying to follow Jesus as best we know, but acknowledging that because as Paul puts it "we see as through a glass darkly" and the documents we have (predominantly The Bible, but also the writings of Christians since) were written under a different cultural understanding (even as our parents grew up with different cultural understandings than we did), we cannot always know exactly "What Would Jesus Do?" As progressive Christians we accept that what we can do is attempt to come up with reactions and reasoning that other well-intentioned Christian believers can agree are respectable and respectful, even if they themselves would come to a different conclusion. Likewise, we recognize that those who have come to a different conclusion in a respectable and respectful manner are still well-intentioned, devout fellow Christian believers.

 Brown, Delwin. What Does a Progressive Christian Believe? A Guide for the Searching, the Open and the Curious. New York, Church Publishing Incorporated, 2008.

Background and Faith Stance as of February 2022

This is the first of two week 1 discussion questions from my Spring 2022 course Making Sense of Theology through Pathways Theological Education.

By way of self-introduction, describe your denominational background and your current faith stance in general terms using the concepts of embedded and deliberative theologies. What has drawn you to taking this course?

The terms embedded and deliberative theology come from our textbook, Stone and Duke How to Think Theologically, 3rd Edition. Embedded Theology is "the understanding of faith disseminated in the church and assimilated by its members in their daily lives." Deliberative Theology is "a process of reflecting on multiple understandings of the faith implicit in the life and witness of Christians in order to identify and/or develop the most adequate understanding possible."

I was raised in the Unitarian-Universalist Association and my parents were essentially theist. We celebrated most holidays - secular, Jewish and secularized Christian (in the case of Christmas and Easter) - and the most commonplace of family events with my mom's best friend who was like an aunt or second-mom to us. She was a devout Jew and we lived in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood for 4 years of my childhood (as in, there wasn't anywhere nearby to buy bread during Passover.) I gained a strong embedded understanding of Judaism (in addition to UUism) and learned as an adult that the only reason we didn't go to synagogue was that my father was opposed to Zionism and our local synagogue was strongly Zionist. As I was in my teens and twenties, I gained more of an understanding and connection to Unitarian Universalism and as part of seeking more of a deliberative understanding, found a historic Unitarian (Unitarian Church of America) book at a local used bookstore, Letter and Spirit by Richard Metcalf. This book lead me to an understanding of Christianity that I could and did embrace. (Like many Unitarians of the 1800's he was also a universalist.) I joined the Christian small group in my church and started paying attention to what the UUCF (Unitarian Universalist Christian Fellowship) was doing.  

I had thought about ministry in my 20's but it didn't feel right and I ended up with a career in tech. In my late 40's I both had to stop doing tech work for medical reasons and realized I had a call to chaplaincy. As I looked for options on how to do that without traditional seminary (particularly without meeting the UUA denominational requirements with their strong focus on preparing for the business of managing a church, often at the expense of pastoral care training), I decided to take part in an extremely accessible undergraduate fundamentalist focused chaplaincy program, because while many of the people in need of spiritual care in my area (and the US in general), have a fundamentalist or evangelical embedded theology (including those who have rejected but not replaced them), I really knew very little about it. Studying fundamentalist theology on a deliberative basis was not entirely a sociological experiment for me. In particular, in having to study apologetics against universal salvation, I found the arguments so uncompelling that further study and reflection made me realize that to me universalism is the core of Christianity.  As I was finishing that program, I contacted the Christian Universalism Association asking about their education program and they basically recruited me to join their denomination (I don't think we have publicly announced yet that we filed the IRS paperwork to officially be a denomination rather than a parachurch organization in January, but it isn't a secret.) I have been gaining both embedded and deliberative theology experience around Christian Universalism since, helping start an online CUA church and working on my chaplain track ordination requirements. 

An important aspect of my personal theology is that I believe very strongly that neither trinitarianism or unitarianism should be used as part of a test of belief. This is in part because I have seen trinitarianism be a huge stumbling block for people's belief. I think it is also problematic that they are often poorly understood even by many who claim a belief in one or the other. I personally lean towards trinitarianism, but I suspect that they are merely examples of imperfect models for understanding the nature of God and the relationship of God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit and that in the next life, we will understand they are both (all) incomplete. I believe these models are only useful to the extent that they improve our relationship with God and need to be released if they are a stumbling block.

I decided to take this class because I really enjoyed Understanding The Bible as a Progressive Christian. This class looked interesting and on a practical level, I believe it will help me formalize some of the ideas I need to put into the essays I am required to write as part of my candidate process for the CUA. 

Joshua, Ruth and the model minority

This is the "reflection paper" from my Spring 2022 course Understanding the Bible as a Progressive Christian through Pathways Theological Education. It was written during the 4th week of class, but not published here until class was over.

Describe the treatment of non-Israelites as portrayed in Joshua 3:7-17 and in the Book of Ruth. Give examples of similarities and differences in the ways that God and/or God’s people treat non-Israelites in the two works. How does Progressive Christianity understand these similarities and differences? Use the questions at the “Three Worlds of the Text” website to guide your thoughts.

In Joshua 3:7-17 (specifically, Joshua 3:10, where Joshua tells the people of Israel that God "will completely remove the Canaanites, Hittites, Hivites, Perizzites, Girgashites, Amorites, and Jebusites before you."), non-Israelites are barriers to be removed, not actually humans.* In Ruth, Ruth is often viewed as a heroine. But I think a better model is that of "the town's black", the exception to the rule in otherwise white-only towns discussed in James Loewen's book Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism. To quote Lowden "Decades after death, such a person may get warm retrospective articles in the local newspaper." (p. 290) This is similar to, but not the same, as the myth of the model minority. I live in Oregon, which has the sad distinction of having been formed as the only state to specifically exclude "negros and mulattos", constitutional discrimination that remained in effect until 1926 and was followed by numerous official and unofficial exclusion rules. The story of Ruth is very reminiscent to me of some of the historical figures of my current town of Eugene. For instance, there is Wiley Griffith, who is known for conducting the mule towed streetcar in town circa 1890, owning the mule, and being a favorite of local children. A mural about him was recently put on a wall near my friend's house in part as graffiti prevention. Or maybe of Pearlie Mae Washington and Annie Mimms, black women who hosted black performers and visiting student athletes in their homes - conveniently located just outside the city limits, performers who were invited to perform for white citizens but not welcome in the white-only hotels as late at the 1970s. I did not grow up in Eugene, I didn't learn about Wiley Griffith and his mule and the Mimms and Washington families in 7th grade Oregon history (although I did learn about some of the token blacks of Portland, but not the extent of racial exclusion in Oregon.) These are stories I learned just existing in Eugene in the 10 years I've lived here. The story of Ruth reads a lot like these stories, it seems like it's about Ruth, but then you start looking at it a little more and there isn't really a lot about Ruth herself and her thoughts and feelings, just Ruth in relationship to the dominant culture. We start out hearing about Naomi and her troubles and her generosity in excusing her daughter-in-laws from the usual expectations a widow owes to her husband's family and end the story showing Boaz's generosity in acting as kinsman redeemer and marrying Ruth, followed by  a genealogy to show that King David descended from Ruth, making the story important to the story of Israel. If Ruth had been an Israelite, would Naomi have had to trick Boaz into doing his duty as kinsman redeemer? Or would the "nearer redeemer" first mentioned in Ruth 3:12 have jumped to do so?

I think that as Progressive Christians, we have a tendency to overlook the implied genocide of the other groups in the Joshua passage (which is more explicit elsewhere in Joshua) and to read into Ruth what we want to see, particularly around women in the Bible. (The article we read, What’s Rape Culture Got To Do With The Book Of Ruth?, shows several examples of this kind of thinking.) Many progressive churches and institutions have ongoing issues with confusing the presence of members of minority groups (of whatever type) and actual inclusion. Ruth may itself be symbolic of that kind of thinking.

While these stories, on the surface, seem to show opposing views of non-Israelites, Joshua viewing them as an other to exclude and kill and Ruth showing the story of a Moabite woman being welcomed into the Israeli community, I think that really they are both about exclusion. In Joshua, all non-Israelites are excluded. In Ruth, a non-Israelite is allowed to exist because she makes herself useful to Israelites. She's the exception that proves the rule that non-Israelites are bad, not someone treated as valuable in and of herself.  Ruth 4:16-17a where Ruth's child is shown as belonging to Naiomi, further cements Ruth  herself as unimportant, she is relegated to the role of surrogate, not mother.  'Naomi took the child and held him to her breast, and she became his guardian.  The neighborhood women gave him a name, saying, “A son has been born to Naomi.”' (Ruth 4:16-17a CEB) This reflects a pattern still seen today where people from countries that do not allow surrogacy contract with foreign women in countries where surrogacy is legal, such as the US, Canada and India. Additionally, the book of Ruth takes place (and is likely authored) later than Joshua. It may partially function as apologia for why there are still non-Israelites around when Joshua said God was going to "remove them before you."

* Also, I want to highlight that in this passage in Joshua, God tells Joshua that he will make him like Moses, Joshua himself is the one who says God will completely remove the other groups.

James's Lowden's website - https://justice.tougaloo.edu/sundown-towns/

Online museum exhibit "Racing To Change: Oregon's Civil Rights Era: The Eugene Story" that includes the Black pioneers mentioned and the racism they faced - https://mnchexhibits.uoregon.edu/racing-to-change/

Summary of Galatians 2

 This is the second of two week 6 discussion questions from my Spring 2022 course Understanding the Bible as a Progressive Christian through Pathways Theological Education.

Summarize the story Paul tells in Galatians 2 with attention to the issues raised by Osiek concerning women and foreigners.

Galatians 2 starts out with Paul in the middle of recounting his background and credentials in becoming an apostle. Paul reports that 14 years after he was last in Jerusalem (and about 17 or 18 years after his conversion based on information in 1), he had a revelation that he needed to go to Jerusalem to consult with the apostles there. He was accompanied by Barnabas and Titus (who was a Greek gentile). In Jerusalem he met with the apostles to share what he was preaching to the Gentiles and make sure he wasn't leaving anything important out. He specifically says he wasn't looking for approval because that comes from God. The Jerusalem leaders did not feel the need to add anything except that he "remember the poor" (collect donations for the central Jerusalem church), something he claims was always his goal. He gives the fact that he was not asked to circumcise Titus as proof that the Jerusalem leaders agreed with him that it was unnecessary for gentile Christians to convert to Judaism or follow Jewish law. (Circumcision is both part of converting for men and required for Jews in the law and  Paul uses circumcision as a symbol of both converting and following all the rules of the law.) It was agreed that he would focus on preaching to the gentiles and both the 3 of them and Paul's mission to the gentiles was treated as equal in value to the preexisting apostles to the Jews and the mission of sharing the good news among the Jews. This wasn't uncontroversial among the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem and some of them tried to force Paul to make the gentile believers follow the Law out of obligation, not out of God's will or in accordance to anything in the truth Paul was preaching, but he did not give in to the social pressure.

Despite this being settled, and Cephas following this advice, Cephas gave in to public pressure and started again promoting the need to follow the law, convincing others to go along with him, and Paul called him out for hypocrisy and shares his teaching on this with his readers: Whether born a Jew or Gentile, it is impossible to become righteous just by following the Law, it requires Christ. The most important thing is to live for God and follow Christ. If we try to do that via the law, we break the law. If we ignore the grace of God and try to follow the law, Christ died for nothing.

Galatians Genre and Setting

This is the first of two week 6 discussion questions from my Spring 2022 course Understanding the Bible as a Progressive Christian through Pathways Theological Education.

Identify the genre and Sitz im Leben (literally, “setting in life”; the many contexts that shape a work, e.g., geography, historical era, purpose, et.c.) of Galatians.

Galatians is a pastoral epistle. That is to say, a letter specifically written for the purpose of meeting the needs of a set of Christians in following their faith in their day to day life. It was written by Paul to the members of churches he had originally founded but was now getting (bad) advice from other sources.  Like many of Paul's churches, these churches were predominantly made up of gentiles who had started following Christ. We know from 2:1 that it occurs after his meeting with the apostles in Jerusalem which is occurred around 49 CE, likely late 40's to early 50's CE. These churches were likely in the Roman province of Galatia. Although we don't know specifically were these churches were, we do know from Acts that in Galatia, Paul completed missionary work in Pisidian Antioch, Iconium, Lystra and Derbe. The purpose of the letter was to correct errors in the church members' Christian walk based on advice they received from later missionaries who were encouraging them to be more Jewish - convert to Judaism (including circumcision) and generally follow the Torah, or law.  At this point in early Christian history, the movement was trying to determine whether or not it was a part of Judaism or separate and if separate to what extent. 

Historical Setting of Ruth

This is the second of two week 5 discussion questions from my Spring 2022 course Understanding the Bible as a Progressive Christian through Pathways Theological Education.

Describe the historical setting of the Book of Ruth. Discuss the possible scenarios that hypothesize an early date (~1000-600 BCE) or to a late date (after 500 BCE) for its composition.

The Book of Ruth is set in Bethlehem in Judea during a good harvest season after a time of extended famine.

The text itself starts "During the days when Judges ruled" (Ruth 1:1a CEB), this sets an earliest possible date of sometime after Saul's reign. However, it ends with a genealogy that leads to David, which sets David's reign as the earliest possible date. (I think you can argue that's a later addition, but a couple generations is still in the early window.)

The language used is often representative of the earlier window. However, it contains some grammar and idioms representative of later Biblical Hebrew. The author may have attempted to use archaic language as a stylistic element but did so imperfectly, resulting in some then contemporary usage mixed in. Eskenazi argues for intentional archicisms by pointing out that the older language mainly occurs in the dialog of the older generation (Naomi, Boaz). Fentress-Williams mentions another explanation, the story could have circulated orally during the earlier period and been written down later.

Ruth is sometimes called the first short story and Alter reports that the later period was marked by "the veritable explosion of new narrative genres," which would make a new literary form more likely. However, we don't have to consider Ruth to be a short story, it has a lot of elements in common with folk tales, a type of story often referred to as "timeless." 

Ruth could be viewed as apologia for King David's mixed ethnic background, a task that would only have been necessary during the early period, because by the later period he was uniformly revered. This is in line with Rabbinic sources that attribute Ruth, along with Judges and Samuel to the prophet Samuel, possibly in response to a controversy about David's qualifications for kingship. (Eskenazi) At the same time, it's possible that his mixed background was a possibly open, but unspoken secret during his lifetime. (Fentress-Williams) On the other hand, Ruth could be a response to the post-exilic passages in Ezra where foreign wives and mixed children were to be sent away, offering a defense of such family members.

This is by no means an exhaustive discussion of the evidence regarding dating this book, but I feel like other scenarios either depend on one of the above  or reflect the same issues in a slightly different form.

Alter, Robert. The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary: The Writings. W. W. Norton & Company, 2019.

Eskenazi, Tamara Cohn, and Tikva Simone Frymer-Kensky, editors. Ruth רות: the traditional Hebrew text with the new JPS translation. 1st ed, Jewish Publication Society, 2011.

Fentress-Williams, Judy. Ruth. Abingdon Press, 2012.

The Temple in Kings versus Chronicles

This is the first of two week 5 discussion questions from my Spring 2022 course Understanding the Bible as a Progressive Christian through Pathways Theological Education.

Outline the major differences between the story of the building of the Jerusalem Temple as told in 1 Kings and 1-2 Chronicles. Infer the reasons for those differences based on your reading of Guenther.

There were 3 major differences between these two stories that immediately stood out to me. 

 Chronicles contains more of a focus on David's role in planning and conceiving the temple, while Kings moves the focus to Solomon carrying out the plan. Both include Solomon's words of blessing and prayer at the temple dedication, although Chronicles includes more detail.

 God appears in dramatic and miraculous ways in the Chronicles account, both during the dedication ("a cloud filled the Lord’s temple. The priests were unable to carry out their duties on account of the cloud because the Lord’s glory filled God’s temple" (2 Chronicles 5:13b-14 NRSV, this is also 1 Kings 8:10-11) and "As soon as Solomon finished praying, fire came down from heaven and consumed the entirely burned offering and the sacrifices, while the Lord’s glory filled the temple. 2 The priests were unable to enter the Lord’s temple because the Lord’s glory had filled the Lord’s temple. " (2 Chronicles 7:1-2)) and later in a detailed vision to Solomon while dreaming. (A short summary of a similar vision appears at a different point in Kings.) 

Another difference that made an impression on me was who did the manual labor. Both versions report that conscripted workers were used. However, in Kings they appear to have been chosen equitably from the entire population. In Chronicles, they were mostly or only immigrants depending on how you interpret the description. While this seems minor, I think there is an important difference between "we labored with our own hands to create this, each taking on their fair share" and "we forced others to make this for us, at little real sacrifice on our part." I think you could argue that working on a community project such as the temple could be a path to respect from and inclusion in the greater community, but we don't see any evidence of that happening.

A more obvious, but in my opinion likely minor difference is that Kings includes more detail about the amazing craftsmanship of the items in the temple and attributes the work to specific craftspeople, while Chronicles attributes the making to Solomon, while at the same time being clear that it was made at his direction. (As an aside, I think this is an important possibility to remember when we see authorship of Biblical texts attributed to David and Solomon, like the temple fittings they may have been commissioned.) I think both authors were trying to give an accurate picture of both the scope of work involved and help their readers form a mental portrait of the glory, beauty and craftsmanship of the temple and that the differences have more to do with the authors' respective writing styles than any intended difference in message.

Gunther posits that the reason for the differences between these two accounts is that they are "historical interpretations" by two different authors, with two different viewpoints and goals. He believes that Kings is part of a longer story (Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings) by a single author, the Deuteronomist. "The Deuteronomist traces the story of the people under the terms of the Sinaitic covenant, emphasizing Israel’s obligation to observe all the commandments, to reverence the LORD alone and to worship him only at the central, authorized shrine." Before going on to Gunther's view of the author of Chronicles, I want to point out that the inherent respect for a "central, authorized shrine" would be higher for one that was built by the community and thus belonged to "all of us." This may explain why the Deuteronomist described the conscription process as random and egalitarian.

Getting to the author of Chronicles, Gunther believes "the Chronicler is concerned to demonstrate the continuity of God’s redemptive activity from creation to the time of the restoration following the Babylonian exile."  This continuity of activity explains why God's activities in Chronicles are more obvious and dramatic than in Kings. The Chronicler holds up David as the ideal king and ruler and is equally complementary of his son and heir Solomon. (Gunther also mentions that the Chronicler is more concerned with kings being right with God (or not) at the end of their life and values repentance, it would be hard to hold David as an ideal without doing so.) Valuing David so highly explains why the Chronicler's story of the temple starts with David making the plans and handing them over to Solomon. This combined with his strong approval for Solomon explains why he speaks of Solomon as the doer of tasks that Solomon merely commissioned - if Solomon "made the pilar" (or whatever) when actually he commissioned it; David "made the temple" by setting his son up to build it. This may also explain his pointing out the fact that immigrants did the manual labor - if it wasn't "us", it was Solomon and by extension David. If it was "us" (randomly chosen people of Israel), then "we" deserve some of the glory. 

In both cases, the contents of Solomon's speeches and letters, the reply from the King of Tyre (particularly in Chronicles), and God's word in the vision are used to further the viewpoints of the authors. This doesn't necessarily make either source more or less accurate, these are at best summaries of what was said and naturally, what is important to the summarizer is going to make a summary. God's vision to Solomon is particularly illustrative of this. In Kings, the description of the vision is very short and basically a summary of the Deuteronomist's viewpoint. "The Lord’s word came to Solomon, Regarding this temple that you are building: If you follow my laws, enact my regulations, and keep all my commands faithfully, then I will fulfill for you my promise that I made to your father David. I will live among the Israelites. I won’t abandon my people Israel."(1 Kings 6:11-13 NRSV) However, the Chronicler ends the story of the temple with a much more detailed dream vision.  It is the end of this vision that I want to highlight, 2 Chronicles 7 19-22 NRSV:

But if any of you ever turn away from and abandon the regulations and commands that I have given you, and go to serve other gods and worship them,  then I will uproot you from my land that I gave you, and I will reject this temple that I made holy for my name. I will make it a joke, insulted by everyone.  Everyone who passes by this temple—so lofty now—will be shocked and will wonder, Why has the Lord done such a thing to this land and temple? The answer will come, Because they abandoned the Lord, the God of their ancestors, who brought them out of Egypt. They embraced other gods, worshipping and serving them. This is why God brought all this disaster on them.

Remember that the Chronicler is writing after the temple has been destroyed and trying to show that God is still actively working for the audience's redemption. By setting a reason why God would allow the temple to be destroyed in the story of the temple's creation, the Chronicler is able to set up even the destruction of the temple as God being present.

Finally, I want to say that I find it interesting that Christians have issues with "inconsistencies" between the histories in Kings versus Chronicles (and I have seen this myself), when we have 4 Gospels with similar parallels and differences that we usually manage to ignore.

Guenther, Allen R. “Kings and Chronicles: Interpreting Historical Interpretation.”  Direction Journal, vol. 11, no. 2, Apr. 1982, pp. 4–15, https://directionjournal.org/11/2/kings-and-chronicles-interpreting.html.

Dark and Lovely

This is the second of two week 3 discussion questions from my Spring 2022 course Understanding the Bible as a Progressive Christian through Pathways Theological Education.

Describe how the different translations of Song of Solomon render 1:5-6. Infer what the best translation might be given the time at which the poem was written and its geographical location/setting. Discuss how such translation differences could both influence social perceptions about women of color and be influenced by social perceptions about women of color.

 These two verses describe the coloring, in particular, of the woman in Song of Solomon. All of them refer to her as dark, but with different amounts of emphasis. There are essentially two references to her complexion, verse 5 refers to how she looks / her natural coloring (which could be hair, skin coloring or a combination of both) and verse 6a refers the fact that her skin shows signs of working in the sun. Robert Alter in his notes on these verses points out that this would mark her as a peasant, not an elegant (presumably richer) urban girl like the daughters of Jerusalem. This is a class marker that still exists in modern times - women are encouraged to wear sunscreen, makeup and otherwise take care of our face, hands and arms to disguise the fact that we work and "protect" us from the aging effects of the sun and wind, rather than acknowledging them as signs of being a hard worker or just the reality of life. (Alternatively sun and wind damage can be painful, but it's still just reality for a lot of people.) I think the CEB gives the translation that best reflects the meaning of these verses in modern times:

Dark am I, and lovely, daughters of Jerusalem—
        like the black tents of the Kedar nomads,
        like the curtains of Solomon’s palace.
Don’t stare at me because I’m darkened
        by the sun’s gaze.

 A number of other translations use "but" or "yet" in place of "and" in the first line, and most start the line with "I am", both taking away from the emphasis on the darkness of the woman's complexion. So, rather than the CEB's emphasis on "Dark" and "Lovely", you get things like "I am black, but comely" (KJV), "I am black and beautiful" (NRSV), "Dark am I, yet lovely" (NIV), "I am very dark, but lovely" (ESV), "I am dark, but comely"(JPS1985) "I am dark but desirable" (Altair). I suspect that given the geographical setting in the Middle East and the beloved identifying her as a goat herder, the woman in question would have been more likely to self identify as dark and lovely and leave the "but", "yet" and despite type thoughts for the class related issue of being darkened by working in the sun. The Hebrew on Sefaria shows the first word of this is "שְׁחוֹרָ֤ה" and even my rusty prayerbook Hebrew can identify that as related to "שָׁחֹר" - black, which further shows the emphasis on her being dark or black. I think that the addition of "black" to "tents of the Kedar nomads" in the CEB is a modern addition as well, to add a piece of knowledge that would have been understood by contemporary readers. (In the notes in his translation, Alter says these tents have been made from black goat hair.) Other translations do not include Black there but I think it is a useful addition for modern readers.

While we were asked to address verses 1:5-6, I don't think this discussion would be complete without pointing out verses 1:8 and 1:15-16 where many translations have the beloved referring to her as "fair." The Merriam-Webster Dictionary has 2 definitions of "fair" that might apply here, definitions 4 "having very little color, coloring, or pigmentation : very light" and 5 "pleasing to the eye or mind especially because of fresh, charming, or flawless quality." Obviously if you pay attention to verses 5 and 6, it's clear that the later definition is the one implied here, however, since the former is a more common use, it is likely to come first to mind and reinforce any thoughts of pale or less pigmented skin as beautiful. I think the translations like the CEB, ESV, and NIV which translate this as "beautiful" do a better job of expressing meaning. (NRSV uses beautiful for 15-16 only.)

I think the de-emphasis on the darkness of this woman in most modern translations is a result of modern western social attitudes and perceptions that privilege whiteness and paleness in beauty, while at the same time, it reinforces those perceptions. This kind of cycle of disdain and invisibility is unfortunately common. The woman's acknowledgement of the lower class distinction of having skin that shows she has been working in the sun shows how intersectional issues often magnify negativity. If I, as a white woman with type 2 hair complain about my hair being tangled, that is interpreted as my being momentarily fed up. If a black woman with type 4 hair does so, it is often interpreted as her having "bad hair", not just "a bad hair day", or an issue with type 4 hair in general. While I am not naive enough to think using a translation like that in the CEB that emphasizes the woman's blackness is a solution, at least it is not increasing the damage.

Translation References:

Ruth 1:5-6 in KJV, NIV, NRSV, CEB and ESV

Ruth 1:8 in KJV, NIV, NRSV, CEB and ESV

Ruth 1:15-16 in KJV, NIV, NRSV, CEB and ESV

Ruth 1 parallel Hebrew / JPS 1983 on Sefaria

Robert Alter's The Hebrew Bible Vol. 3: The Writings, containing his translation of Ruth is not freely available online.

Story of Thomas

This is the second of two week 3 discussion questions from my Spring 2022 course Understanding the Bible as a Progressive Christian through Pathways Theological Education. (The first wasn't really meaningful as is outside of the constraints of the course.)

Summarize what you learned about the story of Thomas as though you are presenting it to a Bible study group before a discussion.

Note: I wrote this as if it were for my church and I'll probably use it for our Bible study, as such I specifically reference the CEB, which we privilege because it is better for our non-native English speaking members and our Bible study materials (Sharing God's Story @ Home, the Narrative Lectionary programs inserts from Spirit and Truth Publishing). My final line is not taken directly from those materials, but is influenced by some of the questions they suggest people think about at home and not necessarily how I would introduce the discussion were we using other materials or none at all. (But I am not unhappy with that direction.) Were I presenting this orally, I would probably not read the direct quotes from D. Mark Davis that are inline below, but keep them handy for discussion if needed.

Today we are going to focus on the story of Thomas from chapter 20 in the Gospel of John 

In the Narrative Lectionary, which our church uses, each year focuses on a single gospel, and this year's focus is on John. This is our last reading of the year from John, for the rest of the lectionary year we are mostly going to be studying Acts. Hopefully, at this point, we at least have an understanding of the background of the Gospel of John and if you don't yet have your own sense of how it differs from the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke), I highly recommend that you read them if you haven't (or if reading on your own isn't your thing, we'll be covering Matthew next year and you'll be able to see the contrast.) I did want to share a quote about John in general that I think is particularly meaningful to this story. In her introduction to John in The Women's Bible Commentary, Gail R. O'Day says "in John, Salvation is found in and through the flesh, not apart from the flesh." I think it's worth reflecting on how this applies to this story in particular.

This week's reading is John 20:19-31 and while today, we are going to treat verses 19-23 as background information and focus on the story of Thomas in verses 24-31, that's not the only way to look at these verses. In verses 22-23, Jesus gives the apostles the gift of the Holy Spirit and says some important things about the forgiveness of sins. Not to mention that verse 21, where Jesus says "As the Father sent me, so I am sending you", is arguably John's version of Matthew 28:16-20, which you may have heard referred to as The Great Commission (and is the reading for this week next year.) Either of those topics are worthy of study in great depth, not being brushed aside as "just background", so please remember these verses going forward.

In this story, we have the disciples, minus Thomas, in a locked room, afraid and Jesus comes to them. Our CEB points out that they are afraid of "the Jewish Authorities", other translations say just "the Jews" or "the Judeans." Although it's not central to the story of Thomas, I think it's really important to comment on this because this verse and verses like it are often used as excuses for anti-semitism, unsubstantiated claims of Christian persecution, and otherwise separating people into us and them. The apostles are afraid of a specific group of locals in power, who specifically worked to turn Jesus over to the still more powerful  Romans. The apostles themselves are also Jews and have many Jewish supporters (but mainly in other areas of the country), but in every group of oppressed peoples, there are some who are willing to grovel to those in power for illusionary safety or power over others in their group. My Jewish Annotated New Testament points out that this fear is also based on Jesus's comments in John 16:2-3 that there will come a time when they will be persecuted. It's worth pointing out that the apostles don't need to be afraid in this context, the authorities do not bother them at this time, the only person who attempts to get into the room is Jesus himself. And thus, Jesus greeting them with "Peace be with you" is potentially multilayered, ranging from a standard Jewish greeting (Shalom) to his telling them that they do have peace in the moment, that is that this is not the time of oppression to come. Brian Stoffregen even points out that it can be an allusion to a future peaceful messianic age, although he doesn't think that is the primary intention here. Later, the other disciples tell Thomas what happened, he expresses doubts and states what he would need to have happen in order for him to believe - see Jesus and touch his wounds from the crucifiction himself. Then the next week, when Thomas is present, Jesus appears again, reassures the apostles again, and gives Thomas the opportunity to feel the wounds like he said he needs to. This story is often referred to as the story of doubting Thomas, but that's not necessarily a good summary. Thomas isn't the only one with doubts here, by the way. If you notice, despite Jesus reassuring them on the first visit, the disciples continue to meet in a locked room. When Thomas is reassured, he exclaims, "My Lord and my God!", which is more than recognition that it is in fact Jesus. Stoffregen refers to it as a confession and points out that he's using a formula for referring to Emperor Domitian, likely the emperor at the time the Gospel of John was written. Thus this confession has revolutionary implications, the immortal Jesus is the supreme power, not the mortal authorities. Finally,  The Jewish Study Bible points out that it could be an allusion to Psalm 35, which talks about people claiming to have seen things they did not and asking "My God and My Lord" to establish justice.

A last thing I want to touch on before we start discussing this story ourselves is some of the subtler meaning of the Greek that gets lost in translation. On the surface, just as Jesus tried to give the fearful apostles the sense of safety they need the first time he visits the locked room, Jesus gives Thomas what he says he needs, a chance to touch Jesus' wounds. However, when Thomas says he would need to actually feel the wounds to believe, D. Mark Davis tells us the word he uses for putting his hand into the wounds implies that his hand basically would fall into the wounds of their own accord while he's going about his business. ["βάλω: AASubj 1s, βάλλω, 1) to throw or let go of a thing without caring where it falls  1a) to scatter, to throw, cast into  1b) to give over to one's care uncertain about the result  1c) of fluids  1c1) to pour, pour into of rivers  1c2) to pour out  2) to put into, insert"] When Jesus appears before Thomas he tells him to feel with a word Davis says implies the movement requires some actual work. ["φέρε: PAImp 2s, φέρω, 1) to carry   1a) to carry some burden   1a1) to bear with one's self   1b) to move by bearing; move or, to be conveyed or borne, with the suggestion of force or speed"] In the Greek, Jesus is telling Thomas that what he wants is there, but he has to do more than the bare minimum, he has to put in some effort. I've seen discussion before over whether or not when Jesus goes on to say "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe" in verse 29 (this by the way is our study materials' suggested memory verse for this week), he is chiding Thomas for not believing without seeing, but perhaps the chide is for not even planning to make an effort to end his doubts. By the way, if you check the service challenge in our study materials for this week, it supports this view, suggesting that we take some sort of action like baking cookies or sending a note, to support our friends and family who may have doubts. Back to the idea of the possibility that Jesus is chiding anyone for not believing, remember it is the other apostles who still feel a need to be in a locked room despite Jesus' reassurance of peace.

So, let's talk about this passage and doubt and trust and how you go from doubt to trust.

The Bible As Received

This is the first of two week 2 discussion questions from my Spring 2022 course Understanding the Bible as a Progressive Christian through Pathways Theological Education and discusses the book How the Bible Came to Be by John Barton.

THE BIBLE AS RECEIVED: List the factors that made the process of finalizing the biblical books in writing a complex one for both the Old and New Testaments. Outline the reasons that some books are in the Apocrypha rather than in the Old Testament canon itself.

One factor that was new to me is the urge to have a set of books written or attributed to Moses. (I think this is a good spot to put the sentence I highlighted about author versus writer/scribe versus editor versus compiler that "The biblical world was not familiar with many of our finer distinctions." (p 34) ) The translation into Greek of the Law (5 books of Moses) and Prophets [which was used to be inclusive of what in Judaism today is referenced as the Prophets (Nevi'im) and the Writings (Ketuvim), but that is actually a later innovation], led to them starting to be presented as a single volume or collection. 

For the New Testament, it seems that over the first 100-200 years after Jesus, Christians came to first esteem, then collect together the 4 gospels as we know them, but it took about another 100 years for the current order to be agreed on - chronologically. Paul's letters (and the pseudo-Pauline letters) were likely collected due to a real or imagined belief that he wanted them shared among churches. (Barton mentions that Colossians 4:16 recommends sharing letters between churches, but also that Colossians may not be a genuine Pauline letter.) They are ordered (albeit imperfectly) by length. The other letters were also placed in length order, with the exception that letters by the same author were placed together. This leaves Acts and Revelations to be handled separately. I find it interesting that there were no collections that placed Acts immediately after Luke, despite it being the second half of the story. 

Some of the factors that Barton lists for why different books came to be seen as scripture include: 

*Citations* Mention of or quoting from the book by other well regarded (scriptural) books is a sign that the book may itself be scriptural.

*Authorship* For Jews, scriptural books are written by (or attributed to) prophets; for Christians, it is apostles and their close connections. It's important to note, though that good or valuable information may have been attributed to qualifying authors as much as actual authors may have qualified books as worth making into scripture.

*Date* Christians valued books believed to be written close to the time of Jesus and because Jews believe prophecy ceased after Ezra and that scripture must be written by prophets, only books believed to have been written before 500 BCE would qualify. (This seems to be why Sirach ended up in the Apocrypha.) Jews also seem to have believed that scripture started with Moses, as books attributed to earlier prophets do exist (and some were mentioned in the New Testament.)

*Relevance and Universality* Books that became scripture in Judaism were seen as universally applicable and relevant by the rabbis. In Christianity,  the test was were they relevant to early Christians and Paul, at least, argued for the relevance of the Hebrew scriptures as instructional and predictive of the current (to him) time. Barton seems to argue that the epistles, in particular, became scriptural because they could be "seen as belonging to all times and all places" (p. 64), but I saw nothing in his text to convince me that they were not universalized because they were considered scripture.

Aside from the above mentioned date issue, a major reason books became part of the apocrypha is that at the time of the translation of the bible from Greek to Latin, the Jews in Israel had decided that the books were not canonical, which brought them into doubt. They also were not as commonly quoted in the New Testament or by early Christian leaders. During the Reformation, in an attempt at making the Old Testament canon match the Hebrew canon, the apocryphal books were removed (or set aside in the case of the Lutherans and Anglicans) but the remaining books were not reordered to match the Jewish canonical order.

3 Portions of Isaiah

This is the second of two week 2 discussion questions from my Spring 2022 course Understanding the Bible as a Progressive Christian through Pathways Theological Education

THE CONTENTS: List the reasons scholars think there are three separate portions of Isaiah. Why might it be important as a preacher/pastor to understand this academic distinction?

This is an extremely timely question, as this week, someone asked on our church Discord (where most of our communal life takes place) about the relationship between Isaiah 43:23 and Isaiah 66:23-24. Their question was, in my opinion, based on a need to have a overly literal reading of the Bible and to make predictions about what the next life will be like. We talked about literalism in class last week, and my personal opinion on most of eschatology is that we should take Paul seriously when he tells us "Now I know partially but then I will know completely in the same way that I have been completely known." (1 Corinthians 12:12b) and not waste a lot of time in the now trying to figure out the exact details, but rather focus on what Jesus has told us about how to live in this life. However, I know that people, particularly people who have been heavily exposed to hellfire and brimstone type fundamentalism, worry about the future and have often been taught that they need to find certainty in the Bible even in the face of so many verses that tell us it isn't there. (ie Ecclesiastes 10:14, Matthew 24:36 ) And it is important to take that fear seriously, however, at the same time that I encourage people (myself included) to follow the guidance from Mandy Rice, MDiv on queerituality.com that "You can’t just unthink religious harm. You have to live your way beyond it." At any rate, simply talking about that "academic distinction" was helpful to my co-member in addressing some of their concern and then we were able to work from there.

Here is what I shared with my church about this:

I'm currently reading How The Bible Came To Be for a class and it talks about how Isaiah is likely 3 books or sections, written at different times, Isaiah 1-39, Isaiah 40-55, and Isaiah 56-66. Isaiah the prophet dates to the 8th Century BCE (the book puts him as just after Amos) and part 1 would take place then. The second part, which would include Isaiah 45:23 has references to then current events from the 6th Century BCE, concerning the plight of those exiled to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar. Then, 56-66, containing the first passage you quoted references then current events from after some of those exiled returned and rebuilt the temple.

(But also, some of the first section might also have been written later.)

So anyway, it seems like at the very least the second passage was a later prophecy.

In addition to the above mentioned timing references, there are differences in style, which not only vary between the three sections, but are also another factor in recognizing that some of the first section my have different authors. That said, none of the three sections are entirely internally consistent in style, but that does not necessarily mean different authors, because I know I, myself, write differently depending on the context.

Beyond being able to give context on relative timing and relationships of prophecies in Isaiah, you cannot understand the context of any given part of Isaiah without realizing that there are different authors from different points in history. I think realizing that parts of Isaiah were written by other authors also impresses on us how important Isaiah was in his own time and shortly after - he may have founded a school of prophets or people may have attempted to copy his style or use his name to gain legitimacy. Finally, I think this is the type of information that helps us fight against the poverty of literalism.