Christianity

Sexy Solomon

Today, I want to talk about what it means to be human. Below your skin, below your bones, below your nervous habits, and favorite Netflix shows. Like normal, we have quite the ground to cover.

Whips and Chains

The Bible is a diverse anthology, and yet one book stands out a lot. I think you know which one I mean.

Readers of the Bible have long struggled with Song of Solomon. The book is a back and forth between two lovers—the Israelite King Solomon and an unnamed (and probably teenage) girl. And, by “back and forth”, I mean mostly of erotic poetry. Some of its eroticism is right there on the surface; much of it comes by euphemism. But it is highly sexual, highly lustful, and ridiculous—even for erotic poetry.

When the two lovers are away, they descend into obsession. They see each other in trees, and towers, and goats, and . . . the pools of Siloam?

“My beloved is radiant and ruddy, outstanding among ten thousand.
His head is purest gold; his hair is wavy and black as a raven.
His eyes are like doves by the water streams, washed in milk, mounted like jewels.
His cheeks are like beds of spice yielding perfume.
His lips are like lilies dripping with myrrh.
His arms are rods of gold set with topaz.
His body is like polished ivory decorated with lapis lazuli.
His legs are pillars of marble set on bases of pure gold.
His appearance is like Lebanon, choice as its cedars.
His mouth is sweetness itself; he is altogether lovely.
This is my beloved, this is my friend, daughters of Jerusalem.”

“How beautiful are your sandaled feet, O prince’s daughter!
Your graceful legs are like jewels, the work of an artist’s hands.
Your navel is a rounded goblet that never lacks blended wine.
Your waist is a mound of wheat encircled by lilies.
Your breasts are like two fawns, like twin fawns of a gazelle.
Your neck is like an ivory tower.
Your eyes are the pools of Heshbon by the gate of Bath Rabbim.”

“Your nose is like the tower of Lebanon looking toward Damascus.
Your head crowns you like Mount Carmel.
Your hair is like royal tapestry; the king is held captive by its tresses.
How beautiful you are and how pleasing, my love, with your delights!
Your stature is like that of the palm, and your breasts like clusters of fruit.
I said, ‘I will climb the palm tree; I will take hold of its fruit.’
May your breasts be like clusters of grapes on the vine,
the fragrance of your breath like apples, and your mouth like the best wine.”

OoOoOoh, yeah!

In one scene, Solomon comes to her by night, but because she is a teenager, she is living in what is probably her family’s house. Solomon—who is totally not a creeper—can only peer at her through some opening. And he most certainly does.

This is Song of Solomon, and it too is in your divinely inspired Bible.

A little more than ten years ago, one of my relatives, who has been an elder in the church for decades and who was on the board of a highly conservative Christian college, confessed to me that he didn’t think Song of Solomon should be in the Bible. Seeing as I saw nothing theologically important in it, I agreed with him.

This is because I was a modern conservative evangelical, and modern conservative evangelicals are trained to read the Bible to mean exactly “what it says it is.”

Genesis begins “In the beginning,” so Genesis must be about the beginning. Joshua describes a war in Canaan, so there must have been a war in Canaan. Revelation describes a war in Heaven, so Revelation must be about Heaven. And Song of Solomon contains erotic poetry between Solomon and just one of his many love interests, so Song of Solomon must be about sex.

Which means every once in a while, you get that hip, “edgy” preacher who tries to make Song of Solomon into a great sex counseling guide for married couples. But Song of Solomon isn’t really useful for any of this (unless, I suppose, you are among the 0.000000001% of married people who struggle with whether sex is a good thing). Worse, these almost exclusively male preachers almost inevitably descend into some thinly veiled version of, “See, women, God put this in the Bible so you would know how much your husband needs sex, and that it’s your duty to God to give it to him whenever he wants it.”

(And we also start wondering what kind of intimacy problems the preacher must be having at the moment.)

Never mind the woman in the poems expresses her sexual desire more than does the man. And never mind the harm this kind of thinking has done to women.

And never mind Solomon.

You need to understand, the people who wrote your Bible were not remotely impressed with that man. Especially as Solomon ages, the Bible depicts him in ways that were meant to remind the Hebrew readers of Pharaoh—a domineering, insecure, power-hungry, ruthless egomaniac. For the same people who felt the whip of slavery in Egypt, Solomon builds a temple out of—guess what?—slave labor. He is paranoid, insecure, and vindictive. And Deuteronomy, which is outwardly styled as the second telling of the law by Moses—but which really was written during the chains of more foreign domination—takes aim at Solomon in no uncertain terms.

Notice how neatly the telling of the “law of kings” in Deuteronomy corresponds with what you read later.

The king, moreover, must not acquire great numbers of horses for himself or make the people return to Egypt to get more of them, for the Lord has told you, “You are not to go back that way again.” He must not take many wives, or his heart will be led astray. He must not accumulate large amounts of silver and gold.

Deuteronomy c17

The weight of the gold that Solomon received yearly was 666 (!) talents, not including the revenues from merchants and traders and from all the Arabian kings and the governors of the territories. . . .

Solomon accumulated chariots and horses; he had fourteen hundred chariots and twelve thousand horses, which he kept in the chariot cities and also with him in Jerusalem. The king made silver as common in Jerusalem as stones, and cedar as plentiful as sycamore-fig trees in the foothills. Solomon’s horses were imported from Egypt and from Kue—the royal merchants purchased them from Kue at the current price. They imported a chariot from Egypt for six hundred shekels of silver, and a horse for a hundred and fifty. . . .

King Solomon loved many foreign women besides Pharaoh’s daughter—Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians and Hittites. They were from nations about which the Lord had told the Israelites, “You must not intermarry with them, because they will surely turn your hearts after their gods.” Nevertheless, Solomon held fast to them in love.

I Kings 

(that exclamation point isn’t in the real text, but it might as well be)

It’s as if the writer of Deuteronomy had a manuscript handy of what would later become the finished version of I Kings right in front of him, and he wanted to explain how Israel’s present problems with global empires looked a whole lot like their checkered past.

And, as you evaluate the usefulness of Solomon’s wisdom to your relationship with your life partner, if you still want to ignore Solomon’s shortcomings as a man, you just can’t ignore that Solomon saw no problem with taking hundreds of both wives and sex slaves—a point that should make inherently suspect anything he penned down. In fact, at one point in Song of Solomon, Solomon finds it meaningful and appropriate and I guess sexy to emphasize the superior beauty of his lover with reference to the many other women in his harem.

“Sixty queens there may be, and eighty concubines, and virgins beyond number; but my dove, my perfect one, is unique.”

(McNeal Revised Standard Version: “Gurrrrrrlllllllll, I’ve been with so many women, but you da best.”)

So, yeah, eroticism is good, but you don’t need Song of Solomon to know that. Solomon was a bad man, and there are better sources on how to spice up your love life. Which begs the question, if Song of Solomon is not a good book to discover the eternal secrets of love and romance and whoopee, then

why is that darn book in your Bible?

I have the answer: It’s the Sh’mah.

Fruit and Chocolate

On one occasion, a member of the Pharisees asked Jesus which command is the most important command of the Torah. Most Christians are familiar with Jesus’s answer here and commonly think that it was some major break from all that “rule following” of Judaism. His answer is prong one of the oft-written “love God, love people” religious views answer you find on thousands of people’s Facebook profiles.

However, Jesus’s response to this Pharisee’s question couldn’t have been more Jewish. It actually came right out of Deuteronomy c6, which reads:

Hear, O Israel: Yahweh our God, the Lord is one. Love Yahweh your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.

Jews name this command the Sh’mah—the Hebrew word for “hear”—and it is central to both the Jewish and Christian faith traditions. Jews have been reciting the Sh’mah every morning and every night for thousands of years. They even begin their worship services with it. After all, immediately after the Sh’mah, they’re commanded to.

These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

Christians and Jews to this day unite around the Sh’mah. Yet, for all its importance, for all its centrality, the Sh’mah is surprisingly mysterious in a way that you would never know from your English Bible. The Hebrew word translated in most Bibles strength is me’od, but me’od doesn’t mean strength at all. In fact, it’s not even a noun.

Me’od means “very.”

Which is grammatical nonsense.

Just think about what we have in our Bibles. The Sh’mah is universally recognized as the most important command of both the Jewish and Christian traditions. Jews agree on this. Jesus agreed with this. Followers of Jesus agree on this. And yet, grammatically it doesn’t mean anything. Bonkers.

Which leads you to wonder.

If only there was a book of the Bible that illustrated what it looks like to love in a way that is as totally hysterical and nonsensical as this totally hysterical and nonsensical command. And since poetry often works so well to describe such non-formulaic, nonsensical things, if only there was perhaps some poetry—perhaps even erotic love poetry—that described the alternative universe of loving with all your . . . very.

Hi.

I’d like to reintroduce you to Song of Solomon.

More likely than not, it was written for exactly the purpose you see on the surface. But for some reason, the writing stuck around for centuries. And, as the second century rabbis of the Talmud struggled to imagine and articulate to their disciples loving Yahweh with all their very (it sounds awkward every time I type that), they saw in Song of Solomon a picture of exactly the kind of passionate nonsensical devotion demanded in the Sh’mah.

Yes, the poems are about sex. Which, for the record, is perfectly great. But what the Rabbis understood was that where there is sex there is also so much more than sex. Who could be surprised with how much we can learn about being human from the most quintessentially human activity there ever was? Second century rabbi Akiva ben Joseph, in one of my favorite rabbinic quotes of all time, put it like this: “He who sings the Song of Songs in wine taverns, treating it as if it were just some vulgar song, forfeits his share in the world to come.”

Haha. I guess in the 2nd century, they were getting drunk to songs from Song of Solomon.

So, what can we learn from it? First, let’s talk about fruit.

Fruit plays a major role in many of these poems. Fruit and gardens.

Like an apple tree among the trees of the forest is my beloved among the young men. I delight to sit in his shade, and his fruit is sweet to my taste. . . . .

I said, “I will climb the palm tree; I will take hold of its fruit.” May your breasts be like clusters of grapes on the vine, the fragrance of your breath like apples, . . .

Awake, north wind, and come, south wind! Blow on my garden, that its fragrance may spread everywhere. Let my beloved come into his garden and taste its choice fruits. . . .

I have come into my garden, my sister, my bride; I have gathered my myrrh with my spice. I have eaten my honeycomb and my honey; I have drunk my wine and my milk. . . .

My beloved has gone down to his garden, to the beds of spices, to browse in the gardens and to gather lilies. . . .

Of course, these images are saturated in sensuality (I’ll leave the specifics to your imagination), but they were also meant to strike a chord with its ancient Jewish audience who would instantly connect these images to the garden and fruit in Genesis. The fruit is insatiable desire and curiosity.

It is all-consuming desire no matter the consequences. No matter what harm may come.

For many people today, this would be like chocolate, which suddenly you’re already thinking about, aren’t you? (“No, Chris, I’ve already been thinking about it.”) Desire is not some foreign thing to you. It’s something you know well, so let’s talk about it.

Costumes and Roleplay

We desire many things, but I think at the core of the human is the desire for deep passion. I think it is the engine of our souls. Think about the times when you felt most alive. You didn’t feel distant. Isolated. Passive. Or uninterested.

No.

Your pupils dilated. Your veins surged with oxygen. Your synapses fired. You gave a damn.

As ridiculous as Song of Solomon is and as terrible of a man as Solomon was, I actually think your life should look like the two lovers in Song of Solomon. No, I’m actually not talking about going to more church, or singing louder in church, or praying harder in church, or even reading the Bible more when you leave church. Most of you are probably doing this fine—and the prophet Amos was hardly impressed with any of it.

And neither am I talking about a life of indulgence—the kind I see in so many people I observe. The life of moving from one thing to the next out of boredom is not a life of passion. No matter how fun it may be at the time.

I’m talking about making the conscious choice that some things have more weight than others.

Have you ever randomly gotten emotional at something and your friends wondered what was wrong with you? And you struggled to explain yourself? That there is so much more going on than they could see? That it may seem like this silly little thing, but it’s actually connected to this thing and that thing and that thing? And all these things together mean so much to you? That the moment felt heavy? And the more you tried to explain it, the more overcome with emotion you became? And in the end you just sounded ridiculous?

The Hebrew word for weight is kavod. We usually translate it “glory.”

A life of passion begins with the acknowledgment that some things are full of kavod and other things are not. If you still need me to spell it out for you, your favorite football team is not the important thing you think it is. I love football like every other red-blooded American, but I’ve lost no joy from not knowing the quarterback ratings of each of the last year’s starting quarterbacks in the SEC.

Most people basically live this way. It may not be a football team, but your energy is probably going mostly to things of equal uselessness to yourself and other human beings. And your soul is dying a slow death. You were made for intimacy and passion, but the real you is safely hidden in a costume, playing out a role designed and scripted by a few very rich people who profit off of your life of nothingness. Your naked self was lost when you set your desire on the tree in the garden—the tree that promised safety and power. That you would be like God.

But when you find something worth giving yourself to, you give your whole self. You put yourself out there. You make yourself vulnerable. Risk things. Even when it’s lonely. Even when people don’t “get” you. When your body becomes weary.

“Many waters cannot quench love;
rivers cannot sweep it away.”

You make the world better when you devote yourself to the things that have kavod. And you stick with those things through the best and the worst because they feel more important than you. Weightier than you. More prized. More jealously guarded. Meanwhile your friends think you’re obsessive. They start saying words like that’s nice but maybe you could tone it down and I think it’s important that we exercise moderation. You hear their words of wisdom, but you don’t care. Because you feel privileged to even have this thing. To sacrifice for it. You even feel unworthy of it, just as Solomon’s lover did. You study, learn, and observe everything about it, and even see it connect to the world around you in the most random ways (“Your eyes are the pools of Heshbon by the gate of Bath Rabbim.”).

Further, when you’re away from it, it is the thing you think about. Where you long to be. You wonder whether it will come back or be gone forever.

“All night long on my bed
I looked for the one my heart loves;
I looked for him but did not find him.
I will get up now and go about the city,
through its streets and squares;
I will search for the one my heart loves.
So I looked for him but did not find him.”

But despite all the energy it demands from you, satisfaction is always the end. This is the life of passion for things that have weight. This is loving God with all your very.

Because the most sexual things sometimes involve sex.

 

Why Isn’t the Old Testament Written In Egyptian?

“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the land of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.”

The central driving force of the Old Testament is the exodus story. The phrase yatsa erets Mitzrayim (“out of the land of Egypt”) is written 142 times, and it is from this memory that the first command of the Torah begins.

According to the Old Testament book of Exodus, the Hebrews lived in Egypt for four hundred and thirty years. But in light of that reading of the story, several odd things happen when they leave. First, you have to accept the fact that there is virtually no record of the Hebrews living in Egypt. That’s simply an archeological fact. Of course, I’ve heard Christians say that the pharaoh must have scrubbed any record of them in order to save his reputation, and I guess that’s a possibility. But there are plenty of things in the Egyptian record, so to speak, that memorialize bad things happening to Egypt. You can find plenty in the Egyptian record of lost battles and humiliating defeats. Further, no other nation records the Hebrews living in and escaping Egypt.

And let’s be clear about the scale we are talking about: The biblical account of the exodus describes a Hebrew community that was at a minimum one million people. That is a truly huge movement of people and stuff. In light of the fact that the number of Egyptians living at the time was also about one million, I simply don’t find it plausible that there would be no record of the Hebrews ever living in Egypt. And if, when you read the Old Testament books of the Torah, you expect simply a videotaped version of history, there’s another problem with the exodus story.

The Hebrew slaves whom Moses delivered through the Red Sea didn’t leave Egypt speaking Egyptian.

Four centuries is a long time to live in a new place and not pick up a language. If that doesn’t mean much to you, consider that the Hebrews were captives in Babylon for only about fifty years, and yet they left Babylon speaking Aramaic. Further, not only did they leave Babylon as Aramaic speakers, but the language turned out to be durable. In fact, more than five centuries after the exile in Babylon, Aramaic was the primary language that Jesus spoke.

Genesis and Exodus are a great history of the Israelites if you want to understand their understanding of Yahweh and their neighbors when they came back from Babylon (which is when and why those books were written). They are a terrible history if you expect a literal reading to reveal their actual origins.

So if the Hebrews didn’t come out of Egypt, where did they come from?

The best theory on this question begins with the striking similarities of Judaism to Canaanite religion that was practiced in the coastal plain of Israel around 1400 BCE to 1100 BCE. This was also an area that Egypt sought to control, though never with complete success. Over time, as some Canaanites moved away from the coast and further inland toward the then largely unoccupied mountainous center of Israel, they began to establish a distinct identity from the coastal-dwelling Canaanites and Philistines. They became Hebrews. Further, to the extent that Egypt also sought control of that coastal region from which they came, you could say there was an “exodus” of sorts—though it wouldn’t have been anything of the scale you read in Exodus.

This, by the way, is called the “Canaanite Origins Theory”. There are other theories, but this is the dominant theory and the one I find more persuasive than the others.

How To Cook A Passover Lamb Without Ruining the Whole Bible

Exodus explains how to conduct a Passover.

And Deuteronomy explains how to conduct a Passover.

Which really sucks. First, this is the boring, hyper technical, and legal part of the Bible. Second, cooking a passover lamb isn’t very interesting to me or most people. And, finally, not only do you have to read how to conduct a Passover, but you have to read it twice.  And that’s to say nothing of the fact that, since the Bible is inerrant, we really need only one set of instructions, right? They’re both just going to say the same thing, right?

Anyway, Chris, I think you’re getting distracted . . . how does one cook a passover lamb?

Simple.

Here you go . . .

“You shall not eat the meat raw or boiled in water, but roast it over a fire.” — Exodus c12

“You shall boil it and eat it at the place that the Lord your God will choose.” — Deuteronomy c16

Okay.

Wait….

WHAT

WHAT?!?!?!

So you furiously open up your Bible right now to check, and … AHA! … smarty-pants McNeal is wrong! You read God’s command in Deuteronomy and it clearly reads, like Exodus, to “roast” a Passover lamb. Meaning, Chris obviously got this idea in some liberal tent meeting, but, like usual, he never bothered to read the Bible for himself.

Some of you have taken it a step further. You’ve gone to Google and searched “alleged Bible contradictions” or done a Strong’s search and read that the Hebrew word for boil is בָּשַׁל “bashal” and that bashal can mean “boil” or “roast.” And since the Bible can’t contradict itself, it obviously in this instance has to mean “roast”.

Case closed. Chris obviously got too excited to find the Bible contradict itself, and now he’s just stumbling over himself.

Actually, what’s going on in our concordances is an example of how our theology prevents us from reading the Bible for what’s really happening in it. Yes, your English translation of Deuteronomy probably says roast. Yes, your Strong’s concordance says that the Hebrew word בָּשַׁל “bashal” can mean “roast.”

But everyone outside of traditional evangelicalism instantly notices that Deuteronomy c16 is the only place in the whole Bible when Strong’s thinks Bashal means roast. And then you insert “bashal” in its place in the English text and notice the trouble that happens.

“You shall not eat the meat raw or bashal it in water, but roast it over a fire.” — Exodus c12

“You shall bashal it and eat it at the place that the Lord your God will choose.” — Deuteronomy c16

You must not bashal it in Exodus but you must bashal it in Deuteronomy. You can’t observe one command without violating the other.

And this was not lost in the 3rd century BCE book of 2nd Chronicles, which described a Passover preparation and kind of panicked. Really, if you come to the passage with the knowledge you now have, it’s actually quite telling:

They boiled (bashal) the passover lamb with fire according to the law and they boiled (bashal) the holy offerings in pots. II Chronicles c35

The chronicler wasn’t sure whether to describe this as a roasting or a boiling, and after what I assume to be several sleepless nights, settled on describing it as “boiling with fire, according to the law.” This is funny, but also disingenuous.

So, getting back to our original question, how does one cook a Passover lamb without ruining the Bible?

Simple.

We change our expectations of what the Bible is.

We admit that these passages contradict each other rather than rush to keep them from contradicting each other. We ask why two passages contradict each other rather than go to war to explain how they don’t.

Even though Exodus presents itself in the Bible before Deuteronomy, Deuteronomy was written centuries before Exodus. We’re confident about this because of its remarkable similarity with the many treaties that Assyria imposed on nations it conquered (and Israel was one of those nations). So, when the Old Testament tells us that Josiah “found” a book of the law, we’re pretty confident that Deuteronomy was that book. However, by the time Exodus was written—this was after Assyria and the later Babylonian exile—Passover lambs were being roasted and not boiled, so Exodus simply reflects that change.

And, by this point, I’m sure they believed that God had instructed it this way all along.

Again, Jesus came to the Earth and taught about God through the language of the mythic national stories of the people living in Judea. This is no threat to the Christian faith. As I’ve argued at length, we need to understand the Old Testament to understand the teachings of Jesus, but we don’t have to accept the Old Testament to accept the teachings of Jesus.

About That Time Noah Got Drunk And Naked And Started Cursing People

The book of Genesis tells us that God saw the evil of humankind and decided to kill  everyone in a cataclysmic flood—everyone, that is, except Noah and his family. Then, after the flood, Noah gets off the boat, grows a wine vineyard, gets astoundingly drunk on his wine, and passes out naked in a tent. Finally, Noah wakes up, finds out that his son saw him naked, and curses his grandson. The end.

Haha, what?

Setting aside the disturbing fact that the God of all justice apparently decided to wipe out all of humanity (and then later declared that justice would never again require doing that—even if humankind became equally evil), there are still many bizarre things in this story.

First, if someone saw me naked—especially because I’d kicked back about ten or twenty too many the night before—l can imagine all kinds of reactions that I might have when I woke up.

But, no matter how hard I try, I can’t imagine cursing that person’s child being one of them.

That said, let’s suspend all familiar. Let’s just pretend that I had no sense of direction or proportionality. Let’s pretend my reaction would be to curse a man’s child. Let’s say my waiter tonight spills a drink in my lap. And let’s say I immediately stand up, look him in the eye, and proclaim, “Cursed be your child! The lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers.”

Again, there would be all kinds of not normal in that situation.

But I can confidently say that God would not curse the man’s child.

So when God actually does grant Noah’s really odd curse on Ham’s child, I think it’s in bounds to ask all sorts of questions. Specifically, is there something happening below the surface that we don’t see?

This is not a story about why it’s bad to drink alcohol (yes, I’ve heard that many times).

What’s really going on here is much more dark.

And we need to talk about it.

It tells us a lot about the kind of thing we are reading when we are reading the Bible that I agree is inspired.

So, let’s go back to the story and look at it in detail. When Noah gets off the boat, we are told that his three sons got off the boat too. But the story begins with an interesting detail.

And it’s oddly specific.

The sons of Noah who came out of the ark were Shem, Ham and Japheth. (Ham was the father of Canaan.)

Whoever Canaan is, he is not in this story, and Noah’s three children had lots of children. So this odd story only get more odd when it begins by the specific information that Ham was the father of Canaan. Perhaps that was just an accident (spoiler: I wrote this whole thing because it’s not), but let’s read on.

Next, we are told that Noah gets drunk on the wine from a vineyard that he planted (as a side note, as a former Californian I can confidently tell you that it takes a LONG time for a vineyard to become wine producing, but never mind), and Ham happens to see him passed out drunk and naked in his tent. But notice that the writer provides that same strange detail a second time:

When he drank some of its wine, he became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent. Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father naked and told his two brothers outside.

Again, let me repeat: Canaan is still not in this story. In fact, there is not a single story in the whole Bible about a man named Canaan. Yet, here his name comes back for a second random appearance.

At this point, you would be in the right if you are beginning to suspect that whoever wrote this story might have been obsessed with Canaan. If you’ve ever had a conversation with someone who, no matter what the topic, always brings the conversation back to something about someone they used to date, I think you’ve experienced what’s happening here. This story isn’t about Noah or his sons or nakedness or wine.

But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it across their shoulders; then they walked in backward and covered their father’s naked body. Their faces were turned the other way so that they would not see their father naked.

This story is about Canaan.

And why Canaan is different from his brothers.

Specifically, why his brothers are superior to Canaan.

And what that might mean to a people who have been exiled from the land that their traditions have long held came from Canaan.

And why Yahweh might not look so favorably on a people who took them away from the land that Yahweh took from those evil Canaanites.

BUT, is accidentally seeing Noah passed out naked in his tent . . . evil? No. But that’s probably not what happened. This part of the story is probably a euphemism for Ham sleeping with Noah’s wife. The Bible often tells whole stories as euphemisms like this. For example, when the book of Ruth tells us that Ruth went to the sound asleep Boaz and “uncovered his feet”, trust me she wasn’t uncovering his feet.

“Ah, yes,” I hear people thinking, “that’s what this story is about. This story is about why it’s bad to have sex with your father’s wife.”

But, haha, no. Ham sleeping with his father’s wife isn’t the point of this story either.

Later the Bible will tell us that God commanded the sons of Shem to wipe out the sons of Ham. But who are the sons of Shem? Why, they are the semitic people. Have you ever heard someone say that so-and-so was anti-semitic, and you knew that meant “anti-Jewish”, but wondered where that word came from? Well, here it is.

This story is about them.

And their land.

Which they took from the Canaanites.

And why they believed God gave it to them.

This is a story told centuries after a genocide, and by the people who committed it.

Notice what we are told at the very beginning of the story:

These were the three sons of Noah, and from them came the people who were scattered over the whole earth.

First of all, it should be said that anthropologists are very confident that the spread of humanity throughout the earth did not happen the way Genesis describes (which is a comforting thing if you aren’t fond of following a God who orders genocides). But, as I have argued extensively, Genesis was written thousands of years after the events it describes. It was written a thousand years after Moses’s time, a time when the Semitic people had just returned after being exiled from their land. And since the writer is trying to explain why everything is the way it is now, he starts with a clean slate. He starts with three people from whom all humanity will come. It’s as if to say: If you want to understand why things are the way they are now, just compare us to the people from whom God gave us this land.

Notice everything Noah says when he wakes up:

When Noah awoke from his wine and found out what his youngest son had done to him, he said,

“Cursed be Canaan!
The lowest of slaves
will he be to his brothers.”

He also said,

“Praise be to the Lord, the God of Shem!
May Canaan be the slave of Shem.

If you are wondering why Noah got so mad and decided to take his anger out on Canaan of all people, it’s because this story never happened. It’s a myth.

What did happen is that when this story was written the sons of Shem—that is, the Israelites—had just returned to the land they had lost and so constructed a narrative to support their never-ending claim to their land.

The Semite’s claim to their land is what you are reading when you read the entire book of Genesis.

Notice what happens immediately after this story in one of those “boring” genealogies.

This is the account of Shem, Ham and Japheth, Noah’s sons, who themselves had sons after the flood.

….

The sons of Ham:

Cush, Egypt, Put and Canaan.

….
Cush was the father of Nimrod, who became a mighty warrior on the earth. 9 He was a mighty hunter before the Lord; that is why it is said, “Like Nimrod, a mighty hunter before the Lord.” The first centers of his kingdom were Babylon, Uruk, Akkad and Kalneh, in Shiner. From that land he went to Assyria, where he built Nineveh, Rehoboth Ir, Calah and Resen, which is between Nineveh and Calah—which is the great city.

….

Canaan was the father of Sidon his firstborn, and of the Hittites, Jebusites, Amorites, Girgashites,  Hives, Arkites, Sinites, Arvadites, Zemarites and Hamathites.

Later the Canaanite clans scattered and the borders of Canaan reached from Sidon toward Gerar as far as Gaza, and then toward Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboyim, as far as Lasha.

These are the sons of Ham by their clans and languages, in their territories and nations.

If you’ve spent as little as an hour in the Bible, you would know that every virtually every single people group who would later become an enemy of Israel—not to mention the Canaanites—came from Ham. But, then notice who came from Shem:

Sons were also born to Shem, whose older brother was Japheth; Shem was the ancestor of all the sons of Eber.

The sons of Shem: Elam, Ashur, Arphaxad, Lud and Aram.

The sons of Aram: Uz, Hul, Gether and Meshek.

Arphaxad was the father of Shelah, and Shelah the father of Eber.

It is from Shem that we get Eber.

And who is Eber?

It is from Eber that we get the name, and the ethnic group, Hebrew.

Now, go back to the text and notice how prominently Eber and Canaan are placed in the genealogy. It’s not an accident. The drunk Noah story and the genealogy are all about them.

The entire Old Testament is the story of the Hamites against Semites. 

This is why I found it important to miss out on normal young, single adult life and spend six months writing a caution against Christians basing their whole faith on the inerrancy of the Bible. It’s easy today for me to say that God never really commanded the things you see written in Joshua and Judges. My reading of the Bible doesn’t force me into that position. And I feel bad for people who still live their lives trying to explain how the justice and wisdom of God required that the Israelites kill the newborn children of the people living in Jericho.

If you realize that the books of the Old Testament are nowhere close to telling what we today think of as “history”, you begin to see that these genealogies are less history and more ancient arguments in support of a claim to nice land.

Arguments that Jesus Christ would later come and kill on a Roman cross.

I certainly believe the Israelites looked from Babylon back at the land from which they were exiled and believed God had commanded this. That their land was their divine right.

But our faith in God doesn’t require that we believe this too.

Unless you are prepared to say that God gave the Israelites the right to kill people for land because Noah got drunk and his son happened to walk into a tent.

The Bible That Borrows Part 8: The Global Superpower Bible

I need to talk about a painting.

Have you ever heard anything as ironic as a nationalist politician enlisting a foreign government to win a domestic political battle? Even an autocratic one with a history of meddling in other countries? I sure have.

I’m talking about Francisco Franco, dictator of Spain from 1937 until 1975.

(What? Who were you thinking about?)

From 1936 until 1939, Spain suffered a civil war between Franco’s nationalist party and Spain’s pro-democracy party, and, to win, Franco enlisted the help of the Nazi military.

On April 26, 1937, it was Monday Market Day in the Spanish city of Guernica, a day when more than ten thousand people were out buying and selling in a city that was well known not to be housing soldiers or military equipment.

Despite this, and without any warning, the Nazi Luftwaffe unleashed a blistering aerial bombardment that destroyed virtually all of the city. It was horrific. Barbaric. Unjustifiable. And we now know that the Nazis considered this humanitarian tragedy as nothing more than target practice.

This bombing deeply affected a Spanish man living at the time in Paris. His name was Pablo Picasso (you may have heard of him). Picasso was the pioneer of “cubism”, a modern art style that deconstructs an object and puts it back together in a way that explores meanings below what might appear on the surface. Because cubism isn’t limited by the strictures of visual realism, it expands the expressive choices available to an artist. Because sometimes the best way to express an idea is to make someone’s head . . . an upright phallic symbol?

By 1937, Picasso had already been perfecting his method for three decades, and after the bombing, he took all that passion and genius and poured it into one massive project. He named it simply Guernica.

guernica.jpg

First of all, Guernica is huge. My friend took this picture the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. The painting is twenty-five feet from one end to the other.

8CF4D3C6-70A4-4058-A8A8-ECAA90F16801.jpg

Guernica certainly makes bold statements. Clearly depicted are civilians who have been distorted in ways that emphasize their suffering, defenselessness, and agony. Everything these people had invested into their city and into their lives was now gone thanks to a senseless and arbitrary German bombing round. “Didn’t I tell you that everything is meaningless?” you can hear Qohelet saying.

But, for every one statement Guernica might clearly make, it raises many more questions.

First, about the two animals: the horse and the bull. The horse near the center of the canvas appears in agony, but the bull to the left appears calm. In fact, the bull is the only calm-looking thing in the whole picture. Does the bull communicate hope for the Spanish people? Or does he represent the callousness and inhumanity of Franco? Or does he represent Picasso himself, who watched from Paris, but was powerless to do anything for his people? Is the bull the Spanish nation emotionlessly shocked? Does this bull have anything to do with any of the many previous Spanish bulls he had already painted?

(You could say there are a few bulls in Picasso paintings.)

Or is the bull just a bull?

As Picasso himself said (though no one believes him):

“…this bull is a bull and this horse is a horse… If you give a meaning to certain things in my paintings it may be very true, but it is not my idea to give this meaning. What ideas and conclusions you have got I obtained too, but instinctively, unconsciously. I make the painting for the painting. I paint the objects for what they are.”

“For what they are” might strike you as an odd way to describe anything that might appear in a cubist painting. But that’s the point. This is Picasso’s snide way of rejecting the need to paint something with visual accuracy to convey the truth of what the thing is.

(And yes, Picasso was perfectly capable of realism)

Regardless of what was going through Picasso’s head, I can say for certain that he wasn’t interested in telling you what the painting is “about.”

If nothing else, that’s boring.

But more importantly, that’s a claim that rarely stands up to any scrutiny.

The same horse and the same bull and the same eye or sun or whatever it is at the top with a lightbulb in it (the art police just read that and are making an arrest right now) can be hundreds of things. And should be hundreds of things. Even simultaneously. That’s what makes a great work of art great. It inspires many more questions than it does answers. And it allows different people to be impacted in unique ways—ways that allow the piece to explore the depth and breadth of the whole human experience.

(which is why contemporary Christian art and music are so bad)

It’s been nearly a century since Picasso painted Guernica, and we’re still asking questions about it. It still impacts people, though oftentimes in very different ways.

I believe this has something to do with the Bible, and that’s how I want to conclude this series.

Human

You may have gotten the impression that I have a low view of the Bible. You may think I’m just trying to wiggle out of it. That I see no room for the Bible in our postmodern world. That hidden behind this big project is nothing more than a lame and long-winded attempt to do whatever I want. That I want comfortable and safe religion. That all ideas are equally valid.

Without question, that’s certainly where I fit within the theological constructs that billions of dollars have been spent propagating, but the real truth is nothing like that at all.

When I think about the Bible, only the most soaring words come to my mind.

Inspired.

Timeless.

Authoritative

Eternally relevant.

Essential.

Ingenius.

Most Biblical traditionalists probably share in this list, and it’s not here that we differ. We differ on one more word.

Human.

I think the Bible is human. Inspired, yes, but also human. Very human. I want to go back to the words I included earlier of Dr. Peter Enns, who wakes up every morning and asks questions about the Bible that I would never even think to ask:

Supposedly, it is unworthy of God to speak through ancient stories of origins that are neither historical nor scientific. God is the God of Truth. He would never stoop so low. Uh…actually…yes he would. God is all about stooping low—way low. That’s how God rolls—at least the Christian God.

If God became human and dwelt among us—specifically, if the Word took human form—then why is it so surprising that God would also allow his text to take on human form?

A God that allows himself to be written about this way is a God with a high view of humans and their thoughts. A God with a high view of human progression, even when it is less than perfect and has to evolve over thousands and thousands of years.

After all we’ve seen, I don’t find it plausible that God for hundreds of years inspired people  in the amazingly creative ways we’ve seen for weeks—only to end in the first century. I am in love with the text of the Bible, and I try to be faithful to it, but what I see in the text of the Bible is less a command to halt and more one to go. Less of a target and more of a trajectory.

Today, our idea of faithfulness to a text operates a lot like how a person would use an instruction manual to assemble a table. If you and I are faithful to the same instruction manual, your finished table will look the same as mine.

But what I’ve tried to explain over the last two months is this: That tribe whose name means “one who wrestles with God” understood faithfulness to the text to operate how art critics study Guernica. We treat the text like an instruction manual. They treated it like a painting. To the ancient Hebrews, the text was expansive and mysterious. Its meaning could drastically change depending on one’s perspective. Finding its meaning sometimes felt like wrestling. And it certainly could mean multiple and even contradictory things at the same time.

We often talk about the Bible as the place for “the answers”, and I agree.

Do you remember in Part 4 how Jesus would answer questions with more questions?

This is how the Bible answers questions too. It raises questions. Just like a Picasso painting, it raises questions, and that is the point.

That is the answer.

Answers support those at the top. Questions support those at the bottom.

And the Bible is not meant to comfort those at the top. In fact, this is one of the few things in the Bible on which you absolutely can rely.

Empire

If the Bible is unified on anything, from start to finish it denounces empire.

We miss this because we read the Bible from such a different place than did its writers. Brian Zahnd puts it really well.

I have a problem with the Bible. Here’s my problem…

I’m an ancient Egyptian. I’m a comfortable Babylonian. I’m a Roman in his villa.

That’s my problem. See, I’m trying to read the Bible for all it’s worth, but I’m not a Hebrew slave suffering in Egypt. I’m not a conquered Judean deported to Babylon. I’m not a first century Jew living under Roman occupation.

I’m a citizen of a superpower. I was born among the conquerors. I live in the empire. But I want to read the Bible and think it’s talking to me. This is a problem.

One of the most remarkable things about the Bible is that in it we find the narrative told from the perspective of the poor, the oppressed, the enslaved, the conquered, the occupied, the defeated. This is what makes it prophetic. We know that history is written by the winners. This is true — except in the case of the Bible it’s the opposite! This is the subversive genius of the Hebrew prophets. They wrote from a bottom-up perspective.

Imagine a history of colonial America written by Cherokee Indians and African slaves. That would be a different way of telling the story! And that’s what the Bible does. It’s the story of Egypt told by the slaves. The story of Babylon told by the exiles. The story of Rome told by the occupied. What about those brief moments when Israel appeared to be on top? In those cases the prophets told Israel’s story from the perspective of the peasant poor as a critique of the royal elite. Like when Amos denounced the wives of the Israelite aristocracy as “the fat cows of Bashan.”

The Old Testament really does take aim at Babylon and the New Testament really does take aim at Rome. I demonstrated this in Part 6 with Revelation, but you also see it strikingly in the Gospel of Mark. Virtually every word of the Bible was penned under the abuses of some global superpower, and its writers for hundreds of years focused on them like a laser beam.

However, while the Bible is concerned with Empire, the impulse of Empire takes many forms, and the word is much bigger than its most obvious one. The impulse is the same regardless of whether it is big and obvious or small and ordinary. You struggle with it in your own life.

Adam and Eve ate from the tree for power.

Cain killed Abel for power.

Nimrod built the Tower of Babel for power.

Pharaoh enslaved the Hebrews for power.

Goliath challenged David for power.

Solomon married hundreds of women for power.

Solomon built thousands of chariots for power.

Jonah sought vengeance on Nineveh for power.

Nebuchadnezzar built his kingdom for power.

Alexander the Great build his kingdom for power.

And each time the Devil tempted Jesus in the wilderness, he tempted him with power—even empire by name.

When you use other people to further your own purposes, you are participating in Empire. 

One of the consequences of both believing that Jesus is God and that the scriptures are a human creation that borrows heavily from human ideas is that when you get past the noise of Jesus’s indulgences of Judaism, you find an attack on this way of life.

Control.

Manipulation.

Power.

Greed.

Envy.

Abuse.

Posturing.

Dominance.

Exploitation.

Revenge.

Insecurity.

Fear.

The seduction of Empire can be found wherever you find people. It is the worst in ourselves, and it brings out the worst in others. It never tires of destruction. Virtually everything you will ever regret for as long as you live will arise out of the impulse of Empire.

I’m thankful to live in such a time of enlightenment, but this is a mystery that has eluded so many of our great minds. When we lower others and raise ourselves, when we repay hurt with hurt, when we retaliate, when we hide all weakness, when we seek revenge, when we take an “eye for an eye”, when we do the right thing only when it’s safe to do so, when we hoard our resources, when we apologize only when they apologize, when we view people only through the lens of their usefulness to us, when we engage in the never-ending toil of controlling our own world, we perpetuate the cycle of Empire.

And it kills everything in sight.

It kills our friendships.

It kills our communities.

It kills our environment.

It kills our joy.

It kills our souls.

It is our burning hellfire and brimstone. Our weeping and gnashing of teeth. Our Gehenna.

Not somewhere distant and outside of this world, but right here.

So, what is the opposite of Empire?

Love.

Love is.

Love drives out all of the worst impulses of Empire.

What I’m about to say is a total cliche, but we’ve really ruined the word “love.” I use it to describe the long shadows in the late afternoon on a golf course. I use it to describe expensive Trappist beers. I use it to describe fancy tacos. Hippies since the 60s have used it to describe a world without responsibility or consequences. Elvis couldn’t help falling into it. It’s a booty call Drake used to get on his cell phone.

But love has nothing to do with any of that. Most people run far away from true love. Love is less seductive than Empire, and, while it might be the best thing, it’s also the hardest thing.

Nazareth got it right that love hurts. Haddaway got it wrong that it will no more.

What is love, but to care for someone else as if they were you? To treat all people as if they are equally important? To sacrifice things for the betterment of people who can never repay you? To forgive people for the worst they’ve done to you as you would hope others would forgive you for the worst you’ve done? To give them the dignity you wish they’d give you?

If there is anything in this world that requires faith, it is love.

In Empire, everyone is is given a rank and is trying to advance. Everyone is always in a kind of war.

But in love, we are all equal.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails.

I Corinthians c13

What Jesus commands us to do is to love. In so doing, we tear down every last vestige of Empire.

You have heard that it was said, “Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

When we see all people as equals—that is to say, when we learn to love—we become distinct among a people driven by the desire of Empire.

“My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.

Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.”

John c17

Purity Culture

That said, most Christians think of Christianity primarily in terms of cleanliness and purity. Most Christians think of Heaven as somewhere else that requires being pure enough to enter, and that life on Earth is about positioning to be pure enough for Heaven.

No doubt, the literal words to support these ideas are found in the text of the Bible, but we have to decide why they are there. Is purity the thing, and love is just one part among many parts? 

Or is love the thing, and purity is the vocabulary that Jesus’s first disciples knew to talk about it?

Again, I concede that if you want to find purity culture in the Bible, the words are there for you. You’re not going to catch me off guard simply by quoting a Bible verse (as many have tried to do).

But let’s recall what led us to today:

  • The first five books of the Bible (and probably several more) are not historical, but were written to support the temple cult in Jerusalem.
  • We inherited baptism from the Essenes. The way the pesher writers took Old Testament texts way out of context to make new points was how the New Testaments writers also wrote.
  • Jesus indulged many of the ideas of the Pharisees while he taught on the Earth.
  • Jesus’s teachings on Gehenna (Hell) were based on the invention of Jewish rabbis who tried to find Socrates’s ideas in their text.
  • John’s vision in Revelation takes the form of Persian apocalyptic themes and describes Heaven and the battle in Heaven almost exclusively in terms of the propaganda images he had seen throughout the Roman empire.
  • The idea of the Holy Spirit was a theological construct of the Pharisees, who believed that wind was spiritual.

In light of everything we have seen, I don’t think purity culture is what Jesus came down to reinforce.

That he came to talk about new ways to sin.

That what was really needed was the Jewish Day of Atonement (which was already forgiving the sins of the Jewish people) being made permanent.

Here’s a good example of what I’m talking about. Read it carefully, and notice how Jewish ideas from the Torah and from the inter-testamentary period were used to talk about love.

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

….

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

We love because he first loved us. Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.

For John, it was completely natural to weave the ideas of love and purity together. He could not help but read into Jesus’s teachings on love the Jewish convictions with which he grew up.

But, in light of the many times that Jesus would use Jewish ideas to actually stray from Judaism, I have strongly concluded that we as 21st century Christians are heirs to those to whom purity was the language they knew to talk about what was actually the real thing.

If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.

1 Corinthians c13

Paul’s conception of God was thoroughly grounded in his years of study under Gamaliel. His training was of a depth and sophistication that modern readers can scarcely comprehend. He would have memorized Leviticus by the time he was eight. By the age of fourteen, he would have answered questions using a Jewish technique called a remez, which is the use of an incomplete part of a text, assuming the audience’s knowledge of the whole text would allow them to deduce for themselves the fuller meaning of a statement. Students of the text like Paul were so grounded in the text that they would have entire conversations in remez. People don’t grow up under that kind of system and simply abandon it.

As much as I say my understandings have evolved, I will never completely abandon my upbringing.

Likewise, Jesus was a Jew and the first interpreters of his teachings were Jews. Jesus used the language they knew, and his first advocates filtered his teachings even further. So it shouldn’t surprise us that the first things people wrote down about following Jesus arose out of the language of Judaism. Our heritage is important, but our heritage is not the thing.

On the surface, it would be easy to assume that I read the Bible the traditional way (and that is how most non-believers classify me). I participate in many of the traditional rituals associated with Christianity. I’m part of a church congregation. I was baptized, and agree that we should baptize new believers. I believe in sin. I believe in punishment for sin. I take communion every Sunday. I pray enough to demonstrate that I think there’s something to it. And I even strongly prefer old church songs to new ones.

But I’m careful to avoid making Christianity about any of them. As Jesus once said, “The Sabbath was made for people, not people for the Sabbath.” We were meant to live in community, and “the church” was the counter-narrative to the cult of the Roman Empire. But Jesus Christ did not die and raise so we could replace old rituals with new ones.

Jesus died and rose again to show that the old understanding of power and dominance was going away, and that a new kingdom of equality was rushing in.

Shalom

In the last two months, I’ve done the best I can explain an understanding of the Bible that (1) I think is more true to what it actually is and (2) certainly is different than its traditional understanding. I’ve loved doing this, and I already miss it.

But, if what I’ve written has resonated with you, I want to offer a few parting words of shalom.

First, you are going to encounter resistance. I see a lot of “us-versus-them” in our churches, and, unfortunately, I often get placed into the category belonging to “them.” It is vital that you not become the very thing that you are working against.

It’s not unreasonable to interpret the Bible in the ways I’ve argued against. Don’t assume that people who do so are dishonest or less intelligent than you. The words to denounce what I’ve argued are in the Bible, and when we talk about translating the culture within which the words of the Bible were written, we’re not dealing with an exact science. Everything we do is always our best guess.

Engage with those who find you threatening. For the rest of your life, you can never stop listening. You must always assume that you are wrong about something. For one thing, people won’t listen to you until you’ve listened to them.

But also you are wrong about something!

Second, even if you radically change your idea of the Bible, I think you should consider maintaining the same fellowship you had before. I have, and I don’t regret it.

Of course, when you invest yourself in a congregation that views you as suspicious, a lot more is required of you. You will have to be on guard always. Anything you do wrong will be reduced to “that goes to show how everything he thinks about the Bible has been a sham this whole time.” It means constantly and actively listening to ideas you disagree with. When I listen to other people express their thoughts, I’m constantly converting them in my head so that I can agree with them.

If I’m being honest, this takes enormous amount of energy.

But, we as a society are too polarized. We spend far too little time around people who disagree with us. We’re not good at talking with people with different views. Remember, even when you don’t change an opinion, you frequently change a mind. When you give someone the dignity of listening to them and genuinely seek to understand them, and when you then intelligently and boldly explain your view, you create an impression in the other person’s mind that they should do more listening too. You sow mutual respect.

And, in a small way, you make the world a little better.

Finally, it’s important to remember that everything we do is about people. People will generally do what they believe they should do, and this means that our ideas require a lot of attention. I’m not impressed when people suggest that we should just spend our lives “doing instead of thinking.” But, nevertheless, we don’t live for ideas. Ideas are not the thing. People are the thing.

This means you need to shut up sometimes.

Don’t remain silent because you think your ideas will challenge people. Don’t remain silent because you think people won’t like you if you tell them what you think. Don’t remain silent because people might hurt you.

But some people aren’t in the right place for this whole thing. Sometimes it’s the right time even when it will cause you pain. Sometimes it’s the wrong time even when it will elevate you. It’s not about you, it’s always about them

As Jesus constantly demonstrated to his disciples, Jesus has great faith in your ability to discern how to love. Set your mind to it, and you’ll know what to do.

Peace be with you, friends.

New here? How about starting from the beginning?