Things Not Even Part One

There is a certain type of observation I need to make in this blog.  This type of observation will, I expect, consist of numerous entries.  I have chosen a general name for the series of entries: "Things Not Even".  (I will explain that particular name later.)

These entries will be about the Bible and its interpretation--specifically about a proper approach to biblical interpretation.  The approach is implicit in the blog theme of "roused, readied, reaped," and I hope there will be no great mystery to it.  The approach is simple, though two-fold: We are participants in the story told by the Bible, and we are viewpoint-based observers of that story.  We are born into it, are shaped by it, and disappear into it.

It might be objected that we do not "disappear" into the story of the Bible because, for good or ill, we (expect to) persist indefinitely, though we understand ourselves as having begun at some point in a progression of time that we imagine regresses backward (in analysis, at least) indefinitely.  But can it be said truly that we ever had a time-defined beginning, when our creation is attributed to the same deity that defines time?

We do not know the end-points of the dimensions through which we conceptualize existence, nor can we say with assurance that those dimensions are ultimately verifiable or--even if so--what utility those dimensions supply to the understanding of our belief systems.  From moment to moment we think we can understand ultimates, and yet in our more sober moments we realize we cannot understand ultimates, and yet again in our need to believe in the sanity and sobriety of our thoughts we fall back into thinking we can understand ultimates.  God always existed, and therefore "always" always existed, or at least if "always" did not always exist, then at least some approximation of "always" must exist (and not nefariously) in our minds and on some terms that seem relatable to "time".

This concern about "ultimates" is confined neither to physical phenomena (either strictly or metaphorically understood) nor to matters purely academic.  Ultimates can affect us in quiet visceral ways.  An apt example is the question of the nature of the devil.  It is often said, and quite truly, that it is unwise to view the drama of the universe as a conflict between God and the devil--as though "the Devil" is to be viewed as a worthy adversary to God.  God is the Ultimate, and the devil is his creature, and certain logical conclusions can flow from those assertions.

Yet it is entirely possible for us to fall into presumptions about the universe that conflict with our understanding--such as it might be--of God.  We can look at the story of the Temptations in the Wilderness, and note especially the part where the devil invites Jesus to access mastery over "all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them," by worshipping the devil.  The devil asserts, "for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it."  The devil seems to be telling the truth, and in exchange for believing that the devil is in that moment telling "the God's truth," many interpreters avail themselves of easy descriptions--applied as though they were ultimately simple and universal--of the universe as being "under the Devil."

The universe, as the Gospels reveal, is not ultimately under the devil, nor is simply the world his, nor was the world his during Jesus' lifetime (and therefore before the devil's possible unseating by the Resurrection).  Jesus repeatedly, and not without exasperation, admonished his followers that whatever they needed of Creation's potential was available to them--they need merely ask, and believe.  To think the devil truthful, then, when he boasted of mastery of the kingdoms of the world, would be effectively to assert that the believer must ask and believe of the devil.

What went wrong with Christianity's assessment of who is the Lord of Creation?  Why has it been possible for Christianity to plunge into centuries of teaching that Man is unregenerate and that Creation is under the devil's thumb, when Jesus taught that the devil might be brushed aside, that the bounties of Creation were available for the asking, and that humans--though "evil"--know how to give good things at proper times?  The answer is simple: Christianity has assumed that the devil--that created being--could tell the truth, and handle the truth, as though he was a god.

The devil is a created being, just like us in that regard, and has the limitations of a created being.  The devil can no more do anything perfectly or consummately than we can.  The devil has a measure of the propensity of any created being to misunderstand--perhaps willfully so.  The devil, in the "ultimate" analysis, can ultimately have no more mastery over Creation than can a snake, or a worm.  Yet we humans, in wanting to "understand" the things of God--in wanting to rise above the status of "roused, readied, reaped"--will spread simple "understandings" over the vista of the universe's mysteries and imagine we are stating simple wisdom.

It is wrong to see the devil as the adversary of God, as though the fate of the universe hung in the balance of an uncertain battle.  This much is easy to understand.  It is more difficult for us to understand that the only universe that we can conceptualize responsibly--and with due deference to our Creator--is a universe in which we share (and are willing to share) the capacity of recognizably-similar experience with all other creatures.  We know somewhat how the devil thinks because we are all created; we know somewhat how the worm thinks because we are all created.

What we DO NOT know is how we could possibly believe that a perfection of concept or of reliability might be applied to the devil.  Think of the devil as a formidable adversary of God, and you think of the devil as a god--that much is plain.  But think of some theological point--like the devil's supposed lordship of the fallen world--as reflecting a simple truth in the devil's mouth, and you are also thinking of the devil as a god.

This is the type of point I must try to make.  Forgive me, but I must end now with the intimation that I will be describing "things not even" to say.

Topic of Life as Participatory

Life is participatory.  Life, as characterized by the Bible, might be described as any state that is "vibrant, meaningful, and positive."  This description, it should be noted, does not bear directly on the idea of "physical life," and that is scarcely surprising, given the biblical (and generally religious) notions of a "life of the soul," etc.

By "participatory", I refer to the fact that any understandable concept of life has the bearer of that life pictured within contexts and modes of contact.  One might refer, by contrast, to the "living God," but any such idea of a self-creating, self-sustaining, self-sufficient, context-defining being is really beyond our understanding, and to attribute "life" to that being is just an intellectual convention.

I also understand that it is something of a convention to reserve "life" to "positive" phenomena, in addition to phenomena that are "vibrant" and "meaningful".  This convention folds back into my description of life "as characterized by the Bible"--the experiences of those under judgment might be thought in some way "vibrant", and in a somber way "meaningful", but they are scarcely held to be "positive"--hence the notion of the continual "death of the soul," though its bearer might otherwise be seen as in an eternal, negative life.

There is a very important aspect to describing life as most importantly "participatory".  Without such a notion, much of what is said about "life" (especially in Jesus' teachings) would be gibberish.  We can start with the beginning of the Bible.  Adam is formed by God as a fully sufficient being--in the physical sense.  To say that he was not "alive" when formed would hardly make any more sense than to say that a nine-month unborn is not "alive".  Adam awaited only the breath of life, and then he became "a living soul."  From the beginning, then, we have created for us the age-old puzzle: The unborn--increasingly, as the pregnancy advances--display the attributes of physical life.  Hard-liners can prate about chromosomes and the moment of fertilization, but the Bible does not describe a divine breath that culminates the birth process--instead, the very "breath of life" defines a living being.  It is the extinguishing of that self-same "breath of life" that characterizes the toll of the Flood.

Again, by "participatory", I refer to the fact that any understandable concept of life has the bearer of that life pictured within contexts and modes of contact.  This becomes crucial as the Bible continues.  Did God lie when he threatened Eve and Adam with death over eating from the forbidden tree, and did the snake expose that lie?  Clearly, a simplistic notion of "life" would seem to fall on the Devil's side.  To stand for the honor of God would require one to stand with the notion that the term "life" (with all of its emotive and cultural connotations) cannot be universally understood to apply to negative experiences.

It is probably just as well to understand that "life", which we unabashedly cling to as being preferable to "death," ought by that very fact be considered a positive thing.  Eve and Adam came under (negative) judgment and, in a sense, they died.  The reader of the Bible, it must be admitted, is under no compulsion to make that allowance--but withholding that allowance makes much of the rest of the Bible unintelligible.

(Indeed, it must be remembered that Adam pre-Fall was observed by God to be unfulfilled by a close and unclouded relationship with his maker--"It is not good that the man should be alone."  Did not Adam reveal himself to be by that measure "dead"?  Is it not fitting to consider that the creatures of the "living God" would themselves be possessed of that "life" only provisionally?)

And then there is the matter of being "born again."   Jesus might have confronted Nicodemus with any number of illustrations of being "born again."  Jesus chose to cite the wind, a phenomenon as mysterious in the First Century as development in the womb--awaiting the breath of life.  (And marshal as we might our modern understandings of the two natural phenomena, at bottom they are still mysteries.)  As any amateur theologian knows, the ancient notions of "breath" and "wind" were integrally connected--even as to be often connected by shared words.  Life for creatures, even life in the spiritual and eternal sense, is understood in terms of contexts and modes of contact.  "Life" is not a thing in itself.  "Death" is not a thing in itself--even the "Death" that befell Adam and Eve and all of us.

Creatures do not just share the fact that they all have lives.  Creature share life.  The importance of this fact will be seen when we consider the way Jesus wanted "life" for his flock--and when we consider how he wanted his flock to live without lives.

Topic of Luke and Paul and Authority

I need to try to compile a list of topics through which this blog can be organized and related.  Here is one:

The Luke-epilogue/Acts/Pauline-letters complex is not applicable to the pursuit of Jesus' commands.

A starting point of this topic is an examination of the transparently contrived business of the Luke-Paul camp dealing with organizational matters.  I will begin with the insupportable notion--rammed through as a given--that the early Church needed to work out the basics post-Ascension.  By "rammed through as a given" I refer particularly to the fact that the young or the novice in each generation are hustled through initial readings of Acts without being asked to contemplate Acts 1:3, describing Jesus' post-Resurrection, pre-Ascension dealings with the apostles:

To whom he also shewed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God. (KJV)

And yet the Acts/Paul characters have to sort things out from scratch?

Jesus, it must be remembered, began the organization of his ministry with,

Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men. (Matthew 4:19)

As we see, from the start of his ministry Jesus addresses how certain of his followers will take the lead in carrying an appropriately-tailored set of instructions to the whole world (as we soon see him describe more and more broadly the world of "men".)  Moreover, Acts has Jesus taking forty days with his disciples post-Resurrection "speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God."

Are we then supposed to believe (Acts 1:15-26) that the apostles--without Jesus--would have to cast awkwardly about for scriptures to help them decide--by lot, no less--what to do about Iscariot's absence?  Would they really have had to ponder (10:34-35) the propriety of ministering to Gentiles, or have been left by Jesus with no guide for minimal discipline, leading to the comical convention (15:1-33) in Jerusalem?  (It seems altogether fitting that this latter silliness would be followed immediately by Paul and Barnabas squabbling about John Mark.)

Not only must reasonable observers conclude that the Luke/Paul characters are making it up as they go along; one is subjected additionally the spectacle of them politicking as they go along.

Atheism as Part of a Social Construct

An excerpt from a comment (4) I made elsewhere.  From the Ashes of Faith asks: ". . . can you believe in a higher power and not a god? Does that still make you an atheist?

Me:

Are not all such questions burdened by the inherent difficulty of defining a word in terms of a negative? Presumably, a “strict materialist” would be describable with satisfactory accuracy (leaving aside for the moment the question of a person being total or consistent in outlook.) A “theist” would be describable to a similar degree—or at least to the uncontested satisfaction of his or her definition. But “atheist”? Is not a self-identification as “atheist” contingent upon the prevailing concept of “god” (or at least that which prevails in the milieu in which a person says, “atheist”?)

I believe in God. I believe that entails a continual duty to challenge every human understanding of God. I see no functional difference between that outlook and one that conceptualizes the divine as a more and more stringently refined notion of a “higher power”. I see no functional difference between those two outlooks and a strict materialist determination to pursue selfless virtue as a default implication of the connectedness of sentient beings. All of the above approaches are provisional and faltering in practice—but that doesn’t stop us from deciding communally to argue about worldviews as if they could ever be pristine or held continually.

The religion-versus-atheism controversy is a social construct—nothing more.

About Time and Place

An excerpt from a comment (#12) I made elsewhere seems relevant to my previous post:

One of those religious needs of our culture is historicity—the contention that this or that happened in time and space. This is not the case in the heart of the Gospels. Jesus spoke of things that had both happened and were yet to happen; things that were yet to happen while they were already happening; things that were happening neither here nor there yet were still happening in both places—there is no hiding or denying this.

Time and space meant nothing to Jesus (sort of a no-brainer when we consider the God he was glorifying), yet time and space represented as historicity mean everything to modern Christianity. And, in my experience, it is the importance of the question of historicity that matters to them, not how it is answered. Tell them you admire the ethics of their Savior but deny him a place in your view of history, and they’ll view you benignly as a logical puzzle to solve; tell them historicity matters not to you and you’d like to devote all that much more attention to Jesus’ teachings about religious ethics, and they’ll consider you a lurking menace.

Christianity prefers to choose its menaces, framed to its advantages, whether it views itself as triumphant or besieged. For instance, there is the fallacy of the secular Western world as supposedly “post-Christian.” Let the example in question be an “un-churched”, “liberal”-ly educated young journalist trying to address “religious issues,” and you can bet your bottom dollar you’ll hear the reporter talking about evolution, sexual mores, and abortion—because the template of un-religion or even anti-religion in the West is still Christianity and its hobbyhorses.

From comments to Geeky Humanist.

Time End Place Pit

"For wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together"--Matthew 24:28, KJV

"Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled"--24:34

"Wheresoever the body is, thither will the eagles be gathered together"--Luke 17:37

"Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass away, till all be fulfilled"--21:32

The earth has been the bloody tomb of the first corpse, since the first natural-born man committed the first overtly evil act.  In the dimension-realm in which God ordained free will:

Time is the End.

Place is the Pit.

There, I said it.

So Much to Not Understand

We are the form of a person, the shape of woman and man,

Between what we are forbidden to understand, and what we simply cannot understand.

When we are what we think, we are nothings.

When we are what God thinks, we are judges and kings.

"And in process of time it came to  pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering to the Lord" (Genesis 4:3, KJV).  There is no indication in the text that the offering was bidden by God.  There is no indication that the offering was required, or that Cain was expected to make up for the offering that was not accepted, or that Cain was under judgment for having made an unacceptable offering.

Cain is upbraided by God for responding negatively to the situation.  "And the Lord said unto Cain, why art thou wroth?  And why is thy countenance fallen?" (4:6).

And then God provides the remedy: "If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door.  And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him" (4:7).

God is not suggesting that positive virtue will justify Cain.  Cain is expected to attempt to refrain from doing wrong, and moreover to refrain from positively succumbing to sin ("unto thee shall be his desire").  The important lesson here is not one of refraining from evil and doing good, as though a sufficiently positive balance between evil and good will justify a person.  There is refraining from evil, and there is doing good, and then there is resisting the temptation to embrace evil as a matter of personal moral identification.  It is this final point, this third element of humanity's moral struggle, that is most important.

We can try to be moral people, and then we will of course fail.  What places our souls in danger, though, is what we decide to do with our failings.  We must accept that we will become exhausted or overwhelmed, and rest in those instances on an expectation of God's mercy.  We must cede control, reckoning that any notion we have of a good God means that God is a force for good.  Let God act, and it will be for good.  We won't understand, but it will be for good.

That is how Jesus responded to the temptations.  Jesus was hungry, and when tempted by Satan with the prospect of cutting the fast short with a convenient contrivance, Jesus rested in God.  It was as though Jesus said, "Yes, I am hungry; yes, I am tempted; but so what?"  For us, it might be somewhat of a lengthier recitation: "Yes, I am hungry; yes, I am tempted; and--yes--I am thinking negative thoughts about the whole thing, but so what?  I will rest on God's mercy and forgiveness."

The important thing is not to combine in moral identification with sin.  Such identification can be overt or hidden, brazen or subtle, but the upshot is the same.  Whether by defiance or by hypocrisy, or by some other contrivance, we can all possibly embrace an essence of sinfulness.  We have no right to claim that such a thing is ordinary stumbling, since by a positive embrace of sinfulness we have not merely fallen short of the moral mark, we have additionally forsaken the ever-present chance in each shortfall to simply yield to the mercy of God.

When we ask of God, God responds with mercy.  When we let go of ourselves, God presses against us with mercy.  This is perhaps the most important pivot-point in the study of Jesus' teachings.  Jesus tells us that God's blessings fall on the evil and the good, providing support and sustenance from which we can draw strength for the next battle.  We cannot assume that we will be unable to draw ourselves up from moments of resignation, any more than we can assume it possible to avoid moments of resignation.  This pivot-point is where the denominations pounce, shoving theological formulations at us when we are most vulnerable, telling us things that we supposedly need to "understand" about God or about ourselves.

Only people with an unseemly assessment of God--or perhaps more importantly, an unseemly assessment of the Ultimate that we approximate with our "understandings" about "God"--need be assured by theological dissertations about the workings of God.  God is good.

And so, to return to the temptations, Jesus responds to hunger by resting in God.  Jesus responds to physical vulnerability by resting in God.  Jesus responds to the temptation of worldly power by resting in God.  We must do likewise.