God is not bound by time and space; God is not corporeal; God is neither male nor female; God is not like us. I take great solace in these "beliefs."
As a result, I recoil from declarations that begin with "God likes ____," "God's very nature is to ____," or "God will most certainly ____," especially when these become downright laughable.
Like on Monday, when a friend of a friend said, and not jokingly, "God has a twisted sense of humor." This was, mind you, in response to yet another chapter in an unemployed friend's fruitless job search. A search that has now lasted months and is taking its expected toll on all parties.
In essence, this person's super-duper helpful point was "God is cruel." Or "God likes to mess with your psyche. For fun. Come on, get in on the funny, funny joke already."
Yeah, instances like that are why it's easy to see why for so many centuries, the Catholic Church discouraged regular folk from reading the actual text of the Bible.
Got time for a casual glance at Job? You'll conclude, like our buddy from earlier, that God is indeed a sadist. A little reading of Hosea at bedtime? Well, what do you know, God's a masochist. Skim through a few Pauline epistles and God's a sexist; swim a shallow lap around Leviticus and God's a bloodthirsty legalist. (Saunter on over to Revelation and God's a drug trip. Far out.)
I don't know about you, but this God is starting to sound, like, not all there, you know?
Who wants a God like that -- or even a friend like that? Not me. I start with the belief that God possesses none of those attributes listed two paragraphs earlier. The effect is that the Bible gains a freedom it otherwise wouldn't have -- the freedom to be a collection of mankind's evolving view of a deity. Rather than revelation, it becomes insight, wisdom, poetry, guidance, philosophy, allegory.
Liberated from the need to synthesize 66 books into a Great Unifying Theory Of God's Celestial Nature, I'm able to read Job and Ecclesiastes and Deuteronomy and Philippians and take them for what their author meant them to be -- musings on how God is and is not. (With special personal gravitation toward the "is not" portion.)
And as such, the Bible continues to retain power in my life. Because I'm not looking to it for all the right answers, but instead, for the right questions to ask, it shines a light for me. Not a light of "God is exactly like this." A light of "Look at this wisdom. Read these stories. Learn. Be illuminated."
Plus, then I don't have to explain away a friend's suffering as God's twisted joke.
You did avoid mentioning Jesus in your version of how to read the Bible, probably cause you wanted to avoid the whole Jesus is God and Man thing. You didn't mention the holy spirit either as it would lead into discussion of the trinity. These two persons of God are revealed in the scriptures and fill out the "personality" of God.
ReplyDeleteIt's good to hear that you still hold the Bible in high esteem. I know most would disagree with the fact that you do not see a unifying theme throughout and only nuggets of wisdom need to be carefully extracted without attributing them to divine inspiration. However the lifes of those who do lead a spirit filled life cannot be mistaken for simply higher levels of moral aptittude.
I started to write a response but it got too long. So I posted to my own blog, instead. http://wanderbrook.wordpress.com/2011/01/20/god-is-not-what-i-think/
ReplyDelete(Mason IS willing to use his friends' posts as a springboard for his own. Mason ISN'T sorry about this, because, frankly, he really IS incapable of coming up with something original to write about.)
Mark-
ReplyDeleteOn purpose, the post is not about Jesus. And you're stretching semantics more than a little to call the HS a "person." Besides (pre-emptive strike: I'm not going to get into this subject too deep,) whether or not Jesus is in fact God has little bearing on God's actual nature, although it does provide some insight into how first-century Jews viewed Jesus and God.
And certainly the Bible has a unifying theme: This Is How We Think God Interacts With Humans is a perfectly good subhead. I'm just pretty sure that an all-inclusive, cover-to-cover reading of scripture only gives you a fuzzy of what and who God is.
Mason-
Gonna go read your thots right now. And yes, as you were thinking, one rip-off does indeed deserve another.
Your prescription for interpreting the Bible in a purely subjective or allegorical sense is dangerously unorthodox and undermines the authority of the original text. For what authority or significance may be found in a text of Scripture that has its meaning read into it? Furthermore, who and by what rule dictates the objects in reality that the symbols and allegorical characters correspond? Regardless of man or method, any interpretation conceived outside of the author's mind should be repudiated.
ReplyDeleteWhen interpreting Scripture, literary devices such as allegory, metaphor and figurative language may be recognized but only when a literal treatment proves not to make the best sense. Most learned readers would allow for Jesus calling himself the door i.e. "the way".
Indeed, it is a sad commentary that many of the modern translations offered by those in privileged positions today would not be understood by the author who wrote the text or the recipients thereof. This brand of treatment sets the interpreter adrift on a sea of subjectivity; off course and wandering aimlessly, at the mercy of his own bias and imagination he arrives at any doctrine he so chooses — a dangerous proposition when speaking for God.
Matt-
ReplyDeleteReasonable Christians, such as yourself, cut and paste throughout the Bible already. You already decide which part is from the mouth of man and which part is direct revelation from God. You have a lens through which you view scripture, and so do I; mine goes something like this:
Eliminate assertions that impute cruelty, hate, sexism, racism and insecurity to God. Deal with what's left. This post is about that: What isn't God?
So understand me well: I'm not calling God those names I used in the "Got time for a casual glance at Job?" paragraph. No, I'm just eliminating those attributes, and then I can proceed to get really, really annoyed when someone insults my deity by ascribing one of those horrible qualities to it. And you get to share in my annoyance when I overblog about it! Yay! :)
"Regardless of man or method, any interpretation conceived outside of the author's mind should be repudiated." It sounds like you're echoing the brand of exegetical analysis we were taught in our tradition: "The only true meaning of a passage of scripture is what the author originally intended to tell the audience to whom he was writing." Of course, that task is already plenty challenging for us, removed as we are from those geographical, cultural and temporal places. Even more challenging would be to settle on a single "answer" for passages like John, chapter 1.
And don't even get me started on the dozens of rabbinic schools' methods of interpreting the Torah. The wikipedia page on that is intimidating enough.
Peace as always.
John-
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't matter how many poor hermeneutical practices you can name or how many different interpretations there are. Every written word can only mean what the author intended to communicate to his or her listeners. Period. This is true when you write your wife a love note; leave written instructions for the baby-sitter or post some lines on your blog. Interesting that you moved to clarify your meaning from your first post-- you didn't want to be misunderstood. I highly doubt you'd appreciate me assigning my meaning to your words and then calling it, "freedom" or, "mankind's evolving view of John Fraley's musings." You don't want me or anyone else to assign their meaning to your words. You want to be understood for what you meant to communicate. I would ask that you'd grant God the same privilege. For the record, you communicated well and I understood that you were not calling God "those names", in fact, quite the opposite. You were saying that you didn't appreciate those malicious assertions being ascribed to God. I got it.
Peace
So, to reply, Matt:
ReplyDeleteYou and I agree that irresponsible reading of scripture is disrespectful to the author, and leads to goofy interpretations (duh), like that God enjoys a good round of torture once in a while.
However (and this is where I routinely get crucified), I don't really believe God wrote or dictated the Biblical text. I tend to believe that the Bible is man reaching for God, not the other way around... needless to say, I don't see us finding a whole lot of common ground on that topic anytime soon. :)
On the other hand, you gave me a great title for my forthcoming philosophical treatise, so keep a close watch on Amazon.com for "Evolving Interpretations of the Not-So-Sacred Writings of John Fraley: A Historical Compendium." Double :)
More seriously, your second paragraph is iffy... texts with philosophical and theological thrusts should probably have more than one possible interpretation, otherwise they're very shallow. You could, quite possibly, assign secondary meanings to what I write, and even turn out to be correct in doing so. Not that my stuff is that layered.
Still, let's say that I write, "God and humans can not be friends." Well, there are more than two ways of unpacking that statement. And yes, if I transmit those words to you in a comment on a blog, and my intent is to convey that the two entities are so different that an honest, amicable relationship is compromised, then that is my primary meaning. But maybe I'm also stating other things, about the nature of friendship, the nature of God, the nature of love, possibly more. Or maybe that statement means something my conscious mind hasn't fully considered.
I might just be spouting incoherently now. But through it all, I maintain that we all interpret passages of the Bible in our own way, which suits our biases and allows us to conceive of a consistent God. And we SHOULD act that way. Otherwise, we become self-absorbed agnostics with no rudder. Which sounds awful.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteTime to shore up our differences. I’ll respect your desire to keep this a conversation about communicating about God and spare you another crucifixion John.
ReplyDeleteYou said, “... texts with philosophical and theological thrusts should probably have more than one possible interpretation, otherwise they're very shallow.”
I think we’ll find a shred of common ground here. I’ll give you that other information can be delivered through a statement’s meaning. There are a myriad of principles, applications and implications that may be derived from the statement, “Thou shall not lie.” but the statement still only has one meaning—don’t lie! Your argument about communicating something the conscious mind hasn’t fully considered—or I’ll add could be mistaken about-- should be addressed through meta-communication. For example, a man that calls out to an attractive woman walking down the street—“Heya Hotstuff! Oh Yaaa! You look Niiiiiiiice!!!” is also communicating through meta-communication that he thinks he has a chance to gain this woman’s attention/affection even though he may have only described what he thinks of her body/hair/dress and have little to no chance of gaining the reciprocation he is seeking. But I digress.
I’ll give you the last word here John and thank you for invigorating conversation.
But before I go I have to share a double-frosted negative statement about God that I whipped up just for you.
God is not not love. ☺
Hi John,
ReplyDeleteJust catching up on some of your posts and wanted to say I really, really like this one. :)
eric