Textual Catharsis

Meandering thoughts on a Mid-winter's Day:

Faith flight fire frivolity
Fluorescent flowing floorspace

Crack snapple creek end ebb
Warm wax waning wistfully wherever worlds wander.
Pickled onions stew strongly under elephantine ovaltine.
A boxer plays with stones.
Will Will's will will Will whatever Will will will? Read Red's red reed.
Quivering kiwis quail quietly in the quays while cowering Krauts consume cooled coloured cabbage.

Where goes sanity, and where goes reason? What is the path of insight, inspired conscious thought?
Can creation keep creativity creative, or will all things run the circuit of entropy? Is the universe doomed to equilibrium?

Fifty five fly flies fly flyly forward from forty flatulating frogs. Do frogs flatulate? What breaks wind better than a forest? Why is the sky pink nigh nighttime and patterned after diminishing returns? Is there any really real ROE?

Flexing flaccid muscle makes many manly men more mourning-mindful, mandating much meaty meals, mulling meagerly masticating molars.

Sip a little tea. Then take a little pea. Sit beside the sea and watch a tiny bee.

Bumble bee, bumble bee: how do you fly? A torso so bulging with wings perched so high.
Fluid dynamics condemn your flight motion. Science is puzzled with you and emotion.
Fly away, fly away, fly away home. Lest the world's oddest wonders be someday full-known.

...God is Backwards

Whenever I read the historical texts in the Bible, I become more and more amazed at how completely bizarre God is in choosing the people He wants to use as His servants. Often, the choice seems random and usually, His callings seem completely counter-intuitive.

Why in the world would God have chosen Moses to lead the nation if Israel out of Egypt? To start off, Moses was the adopted child of Pharaoh's household--the last person one would think would remove the nation's greatest labour force. Then, this royal figure goes and murders of of his officials in broad daylight. He runs away & lives in the desert for forty years, seemingly trying to leave his past behind him. Then, lo and behold, God tells him to go back & remove the Israelites from Egypt. Moses refuses several times (and, with good reason, especially if you ignore that it is God who's telling him to go & do this. Were it anyone else, the reluctance seems very justifiable), but he eventually goes, being met with opposition from both the nation of Israel and the nation of Egypt. However, in the end, God's choice proves to be a good one. Moses "comes into his own," and becomes Israel's most prominent leader, through relying on the Lord.

And what about Samson? The guy's selected from birth to be set apart for God and is commanded to never cut his hair, never be in the presence of a carcass and to never eat/drink anything that "comes from the vine." Throughout his life, however, the records state the not only does Samson repeatedly use dead animals as weapons, but he also eats honey out of a rotting lion carcass. He constantly parties, imbibing in many delights from "the vine," assumedly. And it is only when he gets his hair cut that the Lord removes his supernatural strength (though, Samson's strength returns to him later on after his capture, just in time to destroy over 10,000 of Israel's enemies and himself in one last act of zeal.).

Those examples are all commonly known, even though we often gloss over them. But take this one on for size: Saul, the first anointed king of Israel is a direct descendent of the inhabitants of Gibeah, from the tribe of Benjamin. What the heck?! Doesn’t sound very important or striking unless you've just finished reading the book of Judges (or if you're a meticulous tracker of Biblical history/lineages).

Here's the deal: Back in the day, after the time Samson judged Israel (potentially during the judgeship of Eli, the High Priest who reared Samuel, Israel's last judge), there was a Levite who was travelling through Israel on his way home in Bethlehem with his wife. He stays the night in Gibeah, since he had left late in the afternoon and it was getting dark. No one in Gibeah offered to provide him lodging (as was the usual custom in Israel), so he ended up staying in the square until an Ephraimite returned to the city & offered this traveller a place to stay in his own house. However, when the men of Gibeah got word that there was fresh blood in town, they banged on the Ephraimite's door, demanding that the Levite come out of the house, so that every man in town could have sex with him (sounds a lot like what happened to the messengers of God staying with Lot in Sodom, no?). The Ephraimite man chastised the men of Gibeah, telling them that such an act was unwholesome and rude, however the men of Gibeah kept pressing for sexual relations. Eventually, the people inside the house relented (fearing for all of their lives, no doubt), and they made a proposal: if the men of Gibeah were dead set on having sex with someone in that house, the least they could do is have sex with a woman. The mob outside capitulated and forced the Levite's wife to come outside, where every man in the city continually raped her until the morning, when she was returned to the house's doorstep, dead.

The Levite doesn't take too kindly to this abhorrent act, and calls the whole nation of Israel to do something about it. In response, the nation musters its entire military intent on purging this wickedness from amongst their people by killing every person from Gibeah. Unfortunately, the entire tribe of Benjamin decides to defend its city, Gibeah, and as a result, 11 tribes of Israel attack one. Heavy losses on both sides, but 11 eventually beats one. In the end, the nation of Israel completes its ethnic cleansing, leaving only 700 survivors from the line of Benjamin--all of them male.

What does this have to do with Saul? Well, Saul is a Benjamite, and everyone in his father's house is a direct descendent of those from Gibeah. Yep: Saul's grandpa is a guy who wanted to have sex with a man from the priestly order, but who decided instead to rape the same Levite's wife until she died. If you were a Jew, and God had told you that such a man would become your king, how do you think you'd react? It's no wonder that there was some grumbling among the nation of Israel when Samuel proclaimed Saul as the nation's regent. It's also no wonder that Saul thought Samuel was out of his mind when he was told that he'd become king. Again, it's no wonder that Saul was hiding amongst the baggage when Samuel pronounced Saul's kingship to the whole nation.

It’s funny that way. People & society often tend to have a collective moral conscience that typically shuns leaders whose lineage reveals horrific &/or detestable acts. Yet, God—in His infinite wisdom—chose to use such individuals to glorify His name. When we turn to the New Testament, we see a similar trend as Jesus invites tax collectors to be his followers. Even Jesus Himself was a self-proclaimed Rabbi, though by formal instruction, he was a carpenter (how many rig pigs do you know & trust to teach you the finer points of atomic electronegativity?). And to forerun the theological foundation of the Church after Christ’s departure, God chooses Christianity’s most ferocious opponent: Saul of Tarsus. Kinda makes you think (at least it does, me)… Almost appears to be that God doesn’t give a crap what society says should happen. He chooses & says what (or whom) He wants to choose/say. And He is always vindicated in His choices.

So, next time you think that God has made a serious mistake in what He’s done or said, consider Moses; consider Samson; consider Saul. God has His reasons, and He never screws up. He may not make sense from where we see things, but His reasons always prove best.

Post Cogito.

I've been doing a lot of thinking over the past week. It is one of the upsides to being relocated to the middle of nowhere, where you know no one & where there's nothing really to do. As a result, I thought that I would make a comment on my own most recent post, after having thought about it for a bit longer. If you haven't read it yet, I would advise you to do so before continuing along on this read. (If not, you'll get by--this post isn't exclusively dependent on it's precursor's content).

Yes, sometimes I hate the Bible. I hate it because it is difficult to accept, yet it is completely impossible to reject. The Bible is always right & the Bible speaks truth, however hard it may be to swallow. How do I know that it is true? Well, I extend. I extend its authority from those areas which I have tested and experienced as being true to encompass the whole thing. Is this a foolish thing to do? No, that I doubt. How can I do such things & still keep my rational, logical mind from rebelling? I guess, it falls down to a logical argument, which deductively is flawed, but which inductively could work.

So, the Bible says that if you do certain things, like believe in Jesus Christ's death on the cross as a substitutionary sacrifice for our own sins, and choose to make Jesus the ultimate authority in your life, then you will be saved from the "second death" and be given eternal life, spent with Him. It also says that if you spend a lot of time getting to know Jesus & trying to follow the things He taught us, that you will experience abundant, fulfilling life & "bear much fruit." The Bible also says that the name & sacrificial blood of Christ both have ultimate power, that those who claim purification through His sacrifice are given the same authority as He had over all things: those who love Him and want to see His Father glorified may ask anything on Him in His name, and it will be given. The Bible also says that if we test the Spirits, no anti-Christ spirit will be able to confess that Jesus came in the flesh and was the Messiah (or Christ / saviour of the world). Then, the Bible claims that every part of it is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting & training in righteousness.

The Bible makes explicit claims about followers (and hard-core lovers) of Christ being able to perform super-natural feats, including: prophecy, wisdom, discerning the nature of supernatural activity, knowledge, healing, working miracles, faith, speaking in foreign languages and interpreting foreign languages (among others). The Bible itself reports such events happening in the early church, and I am certain that there are informal records (maybe even formal? If you know of any, please comment or e-mail me) of such activities after the records of the New Testament. Why am I so certain? Well, because I myself have witnessed many of these things in my own adventures in life, as well as having talked with others who have witnessed and experienced several wondrous things as well.

My Life's Support

I myself have personally dealt with demon-possessed individuals, having cast out demons & having been able to distinguish the real thing from fakers. I have personally seen metaphorical visions of situations which end up being just as the visions imply. I have dreamt dreams where I am shown events (both important as well as sometimes trivial) years in advance of their occurrence. I have been spiritually attacked by demons (not a fun experience, just to let you know). I have come to know things that I should have by no normal means known. I may have been used by God to heal somebody of a chronic illness (I have bad follow-up. The last I knew, though, the individual was illness-free). I myself have been healed from chronic illness. And that's just me.

I know people who have had enormous trauma inflicted on their bodies & who have been miraculously healed. A guy I knew was a window installer & as he was moving a pane of glass from his truck, the whole stack of glass panes fell on top of him, pulverising his ribs & pelvis. His co-worker called 911 and help came quickly to do what they could. The paramedics didn't think that he would live, as they put his stretcher into the helicopter that was rushing him to the hospital, but his family & friends had been informed of the accident & were praying for his healing. While in flight, the guy actually felt his bones move around inside his torso, going back to their proper locations, and when the chopper landed at the hospital, the medical staff--who thought that the guy would need an extensive stay in ICU--checked him over & were astonished that all of the recorded internal injuries no longer existed. They kept him for observation for a bit & then discharged the guy from the hospital (I think) a couple of days later. This guy was my counsellor at one of the many summer camps I had attended while growing up.

A decade ago, there was a lady in my family's church who had been diagnosed with lymphoma. As soon as the church found out, we prayed for her healing. She had been scheduled to begin a full regimen of chemo therapy & radiation, but when the doctors checked her again to see how much the cancer had advanced since the initial diagnosis, they discovered that there were no traces of any cancerous activity in her body left at all.

A man at one of my other churches has a festering sore on one of his eyes. At the time, he didn't believe in God or any of the whole Christianity stuff at all. One day, he was told about this preacher who had come to town, so he went to see what all the fuss was about. There, he was told about Jesus Christ & the love, grace, forgiveness and power over death that Christ offers. This guy didn't think much of it, and pretty much wrote the whole idea of God off. The sore on his eye was getting worse, as time progressed, and there was a possibility that he would end up blinded by this. So, one evening, as he was looking into the bathroom mirror, he made God a deal. He said, "Alright, God, if you really are real, then heal my eye." He went to bed, and waking up the next day, he could see out of both eyes. After heading to the mirror to check things out, he saw that the infection had completely disappeared. I still know this man: he's the boss of one of my high school friends.

If... Then

I have seen God work and move. I have heard stories first-hand of how God has miraculously interacted in people's lives. I have even myself had interactive, two-way conversations with the Lord of Lords (no, I am not schizophrenic). There is no shadow of a doubt in my mind that God exists, that Jesus' claims about Himself are real and true. By extension, then, since Jesus' claims about Himself ring true & other supporting claims that the Bible makes ring true again and again, I extend this verification of accurate claims on to those internal proclamations the Bible makes about itself as being inspired by God and useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting & training in righteousness. Do I do this with trepidation or hesitation? No. Why? Because of the massive wealth of external support for many aspects of Biblical claims. Would I hesitate to extend veracity to another text that claimed to be true, and which also had portions of itself that were verifiable? Yes, probably. Unless I had as much exposure to that text & as much experience with what it has said & how it interacts with the world as I have had with the Bible (going on over 22 years now), I would most likely be hesitant to assume that just because some parts of it are true, the rest can also be safely considered true by extension.

Even though the Bible doesn't seem fair at times, I must hold unswervingly to its correctness. God says that He's the same now as He was 3500 years ago, then I must hold that as truth. Why does He seem more silent & less active? Who knows... Perhaps it is due to a shift in perspective: The Bible records God's action in the Old Testament, for the most part, and not His inaction. Remember that the first 1656 years of recorded history in the book of Genesis are contained within chapters 2-6. Five chapters of the Bible span sixteen hundred years, and through that whole span, not much is said about what God did. The next three chapters cover 150 days--the same amount of textual space as the 800 years that preceded it! Why? Because God was doing something spectacular: He was purging the earth with water. As soon as the flood subsided, though, 500 years of history pass briskly in less than two chapters. Other fast-forwards in history occur rampantly throughout the Bible. Its recorded history highlights when God was active and skips over the times when He wasn't. And--as a general rule--people like Adam, Noah, Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Joshua, Gideon & the likes were the exceptions to the rule. Billions of people have traipsed the earth, and we have only a handful of examples where God worked amazingly in a few people's lives.

Does this mean that God is inactive in everyone else’s lives, though? By no means. Take, for example, Enoch. This guy knew God so well that he was one of two recorded individuals in the entire Biblical record who went to be with God without having first died. How much do we know about him and his 365 years of life, spent "walking with God"? Four verses. Four verses! A guy who was so in tune with God that the Lord took him away from earth before he died is given four verses. That guy must've been pretty special for us not to have been able to learn anything from his life. David, the man after God's own heart, is given almost a full textual book in the Old Testament, and his screw-ups are famous: killing one of his trusting friends in order to sleep with that man's wife. Yes, we can learn from David's life.

Therefore

So, what am I getting at? What is the moral of this story? I guess it's that the Bible becomes frustrating when it gets taken out of its historical & temporal context. I cannot verify one way or another that God is any less active now than He was 3,000 years ago. I do know, however, that He still does crazy shit, and that He does it a lot. Perhaps one of the reasons why we do not hear about as amazing things happening to people as what happened to the Patriarchs may be because it isn't communicated to us. Perhaps, it also has to do with a perceived decrease in the amount of faith/reliance on God today--even in those who believe--than those of millennia past. I'm not entirely sure. What I do know, however, is that it is impossible for God to lie, that He is faithful, and that He is just. Jesus says that He will be with us, even to the end of the age. However, He also asks, “When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?” "And He [Jesus] did not do many miracles there because of their unbelief."

Something to chew on, I guess.