[+/-] The Plan Bs

This parable really bothers me:

"For there was once a man who threw a great dinner party and invited many. When it was time for dinner, he sent out his servant to the invited guests, saying, 'Come on in; the food's on the table.'

"Then they all began to beg off, one after another making excuses. The first said, 'I bought a piece of property and need to look it over. Send my regrets.'

"Another said, 'I just bought five teams of oxen, and I really need to check them out. Send my regrets.'

"And yet another said, 'I just got married and need to get home to my wife.'

"The servant went back and told the master what had happened. He was outraged and told the servant, 'Quickly, get out into the city streets and alleys. Collect all who look like they need a square meal, all the misfits and homeless and wretched you can lay your hands on, and bring them here.'

"The servant reported back, 'Master, I did what you commanded - and there's still room.'

"The master said, 'Then go to the country roads. Whoever you find, drag them in. I want my house full! Let me tell you, not one of those originally invited is going to get so much as a bite at my dinner party.'"

- Luke 14:16-24 (Message)

For me this raises all kinds of questions: Is the banquet hall of God not big enough for everyone? Did God make a guest list of certain people he wanted at His table? Was this list made up of privileged people - the type who can buy property and oxen - and not "the misfits and homeless and wretched"? (This seems strange in light of what Jesus said immediately before.) Were religious Jews God's intended guests, and was the acceptance of sinners and Samaritans His plan B? (Paul seems to think so.) Did God have no interest in those who really need a good meal until His well-fed friends shunned him? Did He invite - or "drag in", another big theological issue - the poor and ragged out of kindness and love, or did He want to fill His table simply to thumb his nose at the wealthy no-shows? If there had been enough bums in the city streets, would He ever have sent his servant to those in the country? And what of those who were neither invited initially nor found in the servant's last-minute scramble?

On all these points the story seems dramatically at odds with our cherished beliefs and intuitions about God. I find it particularly hard to believe that the prostitutes and sinners Jesus so radically and graciously embraced are God's plan Bs, his second choices for salvation. On the other hand, such a view wouldn't be wholly at odds with scripture. What do you make of this?

I've struggled with the theology of Jesus' parables before (fleshed out here), and sometimes I wonder if I subject them to too much scrutiny. Maybe they're just crude, off-the-cuff stories meant to explain a basic point without concern for any of the peripheral details. Do you think the only conclusion we're meant to draw from this story is that God is gracious to ne'er-do-wells? Couldn't a story be told that illustrates this point without all the nasty and (hopefully) misleading details of this one?

Maybe the parable isn't about what we think it is. I know, for example, that "God's kingdom" doesn't always mean the place we go when we die, and that many Biblical statements that seem clear and straightforward to my ears are understood differently by many who are more knowledgeable than myself. And I'm sure there are many who can explain this difficult parable in the light of clearer passages, or, to be cynical, passages that more clearly corroborate our cherished dogmas. Perhaps the real lesson to be learned is that Jesus meant for his parables to confuse people.

[+/-] Phun with Philosophy!

I recently discovered The Philosopher's Magazine Online, which includes some very exciting (to me) "games". I recommend all except "Strange New World" and the interactive philosophy quiz. The games deal with some pretty relevant and interesting topics, such as God, ethics, and consistency, and I think they'd be fairly accessible for those without a background in philosophy, although I'm probably a bad judge of that. The activities may be particularly worthwhile for those who have a feeling that philosophy is so much horse poo*, those who just want an introduction to some of the big questions it addresses, and those who think they're right about everything. Check 'er out.

*I don't want to give the impression that none of philosophy (or what we call philosophy) is horse poo. In the words of Cicero, "There is nothing so absurd but some philosopher has said it." But a lot of it's hella good.

[+/-] A Pickle for the Literalists

The bulk of this post is an discussion of a chronological disagreement in Genesis, which may or may not interest you. You're welcome to go directly to the last paragraph if you wish - it's the part I really care about.

An interesting point was raised today in my Intro to World Religions class. We were looking at the two Creation accounts in Genesis (1:1-2:3 and 2:4-25) and my prof mentioned that the there are chronological differences between them. In the first version, animals are created after plants, then humans (male and female together) after animals. In the second version Adam seems to be created before at least some plants, then animals are created, then Eve. The disagreement seems most clear on the matter of whether the animals were created before or after Adam. The NIV tries to reconcile the two accounts by inserting a "had" into Gen 2:19 ("Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air") whereas most translations simply say "formed". The NIV's interpretation is not impossible - the original Hebrew verbs apparently didn't have tense - but consider the context:

The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him."

Now [or "so", "then", "and"] the LORD God [had?] formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field.

But for Adam no suitable helper was found. So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs and closed up the place with flesh. Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.

- Gen 2:18-22

To paraphrase, God notes that it isn't good for the man to be alone. The solution is to make for him a suitable partner. So either God now creates a variety of potential helpers for man and brings them before him, or God decides that before he creates Adam's helper, He'll task him with naming the thousands of birds and animals he's created so far. Which makes more sense to you?

Similarly, it is possible to understand Gen 2:5 to say that only those plants that require rain or human cultivation had not yet been created, or that they had been created as seeds but had not yet sprouted. But then it would seem that either Adam, who was in a garden full of fruit trees, spent a fair amount of time cultivating and watering crops, or after the fall, undaunted by thorns and toil, he decided to grow every kind of crop he could. Neither seems likely to me. Nor does it seem likely that God, after creating Adam, decided that he wanted him to live in a garden, and that the garden should be in a very specific location where no trees had been created, and accordingly hastened to make there a variety of trees that already existed in other areas. (The creation of a new garden at this point when the constituent trees existed elsewhere seems particularly unlikely if God is on a tight schedule, as I'll discuss in a moment.) More likely God created a garden out of new sorts of fruitful trees and crops now that man (and later animals) existed to nurture and consume them. Or more likely still, Gen 2:5-9 refers to the creation of all plants, which the other creation account places before the creation of man.

One further difficulty in harmonizing the two accounts occurs to me. Assuming that most who wish to do so will also affirm a literal 6 days of creation (which I find problematic for more reasons than I'll list here) it seems that the sixth day of creation in particular was a whirlwind of activity. God creates all land animals (1:24-25), forms Adam from dust (2:7), plants a garden and puts Adam in it (2:8-9), gives him instructions (2:15-17), notes that Adam is alone and needs a helper (2:18), and parades every living bird and beast before Adam to be named (2:19-20. A biologist might be able to guess at how many animals were named and how long it might take, but I can't see even a rush job - quite unlikely for an awestruck man seeing each creature for the first time and assessing it as a companion - taking less than a few hours). Then God puts Adam to sleep, removes a rib, forms a woman out of it, and presents her to Adam (Do you think Adam slept for only a few minutes?) who expresses his approval (2:21-23). Finally, God gives blessings and instructions to the pair (1:28-30). I don't know if it would be possible to do all of this in one day, but supposing it is, why would God be in such a hurry? Apparently because the whole of creation absolutely must be wrapped up before the seventh day in order to set an example for the Hebrews, and everything that wasn't done by the fifth must be crammed into the sixth. It seems to me that God would have planned that better.

My point in all of this is that we ought to recognize that the Bible is a very, very old document from a radically different culture. This is not to say that either or both of the creation accounts - or anything else in the Bible - is untrue (at least in the ways it was intended to be true) but such stories can hardly be expected to conform to our modern cultural and literary conventions. This means that things that might seem like distortions or tall tales to us likely didn't seem that way to the original readers. How else can you explain their acceptance of chronological disagreements both here and in the Gospels, Jude's allusions to myths, or sketchy fulfillments of prophecies in the Gospels, among other issues? Many Christians deal with all such "problem passages" by denying that they are out of tune with our modern expectations - a position which I believe to be not only indefensible but implausible and unnecessary. It seems clear to me that we should seek not to make the Bible conform to our modern expectations, but to understand it as it was meant to be understood. It is critical that we ask the question "how would the original readers have understood this text?" before we claim to understand it ourselves. And if we cannot say with certainty how the ancient Hebrew authors meant it to be understood (which happens far more often than we want it to), it is, frankly, foolish and dangerous to be dogmatic about our own understandings.

[+/-] A New Direction

Or What's Going Down in My Life, Part 2

I think my biggest reason for suspecting that Christianity is true is the experiences of other Christians. Of course a lot of us lead very average lives and experience nothing that cannot easily be explained naturalistically. However, I've heard several stories that are much more difficult to explain - fantastic coincidences, mysterious healings, answered prayers, etc. Taken together, they make me suspect that something supernatural occasionally interacts with the lives of Christians. I don't know why this might happen, why it happens in some cases and not others, or why it doesn't happen more, but it does seem to happen.

The fact that Christian faith tends to be based in no small part on first- or secondhand experiences brings to my mind the obvious question of why people of other religions believe what they do. Do they have similar experiences? If not, what reasons do they have for believing? If so, what does this say about the truth of their religious beliefs? Or ours? And why aren't more people asking these questions? (See WGDIML Part 1.)

I suppose the biggest reason most Christians are uninterested in the experiences of others is that most of us have firsthand experiences which we believe to be of divine origin, and they satisfy most of our curiosities about God. I, on the other hand, don't believe I've ever experienced anything overtly supernatural, despite earnestly seeking such experiences. Christianity has done nothing to satisfy my longings for relationship with the divine. Naturally, this causes me to be skeptical about many claims of Christianity that most others take for granted, and to wonder whether other religions can deliver what Christians have taught me to long for. It also makes me wonder if those who speak loudly about the faults and flaws of other religions are blinded by their positive experiences with their own, and whether we're not all more or less seeking the same things and experiencing the same things and condemning the same things in others. I wonder if I was cut out to be a Christian, whether my fear and laziness have kept me from something better, or whether I've simply had too high expectations of Christianity and God, or whether I would have found what I was looking for if I hadn't given up so soon.

There aren't many things I know, but I'm confidant of this: I need to take an honest look at other religions and their adherents. I need to interact with them and worship with them. Especially, I need to hear their stories. I must do this because I need to know what's out there. I need to know whether I can find what I seek outside of Christianity before I seek further inside it. There is an aspect of Christianity that rings true to me, but other aspects do not. I cannot progress as a seeker or as a Christian without looking seriously at my other options.

This whole thing is very exciting to me. I have a bit of a plan, but I'm really not sure what all I'm going to do or where it might lead me. (I have no predetermined destination.) I'm pretty sure that God wants me to do this (as sure as I've ever been about God's will) but I'm very aware that this whole exercise could be fruitless or even detrimental without his support and guidance. If you're the praying sort, please ask that He would direct my paths on this new journey. I'll keep you updated.

[+/-] Kind of Back

Camp is over. It was good - very good - but I'm excited to start school. I'm pretty much only taking awesome courses this year. Also, something else is happening this year that I'm quite excited about, but you'll have to wait for What's Going Down In My Life, Part 2 for that.

Speaking of which, I am trying to get back to writing again, but my blogging muscles have grown flabby it the last four months, and I'm having a hard time completing posts. But I'm working on it.

In the mean time here are some interesting things I've read recently while skimming through some of my four month backlog of Bloglines posts:

Seeker has some interesting thoughts about knowledge and beliefs here and here.

Bruce found an amusing website.

Jim linked to this very thought-provoking piece on sodomy.

And this trailer gives me chills. What I find remarkable is that it seems to neither praise nor condemn zealous Evangelicals. The movie could be awesome.