An advent meditation

It must have felt like hours, as she raged inside her tiny prison, the walls standing resolute against her screams, the door refusing to yield under a torrent of blows. The crawlspace at the base of her bed's headboard had seemed like a great place to hide, just the right size for a young girl to squeeze inside and escape detection. In the dark, however, as the minutes trickled by and no one came to find her, she had quickly changed her mind. When the door wouldn't budge, her uneasiness exploded into panic as she beat and kicked and roared against the darkness that confined her.

By the time my parents finally heard my sister's cries, they found a tear-stained, snotty mess with bloodied knuckles, who would carry the emotional scars of that ordeal the rest of her life.

There are, of course, a thousand beautiful pictures wrapped up in the Incarnation -- that God comes to his broken people, like a father stooping into the mud to scoop up a wounded child, for example -- but for me, the picture that really gives life to this season is tied to that memory of my sister.
  
Have you ever stopped to think how impossible it all seems? The great God of all the universe -- simultaneously present at all times and in all places, the foundation of all being, the source from which the whole material universe was derived -- squeezed, a raging torrent of life and power, within the confines of an infant's weak and helpless body? The immaterial and the material, Spirit and flesh, God and, yet, a little baby -- is there any greater contrast? Could any chasm seem more unbridgeable?

We always tend to think of the birth of Jesus as a peaceful, happy occasion, but there is violence there as well. A member of the trinity who had existed with the others in perfect harmony and self-fulfillment is stripped of this perfect existence and introduced to hunger and fear. He is wrenched away from those who know and love him perfectly and put in dependence on those who can never understand Him. In fact, later, we will find this Jesus, as a grown man, doubled over in a garden, agonizing under the burden of his mission as he weeps and sweats blood, pleading with his own alienated Deity for release.

Far more than the serenity of star light and wise men, far more than the sweet and smoky aromas of frankincense and myrrh, it is that image -- the image of Jesus struggling, just like my sister, within the bonds of his humanity -- to which I most relate.

Don't you?

How often do your hopes of what life could be -- of loving your spouses or children well, of being generous and kind and honorable, of using your time and your resources to be gracious and generous to others -- get trapped in the struggle what life actually is? How often does stress consume your gentleness? How often does obligation ensnare your generosity? How often does the daily agenda cripple your ability to love?

Aren't we all constantly at war against our claustrophobic lives?

Yet, here in this advent season, as we prepare our hearts to celebrate the Baby in the manger, we are met with the greatest truth of all:

He knows.

He knows what it means to hunger and to be tired and to go wanting. He knows what it means to ache for more in our relationships, to struggle under the demands of others. He knows the tyranny of time and expectation. He knows how stress and fear and obligation bind us and hold us back from our grand intentions.

He knows.

And we are not alone.

A brief narrative pt. 1

Perhaps the most central and most powerful way we have historically expressed the various truths of our lives and passed those truths down from one generation to the next is through narrative. Indeed, one of the most fundamental aspects of what it means to be human is to be a teller of stories. So, sometimes I wonder if the way we work through and share the truths we find in the scriptures (which are also heavily narrative-based) would be more fruitfully done through story rather than doctrinal lists or theological textbooks. What you see below is one attempt at doing just that.

I hope, through sharing this with you, and, subsequently, through your responses, that we can build a more dynamic (perhaps even more human?) conversation about these truths we hold so dear. 
(I would love for you to leave your thoughts/comments down in the comments section below!)

So, without further ado...

---

It wasn't the light of their lamps that had first caught his attention; it was the hate in their voices. A sea of faces -- contorted with murderous intent, breathing death into the still night air -- was winding its way toward them. In the midst of all that broken humanity, a face he recognized, though only as one recognizes a childhood friend. The broad outlines were the same, but there was also so much that was different, so much that seemed darker, heavier as he trudged his way up the hill.

How could one man change so much in the course of just a few days?

The boat rocked slightly in the breeze, drawing him back to the task at hand. At his feet lay piles of tattered, woven nets. Funny, how little they meant to him now. After three years, his hands had almost forgotten how to hold them.  

Almost.

His face went hot. Why wouldn't he fight for us? Why wouldn't he let us fight for him? They knew he was capable of far more than facing that ridiculous crowd would have required. Priests? They'd seen him do war with unspeakable things, seen those things shut their mouths at his command.

They would have followed him anywhere. They would have laid down their lives -- gladly! -- if only he'd been willing to ask. Instead, they all got to watch as he gave up, as he handed himself over to the mob -- worse -- to that monstrous traitor who'd sold him out.

Of course the trial was sham! Of course they would find any reason to be rid of him! What the hell did he think would happen?! Surely, he knew what he was up against. Surely, he knew the Warring Terror would tolerate no challenger, that he would be crushed under the imperial weight of the Power he'd opposed. 

Did he even care? All the people he'd leave behind, all those who would continue to suffer at the hands of wicked and violent men -- if there was ever a time to fight, to stand up for those who could not stand up for themselves, wouldn't that have been the time?!

To see him, hanging there...

His fingers dug into his palms as he spat his words into the void.

What a goddamn waste.

The winds shifted, threatening a storm -- as though he even needed much excuse to head in. Making his way toward the shore, he noticed a figure lingering at the water's edge.


Great. He thought to himself. What does this guy want?

Truth

There was a ritual I got to repeat with my daughter, every morning over the past summer. When she woke up, I would go into her room, scoop her up into my arms and ask, "Who is daddy's princess?" She'd wrap her arms around me, press her cheek into my shoulder, and answer, "I am," a smile in her voice.

There's just no way to explain what those moments meant to me -- I've tried. Every time I do, it feels like I'm standing in the entrance to some dark and unfamiliar room, groping for a light switch I'm sure must be there, but which always seems just out of reach.

There are experiences we have every day just like that. They are the core and color of our lives, yet they never seem to fit into the words we use to explain them. 

The truths of those experiences can only be seen out of the corner of the eye, only brushed with our fingertips before they slide back into the shadows. We try to speak about them, but we are always left with the feeling that what we say isn't exactly what we mean.

...which is why one of my favorite things to teach is poetry.

Poetry has this unique ability to draw us up into those truths, to create in us the ability to experience them rather than rely on others to describe them. The most potent expressions of our deepest emotions -- of love and hope, of fear and disillusionment -- have all come down to us through poetry.

And, of course, the Bible is absolutely full of poetry...

           ...and not just the parts we'd expect -- Psalms, Lamentations, Songs of Solomon, etc. -- but all throughout the text. When the prophets declare the "Word of the Lord," they do so often almost exclusively in poetry. The New Testament authors make a consistent practice of quoting poetry in the form of ancient hymns and creeds. In fact, after spending ten long chapters explaining, in meticulous detail, the depth and ubiquity of human sinfulness and the overwhelming expanse of God's grace in response, even the Apostle Paul, like a mad-man chasing an ever-receding horizon, abandons all his logic and well-reasoned arguments and loses himself in a stunning flourish of soaring verse:

Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! 

How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!

For who has known the mind of the Lord,

or who has been his counselor?

Or who has given a gift to him

that he might be repaid?

For from him and through him and to him are all things.

To him be the glory forever, Amen

The bible resounds with poetry. In fact, in the very first chapter of the very first book -- where God puts on full display the grandeur of his creation -- we find... poetry.

---

Perhaps you've considered this before. Perhaps, nothing about what I've said so far seems all that controversial. Perhaps you're right -- at least, until we think about the way we read poetry. Consider, for example, the first stanza of Maya Angelou's poem Alone:

Lying, thinking

Last night

How to find my soul a home

Where water is not thirsty

And bread loaf is not stone

I came up with one thing

And I don't believe I'm wrong

That nobody,

But nobody

Can make it out here alone. 

Clearly, the water she drank wasn't thirsty. Clearly, she wasn't eating bread that was made of stone. Yet, how ridiculous would it be if we went around calling Ms. Angelou a liar as a result! Her words communicate truth -- that plain, material nourishment isn't enough, that water and bread alone, without human support or community, do not - no - cannot satisfy -- without requiring that we take those words literally.

It may seem unspectacular at first but, when we really think about it, that aspect of poetry actually forces us to reconsider the overlap between things that are factual and those that true. 

 
Which brings us back to controversy. 

Instinctively, we know that to be the case -- that poetry speaks figuratively rather than factually -- and we make allowances for it when we are reading the works of Keats, or Ms. Angelou. Yet, whenever anyone suggests that might also be a way we need to read portions of the bible? Watch out.

Just look at what happened to prominent Christian musician, Michael Gungor, recently.

The funny thing is, as Dr. Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury (the leader of the entire Church of England), points out regarding the book of Genesis, for example:

 "[F]or most of the history of Christianity, and I think this is fair enough, most of the history of Christianity there's been an awareness that a belief that everything depends on the creative act of God is quite compatible with a degree of uncertainty or latitude about how precisely that unfolds in creative time."

Even C.S. Lewis believed that some portions of scripture should be read this way. In Meditations on the Psalms, he agonizes over a particular passage where the Psalmist declares of the Edomites:

"Blessed is the one who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rocks!" 

Unable to reconcile the utter brutality with the person and character of Christ, Lewis ultimately concludes that the passage is to be understood poetically, as a metaphor for the fervor of God's love for, and defensiveness of, his people as well as the depth of his anger against sin.

 

 Listen, the point here is not that we have to read Genesis the way Michael Gungor or Dr. Williams do, or that we have to read the Psalms the way that C.S. Lewis does.

The point is that the scriptures are often so much more dynamic and alive than we want them to be.

We all, like the well-adjusted modern folks we are, prefer to read the bible as a compendium of facts to be learned, like a history or theology textbook -- but the problem is it simply refuses to be read this way. The scriptures, and the Spirit who inspired them -- just like the poetry of which they make such liberal use -- continually escape the tidy theological boxes we make for them and instead beckon us to experience the truths they convey, to taste and see that the One to whom they bear witness is good.

Yes, the way we read the bible has an influence on the way we understand our God and ourselves; but our relationship with that God, rather than being perfectly defined by them, explodes the seams of the very scriptures that inspire it.

True relationships are marked, not by lists of static - unchanging - knowledge of one another, but by struggle, by wrestling and reasoning with one another -- things which God, himself, invites.

---

Can we be very clear about one thing? No one wanders from the faith because they fell down some slippery slope of scriptural misinterpretation.

The one who wanders away from Christ is the one who never knew him to begin with.

---

So, if the scriptures speak to those deeper parts of human existence that defy our attempts at explanation, if God Himself invites us -- like Abraham -- to question and wrestle with him as we would in any other relationship of any value, if we readily admit that there are those who are quite capable of saying "Lord, Lord" but who have never really known him...

Isn't it time we stop devouring those who are at different points in their struggle than we are?

Isn't it time we stop condemning those who explain the inexplicable a little differently than we do?

Isn't it time we stop defining ourselves by our lists rather than our loves?

"Whatsoever you have done for the least of these..."

One of the amazing things about the scriptures is the degree to which they speak with any kind of unified voice about anything. I mean, just think about it for a minute: even if we take the most conservative view of biblical authorship, we're still looking at sixty-six different books, composed by at least forty different authors -- perhaps quite a bit more, depending on how many different voices we think are behind the Psalms and Proverbs -- from very different regions of the Middle East, Asia Minor, and even Europe, over a period of thirteen hundred years.

Yet, each piece of scripture fits within the larger whole, like wildly unique instruments joining together in a symphony -- here a kettle drum, there a flute -- resonating within the musical architecture of the piece, becoming somehow greater than the sum of each individual part.

Without any perceptible, individual prompting, these authors (some of them writing during the same period of time and, thus, without any reference to each other's work) all speak in a harmony that defies explanation.

One piece of that music, one part of the harmony of the scriptures as a whole, is the way those authors speak to those the world values and those it does not.

If you pay attention to the rhythm of the Old Testament, it's easy to see this music emerge. It's there in the life of Abram, a man from Ur, who had moved with his family to another prosperous city in the sprawling Babylonian empire and, apparently, struck it rich. He was living the dream -- wealth, influence, a home in the city where he was assured of food and protection, while those outside the walls were left to fend for themselves -- and, in the midst of it all, he hears this call, this lingering, unavoidable call, to leave.

Not to some other city, mind you.

No, Abram gets the inescapable sense that he is to move from the center of his known world out to Canaan, the most rural, most backwoods place you could find. Just listen to how a Canaanite was described by the Babylonian city-folk:

A tent dweller buffeted by wind and rain, 

he knows not prayers,

With the weapon he makes the mountain his habitation,

Contentious to the excess, he turns against the land, 

knows not to bend the knee,

Eats uncooked meat,

Has no house in his lifetime,

Is not brought to burial when he dies.

Basically, they were considered to be little more than animals.

Yet, it was there -- out in the wilderness, out where there was none of the wealth or influence he had come to know, out where the rest of the civilized world was completely unaware of his existence -- it was there that Abram met God.

Or think about Moses, a prince of Egypt, at the height of its power -- the most dominant empire in the world at the time. Yet, in a lapse of control, he murders a man and is driven out of one of the most illustrious palaces the world has ever known into the desert. He takes refuge among a poor, nomadic tribe out in the middle of a vast and expansive nothingness. Laying down the staff of his royal authority, he takes up the staff of a shepherd, sleeping out in the open with his flocks, no roof over his head. He hides -- as far away from the horrors of his past as he can possibly get.

Then, one day, he wanders even further.

The Bible describes Mt. Sinai as being out beyond the wilderness, as if Moses arrived at the very end of the world and somehow managed to keep walking -- beyond the edge of the map, out where no foot had ever trod.

The location of Mt. Sinai is so far out of the way, so alien to the domain of men, that -- even though it was there that Israel actually became the people of God -- beyond one solitary trip from Elijah, it disappears from the lives of the Israelites, completely. 

Yet, it was there, in a place so remote we've actually forgotten how to get there, that Moses, the vagabond Egyptian outcast turned homeless fugitive, was found by God.

We might also think of Saul, the first Israelite king. It might sound shocking to say this, but he was actually a pretty great king, by contemporary standards. When the Israelites were more focused on their tribal, rather than their national identity, when the people of God threatened to dissolve into their own in-fighting as the armies of their enemies threatened to devour them, it was Saul who unified them. It was Saul who led his army, out numbered and terrified, against the mighty Philistines and emerged victorious. It was Saul who shrewdly captured the Amalekite king, knowing he'd be of more use alive -- for treaties or ransom -- than dead.

Yet, it was not a Saul that God ultimately wanted for his people, but a David.

We take for granted what an unlikely choice this David was. However, take a moment and let it sink in that, when faced with the prospect that a member of his own house might become king, with all the elevation of wealth and status that would bring -- even after all his other sons had failed the test -- Jesse found the idea that David could be king to be such a joke that he chose to lie and pretend David didn't even exist rather than present him to Samuel for consideration.

Yet, it was this weak and helpless boy -- who knew nothing of leadership or what it meant to be a king, whose own family hid him away in the fields -- it was this boy who captured God's heart.

Over and over and over, throughout the scriptures, God shows how deeply he identifies with what the rest of the world considers to be "the least of these." To us, on this side of history, they are men of great stature, heroes of the faith, but we really need to remember how ridiculous it was, for example, that the Sovereign Lord of all Creation would choose, as the Patriarch of the people who would represent him to all people, some dusty nomad in a small corner of the world, who (for the overwhelming majority of humanity) may as well have never even existed.

We need to remember how absurd it is that the God who intended to declare his glory to the nations would bypass the wealthiest and most powerful empire in the world -- in favor of its slaves.

And let's not forget: Abraham was a liar who traded his wife away to protect his own skin; Moses was a murderer and a coward; and David stole a man's wife and had him murdered on the battlefield.  The same Israelites who watched Pharaoh's men held at bay by a pillar of fire, who watched the waters part for them and swallow the entire Egyptian army, those very same Israelites yearned to return to their slavery before they ever reached the foot of Sinai.

When we fail to be shocked by the sheer worthlessness of the people God continually calls to fulfill his purposes, we cease to be able to understand passages, like the one in Matthew 25, where Jesus identifies so deeply with the "least of these" that he regards anything done for them as done equally for him.

In fact, we cease to be able to identify "the least of these" at all.

Instead, we trade the needy for the deserving. We exchange the dependent for the worthy.  In place of Jesus' plea that all who are burdened should come to him we hold that God helps those who help themselves. 
 
We excuse ourselves from our call to care -- for the hungry, the alienated, the naked, the homeless, the sick, the imprisoned -- by questioning how they arrived in their state of need (by their own poor choices?) or whether they'd even really benefit from the care we might provide.

We only fight for justice for those who we think are just. We only feed those who we think could eventually feed themselves. We only care for the sick (especially those who suffer from mental illness) who might eventually be healed. 

Of course, the question we have to ask ourselves is, "What if God treated us like that?" What if he only loved the lovely?



 

 What if he only saved those who were worth saving?

Finding God in Aronofsky's Noah

There is an image in the movie Noah that I can't seem to get out of my head. As Noah stands on the scorched earth, facing down the watchers, a stream - presumably a sign of God's blessing or presence - bubbles up and spreads across the land, bringing new life wherever it goes.

The tension between that scene and the impending chaos, between the water that gives life and the water that destroys it, is breathtaking. In fact, the more I think about it, the more it seems that it is explicitly that tension that stands at the center of the whole movie.

Only, the focus of the tension isn't really the water, but God.

In his interpretation of this ancient tale, Aronofsky gets at a question we have been asking ourselves for centuries:

Can God be trusted?

---

Can we be honest for a moment? The flood narrative is a horrifying story.

How we ever decided that the story of God wiping out all that life -- of Noah closing the door to the ark as family after family after family - men, women, and children - faced the surging waters and their inevitable, suffocating deaths -- how we decided that was a kid's story, worthy of wallpaper and bed-sheets, is beyond me.

We have largely numbed ourselves to this terror, but think about what you felt the last time you heard about some poor, unhinged mother drowning her children in the bathtub. Everything in our nature groans under such an atrocity because the idea that a mother, who should love and nourish and protect her child, would instead commit such violence, against her own flesh and blood, defiles our deepest sensibilities.


To pretend we don't shudder to think of God in the same light is to lie, at the very least, to ourselves, if not to others as well. 


So, how will we stand in the face of such a God?

---

One of the (many) beautiful things about Noah is that it allows us to explore the possibility of the other.

For example, Og, one of the watchers, explains that they came to Earth because they saw how Adam and Eve had been cast out of the garden and they pitied them. Isn't that the emotion we'd expect from God? Isn't that pity, that compassion, what we would expect to override His frustration or His anger?

Shouldn't pity have held the waters at bay?

Or, think about Tubal-Cain. What has he done, if not provide for those under his charge? When the cities' mines run dry and the people are starving, he leads the charge - note that: he doesn't sit back and command others forth, but he, himself, leads his men into battle - to secure for them the provisions they feel they need, even to the point of challenging the Watchers in order to gain a place for his people on the ark.

Isn't that loyalty and provision what we would expect from God?

It is uncomfortable to think in those ways. We want to dismiss the Watchers as rebels and Tubal-Cain as a barbarian, but Aronofsky just won't let us. Instead, he paints each with generous and compassionate strokes. We respect the Watchers, giving up everything to help someone else; we empathize with Tubal-Cain as he rails against Noah for closing his ark to the world and threatening the lives of his daughter-in-law and the children she carries in her womb.

---

Of course, some will say the answer to the horror of the flood is justice, the great rallying cry of our hero, Noah.

After all, while the Watchers had intended to show pity and to help man, what, exactly, had been the result of their aid? The wickedness of humanity was not chastened by our expulsion from the garden. Rather, through the help of Samyaza and his kin, that wickedness was able to grow and spread, finding fuller and more potent expression, until the darkness we embraced in the garden soon covered the whole of the Earth.

Or consider that, while Tubal-Cain intends to provide for his own, he accomplishes that end only through the destruction and exploitation of others and the world in which they live. More than that, the substance of what he provides, and manner in which he provides it, actually tear down the humanity of his own people, the very humanity he is seeking to preserve.

As Noah stands on the blood-soaked soil of the human encampment, watching men hand over their daughters to lustful soldiers in exchange for food, it's easy to see that the Watchers and Tubal-Cain were not the saviors we may have originally thought they were.

Perhaps those people really were beyond saving. Perhaps violence and hatred and greed are stains that just won't wash out.

However, the true crowning glory of Noah is that, even here, we find no solace. 

See, one of the ways we numb ourselves to this story is to imagine some great chasm of time and temperament between ourselves and those ravaged by the flood.

Like Noah's wife, we are well aware of the deplorable nature of those out there, but we know ourselves to be good. While they were envious and spiteful and proud, we are loyal and strong and loving. We know enough to realize we are not perfect, but surely the good in us out-weighs the bad.

Aronofsky's Noah robs us of that conceit.

The great realization that Noah makes, as he stands in the camp of the descendants of Cain, is not just how bad they are. The realization he makes is that whatever wickedness he sees in them dwells also in him.

 ---

There are many people who struggle with the dark turn that Noah takes as it becomes clear that Ila, Shem's wife, is pregnant.

For those who grew up with the story of Noah building his "arkie," it seems so drastically out of character for this supposedly righteous man to transform so suddenly into a murderous, raving lunatic.

However, if justice really is the answer we want it to be, can we really say that Noah's determination to cut down his grand-daughters is all that inconsistent?

If the pervasive wickedness of humanity is beyond saving and if that wickedness is universal - meaning, no one escapes its presence, regardless of the degree to which they act on it - by what right should any of Noah's family survive, much less grand-daughters who, as mothers some day, could perpetuate the evil the flood was meant to wipe out?

Can we really argue with Noah when he claims that that would mean the destruction of all that life would have been for nothing?

The fact that we recoil at the image of this knife-wielding Noah, shows that justice is no more an escape from a flood-sending God than anything the Watchers or Tubal-Cain had to offer.

---

It turns out, then, that in the course of his film Aronofsky has offered us three possible replacements for God:

To those who believe God should have been more merciful, that His pity should have stayed his hand, he offers us the Watchers.

To those who believe that God should have done more to provide for His people, that their wickedness is due to some lack in this regard, he offers us Tubal-Cain and his subjects.

To those who believe the flood narrative is an example of justice, that the only right course of action was for God to wipe out all those wicked people, he offers us Noah holding a knife over his grand-daughters (and, consequently, ourselves).

Which brings me back to that image I brought up at the beginning of this post -- the water. 

The "replacement gods" were all capable of producing horrors of their own, but only God, like the water, is capable of producing beauty in the midst of all the horror. Only God is capable of bringing life out of so much death.

Just as a drop of water from the sky was the first sign of the death of all things, it was a drop of water from the sky that restored the flower picked by Ham, bringing new life.

By the end of Noah, we may not find the horrors of this ancient tale any easier to bear. The fact that, upon finding dry land, Noah immediately drinks himself into a stupor, bears witness to that fact.

After it all, we remain at the mercy of the flood-sending God.

However, given that He, and He alone, is capable of turning terror into beauty, of bringing life out of death, perhaps at His mercy was the best place for us all along.

Doubt

They come without warning, these twinges of doubt, these moments where the possibility that I am a fool, in the company of fools, flickers to the surface of my consciousness and steals my breath away.

The last one came last Sunday, sitting in church, as our pastor spoke of the immensity of the universe.

300 billion stars in our galaxy alone...

The largest galaxy we're aware of is more than 1 billion light years across...

As he spoke, I found myself wondering, "The 'Creator' squeezed himself into a tiny speck on some other random tiny speck in the midst of all that?"

Are we kidding ourselves...?

In the past, those waves of doubt would crest into self-condemnation and guilt, followed either by arguing myself into silence or summoning up all kinds of things to do in order to (a) atone for the doubt itself or (b) try to insulate myself against its recurrence. 

This time, however, as I sat there, twirling that little plastic cup of juice in my hands, my mind was suddenly flooded with instance after instance where the people whose stories fill our scriptures must have felt themselves trapped in this same... absurdity... and it occurred to me: 

What if that's the point?

~-@-~

It must have seemed so ridiculous, as she stood in front of that tree -- a tree -- and turned God's words over in her mind. It didn't look any different than any other tree in the garden, it's fruit the same as their fruit, and yet, out of all the others, this one had been singled out as the one to avoid. 

Didn't God make that tree? Wasn't it good like everything else he'd made? If it was so dangerous, why put it here? Are we not good enough?  Is there something he's keeping from us?

Am I being played for a fool?

Isn't that the essence of the serpent's temptation? We give Eve a hard time, but don't we resonate with that fear?

Or what about Abraham, father Abraham, tying one strap and then another, binding his son to a pile of wood?

Do we really believe, through it all -- as his son asked where they'll find a lamb for the sacrifice, as he felt the weight of the dagger beating against his hip while they hiked the mountain, as he uttered the terrible command for Isaac, his Isaac, to lie down -- is it even possible he never had a moment where he asked himself, "What the hell am I doing?"

~-@-~

"No, daddy, I can't!" my son shouted at me from the edge of the pool last summer, as I pleaded with him to jump to me. Teeth clenched, visibly shaking from a mixture of cold and fear, he stomped his resolve on the concrete.

In that moment, as a dad, I knew I couldn't give in, but not because it was of life and death importance that he should be able to jump into a pool, not even because of some belief that he should obey. 

Rather, it was important that he jump because it was an opportunity for my son to learn to trust. 

We have moments like this all the time. The other day, I asked him to put down a toy, in close proximity to his sister, so he could come and take some medicine and the protest came fast and furious, "But, but, but, if I put it down, she'll take it!"

Trust me, son. I will make sure she doesn't.

He's learning to swim now, and a couple of weeks ago I asked him to swim from me to a set of stairs almost the full width of the pool away. Terrified, he wrapped himself around me and begged to move closer. As I reasoned with him, I remember pulling him away from my neck, far enough to make eye-contact, and asking:

"Have I ever done anything to hurt you, buddy? Do you think I would ever let anything happen to you?"

Growing up, the only way I knew how to define the word faith was "believing in God." As a father, I have learned that faith -- real faith -- means believing that he's good, that he has my best in mind, even when he asks things of me that are uncomfortable or impossible to understand.

The thing is, the only way to know that goodness is to experience it, to put it to the test, to stand open and vulnerable upon the promise of goodness and then find out whether things are, in fact, as advertised. 

The only way my son can know, truly know, that I will catch him is to leap -- to leap out into water that would surely mean his death without me -- and find out. 

In the same way, the only way for me to know -- truly know -- that God is good, is to stand in the midst of this absurdity and lean in to that promise, to taste and see, as it were. 

And let's be clear here: the danger is just as real for me as it is for my son.

The depth of the demand that Christ puts upon my life (namely, all of it) will not allow for Pascal's famous wager (that is, that it is better to believe and find there is no god, than to refuse and find that he exists). Rather, we must, with Paul, admit that, if we've missed our guess -- if god either is not good, or simply doesn't exist -- then we of all people "are to be most pitied" (1 Cor 15).

~-@-~

As I sat in church last Sunday, caught up in the absurdity that an infinite God would care even one tiny bit about a miniscule speck awash in this vast and incalculable expanse we call the universe, I suddenly realized I was simply rehearsing the struggle that echoes through all of scripture:

 You want me to leave my home and successful life in a vibrant city and move to Canaan, the most backwoods area of this region?

Trust me, I am good.

 

You want me to try to break down these vast and impenetrable walls... by playing music?

Trust me, I am good.

You want me to go, by myself, to proclaim your judgement on a nation known throughout the world for its brutality and ruthlessness?

Trust me, I am good.

You want us to live in rubble so we can haphazardly rebuild a wall while all our enemies are threatening to destroy us? 

Trust me, I am good.

You want me to be pregnant but not with the child of the man who will be my husband?

Trust me, I am good.

 

In my own doubts, in those moments where I feel myself at the edge of the water, so to speak, afraid and unsure, the story of my own life resonates with those who have gone before me, and I am given the same terrifying but ultimately glorious opportunity as they:

Trust me, I am good.

Without the doubt, without the absurdity, would that even be possible?

We have no king but Caesar

When the fledgling city of Rome was founded (traditionally, in 753 B.C.), it didn't have a whole lot going for it. In fact, according to tradition, in order to build a population large enough to sustain the city and protect it from intruders, the first king, Romulus, threw open its gates to all homeless and wandering riff raff, most of whom had already been kicked out of their previous cities. In that vein, Romulus is also credited with devising a fairly elaborate hoax in order to abduct the women (also quite lacking in early Rome) of a neighboring tribe and make them their own.

Over the next 500 years, however, that small, insignificant city would grow into one of the largest and most dominant empires the world has ever known.

The Romans accomplished this through a program of constant conquest and warfare, first taking over their own Italian Peninsula and then turning their sights on the dominant powers of their time, the Carthaginians (think: Attila the Hun) and the Macedonians (from whom had come Alexander the Great).

To illustrate this point, the historian, Livy, tells us that the second king of Rome, Numa Pompilius, had a temple built in honor of the god Janus (the god of hospitality), and instructed that, whenever Rome was at peace, the doors to the temple would be open, but, when she was at war, they were to remain closed at all times.

Want to know how many times the doors to that temple were open, from the time it was built (around 700 B.C.) until the time Livy wrote about it (around 30 B.C.) - a span of almost seven hundred years?   

Twice. 

Warfare was considered a Roman virtue, and victorious generals were welcomed home with lavish and extravagant parades, called Triumphs, in which they marched their men and all the spoils of their conquest through the city of Rome, to the loud and incessant cheers of her people. 

However, in all that time of bloodshed and expansion, never once had the Romans turned their weapons on themselves. For example, when the lower classes demanded more rights and protections against unfair treatment by the ruling class, they didn't do so through violent revolution (á la France or America of the late 1700's). Rather, they packed up their stuff en masse, and moved out, until the ruling class realized they needed them and granted the protections and representation they desired.

Yet, as the military evolved along with the empire, that was not to last.

Initially, being a member of the Roman army was a sure sign that you were a member of the aristocracy. Armor and weapons were very expensive and only the wealthy had the ability to leave their estates and occupations in order to fight, which put warfare firmly outside the reach of the working class.

But who wants to spend all their time fighting, when being born in the ruling class affords the promise of wealth and ease at home?

Soon, the upper class citizens figured out they could pay members of the lower class to go to war on their behalf and the face of the Roman army changed completely. Early on, when they were all of the same social class, generals may have exercised authority over their soldiers on the battlefield, but the loyalty of the men was to their land, to Rome, and not especially to the generals who led them.

However, once the army was composed of the lower classes, who owned very little if any land at all, its loyalties began to change. 

At first, the Capitol provided a wage for these lower class men who served in the military, but, over time, in order bolster their commitment, the generals began to supplement that wage with money and land until, eventually, some took over sole responsibility for providing for their men.

As a result of that shift, aspiring generals could travel the countryside enlisting men by promising them wealth and prosperity, and what they acquired were legions who were loyal to them and not explicitly to Rome.

The first general to realize the power that came with that shift was Lucius Cornelius Sulla.

Outmaneuvered and shamed by a political rival, Sulla became the first man in the history of the empire to march his army on the city of Rome, itself. Having rounded up and either executed or expelled the supporters of his rival, Sulla believed he had secured his position within Rome and that life would return to normal. Instead, it seems, he merely initiated what would be almost a full century of rival generals and civil war.

First, Sulla's rival, Marius, who'd somehow managed to escape, rounded up an army of his own and marched on Rome while Sulla and his men were off fighting the Macedonians.

Then, when Sulla returned, he again marched on the city (this time, Marius had actually died of old age, even before Sulla came back).

After Sulla died, a man named Pompey used the support of his own men to secure his place as leader of Rome.

Yet, he was soon unseated by someone (about whom you may have heard), named Julius Caesar. Caesar looked to be, perhaps, the first man able to hold on to the power he had secured, but, unfortunately, as we know, it was not to be.

Caesar's assassination touched off a struggle between three other generals: Caesar's protege in the senate, Brutus (of the famed et tu, Brute?); Caesar's favored military commander, Antony; and a young man who was Caesar's great nephew (but was adopted as Caesar's son, in his will), Octavius.

When the dust finally settled, and after he had marched his own army into Rome, it was Octavius who emerged the victor.

While the war still raged, out of its distaste for Antony, and in order to curry favor with Octavius, the Senate (almost entirely powerless at this point) had voted to declare Julius Caesar a god (around 42 B.C.). As a result, Octavius had taken up the title divi filius, "son of god," and now he set about establishing a rule that would be reflective of that title.

He twice amended the Roman constitution in order to secure ultimate political and military control of Rome; when the pontifex maximus, or "chief priest," died in 12 B.C., he simply took the title for himself, making him supreme over all aspects of Roman life; and finally, in the year 2 B.C., he had himself declared pater patriae, or "father" of the whole empire.

~-@-~

Now, imagine you are a man or woman from a dusty corner of the Roman Empire called Judea, part of a province called Palestine that was won from the Parthians by a Roman general named Pompey, around the same time that Julius Caesar was starting to make a name for himself in Roman politics.

You are standing along a road that leads to Jerusalem with countless others waving palm branches and cheering loudly and incessantly as in rides a man named Jesus, in what many refer to later as his triumphal entry. 

This Jesus is wildly popular and has been traveling all around the countryside, gathering supporters by talking about a kingdom and storing up treasures. He's being called the son of God, and is claiming to be the true heir of the Father.

You may not be particularly educated, but you've heard stories of Rome, stories of victorious generals and extravagant processions, stories of armies being led into the city, of the declaration of one new ruler after another. More recently, you know the story of Augustus, once called Octavius, who took control of the entire known world. In fact, your current Hebrew leader, Herod Agrippa, was raised in Rome and is named after Augustus' best friend and most accomplished general.

Standing there, waving your palm branch and shouting,

  

"Hosanna...

 (which means "save us!", a Hebrew plea for salvation brought by the Messiah*)

...to the Son of David!"

 (the ideal Jewish king)

what exactly are you expecting of this Jesus?

When we talk about Jesus' ministry, we often give a nod to the messianic expectations he had to face -- that the Israelites were expecting one kind of king, but that Jesus came to be a very different kind of king -- but that's usually the extent of it.

The problem with that kind of cursory glance, however, is that so much of Jesus' life, in the Gospel accounts, directly engages this Roman world view. 

Think, for example, of the temptations he faces in the wilderness:

And the tempter came and said to him, "If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread."

What had the Roman generals used to woo men into their service? Provisions -- wealth and land.

What is Jesus being tempted to create? Provisions.

Feed the people, and they will follow you. 

Then the devil took him to the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, "If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, 'He will command his angels concerning you,' and 'On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.'"

How had these generals become so popular amongst the people? Spectacle -- through their extravagant triumphs and other celebrations, they ensnared the imagination of the mob and won their affections.

What is Jesus being tempted to perform? Spectacle.

Amaze the people, and they will follow you.

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to him, "All these I will give to you, if you will fall down and worship me."

What was the desire of each and every one of the Roman generals who set their sights on the city of Rome? Worldly dominion -- to have control of an ever-expanding empire that already contained within its borders all of the lands of the greatest kingdoms of Western history (Egypt, Greece, Mesopotamia, etc.).

What is Jesus being tempted to seize? Worldly dominion.

Worship me, and I will give you the greatest kingdom the world has ever known.

And it's important to note that, while Jesus begins his ministry with an explicit denial of the Roman pursuit of power, he also ends his ministry before Pilate, a personal representative of that power.

In one of the more soul-troubling passages of all the Scriptures, Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of the region, looking for any way to avoid the crucifixion for which the crowds are screaming, parades Jesus out in front of them and, exasperated, asks:  

Isn't this your king? Do you really want me to crucify your king?

The response from the chief priests, the supreme religious leaders of all of Judea, is appalling:

We have no king but Caesar.

We cannot miss this. We must not miss this. The premier antagonists of Jesus' Earthly ministry, the group that stood at the apex of those who opposed him, the men who led the charge in his arrest and eventual crucifixion, these men - in their final act of defiance - end their conflict with Jesus by proclaiming their allegiance not to YHWH but to Rome.

~-@-~

We cannot escape being faced with the same question that confronted every member of the crowd that day.

Do we pursue power and dominion in the same way that the Romans did? Through provision, as simple as looking out for the needs and desires of those around us, and spectacle, being likeable and entertaining, do we attempt to control our world and our surroundings?

What about our churches? Do we attempt to "win people for Jesus" by pursuing the very methods He so strenuously rejected?

Things get even more difficult when we try to figure out the modern corollary for Rome.

As Americans can we really escape the sharp focus of Scripture in this regard?

When we, as Christians, write venomous screeds against those with whom we disagree, when we go on television and shout and scream and give in to the spectacle, when we align ourselves with and seek to wield the power of the ruling class -- even toward ends we think are just and righteous...

...are we pursuing Jesus? 

Or, are we pursuing the power of Rome?

____________________________
* See, for example: Psalm 118:25-27)

"Memory believes before knowing remembers..."

It is hard to overstate the importance of William Faulkner (who is responsible for the quote in the title) within the reemergence of (post Civil War) Southern literature and culture.

Though formally declared part of the Union after its defeat, the question of the South's "reintegration" lingered through decades of political and social wrangling. In fact, the first president ever impeached by congress, Andrew Johnson, endured that fate as a result of that precise question (he vetoed a constitutional amendment put forth by Northern congressmen - without any Southern representation - that would have dissolved the Southern states and reorganized them in five separate districts under the rule of martial law).

Of course, it's easy to understand why that was the case.

The South had been ravaged by the Civil War. Its economy, built so heavily upon an enslaved work force, was in shambles; its communities, pillaged and burned by General Sherman's Total War (as he made his way, state by state, from the Mississippi to the Atlantic); and its people, defeated and demoralized by the victory claimed by the North.

In almost all quarters, reconstruction and reintegration were just as much a question for the South as they were for the North. In fact, much of the literature that emerged from the South, shortly after this "war of Northern aggression", focused on the "Lost Cause" of the Confederacy, romanticizing the South as noble and chivalrous, whose superior military prowess was simply overwhelmed by the North's numerical and industrial advantage.

It is, of course, with no small irony that the South envisioned itself in the roll of the noble savage, its agrarian culture making it closer to the land than the modernized and greedy North who, by superior technical and industrial advances - but without heart or soul - was able to overcome and subjugate the South to its will. Yet, that narrative persisted into the early years of the 20th century.

However, with time (and distance from the conflict), came a fledgling critical spirit.

In the 1880's, men like George Washington Cable and Mark Twain began to criticize the racism of the South and mock its supposed chivalry; a decade later, Southern journalists began to question the intellectual mediocrity of their leaders; and, by 1903, an academic, at (what would become) Duke University, was calling Booker T. Washington "the greatest man, save General Lee, born in the South in a hundred years."

Yet, the problem with the critics and the romantics is that they only perpetuate conflict, each digging out their own particular trenches from which to attack the other.

So, it wasn't until the 1920's and 30's, through the writing of Faulkner and his peers -- members of the "Southern Renaissance" --  that the foundations were laid for the South's reemergence as a contributing and respected part of America as a whole.

Faulkner achieved that end through neither criticism nor romanticism but through inviting his fellow Southerners to remember.

See, both the Romantics and the Critics, avoided (honest) memory in some way. The Romantics could not admit anything worth criticizing, while the critics could not admit anything worth praising.

But, memories are not so neat and tidy. Memories are personal and as such are neither easily white-washed nor condemned. Through our memories we face equally those things of which we are proud and those of which we are ashamed.

For example: on the one hand, Faulkner's novels -- told in his distinctive style, as the stream-of-consciousness memories of his characters -- ring with the sensibility and culture of the Southern gentry and add to them an almost Gothic weight. His characters speak not as outsiders, by choice or birth, but as members of the South who find neither artifice nor superficiality, but deep reservoirs of communal identity in their individual experiences. However, on the other hand, they are also not blind to the horrors of slavery, to the dehumanizing aspects of owning people and treating them as commodities.

Thus, in Go Down, Moses, a series of stories told as an old man's recollections about the events and people that shaped his life, the memories we are shown both celebrate the Southern community's historic connection to the land (as displayed through ritualistic hunts), and stagger at its prejudice (when the old man remembers a letter between his uncles, which finds them unwilling to admit a slave could be capable of the broad and abstract thought that leads to suicide). In fact, the old man, himself, displays this dual nature, as he ultimately rejects his inherited plantation (lest he perpetuate the cycle of abuse) but then objects to the marriage of a white man and a former slave (lest it violate the social and cultural norms of his time).

Through the use of memories, Faulkner was able bypass the defensive stance of his Southern peers, to invite them into his stories, and evoke their own memories, which were much more nuanced than either the romantics or the critics were willing to accept. As a result, he and the other members of the Southern Renaissance were able to build bridges for the South to emerge from the darkness of their heritage of slavery without being forced to abandon the light of their agrarian and communal identity.

-~@~-

It should probably not surprise us, that the Bible -- which is equally concerned with building bridges out of darkness while reclaiming light -- would also be written not as list of critiques or romantic ideals, but as a history, the collective memory of a people, about the events and the People (YHWH / Jesus / Holy Spirit) that shaped their identity.

Indeed, the Scriptures positively resound with both the command to and the act of remembering.

When God reveals himself to his people, he often does so in ways that appeal to memory: 

"I am the God of your fathers... 

...of Abraham... 

...of Isaac... 

...of Jacob"

"I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt"

"Before Abraham was, I am"

Whenever God encourages his people to obey, He does so on the basis of their memory: 

"Remember my commands"

"Remember how I fed you in the wilderness"

"Remember how I brought you out of Egypt"

"Remember the result of your Fathers' disobedience"

And, as with Faulkner, this is an earnest history that portrays both the good and the bad.

The same Noah who built the Ark, finds his way into a naked, drunken stupor when the waters recede.

The same Moses who led the Israelites to freedom, began his adult life with the murder of an Egyptian guard.

The same David who defeated Goliath as a display of the faithfulness of YHWH, the archetypal Israelite king, steals a man's wife and has that man murdered on the battlefield.

The same Paul who spent his life carrying the good news of the gospel from Jerusalem to Rome, not only participated in the arrest of believers but approved of their stoning.

In this sense, when we interact with the world in terms that are purely romantic (become a Christian and everything will be amazing!) or critical (you must abandon everything you know about yourself and your life, because it's all wrong!) we are actually acting in a way that is unbiblical.

However, when we remember, when we deal honestly with both our failures and that which is valuable from our past - even before we were believers - we invite others into our story (in the same way that Faulkner invited his fellow Southerners into his stories), and build bridges for them to emerge from their own darkness while also avoiding the insistence that they had no light to begin with.

And maybe -- through our willingness to accept that there is light out there, outside our own particular tradition, that the imago Dei is not exclusive to those with whom we agree -- just maybe we might be humbled and realize we are still in need of our own bridges out of our own darkness.

Isn't that the point of all this, anyway?

Mytho... what??

Mythopoeic (adj.) /mith-oh-pee-ic/ - Of or pertaining to the creation of myths. 


Now, I'd wager, for most -- if I asked, "What is myth?" -- your response would follow closely with the modern sense of "fake stories about fake beings composed by primitive societies to explain natural phenomena (like lightning, or earthquakes, or why turtles have shells, etc.)."

The problem with our modern definition, however, is that it doesn't actually have a whole lot to do with the original meaning of the word. 

In his classic work, Poetics (written around the middle-to-late 4th century, B.C.), Aristotle uses the term mythos (from which we get our term "myth"), in his discussion of tragedy, to refer to "plot."

That might not seem very consequential, but, for Aristotle, the plot was the beating heart of a good tragedy, more so than its characters, style, or even its theme or moral. The plot was the vehicle that drew you in to the world of the tragedy and allowed you to experience the action and crises as if they were your own.

See, for Aristotle, tragic plays were not merely an expression of culture or high society (the way we tend to think about art or the theater, today). Rather, good tragedies, like the kind written by Sophocles, for example, were crucial in that they cleansed society of the pernicious emotions of pity and fear.

Insofar as we might feel pity for Oedipus, as he unknowingly stumbles into the grotesque situation of having killed his father and married his mother, or fear, as he gradually works his way toward the truth, we are then freed from feeling those emotions for ourselves.

Given that self-pity and fear are thoroughly destructive of the cooperative living necessary within any stable society, going to the theater to see one of these tragedies was not simply entertainment but an exercise in strengthening the community.

However, not just any tragedy, with any plot, will do.

For the plot -- the myth of the play -- to function as it ought, there had to be a degree of realism, a sense that, given the appropriate circumstances, the action of the play could have actually happened as depicted.

We've all seen movies where the characters say or do things that leave you thinking, "what??"

They do something that seems so contrary to what any normal, rational person would do, or they say something - with a straight face - that seems so cartoonish or ridiculous, that it jolts you out of the experience of the movie and leaves you feeling bored or frustrated.

(Side note -- The best of them, in the ironic sense of that phrase, used to end up being ridiculed at the hands of the folks over at Mystery Science Theater 3000 -- man, I miss that show!)

For a plot to be good, on the other hand, to be one that draws us in and maybe even effects some change in us, it must be decidedly human. 

Good plots present us with situations and experiences that speak to the deeper realities of who we are as people, of the emotions we feel, the causes with which we align, the broad narrative of what it means to be human in our particular context. 

Even fantasy films abide by, what we might call, this rule of good story-telling.

What is Avatar if not a reworking of the basic themes of Pocahontas - the inner tension we all feel between our greed and our compassion or empathy for others? (Not sure you feel that tension? Let someone ask to borrow your car for a few days and tell me what you feel.)

Or, consider that the whole Zombie genre began as someone's musings on the consumer culture of the modern, industrialized world. Don't we all mindlessly and insatiably consume things in the same way that zombies supposedly consume people? Don't we all tend to react to those who have somehow avoided our materialistic plague with the same irrational anger and desire to destroy?

- - -

What made the ancient myths so powerful was not that people were somehow dumber or more naïve back then (consider that the Greek philospher, Democritus, proposed the existence of the atom almost 2000 years before we had the technology to observe one). Rather, what made them powerful was that they identified and articulated some fundamental aspect of human experience.

For example, why does Kronos swallow up all of his children (except for Zeus, in whose place he mistakenly swallows a boulder in swaddling clothes)? Why does Ra - in Egyptian mythology - curse his consort, Nut, so that she cannot have a child on any day of the year? Why does Apsu - in Sumerian mythology - decide to destroy all his children for making too much noise?

 

Because in Patriarchal societies, where your well-being is tied to the land you own, at some point every man must go from being the head of the household to simply an old man we allow to live here.

All men lived within the tension that their children were simultaneously their legacy (what they would leave behind of themselves, the continuation of their name) and their undoing (the ones who would ultimately replace them and seize their authority for themselves).

Is it any wonder, then, that their myths overflow with this tension?

And, really, can't we still relate to this? Doesn't anyone in any position of authority still feel this tension? Think about the leaders within movements and organizations who were ultimately replaced by their prodigies.

Et tu, Brute?

Has there ever been a generation that was not simultaneously criticized by the ones that preceded it and critical of the ones that followed?

When we relegate these old myths to the realm of the primitive, to the silly things our ancestors told themselves to explain the weather, we rob ourselves of the ability to consider our place within the continual struggle between one generation and the next, and to think about our own feelings and actions that maybe even perpetuate that struggle.

- - -

The interesting thing is that the Bible doesn't ignore these myths, it simply re-purposes and reorients them around YHWH.

For example, in the Enuma Elish, the Babylonian creation myth, the first two beings to exist - before anything else is created - are the primordial water gods. Apsu represents the fresh water and Tiamat represents the salt water. They give birth to the gods who then go on to create all other things.

In Egyptian mythology, the first being to exist is the great expanse of water called Nu. He brings into existence Ra, who initially hovers, like a golden egg, over the water god, and then speaks all things into existence.

Now, consider the opening verses of Genesis:

It was in the beginning that God created the heavens and the earth,

And the earth was formless and void,

And the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters,

And God said, "Let there be light"

  

The similarities are pretty obvious, but what is truly striking are the differences. Notice how clear it is, for instance, that God is the initiator and he is not derived from any other source. In the Babylonian and Egyptian myths, it is the waters that begin this process, they birth the other gods who then go on to form the rest of creation. In Genesis, these waters lack any of the personal dignity or creative force we see in the other narratives. They do not act. They have no names. They are simply tohu v'bohu, "without form and empty."

 

And those aren't the only parallels..

In the Enuma, after Apsu and Tiamat create a new generation of gods, those younger gods fly around and make a lot of racket. The noise gets so bad, that Apsu decides he's had enough and is actually going to kill his children in order to get a little peace and quiet (I mean, seriously, if you have small children, can't you relate to this feeling just a little?). 

One of those gods, Ea, the sky god, learns of Apsu's intention and hatches a plan, which he then successfully executes (mind the pun), to kill Apsu instead. Out of Apsu's body, Ea creates a domain for himself and the other gods (what we might call heaven). 

Tiamat, the other water god, learns of this and decides to carry out her husband Apsu's initial plan as vengeance, at which point Ea gives birth to another sky god, stronger than himself, Marduk, whose greatest weapon is the flood-storm. Marduk proves his power by speaking and making a constellation disappear and then speaking and making it reappear, and then goes off and defeats Tiamat. Out of her body, Marduk creates the earth, and on that earth he creates a great shining city, in honor of his conquest and supremacy, where the gods rule and are served by the humans that Marduk also created from the blood of one of Tiamat's consorts. That city is named, Babylon.

Now, remember that line from the opening verses of Genesis:

"And the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters" -- as in, where the sky would be? 

If you are someone living in ancient Mesopotamia, with the Enuma as your cultural background, and you hear those lines, your expectations are pretty clear: there is about to be a fight.

And that's what makes what follows so shocking. 

The creation of the heavens and the earth are not the product of patricide and bloodshed (the Enuma describes Marduk splitting Tiamat like a shellfish in order to create the sky and the land!), but of the peaceful and orderly intention of a God whose creation can all be described as "good". 

Nor are there a host of intermediary gods between the Creator and his creation. The Bible, for example, calls the sun simply "the greater light," conspicuously avoiding the hebrew word for sun (shemesh) lest it be confused for the Babylonian sun god (shamash).

Notice also, the placement of violence: In the Enuma the gods themselves are violent, territorial, and usurping (thus giving tacit justification for men to act the same way). On the other hand, in Genesis, violence only comes as a result of the fall and is therefore rooted in our brokenness and not the divine nature (thus offering a critique against men acting this way).

However, these parallels really come home when we consider what the Bible has to say about Babylon.

Just before the narrative of Genesis really picks up with the story of Abram (later, Abraham), we have a very short and intriguing vignette, as it were, about a misguided construction project. 

Remember what the Enuma taught about Babylon -- it was the creation of the supreme god, Marduk, in honor of his conquest and supremacy. It was the first and greatest city on earth, meant to be ruled by the gods and inhabited by the humans created to serve them.

Genesis, on the other hand, tells us that a large group of men gathered together in a single place named Babel - which sounds an awful lot like Babylon (wink, wink) - where they (not the gods) built a very large tower, not out of pride but out of fear, lest others attack and scatter them. 

And, if we weren't quite picking up on all the hints here...

The bible immediately shifts to the story of Abram, who lives in Ur, which just happens to be one of the crowning cities of the empire of Babylon, AND it just so happens that Abram's first recorded act of faith is to leave.

- - -

The argument that some have attached to the parallels between Genesis and the mythic literature of people from around the same time that discredits the Genesis account as simply borrowed from its larger cultural environment is, as we have seen, demonstrably false. The Bible does not unquestioningly borrow but knowingly references and critiques. 

However, fear of that confusion should not push us to the opposite position, that Genesis is completely distinct and has nothing to do with that literature, either.

For one, the arguments and shifts in Genesis are made largely by means of conspicuous absences rather than formulated, positive arguments. 

The fact that Genesis does not give a name for the primordial waters or the sun or the moon only stands out as significant if we know that other contemporary literature does.

The fact that men built the tower of Babel seems like a rather obvious detail to us, until we realize that other contemporary literature claimed Babylon to be the handiwork of the gods.

The fact that Abram was called to leave Babylon only seems curious, until we realize that other literature argued the greatest existence for man was found in Babylon.

However, the thing that seems most significant to me is that the Enuma and the Bible basically agree on one key point: Human society has most commonly expressed itself throughout all of history as violent and imperialistic.

The reason that's important is that it is as true today as it was nearly thirty-five hundred years ago, and, where the Bible and the Enuma diverge on the causes of that violence and the appropriate response to it, we have the amazing opportunity to examine our own thoughts and instincts (as well as those of the culture in which we live) and ask: am I thinking about this in a way that reflects the Bible? Or, would my thoughts be more at home in the worldview of the Enuma?

When we look at things like the slave trade or Manifest Destiny or even something like drone strikes and the Iraq War...

...when wildly popular country singers write wildly popular songs identifying putting "a boot up their ass" as the "American way"...

 

...would these expressions of both our American heritage and our contemporary culture be more at home in the Bible, or in the Enuma?

Now, I'm not saying everyone must answer those questions the same way, but aren't they worth asking?