Inspiration and Incarnation: Wisdom Literature

Image text: Ecclesiastes 1:2 "Meaningless! Meaningless!" says the Teacher. "Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless." Image source.

I've been reading "Inspiration and Incarnation" by Peter Enns. Chapter 3 is called "The Old Testament and Theological Diversity." There are diverse viewpoints within the Old Testament- one passage says one thing, and another passage says another thing which is inconsistent with the first passage. 

There's a lot of fascinating stuff in this chapter, so I'm breaking it down into several blog posts. This post will cover the part about the wisdom literature in the bible. Specifically, the books of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job.

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Proverbs

Proverbs is a book of wise sayings. These are useful guidelines for how to live your life, but it doesn't mean you're *guaranteed* to have good results if you follow them. That's why I never really liked the book of Proverbs when I was evangelical- it's a bunch of generalizations, all of which have exceptions so you can't take them too seriously. Unlike the rest of the bible, which was Absolute Truth [so I thought].

Blogaround

1. Epiphanies (January 6) "If the person and the life of Jesus Christ taught us humans everything we need to know about God, that life also taught God what it is like to be one of us."

Also from the Slacktivist: Lost in the flood (January 7) "It’s darkly ironic that the rejection of that fact — the refusal to accept that the Bible is often bigger, stranger, more complicated and polyvalent — is referred to as 'a high view of scripture.'"

And: But in Canada, they have waiting lists (January 9) "This whole time, again, my wife is dealing — every day — with a condition that’s painful and inconvenient and disabling and that risks her long-term health."

2. Meta says it will end fact checking as Silicon Valley prepares for Trump (January 7) "The move comes as Meta and other tech companies are working to smooth what has been a rocky relationship with Trump." Oh this sounds bad.

3. Shigatse Earthquake: Over 120 Dead as Rescuers Battle Cold and Rubble (January 8) "A day after a 6.8-magnitude earthquake struck southwestern China’s Xizang Autonomous Region, the toll has climbed to at least 126 dead, 188 injured, and over 3,600 homes reduced to rubble."

4. Stripe Tales of the Ace and Aro flags (January 8) "I think using colors to represent specific groups raises too many questions about what groups are included or not included, and who 'deserves' to be on the flag."

5. Melchizedek: How a Literary Phantom Became an Eternal Priest and Savior of Israel (September 21) "Jews who interpreted Psalm 110 as a historical poem about Abraham would have discovered that it contained four surplus details about Abraham that were not originally explained in Genesis 14. Granarød believes that the Melchizedek character was invented on the basis of Psalm 110:4 and added to Genesis 14 to fill in those gaps."

6. This New Immigration Bill That’s About to Pass Is a Horrifying Trojan Horse (January 10) "In short, under the guise of punishing a small number of lawbreaking undocumented immigrants, the act would curtail legal immigration and subject law-abiding immigrants to detention and deportation. It is baffling that so many Democrats would sign on to such a cruel and constitutionally dubious scheme."

7. Anita Bryant, a popular singer who became known for opposition to gay rights, dead at age 84 (January 11)

8. Mantracks: a True Story of Fake Fossils (January 11) 1-hour-25-minute video from Dan Olson about the young-earth-creationist claim that human and dinosaur footprints have been discovered together. 

Wow! This video is very well-done. When I was a young-earth creationist, I mostly followed Answers in Genesis, and their position is that these human footprints are fake. Dan Olson talks about this in his video- how some creationists are just shameless grifters, and some are trying to look like real scientists, but they all share this ideology which is incompatible with how science actually works. Real science is about realizing you were wrong, changing your ideas when new evidence comes out- but from a creationist perspective, this is seen as a fundamental weakness. We already know the right answers from the bible, supposedly. Scientists are wrong and you can see that because they have to keep making changes to their theories, whereas we don't have to do that because we're already right.

9. Atheist group faces backlash after publishing, then removing, anti-trans article (December 29, via) "The whole piece is nothing more than anti-trans bigotry wrapped up in a cloak of science."

Blogaround

1. If you're interested in the history of American evangelicalism- and how it's tied up with patriarchy and nationalist politics- the Slacktivist has been writing a whole series on it:

New evangelical historiography just dropped
Fightin’ words in the ‘evangelical definition wars’
What about Breakfast at Tiffany’s?
‘Evangelical’ has no right-wing boundaries
Tony Campolo is not a white evangelical

Of these posts, my favorite is: Tony Campolo is not a white evangelical (September 16) "This is where most 'progressive evangelicals' come from. It is our origin story. We took what we were taught so seriously that we began to apply it to parts of the Bible that our teachers mostly ignored. This was just as true for me as it was for Ron, and Jim, and Shane." Same. I am also one of those evangelicals who followed Jesus right out of the church.

Also from the Slacktivist: The boastful pride of pro-life: Anatomy of a lie (September 18) "The desperation for some reassurance that we are safe (or relatively safer) from such suffering can always tempt us, like Bildad, to assert that those suffering pain and loss must be wicked sinners who deserve it."

2. Families Split Apart: Families Fleeing Anti-Trans Laws File Amicus In Supreme Court Case (September 5) "These bans aren’t done to protect kids, but rather to satiate the needs of people who hate them simply for existing as who they are. Families are left with an impossible choice: stay together and risk their child’s well-being or separate to get the care their child needs."

3. Every Scientific Field (September 17) Some insight from xkcd.

4. How to Think About Politics Without Wanting to Kill Yourself (September 16) "Because the true work of political action is not to identify idealized superheroes to run for office. It is, instead, to create the conditions in the world that make it safe for the cowards to vote the right way."

5. Powerful must-see statement by Lawrence O'Donnell on the stakes for abortion rights in this election (September 18, via) "Lawrence makes it absolutely clear, in no uncertain terms, that Donald Trump and George W. Bush both have blood on their hands."

6. On Being An Altruistic Parent (September 20) "He hadn’t made any promises, and yet here he was, giving up precious Minecraft time to walk half an hour to school. His parents were hurting him because of a decision he had no say in to help people he didn’t care about one bit."

7. Kamala Harris’ Abortion Speech Broke New Ground (September 21) "Too often, the abortion stories that politicians feel comfortable sharing are those that were medical necessities or the result of a tragic diagnosis. But here, Harris spoke plainly about the most common kind of abortion—one that’s done simply because a woman doesn’t want to be pregnant anymore. Because it doesn’t fit in with what she wants, or has planned for her life."

No One Can Take The Bible From Me

Book cover for "Inspired" by Rachel Held Evans. Image source.

As an ex-evangelical who is still a bible nerd, I LOVED the book Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again [affiliate link], by Rachel Held Evans. It's about reading the bible in a whole new way- well, actually, not new at all, but in a way that I never heard about in evangelicalism.

The intro chapter is SO GOOD and so relatable. Evans talks about how, as an evangelical, she always viewed the bible as a "magic book", but in slightly different ways as she grew up. As a child, she viewed the bible as a wonderful storybook. As a teenager, it was a handbook to tell you how to live. As a young adult, it was an answer book that gives all the reasons why we need to vote Republican/ reject evolution/ oppose same-sex marriage/ etc. But then, she began to question her faith, and question the interpretations of the bible that she had always heard.

Some quotes from the intro:

It was as if the Bible had turned into an unsettling version of one of those children's peekaboo books. Beneath the colorful illustration of Noah's ark was-- surprise!-- the violent destruction of humanity. Turn the page to Joshua and the battle of Jericho and-- peekaboo!-- it's genocide. Open to Queen Esther's castle and-- look!-- there's a harem full of concubines. [page xvii]

and

Beneath all the elaborate justifications for Israel's ethnic cleansing, all the strange theories for where Cain got his wife and how Judas managed to die in two different ways (he hanged himself and then fell headlong onto the ground), I sensed a deep insecurity. There was a move-along-nothing-to-see-here quality to their arguments that only reinforced my suspicion that maybe the Bible wasn't magic after all, and maybe, deep down, they knew it. Instead of bolstering my confidence in the Bible, its most strident defenders inadvertently weakened it. Then when a pastor friend asked me what personal sins might have triggered my questions-- "sexual immorality, perhaps?"-- I saw that my journey through these doubts would be a lonely one. [page xviii]

Damn that is so real. The "move-along-nothing-to-see-here," and the idea that people who question their church's teachings are motivated by a desire to have sinful sex (which makes me especially angry as an asexual). (See also: Evans's 2013 post, Is doubt an STD?)

I feel the exact same way. I know the bible so well- I've read the entire thing multiple times, in college I would have a "quiet time" every day where I read the bible and prayed, I started bible study groups, etc etc etc. But at some point, as I began to question a lot of evangelical teaching, it became so difficult for me to read the bible at all. These familiar stories that I knew so well, that had always comforted me- and suddenly I would try to read them and immediately have so many questions. There were so many things that seemed weird or wrong, that I had never seen before.

These were the stories we knew so well, we lived them, we memorized them. But we only saw one side of them. Children's bible story books and Sunday school classes are always about "here's the nice tidy moral lesson we are supposed to get out of this bible story. Ruth teaches us about loyalty. Joseph teaches us about forgiveness. Abraham teaches us about obedience. Daniel teaches us about standing up for what's right." And when you grow up and become an adult, it's still like that... Sermons about "this is what this bible passage means." That's how the bible is taught, in my experience. Here's the bible, here's what it means. If you have more questions, let's find you an apologetics book that answers them. And that's that.

There's something so amazing about hearing the stories discussed in a new way. It's like, all these bible verses I know so well, suddenly tilted at a slightly different angle, like wow, how did I not see that before?

Let me give an example- and this was back when I was evangelical, so it has nothing to do with challenging evangelicalism or the "inerrant" view of the bible. I sometimes went to the international student bible study back when I was in college- this was a college in the US, and I am American, but I went there because I was studying Chinese and wanted to meet Chinese people. One night, the group was reading a passage about how we are not citizens of this world, we are citizens of heaven. (Perhaps Philippians 3:20 or 1 Peter 2:11?) And the bible study leader was saying "we understand how this is, because we are living in this country but we are not citizens, and we miss our home countries." And I was just so amazed, because I had never thought of that- reading a verse about how we are not citizens, and connecting it to actual people who are not citizens of the country where they live, and how they understood that verse in a way that was different than I did, because of their experiences. (And now I live in China...)

So... the idea of seeing bible stories in a "new" way is something that evangelicals love, in my experience. But there are limits to it... Some of the interpretations of bible passages in this book would probably get a "wow that's cool!" reaction from evangelicals, and some are crossing a line into "false teaching" and saying the bible isn't inerrant (gasp!).

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Structure of the book

Here's how the book is organized: Each chapter is about a different type of bible stories- for example, origin stories, deliverance stories, war stories, etc (8 types in all). Each chapter has a fanfic (or poem or something along those lines) at the beginning.

For each of the different types of stories, Evans discusses it in a completely new light. Well, not actually "completely new", because Christians have been reading these stories for 2000 years (and Jewish people have been reading them even longer than that)- none of this is actually new. But I say "new" because I never heard anything like this when I was evangelical.

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Bible fanfic, and honoring the bible's victims

OKAY. YOU GUYS. I love bible fanfic SO MUCH. I am so ridiculously proud of the ones I have written. You have no idea. This is SO important to me.

And, let me just take a moment here and share MY FAVORITE bible fanfic: lament for the slave girl in pharaoh’s house (2018) by Micah J. Murray [content note: child death].

In the book "Inspired," my favorite bible fanfic is the one about Hagar. When I was growing up, I just viewed Hagar and Ishmael as Abraham's mistake- a symbol of Abraham's sin of not trusting God. But no, Hagar and Ishmael deserve better than that.

Background info, if you don't know the story [starting in Genesis 16]: God promised Abraham that he and his wife Sarah would have a son. But Abraham and Sarah were both very old and unable to have children. They were supposed to have faith in God's promise, but instead they decided that Abraham would impregnate Hagar, the slave. So Hagar had Abraham's baby, and the baby's name was Ishmael, and there was *drama* between Hagar and Sarah. Later, God did keep the promise, and Sarah had a baby named Isaac. Isaac was the child that came from having faith in God's promises, and Ishmael was the child that came from sinfully taking things into your own hands instead of trusting God. (Also, rape... but in church I never heard anyone say "Abraham raped Hagar" even though it's clearly true.) In Galatians 4 (in the New Testament, hundreds of years after Abraham), Paul makes this whole big analogy about how Hagar represents slavery and the law, and Sarah represents God's promise, and obviously we want to be Sarah's children rather than Hagar's.

So anyway, I always thought Hagar and Ishmael were the "bad guys" and Abraham, Sarah, and Isaac were the "good guys." In the simplest children's bibles, Hagar and Ishmael are not even mentioned- it's all about Isaac. Hagar and Ishmael are... kind of a "stain" on the story of Abraham the Good Godly Role Model.

(Also, I've heard that Muslims have a completely different take on Ishmael. It would be interesting to hear more about that.)

But, that's terrible, to treat Hagar that way. None of this was her fault. It was what Abraham did to her. 

And actually, the writer of Genesis doesn't even treat Hagar so one-dimensionally. In Genesis 16, when Hagar, pregnant, runs away into the desert because Sarah is so cruel to her, an angel meets her. The angel gives her a promise- her son Ishmael will be "a wild donkey of a man" and she will have uncountable descendants. Hagar responds by saying "You are the God who sees me" and "I have now seen the One who sees me" which is significant because NOWHERE ELSE IN THE BIBLE does a person give a name to God. (Evans's fanfic is about this story.) And a similar thing happens in Genesis 21- drama between Hagar/Ishmael and Sarah/Isaac, Sarah drives them away, and again an angel meets Hagar and encourages her, and gives her a promise that Ishmael will become a great nation.

(Some of my posts related to Abraham and Hagar: Honest Lent: Abraham's Slaves and "Waiting On God" - But Like, Why Though?)

Yeah, I love bible fanfic, and actually, evangelicals love bible fanfic too. All the kids books about bible stories, all the Hollywood movies based on bible stories- they all add some embellishments. You pretty much have to add things, because the bible passages are short and just tell the basic story, without enough details to be a whole movie. Modern writers add their own ideas about what the characters were thinking or feeling, add characters who weren't mentioned in the bible at all, add extra scenes to make the story fit together better, etc.

Evangelicals love bible fanfic (though they don't call it "fanfic") but there's a limit to it. It has to be consistent with evangelical beliefs about what the bible means. 

For example, I remember one fanfic I read in a Christian magazine for kids- it was from the perspective of the wife of one of the shepherds who had seen the angels in the sky when Jesus was born, and the whole fic was about how surprised she was that her husband and the other shepherds had left their sheep behind to go see baby Jesus. This "shepherd's wife" is a totally made-up character, not mentioned in the bible, and the idea that the shepherds left their sheep behind when they went to see baby Jesus is also not mentioned in the bible- but this fic made a big huge deal about how "they left the sheep" and how it was so hard for her to understand what was so important about baby Jesus, that would cause the shepherds to respond like that.

The point of the story was, Jesus is so amazing and important, that it is worth it to take shocking risks or make sacrifices in order to have a chance to experience him. So, from an evangelical perspective, that's a great message to send. (But, to be honest, there are probably some evangelicals who would quibble with it, for making up things that weren't mentioned in the bible. And yeah every time there's a movie based on the bible, you can find evangelicals arguing with each other about this or that thing in the movie that wasn't in the bible, and whether it means the entire movie is blasphemous.)

I also write my bible fanfics to make a point, but they're always points that challenge evangelical beliefs. For example, Noah's Evangelism was one giant metaphor about evangelical beliefs about hell. Strange Fire is about the bible story where God kills the priests Nadab and Abihu for their sin of ... something about burning incense wrong? idk? ... and my fic says the bible is wrong about that, and here's what really happened. Mary's Choice was a pro-choice metaphor (hopefully this was obvious) which grapples with the idea of making big choices that change the trajectory of your life, when you're too young and inexperienced to even know what you're getting into, and how that intersects with being called by God and choosing to take risks for God.

So, I mean, yeah, there's a whole range of bible fanfic, pushing different ideas. Thinking about Evans's fanfic about Hagar, my first instinct is that this would not be an evangelical-approved fanfic, because it invites the reader to empathize with Hagar, who is, you know, a "bad guy", a sin, a mistake in Abraham's life, that we just want to forget about.

The thing is, though... the bible does say that Hagar was a slave, and Sarah "gave" Hagar to Abraham. And that when Hagar was pregnant, Sarah was so cruel to her, that she ran away into the desert. The bible says these things. Hagar was a victim, and what Abraham and Sarah did was wrong. There's no way to read those verses and then argue with that. It's right there, chapter and verse. 

Nobody's embellishing anything. Evans's fanfic is, quite simply, the thoughts and feelings that a pregnant woman would likely have in that situation. The reason it strikes me as not-church-approved is that it invites readers to consider how Hagar felt, to care about her, rather than viewing her as nothing more than a regrettable detour in the story of the birth of Isaac.

Fanfics that draw attention to the minor characters in the bible who are innocent victims who suffer because of what God does, or because of what the "bible heroes" like Abraham do... We need more fanfics like that.

Evans discusses the idea of honoring the bible's victims and, wow, this blew my mind, and I love it:

In one of the most moving spiritual exercises of my adult faith, an artist friend and I created a liturgy of lament honoring the victims of the texts of terror. On a chilly December evening, we sat around the coffee table in my living room and lit candles in memory of Hagar, Jephthah's daughter, the concubine from Judges 19, and Tamar, the daughter of King David who was raped by her half brother. [Note from Perfect Number: this list is 4 people total. In case the commas make it confusing.] We read their stories, along with poetry and reflections composed by modern-day women who have survived gender-based violence. My friend built a diorama out of a pinewood box that featured five faceless wooden figures, huddled together beneath a ring of barbed wire, their silhouettes reflected on the backboard by pages cut from a book. Across the top of the box were printed the words of Christ-- "As you have done unto the least of these, so you have done unto me." [p 75]

This is, wow, really powerful. To say, what happened to them was wrong, and they deserve to have someone care about that. Typically, all that Christians have to say about these stories is "these parts of the bible are descriptive, not prescriptive- it tells the truth about how sinful people were, and it does NOT mean we should act like that too." As if the only issue is the bible's position on whether or not it's okay to gang rape a woman and then cut her body into pieces (Judges 19, trigger warning, my god)- don't worry everyone, the bible is NOT saying that's okay! All right now move along nothing to see here.

To actually spend time caring about the victims of the bible... wow, that's something new and powerful.

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Job

There's a section in "Inspired" where Evans talks about the story of Job. If you don't know this story from the bible, here it is: Job was a righteous man. One day, Satan and God were discussing Job, and Satan said the only reason Job worships God is because God has blessed him with huge herds of livestock and lots of children, but if all this was taken away, Satan is sure Job would not worship God any more. God says, okay, sure, try it and see. So then a series of disasters causes Job to lose all his wealth, and all his children die. This happens in the first 2 chapters. The book of Job is 42 chapters long; the entire rest of the book is Job and his "friends" debating the question of why God allowed such terrible things to happen to Job. The "friends" say Job must have sinned, and these things happened as a punishment, but Job insists that's not true.

So... if this is a true story, then, well, God's behavior is horrifying. Letting all of Job's children die, just to win a bet with Satan? NOT COOL.

But Evans says the story of Job is in the bible to present a different perspective than other bible passages which say that living a righteous life leads to prosperity- mainly the book of Proverbs. The book of Proverbs in the bible is about wisdom- basically a bunch of simple, common-sense principles to live by, to make good decisions and have a happy and successful life. 

Job's friends are basically following the logic of Proverbs. Proverbs says that if you follow God's rules and make wise decisions, then you will have a good life. Job had all these bad things happen to him, therefore he must not have been following God's rules correctly. He must have sinned, and that's what caused these bad things to happen.

Please note that that's a terrible thing to say to someone who's grieving. Telling them that it's their fault. That's awful. But if you believe that the principles given in Proverbs are always true, then it follows logically.

That's why the bible includes the book of Job, to offer a different perspective than the one presented in Proverbs. The book of Job tells a story about a man who truly was innocent, and had the worst tragedies happen to him, for reasons that really had nothing to do with him, reasons that no human could have possibly figured out. This shows us that yes, in general you should live according to the wise advice in Proverbs, in general that leads to success, but not always. Sometimes innocent people suffer, that's a fact, and it doesn't do any good to question them about what they did wrong to "cause" it to happen.

Also: The story of Job didn't really happen. Perhaps some progressive Christians would phrase it as "The story of Job is not literally true" but I don't really see a difference between "not true" and "not literally true." (Maybe because I'm autistic.) It's not a true story. It didn't happen. It was written to engage with the question of why bad things happen to good people. To bear witness to the reality that sometimes bad things happen to you, and it's not your fault. 

And those things are literally true. Yes, it is literally true that sometimes bad things happen to people, and it's not their fault, and we don't have answers about why God allowed it, and we just need to respond with compassion, rather than blaming them. That is literally true.

The story of Job is basically what you would get if a writer wanted to write a fictional story with the most extreme elements of "bad things happen to good people and we don't know why." Job is a righteous man, so righteous that he even makes extra sacrifices to God, just in case one of his children sinned. He is extremely rich. Then he loses everything- all of his wealth and all of his children. And the reason is that God and Satan happened to be arguing about the motivation for Job's obedience to God- it had nothing to do with any "sin", and none of Job's friends could have possibly guessed that that was the reason.

I'm imagining the ancient people who heard the story of Job... perhaps then they heard about someone in their community who suffered some terrible tragedy, and their first thought was to wonder what sin this person committed, to cause the tragedy- but then they remembered the story of Job, and how Job and his family suffered even though they were innocent.

Job wasn't a real person, but "bad things happen to good people" is real. It's fascinating to me that writing a fictional story about this real-life fact can make it feel more real.

And, if the story of Job isn't a true story, well, that's great news, because then we don't have to get stuck on the way it portrays God. God, in this story, is arrogant, heartless, allowing Satan to kill Job's children just to prove a point. But, since it isn't a true story, if someone is horrified by God's behavior in the story, we can just say "you're reading too much into it." You can just ignore that part, because it's not true, because the whole story is not true.

Interesting that the story teaches "God doesn't care if Satan kills your children" and also teaches "sometimes bad things happen to good people", and one is true while the other is "oh stop it, you're reading too much into it." (So... then the bible is not authoritative- it depends on its readers to have an understanding of which parts they are supposed to learn from and which parts they are supposed to ignore.)

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Pronouns

In this book, Evans does not use any pronouns for God. She just uses "God." You get sentences like, God did this because God wanted God's people to blah blah blah, a lot of "God" in the sentence instead of She/He/They/Whatever.

(I don't remember if the characters in her fanfics use pronouns for God. In my bible fanfics, my characters use he/him pronouns for God, because that fits with the way they would have viewed God, even though personally my God is a They/Them.)

I was glad to read a book that doesn't use he/him pronouns for God, because honestly it's a bit jarring to me when people refer to God as a "he." (Wow look how queer I am, I guess.)

At the same time, though, if you don't use any pronouns for God, well, your readers might not even notice. If your God is a he/him, and you read a section of Evans's book, which says "God did this and God did that, etc" with no pronouns, just a lot of "God", and after you read it, someone asks you if Evans referred to God as "he" in that section, what would you say? Maybe you would say yes, because when you read about God, you imagine it's a he/him God, and you didn't notice whether the text explicitly said that or not.

It's something that I think people won't notice unless they're specifically looking for it. Or, if there's a sentence like "God loves God's people" like very blatantly crying out for a pronoun because the density of "God" in the sentence is just over-the-top. Or if you have a sentence with the word "Godself" where a normal person would put himself/herself/themself. If you can avoid those specific issues, then you can write and write and write about God and most readers won't even notice that you never gave God a pronoun.

So, I gotta say I'm not really a big fan of not using any pronouns for God. It feels like not taking a stand. Yeah, it's better than using "he" pronouns, but ... If you have a reader whose God is a he/him, who has never even heard of the idea that God could be anything other than a he/him, and this reader reads your entire book and still has no awareness that God could be anything other than a he/him, well, I'm not impressed by that. 

If you're going to not use pronouns for God, I would like to see some kind of explicit statement about "I don't use pronouns for God, because God is all genders. God is not more masculine than feminine." Yeah, I would be happy with that.

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Conclusion

For this blog post I just picked out a few interesting things about the book "Inspired," but there's so much more. I loved this book. Evans looks at so many different bible stories and puts a fascinating new spin on them- although, actually, there's nothing "new" about any of this, really, it's just that you could live your entire life in evangelical culture, read the bible every day, and never hear these interpretations.

It feels so incredible to me, reading these new takes on the bible stories that I know so well, that I've read so many times and memorized. To look at them from a different angle, and wow, it's like I knew all of this but I never put it together that way, and suddenly there it is.

(And that's why I write bible fanfic.)

The bible we see in "Inspired" is not an authority over us, telling us what the right answers are, and we must force ourselves to stay within those rigid interpretations. No, this bible is living and active. We are made in the image of God, and we create just as God creates. We take the bible stories and we use them to create meaning, informed by our own identities and our own experiences. Living with the story and in the story.

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Follow-up posts:

For Rizpah (or, a post about human sacrifice in the bible) 

If God Metaphorically Made the World in 6 Days, What Does That Even Mean?

Related:

She was the first (Thank you, Rachel) 

Not Sure I Want My Kid Reading the Bible 

My mind is blown by how cool the Synoptic Problem is 

Peter Enns Makes Me Want to Actually Read the Bible Again

Not a Cliche

Sometimes the bible seems really cliche to me. I can't help it, I've been a Christian my whole life- I have a lifetime of experience in Christian culture with people always reciting the popular bible verses, putting them up against a pastel background on a powerpoint slide, cross-stitching them into pillows...

Image source.

And I'm sorry but it gets old and kind of meaningless.

Image source.

Image source.

Image source.

If anyone could explain how the flowers relate to any of these verses, I would be most grateful. Image source.

All these encouraging verses, ripped from their context, presented as a simple answer to the world's problems. Just putting a good face on stuff as if we're always TOTALLY FINE AND HAPPY when we're Christians.

Image source.

(Though I must admit, I really do like a lot of the above images and verses...)

So I read Psalm 57 and yeah, a lot of these verses, I've heard them before. "Be exalted, O God, above the heavens; let your glory be over all the earth," and so on. And my first response (though I'd probably keep it to myself) would be "blah blah blah yeah I've heard that before"- IF I hadn't read the entire psalm.

Because dude, Psalm 57 talks about some scary stuff! "I am in the midst of lions; I am forced to dwell among ravenous beasts- men whose teeth are spears and arrows, whose tongues are sharp swords."

Yikes. Let's see that one pasted onto a photo of a majestic waterfall. Let's use that as the theme verse for our women's conference. Deck it out in pastels and flowers. And we can have the little kids in Sunday School draw lions. Perfect.

Psalm 57 is so odd- it has these 2 seemingly unconnected themes running through it. First, David being in incredible danger from these "lions," his enemies, and he's crying out to God for help. And second, abundant praise and love for God.

What is the connection? Well I guess the connection is that God saved him, so then he praises God? I guess? To me, reading this psalm, they just appear to be completely separate ideas, set there next to each other.

Basically, out of his distress and danger, he was able to say, "My heart, O God, is steadfast," and worship God with so much adoration. And wow, I love that. THAT is authentic. THAT is not a cliche. That is NOT just saying nice things to pretend that there are no problems in the world- no, David was suffering and yet he still praised God.

Wowwwww. Context is everything. A few more examples:

Ever hear the verse, "I know that my redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand on the earth"? Ah, that's nice, my redeemer lives, obviously we're talking about Jesus, yada yada yada.

Wait, this is Job 19:25? Job? As in, the guy who lost everything he had, and all his kids died, and then his "friends" were like "well obviously this is your fault for being a sinner"? And in Job 19, Job accuses God of doing all this to him...

“Though I cry, ‘Violence!’ I get no response;
    though I call for help, there is no justice.
He has blocked my way so I cannot pass;
    he has shrouded my paths in darkness.
He has stripped me of my honor
    and removed the crown from my head.
He tears me down on every side till I am gone;
    he uproots my hope like a tree.
His anger burns against me;
    he counts me among his enemies.
His troops advance in force;
    they build a siege ramp against me
    and encamp around my tent.

He has alienated my family from me;
    my acquaintances are completely estranged from me.
My relatives have gone away;
    my closest friends have forgotten me.
My guests and my female servants count me a foreigner;
    they look on me as on a stranger.
I summon my servant, but he does not answer,
    though I beg him with my own mouth.
My breath is offensive to my wife;
    I am loathsome to my own family.
Even the little boys scorn me;
    when I appear, they ridicule me.
All my intimate friends detest me;
    those I love have turned against me.
I am nothing but skin and bones;
    I have escaped only by the skin of my teeth."

(Let's cross-stitch some of those on pillows. And you guys, there's a lot more where that came from. Seriously let's get working on those pillows.)

And then, right near the end of the chapter: "I know that my redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand on the earth." Wow, that verse means something different now, doesn't it?

And have you heard those verses from Philippians? Things like "Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!" and "I can do all things through him who strengthens me." Did you know Paul was IN JAIL when he wrote Philippians?

Jail. JAIL! Image source.

Dude. Dude. When we read the bible, we have to see the good and the bad- or else it comes across like all those Christian cliches which deny the existence of suffering, imply that Christians should hide their problems, and give pat non-answers to those who are hurting.

And wow, Psalm 57 does this really well. The extremes of the good and the bad. "Be exalted, O God, above the heavens," and "I am forced to dwell among ravenous beasts."

As I said in The Bible Is Less Naive Than Me:

I thought the bible presented a naive religion that couldn't handle anybody asking questions about God letting evil things happen. I thought it promised puppies and rainbows and had nothing to say about sickness and tragedy. But nothing could be further from the truth.

The church NEEDS to talk about pain and suffering, because pain and suffering are real.

The church NEEDS to overflow with worship in response God's love and faithfulness, because God's love and faithfulness are real.

The church NEEDS to fight injustice in this world, because the injustice in this world is real.

The church NEEDS to believe in the goodness of God, because the goodness of God is real.

And it is that goodness that will win in the end. God's love and justice will transform this world so there will be no more pain. (Can I get an amen?)

And as we look forward to that, as we join Jesus in his mission to change the world, let's be honest about the good and the bad. Just like Psalm 57.

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This post is part of a link-up on the topic of Psalm 57. To read other people's posts, click here: Breakthrough, A Reflection on Psalm 57.