Having summarized several aspects of Robert Bellah's Habits of the Heart last October, I want to turn briefly to Nathan Hatch’s work in Democratization of American Christianity which should help to create a better vista of how our current doctrines and practice are be compromised by individualism.
Hatch attempts to show how the democratic spirit of early America set the tone for the American church as it took on the spirit of the age. This democratic spirit emerged in three profound ways. First, American’s rejected the traditional separation between clergy and laity where power and virtue was transferred from the educated elite to larger body of individuals.1 Apart from the well educated elite and tradition, individuals were free to explore their “spiritual impulses” thus defining faith for themselves.[2] Filled with democratic hope, Christianity was to become a liberating force for all people from authoritarian structures.[3] From these beginnings, Hatch says that three tendencies emerged for American Christianity: 1) mingling of diverse and contradictory sources, 2) fragmentation, and finally inversion of authority.[4] American religious experience mirrors what was taking place in the name of equality and freedom both at a national level and within its constituents by the systematic and simultaneous raising of the common individual by casting off oppressive authority and placing that authority into the hands of each person.[5] A largely untrained people became the prime interpreters of scripture, now taken from the oppressive hands of educated clergy revealing a populist common-sense or self-evident hermeneutic. [1] Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 9. [2] Ibid., 10. [3] Ibid., 11. [4] Ibid., 35.
0 Comments
A year or so ago, someone near me rejected a proposed brochure because its central focus was of a stained glass image of Jesus the good shepherd. She cited the Old Testament prohibition against graven images from Exodus. Now I am aware that this argument is still alive and well in certain Christian community, but I was startled to find it so near me. This strange series of events made me consider the nature of an image of Christ and the portrayal of his humanity. Some years ago I had the opportunity to engage certain fundamentalist Baptist pastors about such matters who are ardently opposed to images of Christ even though they had certain didactic purposes, which they consented to. Their main claim was that once you had said that this is Jesus, you would also have to explain that this is not Jesus because it only portrayed his humanity.
So how do artists get off with imaging Jesus? To my fundamentalist interrogators I would now respond with wisdom I did not possess then, that one may have well passed Jesus on the road or in the market wholly unawares of his divinity. Our eyes have been trained by faith to see the divinity within Christ and yet N.T. Wright suggests that few, if any, Jews of the time would have expected the Messiah to be divine. Another complicating factor concerns our Western intellectual heritage of emphasis on the written word, and for descendants of the Reformation that is seen in the written Word. While Luther was not as condemnatory of images as Calvin and Zwingli, he kept a wary eye on them. I cannot help but wonder how these emphases, so strongly rooted within Protestantism, has perpetuated this anti-image and iconoclastic tendencies within our Western version of Christianity. Returning to the woman who rejected the brochure with images of Christ, I wanted to ask her what she thought of Mel Gibson’s film The Passion. Did she enjoy it? Did she even see it? Are there Christians who praise the film and yet reject still images whether painted or sculpted? Do those who praise the film and reject images see their duplicity? What is it for them that sets the film apart from images? Are not those who act as Christ not more potentially misleading than the static images which are surely other than the humanity Jesus inhabited? These are questions I am posing to my class this coming Monday. I am interested to hear their responses after their readings. In the recent weeks I will admit that I have been slacking off with my posting schedule. Class and work have been a little overwhelming. But that does not mean that I’ve not been thinking about the films I’ve been watching. We have seen a few remarkable films as of late.
I Am Legend – I remember seeing the preview for this film in the theatre before Ocean’s 13 and immediately I wanted to see the film. And yet, the film preview says little about the actual movie. I have had this fantasy since I was a kid about being able to go anywhere, into everyone’s homes and look around. If I was the only person left, where would I go? What would I do. I think that is what intrigued me about I Am Legend. In actuality, the film struck me as a strange cross between solitary and forgotten Tom Hanks character of Castaway and the cult classic from 1969, The Night of the Living Dead. Theologically what struck me about IAL was certainly the sacrifice of the one that many could live. Smith’s character becomes a sort of Christ figure through that sacrifice. One of the other keys themes centers in the topics of anthropology and what makes someone human. Without giving too much away, we are right to consider what are the quintessential marks of humanity, and without those marks, what do we become? Freedom Writers & Gridiron Gang – Both films tackle the violent nature of inner city youth culture and how our society can train and educate these broken young men and women. Both are loosely based on true stories where one individual through personal sacrifices and dedication to these impoverished young people invests in them giving them hope. Gridiron Gang uses the football, still a violent sport, to inspire a team mentality to overcome the divisions of individualism and competing gang mentality. Freedom Writers overcomes the same challenges but through a more generous and caring self investment through their teacher played by Hillary Swank. Both are worthy films to explore how racism still divides us today and the violent nature of our youth culture. Gridiron Gang recalls both Coach Carter and Remember the Titans. While Freedom Writers recalls Stand & Deliver, Lean on Me, and most notably Higher Learning but also many others. These films are needed reminders of our responsibility towards the other. In many ways, Freedom Writers is about calling and vocation. Swank’s character ends up divorcing her husband played by Patrick Dempsey as she has taken on 2 part-time positions to pay for supplies for her students that the district cannot or will not give her. But one of the key exchanges is his lack of understanding of what in many ways is played out like a calling upon her life. He selfishly fails to understand her commitment to these kids because they are not, from his perspective, her responsibility. The film suggests that these kids have been largely disowned by everyone who encounters them and she becomes the only one who invests her life into them from which a mighty change in their personal life is portrayed. The theme of vocation in a poignant scene with Swank’s father played by the grizzled Scott Glenn, that this calling is a burden upon her. Not that this weighs her down, but is her role to carry and fulfill. This is a beautiful image for the pastor and Christian in general. There is a certain burden and heaviness of life that comes with matters of faith, education, missions, and preaching. I have felt it as I prepare my lessons. I have felt it in my unworthiness and lack of knowledge. It defies casual understanding. She states that in this role, she feels most like who she was created to be. What a wonderful image and thought. For us, as Christians, utilizing our unique giftedness to care for and serve in God’s Kingdom, we will meet challenges but we will simultaneously becoming who we were meant to be in ways we cannot even fathom when we begin. This is a rather late addition to the Fight Club series I did a month or so ago, but upon reading The Rule of Saint Benedict this week one short passage stood out, as if I had seen a mirror of this in action recently. Rule 58 states,
“When anyone presents himself to be admitted as a monk, they shall not easily give him entrance; but, as the apostle advises: ‘Make trial of the spirits, to see if they are of God’ (1 John 4.1). If he is importunate and goes on knocking at the door, for four or five days, and patiently bears insults and rebuffs and still persists, he shall be allowed to enter. He shall stay in the guest-room for a few days. Thence he shall go to the cell where the novices study and eat and sleep.” This Benedictine initiation practice is meant to deter those who are not prepared to undertake such a life change. This is not meant to be easy. After several days of waiting through insults and denials, they still persist in their desire, they may be allowed to enter. I have heard of a Rabbinical tradition that may do similar things. Those who wish to convert to Judaism approach a Rabbi who rebuffs them. If they return three times, they may undertake with seriousness their conversion. In Fight Club, we see young men coming to stand outside on the porch of the Paper Street house waiting to enter. They are verbally and physically harassed about being to young, fat, or blonde. Once they have stood the appropriate time, they are asked if they have brought the needed supplies of black clothing and personal burial money. Once entered they receive a ritualistic head shaving, thus leaving their old beauty of the world behind. They form a new army and take on its uniform. I wonder how many American Christians would actually put up the waiting and rebuffs to become a Christian? Does the Church allow too easy of conversion? Would any church actually rebuff someone today who came seeking? What can our churches learn from the novitiate or catechumenate processes? This past week one of our class viewings was the delightful comedy Keeping the Faith which picks up on the plethora of priest/rabbi jokes that seem to circulate. It tells the story of 3 inseparable kids growing up in New York City until Anna, played by Jenna Elfman, leaves her two boys Jake Schram, played by Ben Stiller, and Brian Finn, played by Edward Norton after their eighth grade year. Stiller’s character grows up to be a rabbi while Norton’s character becomes a Catholic priest. Many years later, but still in the infancy of their ministries, Anna, now a high-power business woman returns to New York for work and looks up he long lost childhood friends. What ensues are crises faith, falling in love, conversions, and questionable ethics.
Going in, I asked my students to read articles on love, sexuality, Judaism, Roman Catholicism, and pluralism from the Musser & Price New and Enlarged Handbook on Christian Theology. I also asked them to read Beth Newman’s article “Pluralism as Idolatry.” One of my questions of the film and filmmaking in general, is what should we expect from them in the portrayal of religion? Should I expect them to give an accurate portrayal? Can we appreciate the film on its own merits and still be dissatisfied with its shallow portrayal of religion? Notes on the positive: Fr. Finn is a young priest who seems to be inspiring his congregation, at least by sight in terms of growth. He had brought a sense of renewal to this apparently dying congregation. Fr. Finn is an interesting portrait of a priest as well. In one sense, this film is about calling and the challenges of ministry. We see a very human priest facing the challenges of celibacy. It is cliché these days to portray a faithless priest as pedophile or sexually active among his congregants. Keeping the Faith walks a fine line. Brian certainly falls in love with his childhood friend Anna, makes a pass at her, but still remains true to his vows. At the highpoint of poignancy, the elder priest comforts Brian by telling him that he had fallen in love at least once every decade of his ministry. But he says to the young priest that each day it is a choice, in marriage or ministry, to be faithful and fulfill your vows. The scene goes like this, Father Brian: I keep thinking about what you said in seminary, that the life of a priest is hard and if you can see yourself being happy doing anything else you should do that. Father Havel: That was my recruitment pitch, which is not bad when you're starting out because it makes you feel like a marine. The truth is you can never tell yourself there is only one thing you could be. If you are a priest or if you marry a woman it's the same challenge. You cannot make a real commitment unless you accept that it's a choice that you keep making again and again and again. It is a welcomed word for both those who are married and serve in ministry. It is a helpful corrective to the “feeling” of love, and Brian’s own definition of faith as feeling. Notes on the not-as-positive: My feeling is that the portrayal of religion is ultimately shallow. Brian, in a sermon defines faith as, “The truth is, I don't really learn that much about your faith by asking questions like that...because those aren't really questions about faith, those are questions about religion. And it's very important to understand the difference between religion and faith. Because faith is not about having the right answers. Faith is a feeling. Faith is a hunch, really. It's a hunch that there is something bigger connecting it all... connecting us all together. And that feeling, that hunch, is God. And coming here tonight, on your Sunday evening... to connect with that feeling, that is an act of faith. And so all I have to do is look around the room at this packed church... to know that we're doing pretty well as a community.” Not only does he define faith based something as fickle as feeling he connects vital faith with numbers. Not that this is particularly unique to our society. Rather, in many circles this is heightened by the health and wealth gospel as well as our addiction to self-help resources. Faith, for Brian, is about us and not about God. I do not want to reduce faith to pure rationalism, and feelings are a necessary part of the life of faith. But his succinct definition would seem to truncate the historical definitions of faith. Similarly, the required readings for this film were intended to help students consider our cultures pluralism. Does Keeping the Faith simply show the existence of a plurality of religions or does it suggest in a typical postmodern fashion, that all faiths or spiritualities are equal and can be chosen at random as long as it is useful to ones life? Are the interrelations between Brian’s Catholicism and Jake’s Judaism simply friendship between the two acknowledging the gulf in between or are they just two options in the spiritual marketplace? Another comical scene in the film takes place when Brian, distraught on a bender shares his story with a local bartender. In this scene we get an insight into the very complicated religious plurality of human lives. Father Brian: You're a Sikh, Catholic Muslim with Jewish in-laws? Bartender: Yes. Yes. It gets very complicated. I'm reading Dianetics. Father Brian: Don't blame you. Additionally questionable, Brian, along with Rabbi Schram want to bring their religions into the 21st century…“old world religion with a new age spin.” Both run up against religions steeped in tradition. Jake seems though to take it on more directly with the introduction of non-Judaic practices into the communities spiritual life. He also runs up against their expectation of a rabbi. He too receives wise words from an elder that people want to be lead into the next century and change rather than pushed. People like their traditions because they give them stability that orients them in the world. So while both young men want to push their congregants to keep pace with the changing world, they hopefully learn the value of tradition along the way. I have seen this film numerous times and yet have not come to a conclusion on the films view of pluralism. I do feel it is a valuable film to explore topics of vocation, love, tradition, family, conversion, similarity and differences of faith and religion; but also pastoral ethics, revitalization and many more. The lifestyle enclave becomes a means of self-expression where the self has been divided between the working public life and private and intimate sphere of the home. Once the self is separated from family, religion, and work, individuals can express their “unique identity” by joining lifestyle enclaves. Rooted in private leisure and consumption, enclaves gather those who are “socially, economically, or culturally similar” to enjoy like-minded individuals.[1] In contrast to a community which seeks to be inclusive, celebrating the interdependence of public and private life, the lifestyle enclave is exclusive. Marriages and church affiliation reduced to the affinity of lifestyle enclaves.
If we have separated the self from family, religion, work, and tradition, what is left to constitute the self? The simple answer is our preferences. But, what are these choices really based upon? If selves are simply defined by their preferences which are arbitrary, “each self constitutes its own moral universe, and there is finally no way to reconcile conflicting claims about what is good in itself.”[2] Without any larger objective framework for right and wrong, good and evil, the self and its feelings become the moral guide.[3] The self is constantly in progress but without fixed moral end and is able to adapt behavior to various social roles.[4] Self-awareness and self-knowledge leading to personal happiness become the keys forming ones personal moral convictions. Finding oneself also means finding the story in which our life seems to make sense. Yet they seek to do this as individuals without reference or perceived shared experience with a “larger generational, historical religious context”[5] Each life stage becomes a crisis of further individuation. Public work and the private lifestyle enclave become the means of orienting or filling ones divergent selves. The individual, while striving for self-reliance still seeks out social interaction in the lifestyle enclave. He is afraid to admit the need to such interaction at the expense of his independence and identity. Rather than an empty, unencumbered, consuming self, what would the interactions of a encumbered self look like? The authors suggest Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue to describe communities of memory. Communities are in many ways constituted by their past and re-telling those stories as its central narrative, and by doing so, “offers examples of men and women who have embodied and exemplified the meaning of the community.”[6] Traditions are built upon the stories and lives the community and “contain conceptions of character, what a good person is like, and of the virtues that define such a character.”[7] These stories tell of health and sickness, success and failure bind the community to the past and turn to the future in hope. We see our part in the story being woven into the greater whole. This takes place at the family level as we pass on stories, heirlooms, and practice family rituals. Communities of memory are also practiced at the national level seen in our holidays and monuments. But powerfully we see the potential for this in the church. Each Sunday and liturgical year, our journey to the church building and worship services re-enact and re-constitute the Christian narrative and community. History and memory become the key to constituting ones future. These communities are enacted in special ways called “practices of commitment.”[8] Memories, hopes, and fears are not only passed on orally but are also practices that define the “patterns of loyalty and obligation that keep the community alive.”[9] Yet, where history is forgotten, community “degenerates into life-style enclaves.”[10] America has had a varied past of established and disestablished religion. However, once it is disestablished it becomes a private matter to be practiced within the church walls and at home. For many in America, religion is a private and optional matter not to enter the public domain. As a private matter, the autonomous individual, apart from the constraints of any religious system is free to concoct a spirituality as they choose. The authors highlight a woman named Sheila Larson who has named her religion or faith after herself. “Sheilaism” is based on “her little voice” to “love yourself and be gentle with yourself” and “take care of each other.”[11] Since religion is a private matter, diversity or plurality is not only acceptable but encouraged. [1] Bellah, 72. [2] Ibid., 76. [3] Ibid. [4] Ibid., 76-77. [5] Ibid., 82. [6] Ibid., 153. [7] Ibid. [8] Ibid. [9] Ibid. [10] Ibid., 154. [11] Ibid., 221. Another significant part of Bellah's study that is helpful for many is the articulation of therapeutic tendencies of our culture. Therapy is often related to the expressive individualism we just explored because it focuses on the individual and ones choices about roles, commitments, that one will make. Yet these choices are not based on a larger framework again, but according to “life-effectiveness” as the individual perceives it.[1] Therapy itself suggests a need for cure. But from what? The cure seeks to re-adjust ones social construction between self and the world, private and public meaning. Individuals are able to think in terms of commitments regarding such decisions as marriage, work, and church, as either enhancements or entanglements en route to self creation of ones individuality.[2] In the cultivation of self we see its connection to expressive individualism but its larger root comes from the rub by the incompatibility between the natures of public utilitarian individualism and the private expressive individualism. Only by accepting and asserting ourselves can we enter into “real” relationships.[3]
Several common themes emerge for American individuals: self-reliance, leaving home, leaving church, and work. Self-reliance is a nineteenth-century term popularized by Emerson. Self-reliance in the biblical and republican traditions maintains a collective note expressed in the Puritans who left society to rely upon each other.[4] Yet for the utilitarian and expressive individualists, self-reliance was purely individualistic.[5] Individuation is a natural part of human development, yet it is a hyper-individuation in America. “Childhood is chiefly preparation for the all-important event of leaving home…in late adolescence” and becomes a recurring theme throughout life.[6] Coming of age means “breaking away from dependency on parents and relying themselves.”[7] Not unrelated to leaving home, many American’s leave church as well. It is expected that during ones youth, decisions will be made about whether or not to attend church and subsequently which one. Individuals cannot merely assimilate the views of their parents but must make them “particularly and peculiarly one’s own.”[8] This is heightened in Protestantism by “demanding…a unique conversion experience.”[9] The authors point out a fantastic irony by saying, “just where we think we are most free, we are most coerced by the dominant beliefs of our own culture. For it is a powerful cultural fiction that we not only can, but must, make up our deepest beliefs in the isolation of our private selves.”[10] The demand to “make something of yourself” through work is also a common theme for American individuals.[11] Our sense of work shapes how we view ourselves. For some, jobs are to make a living. For others, the career traces progress through achievement and advancement and is built on success and self-esteem.[12] Whereas calling suggest that ones work and morals are inseparable as an offering of the self into a community for the larger good. [1] Bellah, 47. [2] Ibid., 47. [3] Ibid., 98. [4] Ibid., 55. [5] Ibid. [6] Ibid., 57. [7] Ibid. [8] Ibid., 63. [9] Ibid. [10] Ibid., 65. [11] Ibid., 66. For Americans, freedom is likely the most deeply resonant and shared value of American society. Yet this freedom, is conceived in the libertarian sense (as we have commented often this semester) as freedom from others values, ideas, lifestyles in both private and public life. Commonality is shared only in the right of the individual to pursue ones own ideals. Justice, based individual rights, becomes the only means to effect and ensure such equal opportunity. In so far as success, justice, and freedom all are common American themes, they provide little help in talking about anything beyond the individual.
The authors suggest that cultural traditions are conversations or arguments about the meaning of the groups shared destiny.[1] Americans have often used a biblical and/or republican mode of discourse to speak of the country’s shared destiny and meaning. The Puritans become the prime exemplar in their desire to create a community where one could live a truly spiritual life. A libertarian sense of freedom is rejected in favor of a “moral” freedom of what is “good, just, and honest” in the context of the covenant between God and humanity.[2] In contrast, the republican ideal casts Thomas Jefferson as the exemplar of public participation for the larger good of society. Equality is conceived as a universal principle defined in primarily political terms to allow equal citizen participation in a self-governing society.[3] The authors describe individualism in two particular forms: utilitarian and expressive. Benjamin Franklin is the epitome of the utilitarian expression of individualism where the individual rises to success through hard work and personal initiative. Many believed that if each individual vigorously pursued his or her own interest, the social good would also automatically emerge.[4] Societal participation becomes contractual where individuals enter merely to advance ones self-interests. Expressive individualism, a form of Romanticism and best exemplified by Walt Whitman, arose in reaction to the materialistic pursuits of utilitarian individualism. Expressive individualism sought to cultivate the self and self-expression where each person has a “unique core of feeling and intuition that must unfold if individuality is to be expressed.”[5] These sentiments are easily identifiable in Whitman’s writings, as well as, Emerson, Thoreau, Melville and others. For the expressivists, “the ultimate use of the American’s independence was to cultivate and express the self and explore its vast social and cosmic identities.”[6] [1] Ibid., 27. See Alisdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, (South Bend, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), 206-207. [2] Ibid. [3] Ibid., 30-31, [4] Ibid., 33. [5] Ibid., 333-4. “How ought we to live? How do we think about how to live? Who are we, as Americans? What is our character?”[1] So begins Habits of the Heart. Its authors, delving into the life and values of “white, middle-class Americans”[2] explore the pervasiveness of individualism. Their study and title gives homage to Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America by returning to his “admiration and anxiety” over the great strength of American individuals, as well as, the potentially isolating tendency of individualism.[3] Tocqueville described these American mores or “habits of the heart” not only as “ideas and opinions but habitual practices with respect to such things as religion, political participation, and economic life.”[4] He described it as the disposition of “each citizen to isolate himself from the mass of his fellows and withdraws into the circle of family and friends; with this little society formed to his taste, he gladly leaves the greater society to look after itself”…where individuals “imagine their whole destiny is in their hands”…finally forgetting their ancestors and descendents.[5]
This sociological study explores the nature of the individual’s participation in both public life through local politics, activism, and voluntary associations and ones private life in terms of love, marriage, and therapy. The first chapter highlights four very distinct individuals which serve to illumine their points through out the text. Even though they betray sharp contrasts in many ways they all share a common individualistic vocabulary in conversations about morality, society, and politics which they call the “first language of American individualism.”[6] Their differences often come in a variety of second languages. These four individuals give us a broad look at cultural values and the difficulty of reconciling them. The authors claim that our “American cultural traditions define personality, achievement and the purpose of human life in ways that leave the individual suspended in glorious, but terrifying, isolation”[7] because ones selected “values and priorities” are merely a personal choice, as long as it does not interfere with the choices of others, and not justified by a “wider framework of purpose or belief.”[8] The good is then defined by one finds rewarding however, as ones preferences change, so does the good.[9] Where there is no shared standard value system, individuals all exist on equal ground where tolerance becomes the virtue of plurality. As a private matter, one cannot impose upon another’s chosen values. In such a world, conflicts are resolved by “honesty and communication” of ones “needs and desires”[10] as matters of “technical problem solving, not moral decision.”[11] Morality then is based on the highly subjective nature of personal preferences. Values are arbitrarily chosen. As a result, successful self-reliance and self-fulfillment become the standards for choosing those preferences and yet, that self-fulfillment is done in radical isolation without means of affecting that same fulfillment for others.[12] The only, and very ironic, fragile unity that such a strident diversity is able to bring about is in the language of individual rights. [1] Robert N. Bellah et al., Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), xli. [2] Ibid., xliii [3] Ibid., xlii [4] Ibid., 37. [5] Ibid., 37. [6] Ibid., 20. [7] Ibid., 6. [8] Ibid. [9] Ibid. [10] Ibid., 16. [11] Ibid., 7. [12] Ibid., 16. I am convinced that I have been given a hermeneutical lens of humor. Quite often I am reading and something will just catch and then seem so strange and ironic that it becomes humorous. I often see the exchanges between individuals or individuals and God as part of a comedy sitcom. Humor that can be pulled from slightly twisted readings is wonderful.
Today our lectionary readings included Exodus 32.1,7-14, Psalm 51, 1 Timothy 1.12-17 and Luke 15.1-10. 1 When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered around Aaron, and said to him, "Come, make godsfor us, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up outof the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him."7 The Lord said to Moses, "Go down at once! Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely; 8 they have been quick to turn aside from the way that I commanded them; they have cast for themselves an image of a calf,and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it, and said, "These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!' " 9 The Lord said to Moses, "I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they are. 10 Now let me alone,so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them; and of you I will make a great nation." 11 But Moses implored the Lord his God, and said, "O Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? 12 Why should the Egyptians say, "It was with evil intent that he brought them out to kill them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth'? Turn from your fierce wrath; change your mind and do not bring disaster on your people. 13 Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, how you swore to them by your own self, saying to them, "I will multiply your descendants like the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.' " 14 And the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people. What struck me today was the exchange between Moses and God. Yahweh tells Moses of an emergency down at the camp saying “your people, whom you brought up” from Egypt. Your people? Has Israel been disowned by God? And does Moses answer in defense saying, “Hey they are not my people, you are the one that chose them and brought them here?” Is Moses trying to distance himself from them? Well that is where my mind went the first time I read it. But after reading it through again I don’t see it quite that way. Rather, Moses pleads with God to relent from his anger, he reminds God that they are his people, that he brought out of slavery, and that he had made promises to them. Moses reminds God to be God, reminding him of his covenantal faithfulness. And yet, I have seen parents do this very thing with children who are acting up. One parent may say to the other, “your son/daughter wants/need/did/is…” and we may fill in the blank with any frustrating or embarrassing behavior. What is interesting is that God has made up his mind to go back on the covenant. And Yahweh may have had good reason to consider it if it is seen from a contractual point of view where Israel had certainly fell off from their end of the deal. God tells Moses to leave so he can let his anger burn. This adds an interesting facet to who God is. Without psychologizing it too much we see God’s jealousy and anger, not an inferiority complex that leads to a sulking deity. Another interesting point is that not only was Yahweh ready to cancel the covenant with Abraham and Isaac, he was ready to make a new covenant with Moses. In this we begin to see not just the initial humor but or a petty change in God’s mind, but what would have been a radical shift in our salvation history. What can we take away from these thoughts? Well, what comes to mind is God’s faithfulness. In one sense, Yahweh seems to be on shaky ground when it comes to his promises. And yet, God does follow through and we must remember that. The other is the importance of knowing our story that we too might remind God to be God. We cannot claim the promises if we have not heard of them nor remember them. We must not only hear the story but live in them and make our lives immersed in the promises of God. |
Ryan StanderArchives
January 2018
Categories
All
|