Amos

I'm going to jump-start mixing blogging and theology by doing this week's Old Testament homework in a blog post. We're reading Amos, and tonight I'm specifically re-reading Amos to summarize three portions of Amos - his judgement of Israel, his three woes, and his vision. First a little context ...

Amos was not a professional prophet. He was a farmer from Judah in the south, called to prophecy in Israel in the north. He was active in the 8th century BC, probably around 760-745. All around Israel, Assyria was the world super-power - gaining land and tributaries all over Mesopotamia from Babylon to Syria. (I know, Assyria vs. Syria is confusing.) Amos preached when a "weak" king ruled Assyria, so Israel still enjoyed independence and prosperity and did not face immediate threat of invasion. As such, Israel (and Judah) fell into a listless lifestyle and culture that ignored or forgot Yahweh and the responsibilities of His covenant.

Into this, Amos starts his preaching in a formula on the evils of the other nations around them - Aram, Philistia, Tyre, Edom, Ammon, and Moab. "Thus says the LORD: For three crimes of _____, and for four, I will not revoke my word;" In the blank, he names the nation or its capital city. After this, he names specific evil of the nation - e.g., "Because they threshed Gilead with sledges of iron" or "Because they took captive whole groups to hand over to Edom" etc. He then pronounces the punishment of each in the form "I will ... (send fire, root them out, turn my hand against them, etc.)" You can almost hear the shouts of "Amen!" and "Preach it!" and "Glory to God!" from his audience like you might hear in a contemporary fiery sermon of judgement.

Then he throws a curve ball. He continues right on in the formula judging against Judah! Of course his audience is in Israel, so they probably gave some mild awkward applause for his judgment against Judah: "Because they spurned the law of the LORD, and did not keep his statutes; Because the lies which their fathers followed have led them astray." (2:4) Well sure - the Davidic monarchy was known to be in error, right? So of course Judah's fathers led them astray. Okay then, getting too close to home, probably about time to wrap it up, right?

Then he blows their minds; hammers into Israel with his most scathing judgement: "Because they sell the just man for silver, and the poor man for a pair of sandals. They trample the heads of the weak into the dust of the earth, and force the lowly out of the way. Son and father go to the same prostitute, profaning my holy name. Upon garments taken in pledge, they recline beside any altar; And the wine of those who have been fined they drink in the house of their god." (2:7-8) Ouch. Say what now?

The first major theme of Amos's judgement against Israel is perfectly summarized by our textbook: "He [Amos] connects the injustice he sees around him to a society bent on wealth and prosperity and forgetful of the true worship of God." Ouch again - sound familiar?

Secondly, Amos, like all the prophets, condemns Israel's idolatry to "any altar" - referring to the widespread worship of the gods of Canaan by the Israelites. This offense is compounded with mistreatment of the poor, who would give their cloaks as pledges to their creditors, who were supposed to return them before nightfall ("If you take your neighbor's cloak as a pledge, you shall return it to him before sunset; for this cloak of his is the only covering he has for his body. What else has he to sleep in? If he cries out to me, I will hear him; for I am compassionate." Ex 22:25-26, also Dt 24:12) Amos goes on to reiterate Yahweh's supremacy over Israel as opposed to other gods, and gives a strong premonition of military defeat.

Another major part of Amos's preaching are three woes. I had to look up the biblical meaning of 'woe' and I think it roughly means the opposite of blessings - i.e., disasters. Amos speaks a first woe - that Israel will not live in its houses nor drink of its vineyards because they "turn judgment to wormwood and cast justice to the ground." The second woe is, ironically, to those who long for "the day of the LORD" - Amos preaches it will be a day of darkness for Israel and not light, because Israel makes empty offerings and songs. For this, Amos preaches that Yahweh will "exile [them] beyond Damascus." Finally, Amos decrees the woe that a nation (Assyria) will oppress Israel for its complacency in trusting in its wealth and military might and not in Yahweh.

Amos also relates symbolic visions - threats and promises - to Israel. First a vision of locusts and then of fire (burning drought) destroying Israel, at each of which Amos intercedes for Israel and Yahweh repents of it. Then he has a vision of a plummet - specifically, of God using one to judge the uprightness of Israel. Against this Amos does not intercede. Amos also has a vision of a basket of ripe fruit, which I'll admit completely dumbfounds me as to its meaning. Finally, Amos has a vision of the destruction and total ruin of an altar and temple killing those inside; symbolizing that no-one escapes God's punishment.

That's all the homework I'll post for now. I also picked out three instances of three kinds of parallelism found in Amos, but that would take this post into Hebrew poetry which is way to deep to cover fairly. :)

Hitting the wall

Today I ran four miles. First time in years I've run more than three. Today I actually, finally, did some prayer while I ran. I think I need to do more of each and especially of both together.

I have to make a confession. I have already made a confession to a priest, and I want to make one here too. It's been going on for months - too many months. I've been too consumed by (my) theology and (my) life. It's wearing me out, I've hit the wall, I'm trying to get through it, and I'm hoping this post will help.

I've thought of myself before others.
I've considered myself better than others.
I've met others with skepticism.
I've engaged others with pretense.
I've thought judgment upon others.
I've spoken platitudes at others.
I've been insincere with others.
I've ignored the life of God in others.
I've ignored the love of God in others.
I've withheld myself from others.

I am sorry for these sins with all my heart. I have chosen to do wrong, and failed to do good. If I have made these sins against you, I ask your forgiveness. These sins have sneaked into me slowly, but they are real and clear - like worn stains under a full Light.

I'm assigning myself a personal penance - to resume the Daily Office. It's really amazing how much ten minutes of prayer twice a day can change the way I live and love.

Theological Blogging

This semester I've been struggling to finish my Old Testament essay, "Themes and Theologies from Primeval Myths of the Ancient Near East." Partly, I think I'm just bad at traditional academic writing. So, I'm going to try to mix a couple of my passions - my blogging and my theological study. But I need some reader participation for this ...

I spoke to my professor about writing some academic-flavored blog posts in lieu of writing a term paper for next semester's New Testament class. He and I will determine an assignment of blog posts to write on the topics we'll cover in the New Testament. When I blog them, I will need at least some readers to ask me some follow-up questions in the comments, and that will instigate me into further research and response. I think it can work really well, based on my previous post on Genesis which got a good 16 comments.

So, how many of you could help me out with comments on some academic posts next semester? The number of comments to this post could serve as something of a trial figure, so please leave a comment here so I can show my instructor that this could work. Thanks.

whoa. whoa. WHOA!

Okay, this is exciting. The Vatican has approved an Apostolic Constitution for the purpose of bringing Anglicans into the Roman Catholic Church! Very roughly, this means there will be something like an 'Anglican Rite' of the Roman Catholic Church, and as I understand it, Anglican congregations can be corporately brought into full communion with Rome.

As I understand it, married priests will retain their clerical status and responsibilities, but cannot be bishops. Celibate Anglican bishops can become bishops in the Roman church, and some celibate priests may be ordained as new bishops in the Anglican "rite" of the Church.

This is meaningful to me for a couple reasons.

First and foremost, one of my good friends is Episcopalian - the province of the Anglican Communion in the US. I know he's very warm to the Roman tradition. He is actually one of the main reasons I became Roman Catholic. and he turned me on to liturgical tradition by introducing me to the daily office. I haven't talked to him about this yet, but just the fact that this avenue exists between the two churches gives me new hope as I reflect on how much our friendship has meant to me.

Another reason I'm excited is I think this sets a positive precedent for the Church. I think this is a good experiment for the Church to see how it can open up new avenues to receive established Christian communities into its fold. I don't think I'll offend any of my Protestant readers if I say that there's something of a trend of dissatisfaction fomenting in the ranks of mainline Protestantism. I think the 'Emerging' movement, with which I heavily identify, is a result of it. With this precedent in place, is it really far fetched to consider the possibility of a Lutheran or Methodist rite? Though I won't hold out too much hope for an Emerging rite. ;)

It's still early in the process, and there may only be a small proportion of Anglicans who will embrace this opportunity, but I still think this will only be good for our Christian ecclesiology and ecumenism.

contemporary mythologies

Is it just me, or are TV series better these days about accurately and intelligently broaching some deep and important topics? Well, okay I know it's not just me, because Speaking of Faith ran a program on TV and Parables of Our Time which was really cool. And their mention of Battlestar Galactica was the last push I needed to check it out; a few of my friends also said I would enjoy the mix of SciFi story and Religion.

The series presents a story of war between humans and machines set, presumably, in the far future and in a distant part of the galaxy. The humans live in colonies named for (and presumably located within?) Zodiac constellations - Caprica, Gemini, etc. The humans create a race of cybernetic machines as tools to improve their lives. The machines - cylons - rebel against the humans. There's a long war between them, but they declare an armistice. After 40 years though, the cylons return to destroy all of humanity. That's where the series starts.

An interesting twist of the series is that the cylons are more religiously zealous than the humans. The humans somewhat superficially maintain a "pagan" religious tradition that resembles the mythologies of ancient Rome and Greece; by contrast the cylons are deeply devoted to their faith in the "One True God" that's apparently inspired by monotheistic fundamentalism.

I have to say so far I've thought the religious themes and concepts explored by the series have been pretty average. There's nothing grossly inaccurate nor offensive, but the writers lack some of the subtlety and nuance of fuller religious reflection. A few episodes I watched last night raised the bar a bit, and I'm hoping it continues to improve in season 3.

One of the episodes depicted a scene with a human priest counseling one of the characters after they've done something, uh ... really bad.

(Priest) Cavill: Chief Tyrol, I am Brother Cavill. I understand you've asked for religious counseling.
Tyrol: I never really believed in psych therapy. My father was a priest.
Cavill: I see. You thought you'd have an easier time with a priest than a real doctor.
Tyrol: Okay. I pray to the gods every night. But I don't think they listen to me.
Cavill: Do you know how useless prayer is? Chanting and singing and mucking about with old half-remembered lines of bad poetry. And you know what it gets you? Exactly nothing.
Tyrol: Are you sure you're a priest?
Cavill: I've been preaching longer than you've been sucking down oxygen. And in that time, I've learned enough to know that the gods don't answer prayers. We're here o­n our own. That's the way they set things up. We have to find our own answers, our own way out of the wilderness without a nice little sunny path all laid out in front of us in advance.
Tyrol: That's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to find my way.
Cavill: Well, it's not going to get better until you see what the problem is. And the problem is, you're screwed up, heart and mind. You. Not the gods or fate or the universe. You.
Tyrol: Thanks for the pep talk.

I had to pause the DVD at this point. This is a perfect example of a big distinction between Abrahamic and most pagan theologies. Judaism was the first major religion (of which we know) to espouse the idea of a god who was compassionately oriented towards humanity. By contrast, the pagan gods of Assyria, Babylon, Canaan, Egypt and Greece were only superficially interested in the well-being of mankind. By and large, pagan peoples offered sacrifice and prayer to the gods of nature in an attempt to barter favor from those who would really rather pursue their own interests. The pagan gods viewed humanity the way we might view a hive of bees - good when they give us honey, but also annoying when they sting us; insignificant creatures to be merely used or swatted.

Of course the exchange hints at other theological ideas - deism vs. theism, fate vs. free will, etc. But this is was, in my opinion, the meatiest theological material in this particular episode. It inspired me to include some ancient Greek mythology in my essay, "Themes and Theologies from Primeval Myths of the Ancient Near East and Today." The myths I'll explore in the essay ...
From the Ancient Near East:

• Hebrew Genesis


• Babylonian Enûma Eliš


• Babylonian Legend of Adapa


• Akkadian Epic of Gilgamesh


• Ugaritic Baal Epic


• Egyptian Nu and benben Myths


• Greek Theogony

Contemporary:

• J.R.R. Tolkien's Silmarilion


• C.S. Lewis's Narnia


• George Lucas's Star Wars


• Battlestar Galactica

I'm sure I'm missing some obvious or important contemporary "mythologies" ... ?

(optional) contextivism !== relativism

Hypocrisy, thy name is Luke. Here's some of my own theological activism/contextivism not an hour after I wrote about disliking it. This is an optional rant post. I've tried to stay away from ranting on this blog, but in this case I just need to vent. Feel free to skip this ...

Remember I said one of the theological discussions/debates to which I'm drawn is the whole evolution/creation/Genesis thing? Well, I had been in just such a discussion over on imonk with this "Will" guy. I brought up the parallel to the Galileo affair, and he wanted to take that on.

The main meat of our exchange starts here. I'll wait while you catch up on at least that much.

Done? Good. Normally I would have commented back again, but imonk very smartly closes comments on posts older than 6 days, and I was too busy bringing my newborn daughter home from the hospital to comment in that time. That's mostly why we're getting into it here.

His last comment is the worst offense, and I really hate that it will be the last word in the dialog for anyone who stumbles onto it later. Oh well. Here's what he said:

Where does it stop Luke? What if science one day provides evidence that resurrections don’t happen. Do we need to stop with the black and white thinking that requires a literal resurrection?

Oh….wait. Science does show clearly (one heck of a lot clearer than it does show evolution) that humans that are truly dead for 3 days don’t come back to life. How can we reconcile this without becoming the closed minded church of Galileo? Maybe the resurrection was metaphor. Maybe the ancients didn’t really care about a real literal resurrection. Maybe they just cared about hope coming out of disappointment.

What? Are you arguing with me? Why are you being so closed minded about things. We all know that the dead don’t literally rise. Don’t we? The sooner Christians stop clinging to silly notions such as this the sooner we can have a genuine faith.

Or…..we could believe what scripture says and let science catch up later. Your choice my friend.

This is a classic slippery slope fallacy. It seems common among scientists, engineers (like me), and fatalists. Basically, Will is saying that if we reason that Genesis 1-3 is myth rather than literal Truth, we will inevitably be forced into sacrificing our faith in Jesus Christ to reason. It just doesn't work that way for me. Maybe it works that way for Bill G (if he's still reading this blog)? It's a similar string of logic: observe that the authorship or accuracy of text in the Bible is uncertain, and be inevitably forced to conclude that the whole Bible is myth. I just can't connect all those dots.

Back to Will's particular statement about resurrection. A similar thought came up in class as well, and I'll ask it here: is there any way science (archaeology was the science in question) could void your faith?

In that particular discussion, I had to admit yes. If I'm someday convinced that we have uncovered the tomb and remains of Jesus, that would shake and uproot my faith. I would have to more seriously consider Judaic and/or Islamic traditions. It's somewhat unpleasant thought, but I have to admit it to myself out of intellectual honesty.

So here's the point: I used to feel that way about evolution, but I don't anymore. And the key for me is context. The context of Genesis 1-3 within the Pentateuch, the Old Testament, the Jewish and Christian traditions - means evolution just doesn't amount to a faith-changing notion for me. But I understand completely where Will is at right now. When my faith was "the entire Bible is literally true as read in my own interpretation," then believing evolution would have been a faith-changing event for me. But when I rejected sola (my) scriptura, it suddenly became a non-issue.

But the key for me has always been about context. I just get really irked when people confuse contextualization with total relativism - i.e., either you ignore all context and take everything directly at face value, or else you have to concede everything you think to be True is totally relative.

Theological Activism

I recently called a good friend a "theological bulldozer." Let's use that conversation as a starting point, but this a great friend of mine, so don't get the idea that I'm dissing them or whatever. They read this blog; if they want to make themself known in the comments, they can.

I've talked about theology, a couple times. I'm actually very positive on theology; I'm studying for a theology degree, and hoping to get a MTS from the University of Dallas. But where I draw back is from "theological activism" - a more accurate(?) term for what I meant by "theological bulldozing." I like 'activism' terminology better because it can carry a positive context (like this), and it's more open to analogies and metaphors - my intellectual meat and drink. :)

There's areas of activism about which I'm largely apathetic. Not that I don't have my own ideas or beliefs, but there are a good many things where I indulge in some rational ignorance, and so I'm not particularly passionate about them ... at least not right now. The more I specialize my knowledge into certain things - computer programming, studying theology, brewing beer, or whatever - the less I'm willing to hold onto a strong opinion about the other things I don't know as well. And in studying theology, I find the breadth and depth of the subject so massive that I hesitate to act on my still tiny knowledge.

Though as I was writing this post, I caught myself engaging in some of my own theological activism. Specifically, I find myself drawn to discussions/debates about evolution and Genesis. I personally don't see the conflict between them as other people do, because I'm more and more interested in the mythology of Genesis in its proper context and unwrapping what Truth that implies.

I try not to nit-pick theology. So if someone is communicating a general message about how God and humans relate to one another, I won't pick out a single sentence or a single word choice on their part and blow it out of context. I love context and bigger-picture stuff. Maybe I'm into "theological contextivism" ? I wonder if that's any better?