I want to acknowledge this statement and say that I saw it hours ago and was so humbled (believe it or not) that I had to think about it for all this time.
The three people to whom - far and away - that have posted the closest to my views are FlaSoxxJim, ChiSoxyGirl and GOWT.
To be included in the same sentence as FSK by GOWT is an honor.
One of my proudest honors was when the leading atheist in Calhoun County wrote a letter to the editor of the paper which said I was not too stupid for a minister.
With love and respect to everyone, the conversation amongst the religious does not mean much to me. We live in a world that as Bonhoeffer said has "come of age" and does not need religion anymore. The proper preparation for any worship service is a reflection on our own sin. The people who claim the name of Christ have commited any number of grievous sins against humanity (here's a trinity for you all: crusades, Inquistition, Holocaust) and have no room to address anyone on anything. For a group that persecuted people for believing the earth revolved around the sun or put people on trial for not beliving the historicity of Genesis or produce s&m gay porn and call it the Passion, we have no reason to think that we can converse in intellectual matters. And let us not forget the ludicrousness of Bishop Usher (as opposed to the great beats of Ludicris and Ussher).
We are not people who actually trust our own Scriptures. The very first narrative of murder, Cain killing Abel, God not only protected Cain but gave everyone else a warning not to harm him. We prolciam a Savior wrongfully executed. And yet there are those who argue in favor of the death penalty...
not in God's world.
For example.
And I could throw the terms "tautology" and"aetological" out there and be condemned by my own fellow believers and yet know I am in the company of the greatest of believing scholars who have devoted their life to what the Scriptures actually say rather than defend tautology and aetological stories. It is where one hears the voice of God - in defending the indefensible (Noah's Ark, give me a break) or in hearing that God is saying something far more meaningful that transcends any lack of historicity be speaking to a Truth that lays beyond Mesopotamian narratives.
God is not capracious. God is not unjust. God did not wipe out almost all of humanity out of a petulant rage because people didn't worship God enough. It is the sketic and/or the non believer who is able to understand the truth of that. Or the person who reads every word and understands scholarship rather than defend the indefensible. There are clearly two narrative strands woven together in Genesis 6. Scholars denote them as the J source and the P source. The P source in Genesis 6.1ff clearly identifies the overarching crime of humanity, the offense to God: "Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight, and the earth was filled with violence... I am determined to make an end to all flesh , for the earth is filled with violence..." Now is the point of the story that God acts with evil intent because God has the power to (which would violate God's own definitioon of God in Exodus but that is another thread)... or that violence is the consuming destructive end of humanity? I reflect on Jesus saying those who live by the sword die by the sword and I know the answer.
If we actually read (present tense on "read" not past tense) we notice again and again that God's usual comments on the religious who spoke to the religious is to say (as in Amos, Micah, name your 8th century BCE prophet) that God hates and despises our sacred feasts and our festivals and all of our religious talk and piety but that God desires (indeed, in Micah, requires) justice, mercy, and walking humbly with our God. God does not require our religiousity. God requires we live as if God matters.
(And incidently, a huge salute to Apu who is probably a raging atheist, I don't know, but whose every post speaks of his yearning, his passion for justice and I know that, regardless of the mere facts that Apu may argue, that Apu is proclaiming God's own message of justice more than any of the rest of us and I am humbled.)
"I believe because the Bible says" - hell who can believe that s***? Brando caught a hell of a lot of flack by saying that if God were indeed a capricious being then God could go f*** himself (if maleness were an attribute of God). Sure that sounds offensive but given the language of the 21st century common vocabulary it is as profound of a religious statement that can be made. The authors of Scripture would surely agree -- if not stating that more elegantly. The entire battle in Genesis 1 and elsewhere but especially seen in chapter 1 is the battle against chaos, against capriciousness. The earth was without form and void - chaos ruled - read the Scriptures again and see that battle against chaos over and over again.
In the chaos of capricious and jealous and "why do I have to be fair" gods there is the unique YHWH - the God of justice - who puts an end to chaos. Christus Victor. The Scriptures tell us that God sets aside capriciousness and is justice to us because God is who God is and will be (Exodus 3). I am who I am. I have heard the cry of people who suffer injustice and I respond with deliverance. Exodus 3. God is not the God who practices "who says I have to be fair" as underlying the Noah stories because that is everything that God abhors, that is not who God is by God's own statement. The Noah narratves say that violence destroys us, that God sends to the whole creation the symbols of peace and establishes a covenant that if set aside violence we shall not enter into desturction, with if destruction comes, will be of our own doing, not of God's doing.
(And in the end because God is indeed shown to be the God of justice, it is - and I can hear Eligah saying this - the gods of Ba'al that do go f*** themselves because in the moment of reality YHWH was the God not capriscious, not unfair, but True to the Revelation of God.)
And yes there is a passing reference to "I am a jealous God" but in context God totally destroys the paradigm of jealousy.
And then I read again that every interesting conversation that God as God, or God in Christ, has with the human creation is with the skeptics and these are the people, not the religious, whom God favors. Abraham scoffed, Sarah laughed, Lot got drunk, Jacob wrestled with God, Moses said not me, Rahab was a prostitute, David was a murderer (another statement on the death penalty), Elijah went and hid in the mountains, Amos said I am only a vine dresser, Jesus said let this pass from me, Paul - another murderer - was made the greatest apostle (another statement on he death penalty), and we don't read the geneology of Jesus and thus fail to see the scoundrals, prostitutesm foreigners, aliens, and other outsiders and we think it is all religious folk. Wrong!
The greatest truths we learn are from those who will not accept our bulls*** and religious platitudes. (Best sermon criticims I ever got: "your views on that subject are myopic." and that turned out to be so true...)
Jesus sought out the greatest skeptics and critics for the best conversations - that is where we hear Gospel.
God always called the outsider, the skeptic, the one not favored by the religious. Isaac, not Esau.
David, not the brothers, and certainly not Saul. Deborah, and not her male counterparts, Ruth, not even a follower of YHWH, Rahab the whore, Haggai, husband of a whore, Zacheus, Paul, Matthew, so much so the religious were offended who Jesus jung with and listened to.
Those who can point out the fallacies and the unbelivable things abiout what we say - they are right and we must listen to them and not try to amke them believe our impossible stories. And then we can see that when we cannot defend the indefensible, we are freed up by God's grace the see the Truth that is shielded from the religious but visible to the ones who question every detail.
When one can't buy all of it one has begun to grasp the whole.
When one cannot buy any of it one is freed to look again as if for the first ime and see something wholly new and that is the image of God reflected in the fiercist skeptic who has given us the prism to see that which we cnanot behold: that we begin in recognizing our own weaknesses and need to hear the voice of God in all who speak, especially ones who see through our religious verbiage and say get real. Getting real indeed. Thank you to those who do not accept. Blessed are those who see the holes in our platitudes for it is in dialogue with them we think not as people of religious conviction but as those who seek to be open to the very things that blow us away and show us that God indeed does a new thing, teaching us to look beyond our comfort zone, do we not perceive it?
