Spiritual sustenance for terrifying times

A friend asked on Facebook, "How are you going to sustain yourself emotionally and spiritually in the coming months and years?" I never thought of responding, "I'll go to church."

If people who call themselves Christians could bring us Donald Trump and his evil minions, I was inclined to stay home, walk my dog, and read distracting novels.

I admit: I was being grossly unfair. The church I attend is made up largely of the very people most likely to be harmed by Trump's administration: immigrants, people of color, LGBTQ people, women, seniors, people whose children are in the military. I should have thought of it as a primary source of emotional and spiritual sustenance, but I was maybe just a little ticked at our pastors for not speaking out more specifically and forcefully about the dangers so many of us are facing and our pervasive fear in the face of those dangers.

Yet for some reason, though I had planned to stay home yesterday morning, I found myself walking through the church doors anyway. I'm glad I did.

Not because of the sermon. It was a perfectly decent sermon for normal times, but the preacher typically made no direct reference to the seriously abnormal events that are washing over us. Well, he did tell us that followers of Jesus are more likely to suffer than to get rich. He got that right.

No, it was the hymns and Scripture readings that brought emotional and spiritual sustenance--and I'm not saying that because my husband is the music director. He and the pastors together chose the hymns well before Trump's hugely disastrous first week in office, and the Scripture readings were chosen years ago by the Consultation on Common Texts. God works in mysterious ways, as the seriously depressed William Cowper noted in 1774, two years before his country went to war.

But wait--before I'm sucked back into the Slough of Despond, let me share some of yesterday's poetry with you, in case you too are feeling short on sustenance.

Here are three verses from the first hymn, "Rise Up, O Saints of God" (imagine singing this lustily with congregation and organ):

Speak out, O saints of God! Despair engulfs earth's frame;

As heirs of God's baptismal grace, the word of hope proclaim.

Rise up, O saints of God! The kingdom's path embrace;

Redress sin's cruel consequence; give justice larger place.

Give heed, O saints of God! Creation cries in pain;

Stretch forth your hand of healing now; with love the weak sustain.

This is the summation of the first Scripture reading, Micah 6:1-8:

He has told you, O mortal, what is good;

and what does the Lord require of you 

but to do justice, 

and to love kindness, 

and to walk humbly with your God?

Psalm 15 is especially striking when read responsively:

Lord, who may dwell in your tabernacle? 

who may abide upon your holy hill?

Whoever leads a blameless life and does what is right, 

who speaks the truth from his heart.

There is no guile upon his tongue; he does no evil to his friend; 

he does not heap contempt upon his neighbor.

In his sight the wicked is rejected, 

but he honors those who fear the Lord.

He has sworn to do no wrong 

and does not take back his word.

He does not give his money in hope of gain, 

nor does he take a bribe against the innocent.

Whoever does these things 

shall never be overthrown.

The second Scripture reading, 1 Corinthians 1:18-31, warns against boasting because "God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong." 

The Gospel reading, Matthew 5:1-12, is Jesus's list of those who are blessed in God's kingdom: the poor, mourners, the meek, those who hunger for justice, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, those who are persecuted for speaking truth to power.

Joshua Banbury movingly sang the prayer attributed to St. Francis of Assisi, which includes these words:

Where there is hatred, let me sow love;

Where there is injury, pardon;

Where there is doubt, faith;

Where there is despair, hope;

Where there is darkness, light;

Where there is sadness, joy...

As the service ended, we all stood up and sang "God of Grace and God of Glory" (to the tune usually used for "Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah"). Here are two verses. Sing it as you read, and hear the church singing with you:

Lo! the hosts of evil round us

scorn thy Christ, assail his ways!

From the fears that long have bound us

free our hearts to faith and praise:

grant us wisdom, grant us courage,

for the living of these days,

for the living of these days.

Save us from weak resignation

to the evils we deplore;

let the gift of thy salvation

be our glory evermore.

Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,

serving thee whom we adore,

serving thee whom we adore.

Christianity will have a hard time recovering from self-proclaimed Bible-believing Christians who played a major role in bringing us the horrors now unfolding in Washington DC and around the world. Churches that take Scripture seriously, however--if they do not give in to "weak resignation"--may be among our best sources of emotional and spiritual sustenance in the coming months and years.

Rise up, O saints of God! The kingdom's path embrace;

Redress sin's cruel consequence; give justice larger place.

In case Mr Trump couldn't make it to church this morning...

If Donald Trump, who is technically a Presbyterian, attended church this morning (not unthinkable - he did attend an Iowa church one Sunday just before the caucuses), here is the Epistle reading that he probably heard:

If you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.

Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry). On account of these the wrath of God is coming on those who are disobedient. These are the ways you also once followed, when you were living that life. But now you must get rid of all such things-- anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator. In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!

Colossians 3:1-11

Some prominent evangelicals have claimed that Mr. Trump may be a new Christian. If this is true, I'm sure he'll be especially interested in studying this passage, since it is addressed to new converts who are just learning what it means to follow Jesus.

Mr. Trump has said he collects Bibles. If he unavoidably had to miss church this morning, he might want to pick up one of those Bibles, look up the passage, read it slowly and carefully, and ask himself how to apply its words to his life.

Let's talk about food ... and wine!

[Caravaggio, Bacchus, 1596]

A meal without wine is like a day without sunshine.

--Brillat-Savarin, or maybe an Italian proverb

 

I enjoy wine. But I readily acknowledge that some people should not drink wine: recovering alcoholics, of course; drinkers who don't realize they're alcoholics; people taking certain medications; people who are about to drive cars or pilot airplanes; children; and so on.

To be fair, there are people who shouldn't eat bread, either, though not as many.

Yes, wine can be dangerous. In scripture and other literature, it can indicate evil and punishment and terror.

In the Bible, wine sometimes accompanies wickedness and judgment. For example, the Psalmist writes that "in the hand of the Lord there is a cup with foaming wine, well mixed; he will pour a draught from it, and all the wicked of the earth shall drain it down to the dregs" (Psalm 75:8).

St. John of Patmos says that Babylon--herself a symbol of corrupt governments and multinational corporations--"has made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication" (Revelation 14:8; 18:3).

In "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," Julia Ward Howe uses wine production as a double symbol, evoking both the Last Judgment and the American Civil War: "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord; / He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored."

But more often, wine brings to mind abundance and contentment and friendship.

Hear Moses' final blessing on his people: "So Israel lives in safety, untroubled is Jacob’s abode in a land of grain and wine, where the heavens drop down dew" (Deuteronomy 33:28).

And the Preacher's summary of a good life: "Go, eat your bread with enjoyment, and drink your wine with a merry heart; for God has long ago approved what you do" (Ecclesiastes 9:7).

And the delightful quatrain by Hilaire Belloc:

Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine,
There’s always laughter and good red wine.
At least I’ve always found it so.
Benedicamus Domino.

A drink that can evoke friendship and anger, blessing and corruption, joy and addiction, holiday relaxation and highway death, family harmony and family destruction--what a symbol!

In Prince Caspian, Book 2 of The Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis describes the Pevensie girls' reaction to a wild party with river gods, forest goddesses, maenads, Silenus, and Bacchus himself:

"I wouldn't have felt safe with Bacchus and all his wild girls if we'd met them without Aslan," [said Susan].

"I should think not," said Lucy.

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This is part of a series of short posts especially for people who attend St Barnabas Episcopal Church in Glen Ellyn, IL, where I'm leading conversations about food on September 22, September 29, and October 6. I'll post about food every weekday between September 16 and October 4.

Let's talk about food: What does bread mean?

[Salvador Dali, Basket of Bread, 1926]

Bread is an especially rich symbol (see yesterday's post about how symbols have many layers of meaning).

Imagine

● a freshly baked, crusty baguette
● a thick slice of heavy brown bread, warm from the oven
● two loaves of challah at the beginning of Shabbat dinner
● scones with clotted cream and jam

--or, on the other hand,

● a dry crust
● crumbs
● day-old bread
● Wonder Bread

I'm guessing you quickly moved beyond taste and smell to highly personal associations--places, people, feelings, stories evoked by thinking about bread. Symbols invite you to do that.

Consider also some of the many Bible stories that feature bread:

● Passover with its unleavened bread
● The manna that fed the Israelites in the wilderness
● The miracle of the loaves and fishes
● The Last Supper (a Passover meal) with its shared loaf

--or some scriptural statements about bread:

● "If your enemies are hungry, give them bread to eat" (Proverbs 25:21)
● "Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread?" (Isaiah 55:2)
● "Give us this day our daily bread" (Matthew 6:11)
● "Jesus said to them, 'I am the bread of life'" (John 6:35)

Ask yourself, what does the bread mean? You'll likely come up with multiple meanings right away. That's how symbols work.

Now think about bread, any kind of bread you choose--

● how its ingredients are grown, harvested, and processed, and by whom
● how it's baked, and by whom
● how it is served and eaten, and by whom

Can you see how bread might enrich your view of life, or Jesus, or God's providence, or ... ?  Again, you're seeing symbols at work--or at play.

I love the prayer in the Roman Catholic liturgy that echoes the Hebrew blessing over bread:

Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation,
for through your goodness we have received the bread we offer you:
fruit of the earth and work of human hands,
it will become for us the bread of life.

A person could spend hours just parsing that prayer. Once you let symbols loose in your mind, everything looks different.

*   *   *

If you aren't yet convinced that bread is an extremely fecund symbol, find more layers of meaning (from the sublime to the ridiculous) in "The Symbolism of Bread."
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This is part of a series of short posts especially for people who attend St Barnabas Episcopal Church in Glen Ellyn, IL, where I'm leading conversations about food on September 22, September 29, and October 6. I'll post about food every weekday between September 16 and October 4.

Let's talk about food: Naked, no doubt hungry, and definitely not ashamed

[Rodin, Le baiser]

It's odd that Christians--people who claim to believe that God created the earth, sustains it day by day, and intends to create a new earth--are often so mixed up about sex and food. How long would the earth's inhabitants last without coupling and eating?

And yet most Christian writers right up to the 16th century praised celibacy, sexless marriages, and arduous fasting. Bless Martin Luther for loving his wife (and the beer she brewed), but lots of us still seem to think that good sex and good food--if not actually sinful--are at least pretty low on the religious values hierarchy.

Has it escaped our attention that, according to our most sacred literature, God made a naked male and a naked female, put them in the midst of grain fields and orchards, and told them to multiply?

Have we noticed that, in the great poem that is the last book of Christian scripture, the celebration of the triumph of good over evil is portrayed as a marriage supper?

Why are we so nervous about our bodies?

Well, such nervousness has a long history. Philosophers going back at least as far as Plato have favored the soul over the body. St. Paul often sounds like he does too (though theologians, e.g. E.P. Sanders, point out that his spirit/flesh dichotomy isn't really talking about the soul vs the body at all). And the Roman Empire was full of teachers who posited a radical dualism between soul and body--with the soul, of course, on top. The author of the first letter to Timothy described such teachings, and rejected them:

They forbid marriage and demand abstinence from foods, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected, provided it is received with thanksgiving; for it is sanctified by God’s word and by prayer (1 Timothy 4.3-5).

I wanted to illustrate this post with a painting of Adam and Eve enjoying themselves in paradise. I thought it would be easy to find: just Google "creation" or "paradise" or "Eden," throw in "Adam" or "Eve" to narrow the search results--piece of cake, right?

Sadly, no. Just about every painting that came up was about the Fall. Eve having a chat with a snake. Eve sharing her apple with Adam. The primal pair fleeing Eden, earnestly hiding their genitals.

My Google search discovered no rejoicing in the beauty and goodness of the fresh-made earth. No sumptuous breakfasts prepared by the Creator for the wakening humans. No primordial picnics au naturel.

Just guilt.

Hey, Christians, can't we do better than that?
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This is part of a series of short posts especially for people who attend St Barnabas Episcopal Church in Glen Ellyn, IL, where I'll be leading conversations about food on September 22, September 29, and October 6. I'll post about food every weekday between September 16 and October 4.

Let's talk about food: The Bible says "Let's parteeee!"

[From the Schmalz Brewing Company]

If you are under the impression that the Bible recommends a life of dour deprivation--especially of good food and drink--read Deuteronomy 14:22-26 for comfort:

Set apart a tithe of all the yield of your seed that is brought in yearly from the field. In the presence of the Lord your God, in the place that he will choose as a dwelling for his name, you shall eat the tithe of your grain, your wine, and your oil, as well as the firstlings of your herd and flock, so that you may learn to fear the Lord your God always. But if, when the Lord your God has blessed you, the distance is so great that you are unable to transport it, because the place where the Lord your God will choose to set his name is too far away from you, then you may turn it into money. With the money secure in hand, go to the place that the Lord your God will choose; spend the money for whatever you wish--oxen, sheep, wine, strong drink, or whatever you desire. And you shall eat there in the presence of the Lord your God, you and your household rejoicing together.

And the tradition continues in the New Testament. Remember the winemaker for the wedding at Cana!

[Andrea Boscoli, 16th century]

L'chaim!
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This is part of a series of short posts especially for people who attend St Barnabas Episcopal Church in Glen Ellyn, IL, where I'll be leading conversations about food on September 22, September 29, and October 6. I'll post about food every weekday between September 16 and October 4.

Let's talk about food: Chocolate Cake

Someone has just offered you a big piece of chocolate cake. What do you say?

--Oh, I shouldn't.

--Could you give me just half a piece?

--I'll diet tomorrow. 

Chocolate = Guilt. Shame. Regret.

Right?
Unless, of course, it's your second birthday.
Or unless you've been reading your Bible about food.

"Let us eat and celebrate."
Luke 15.23

"Eat what is good,
and delight yourselves in rich food."
Isaiah 55.2

"Feasts are made for laughter."
Ecclesiastes 10.19

So when did we trade celebration for guilt, delight for shame, laughter for regret?

What did Jesus mean when he said, "Unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 18.3)?

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This is the first of a series of short posts especially for people who attend St Barnabas Episcopal Church in Glen Ellyn, IL, where I'll be leading conversations about food on September 22, September 29, and October 6. I'll be posting about food every weekday between September 16 and October 4.

Grammar sins: a case study

From Nicolas Poussin,
 Le Christ et la femme adultère

You know the story. A woman was caught in the act. The religious leaders grabbed her and brought her to Jesus. Are you a biblical literalist? they asked. Because if you are, shouldn't we stone her? What would Moses do?

Quick, now. What did Jesus say?

About.com's French Language website quotes his words thus: "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone."

My inner grammarian wincing, I dashed off an email to the website's author: "That should be 'Let him who is without sin ... ' (i.e., 'Let him ... cast the first stone'; I don't think you'd be tempted to write 'Let he ... cast the first stone').

Of course she knew the difference - she herself is a grammarian. But, she said, she was just quoting the Bible, which says "Let he ...."

Actually it doesn't, at least not in the King James Version, the Revised Standard Version, the New International Version, the New American Bible, the Common English Bible, the Douay-Reims Version, or presumably any other version that uses copyeditors. Lacking a Bible at hand, she explained, she had found the verse online. Just Google it, she told me.

So I did. I am pleased to report that when I compared "Let him who is without sin" to "Let he who is without sin," correct grammar won, 3.8 million to 1.3 million.

I also learned that "Let He Who Is Without Sin" is the name of a Star Trek episode.

It's a good thing modern English tends to use only three pronoun cases (such as he, him, his). We'd never learn to speak Hungarian - it has at least 18 cases.

But hey, if you use the wrong case, I won't stone you. I'm not without sin: I refuse to say "It is I."

THE SISTERS OF SINAI by Janet Soskice

When my friend Irene, who reads much more deeply than I do, said "I love this book," I thought, Uh oh. Now I'm going to feel shallow unless I read it too. So I put a hold on it at the public library (no commitment required), and I looked at Amazon's reviews, which you can find here.

Whoa... an "enthralling narrative"? "Luminous"? "Absorbing and delightful"? "Lively and lucid"? Improbable descriptors for a book about two middle-aged female linguists who discover a Syriac palimpsest in St. Catherine's Monastery, and I've been in publishing long enough not to trust book-jacket blurbs.

Still, it's no mean feat to garner favorable reviews - or, really, any reviews at all -  from the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Washington Post, Books and Culture ... well, I was beginning to be embarrassed that I hadn't heard of the book before my friend tipped me off. And now that I've read it, I pass her tip on to you.

Janet Soskice, who is Professor in Philosophical Theology at the University of Cambridge, has nevertheless written a fascinating biography of Agnes Lewis and Margaret Gibson, twin sisters from Scotland who were never as famous as they deserved to be for discovering an ancient biblical manuscript.

Their discovery, which came at a time when ancient biblical manuscripts were all the rage, was of one of the oldest New Testament manuscripts ever found. It contained most of the Gospels, almost definitively proved that the original book of Mark did not include the snake-handling, poison-drinking verses in the last chapter, and was written in Syriac - first cousin to the Aramaic spoken by Jesus and the disciples. So why have we never heard of Mrs. Lewis and Mrs. Gibson?

Mostly because they were women. Born in 1843, they educated each other, becoming proficient in a variety of languages ancient and modern. They could not earn university degrees, because universities in mid-nineteenth century did not award degrees to women. Besides, they were Scottish Presbyterians, who were not especially in favor at Oxford or Cambridge. And several university professors desperately wanted the credit for their work.

Luckily, Mrs. Lewis and Mrs. Gibson were extremely rich and incredibly motivated.

Soskice has done a fine job of presenting them and their era in all their glorious eccentricities, turning their story into a good read even for people who are not usually fascinated by archaeological findings and ancient manuscripts.

Thanks, Irene.

The Shallows, A Time of Gifts, and the importance of memorization

I just sent a review of Nicholas Carr's new book, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, to Christian Century magazine, so I won't review it here. I will say, however, that the book is well researched and thought provoking, and Carr is an engaging writer to boot. If you're thinking you might want to buy or borrow it, you can get a preview by reading his Atlantic article, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" (July/August 2008).

But I'd like to comment here on his ninth chapter, "Search, Memory," which includes some startling ideas that aren't in the magazine article. Carr strongly disagrees with those who see no point in memorization, now that nearly anything we might memorize is available in the Internet's vast data banks. Without well-formed memories, he believes, we become unable to synthesize our cultural heritage and reinterpret it for our day. We can't draw on it to inform our own creative endeavors. And we certainly can't pass it on to future generations. "Outsource memory," says Carr, "and culture withers."

While reading The Shallows for work, I was also reading Patrick Leigh Fermor's A Time of Gifts for fun. In 1933 at the age of 18, Leigh Fermor set off on a solo walking tour from Holland to Constantinople. This book, the first of two about his journey, gets him as far as Hungary. With no MP3 player to distract him, he amuses himself en route by singing and reciting poetry: Shakespeare, Marlowe, Spenser, Keats, Tennyson, Browning, Coleridge, Blake, Scott, Swinburne, Rossetti, Wordsworth, Kipling, Donne, Herrick, Raleigh, Wyatt, Herbert, Marvell, Housman, Chaucer, Carroll, and Lear--to name only some of the authors he mentions.

Leigh Fermor, I should point out, left school at age 16.

If I made that journey, I wouldn't know enough poetry to get me from breakfast to lunch on the first day out. Back in the 1950s when I was in elementary school, memorization had largely fallen from grace. My father had memorized long poems in the 1920s, but by age 16 all I could recite was William Cullen Bryant's "Thanatopsis" (learned for extra credit to prove to my father than I could do it too), a couple of poems by Robert Frost, the first two and a half verses of "Paul Revere's Ride," and "Gerald McBoing-Boing Meets Mr. Magoo," a poem published in Family Circle that my mother suggested I memorize when I was driving her nuts on a long car trip (I was an 8-year-old chatterbox, and I had run out of library books).

This is a shame because, in Leigh Fermor's words, "I was at the age when one's memory for poetry or for languages - indeed for anything - takes impressions like wax and, up to a point, lasts like marble." Fortunately I attended a Christian school that, though it had given up on poetry and languages, still expected us to memorize scripture. Lots of it, from the King James Version. I whined and grumbled, but my mother wisely told me to just do it. "When you're older," she told me, "these verses will stay in your mind. You'll be glad they're there."

Mother was right, and so, I believe, is Nicholas Carr. As I learned in grade school and still remember, "out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh" (Matthew 12:34).


Check out William Dalrymple's 2008 interview with Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor here.

Adam Smith meets the rich young ruler

For more than sixty years American presidents have tried to reform our health-care system, to no avail. In the same time period, all other developed nations have set up systems that insure all their citizens, that spend less per capita than we do, and that have better outcomes in almost all categories. Why are American still lagging behind?

Ethicist Daniel Callahan diagnoses our problem in the most recent issue of Commonweal magazine and comes to this conclusion: we suffer from “the absence in this country of a solid common-good tradition.”

In his thoughtful article "America' Blind Spot: Health Care & the Common Good," Callahan points out that the absence of a common-good tradition is not ideologically based—it is felt at all points on the political spectrum. “In their opposition to liberal reform efforts,” Callahan writes, “conservatives invoke freedom, choice, and competition as their leading values. Liberals—and the Obama administration in particular—have no agreed-upon set of countervailing values.”

Instead of the common good, says Callahan, liberals have appealed to rights, obligations, and justice—fine concepts, but without much curb appeal. Conservatives invoke radical individualism, even though one of their heroes, Adam Smith,

believed that markets could not flourish without a strong underlying moral culture. Smith believed that such a culture is animated by empathy and fellow-feeling, by our ability to understand our common bond as human beings and to recognize the needs of others.

And all of us argue about the bottom line.

Sunday’s Gospel reading was about a man who asked Jesus what he needed to do to inherit eternal life. Jesus told him to sell his possessions and give them to the poor. “At that statement his face fell, and he went away sad, for he had many possessions” (Mark 10:22).

I confess: I don’t want the poor to take any more of my possessions. I pay taxes. I give to charities. In the wake of the recession, our income has taken a serious hit, and a tax increase would hurt. I would much rather offer the poor someone else’s possessions. Why not help them, as many European countries do, by restricting doctors’ income and insurers’ profits?

Strangely, my cardiologist’s office doesn’t want to lose any of its possessions either. A recent mailing urges patients to oppose health-care reform and Medicare changes, warning that their lives may be endangered if cardiologists are prevented from making big bucks from overusing expensive diagnostic equipment (this is not, of course, how they phrase it).

Oddly enough, insurance companies would like to hang on to their possessions too (though almost everybody in America thinks that Aetna’s CEO probably doesn’t need every cent of the more than $24 million he made in 2008). No wonder they are doing their best to scare us into keeping the present system.

Without a shared belief in the common good, who among us will go first? Or will we do nothing, hang on to our possessions, and go away sad, leaving health care unreformed and the poor uncared for?

Here is how Callahan concludes his fine analysis:

Suffering, disease, and death are our common lot. They ought to be dealt with as our common problem. It is a shame that the kind of empathy and mutual support that Adam Smith understood to be a requirement of morality have not, in our culture, been extended to health care—extended to one another in the recognition that we all have bodies that go awry and fail. Instead we are offered a consumer model, a national Walmart of medical choice where we are all sharp-eyed purchasers getting the best possible deal for ourselves. A construal of the common good as the freedom of consumers to get what they want, indifferent to the fate of others, is a cheap substitute for the real thing.

Callahan expertly diagnoses our problem, but he does not offer a solution. National revival comes to mind, but America already has a much higher percentage of church-going Christians than the countries that take care of all their poor and suffering. Maybe we won’t really care about the common good until more of us Americans experience poverty and suffering first hand.

Theological dogs

Last week a friend who knows my dogs sent me a link to Wendy Francisco’s wildly popular new song, “God and Dog” (over half a million views at time of writing). G-o-d and d-o-G--two words, one kind of love. "They would stay with me all day; / I’m the one who walks away . / But both of them just wait for me / and dance at my return with glee. / Both love me no matter what ..."

Well, OK. I know that "nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God" (Romans 8:39) and that "joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth" (Luke 15:7). And I've noticed that both Greyfriar's Bobby (pictured at left) and the Old Testament God (not pictured; dislikes graven images) are renowned for their faithfulness. If self-doubting, guilt-ridden You Tube viewers are moved by Ms Francisco's song to consider and perhaps even feel some of God's everlasting love for them (Jeremiah 31:3), she has accomplished a lot.

I'll admit, though, that the song makes me uncomfortable--not just because of its sticky sentimentality, but also because of its God-as-a-pet-dog theology. The canine metaphor for the relationship between humans and God is nothing new, of course. "Even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs," said the Greek woman to Jesus (Luke 7:28): even pagans can be blessed, if indirectly.

In the early 1800s, theologian and philosopher Friedrich Schleiermacher came up with an idea that the Greek woman might have appreciated: the basis of religion is not reason, creed, or dogma, but rather a feeling of absolute dependence. Schleiermacher's colleague in philosophy, G.W.F. Hegel, famously retorted: "[Then] a dog would be the best Christian, for it possesses this [feeling of absolute dependence] in the highest degree and lives mainly in this feeling” (Crouter, 91).

Note that in the Greek woman's plea, as in Hegel's wisecrack about Schleiermacher's theology, God is the human and I'm the dog, not the other way around.

Hegel published his comment in 1822. Some 70 years later, rescued opium addict Francis Thompson wrote what would become his most famous poem, "The Hound of Heaven." In it, God has become the dog.

But Thompson's hound is no friendly if neglected pet. It's a hunting dog with a one-track mind, a dog you don't want to get involved with if you're a rabbit:

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him ...

The hound of heaven doesn't just wait; it pursues with "deliberate speed, majestic instancy." It doesn't wag its tail; it brays at its prey, "How little worthy of any love thou art!"

Read the poem aloud so you can appreciate its relentless rolling cadences. Spoiler: it has a happy ending. But the hound never turns into a poodle.

"God so loved the world"--though if you do a word search on Bible Gateway, you'll see that the New Testament writers don't mention God's love nearly so often as they point out the love we ought to have for God and one another.

Like the prodigal's father (Luke 15), God waits and rejoices--but the time in the far country can be terrifying.

My little dogs warm my lap and my heart, lower my blood pressure, and make me get enough exercise--but I still think that if anyone in the relationship between God and me is a schnorkie or a shih-poo, it isn't God.

Self-righteousness

I believe everything I wrote yesterday: torture is always wrong. No matter what.

However, last night I got to thinking about how very easy that is for me to say. I have never tortured anybody. I have never wanted to torture anybody. I have never even pulled the wings off a butterfly.

Nor am I in a position where I have the power to torture anybody, or to decide that anybody should be tortured, or to judge whether or not torture is legally permissible.

So, yes, torture is always wrong. But it's not something I've ever personally struggled with, so in making that judgment--the right judgment to make! and one that every Christian should agree with!--I can very easily slip into self-righteousness. I am right! (And I am, of course.) Those other Christians are wrong! (As indeed they are.) I am so much better than they are. (Whoa... not likely.)

Here's what I'm thinking I should do: pick a book of the Bible, any book. Read it for its big ideas. Try to identify its major ethical teachings, whether they are explicitly stated or implicit in the stories related. Look especially for areas where I clearly do not measure up. Ask myself why not, and see if I can do something about it--change an attitude, change a habit, add or subtract some activity, whatever.

I say I should do that. I don't know if I will. I expect it would be ever so much more difficult than saying torture is always wrong. Though of course it is very wrong, without exception.