Outside-of-the-Box

This was the third week of my church’s Bible study group, which is going through Tim Keller’s The Prodigal God, a book about Jesus’ Parable of the Prodigal Son.

I appreciated one lady’s outside-of-the-box thoughts. While Tim Keller says that the younger son became heir to one-third of what was left of the inheritance after he returned and rejoined the family, this one lady argued that the elder son was the sole inheritor, for the father told him that all that he had was his. The lady also asked if the Parable of the Prodigal Son was based in some manner on the story of Esau and Jacob, for both present a younger son being blessed, an older son being upset at the younger son’s blessing, and the younger son going away from his father for a while. She also inquired if the parable could concern the Christian church’s outreach to the Gentiles, a concept that wasn’t exactly outside-of-the-box, since early Christian exegesis did apply the parable to that. But she was nervous that she was making a stretch, so, for her at least, she was positing something outside-of-the-box.

These insights impressed me because part of biblical scholarship is paying close attention to details in the text, as well as making connections, and this lady was doing that. But nothing was really done with her insights to take them a step further, or to show how they can be edifying. The exception would be her comments on the Gentiles, for somebody else in the group remarked that the Parable could be instructing the church not to hog up God, but rather to share him with the Gentiles. But her thoughts on the Jacob/Esau story and the piece of the parable about “all that I have is yours” were not carried further.

And I wonder how they could be. What would happen were we to read the Parable of the Prodigal Son intertextually with the Jacob/Esau story? What light would each shed on the other? Perhaps one point could be how the Jacob/Esau story shows that God favors the youngest, even when the youngest is a jerk, but that the Parable of the Prodigal Son highlights how God loves the elder son, too.

As far as “All that I have is yours” goes, there may be a lesson that the Prodigal Son jeopardized his inheritance, for sin has harsh consequences, even if one receives the love of the father. Or maybe we should not take “All that I have is yours” to mean that the elder son got all of the inheritance. Perhaps it had nothing to do with inheritance and just means that the father was sharing his property with his elder son who was with him.

Larry's Reflections

I’m currently in Chapter 44 of Stephen King’s The Stand: The Complete and Uncut Edition. In this chapter, Larry Underwood meets Nadine Cross and a feral boy called “Joe”. I have three items:

1. On pages 430-431, Larry is still traveling by himself, and he thinks about the music of the sixties and how awesome it was. I can’t say that I know much about music, but I can identify with thinking about certain topics according to their time period or decade. I do that as I think back on my life—what books I read when I was such-and-such an age, where I was religiously or personally at such-and-such a season, etc. On some occasions, I also think about television shows or politics by decade. And it’s fun when I can reflect on how awesome something (i.e., a book, a movie, a church, etc.) was.

2. On pages 439-440, Larry realizes that two people are following him, and they will turn out to be Nadine and Joe. But, as they are following him, Larry ceases to be afraid, for he reflects that they would have killed him already had they wanted to do so, plus he desires human companionship. On page 439, Larry wonders why he feels so good, and he thinks for a minute that perhaps “some black poison had leaked out of his system during his long sleep the previous afternoon.” On page 445, Larry’s dreams put him into a good mood for the day, and he looks forward to seeing the ocean. I liked these parts of the book because it feels so good to be drained of the poison of negative emotions, to have inner peace and tranquility rather than fear, and to look forward to the day rather than dreading it as a chore to endure.

3. Something on which I have commented in my posts on The Stand is Larry Underwood’s growth as a person. People call him a taker, and Larry goes out of his way to prove them wrong—primarily to himself. He learns to help Rita, for example, even though she annoys him. At some point, Larry simply drops all pretense and acknowledges that he is not a nice person. I have wondered if Larry grows in the book from being a taker to being a giver, and it will be interesting to look at his character development as I read on.

On pages 448-449, Larry reflects that he has changed. He does not say how exactly on those pages, but, on page 434, he thinks about how he at one point dreamed of being the Elton John of his day, and now he’s crawling over cars, trying to get to wherever. Obviously, the things that mattered to Larry before the plague hit were different from what matters to him now, for he no longer dreams of being a big-time musician. That’s irrelevant now. Circumstances have changed, and so he has changed with them.

On pages 448-449, Larry thinks about Jory Baker, who was a rising musician. Then, Jory was in a car accident and got doped up in the hospital, and he became a heroin addict, the type “with fumble fingers, spare-changing down at the Greyhound station and hanging out on the strop.” Over eighteen months, however, Jory got clean. He was no longer a rising musician, but he showed up to his practice sessions on time and did what he was supposed to do. He had come out the other side, which does not happen to everyone. And Larry reflects that he, too, has come out the other side.

Sometimes, change can come when we’ve “had enough”. There may also be times when change does not result from us beating a dead horse, trying to be different, but it just comes. I think of Jesus’ parable in Mark 4:26-29: the Kingdom of God is like seed that grows into a plant as a man sleeps and gets up every day, and the man does not know how it happens. This is not to suggest that I shouldn’t work on my character defects, for things like relationships and personal growth can take a lot of work. But, sometimes, just letting things be is the way to go.

Scholarship on Judaism Being (Or Not Being) a Missionary Religion

On page 289 of Jew and Gentile in the Ancient World, Louis Feldman states the following:

"In the latter part of the nineteenth and the early part of the twentieth century, much scholarship, especially in Germany, insisted that Judaism, particularly in the period after Bar Kokhba but not restricted to that period, was not interested in gaining converts. In fact, Judaism was said to be hostile to such attempts. Such scholarship was often based on hidden agenda, namely to prove that Christianity, which eagerly sought proselytes, was therefore superior to Judaism. Scholars who responded to this thesis tried either to explain away Judaism's noninvolvement in proselytism or to show that Judaism was actually inherently missionary in nature. Just prior to World War II, the Reform Judaism movement in the United States considered the possibility of seeking out converts; two works of scholarship that appeared at the time concluded that Judaism in the Talmudic period was favorably disposed toward proselytes and indeed sought after them eagerly."

Feldman then refers to George Foot Moore, who said that Jews tried to convert Gentiles to the worship of the one true God, yet did not officially send out missionaries.

Feldman also refers to Scot McKnight's (yes, the Scot McKnight) A Light Among the Gentiles: Jewish Missionary Activity in the Second Temple Period, and Martin Goodman's Mission and Conversion. Their position, according to Feldman, was that "Judaism was not at all a missionary religion during this period" (page 290). For Goodman, when Philo and Josephus talk about the spread of customs such as the Sabbath and dietary laws, the issue is Judaizing, adopting Jewish customs without actually converting. My impression is that Feldman disagrees with Goodman and argues that Judaism honored and even glorified proselytism.

It's interesting that scholars in the nineteenth-early twentieth centuries put down Judaism because it supposedly wasn't a missionary religion that sought converts. Nowadays, Judaism is praised for not being a missionary religion. I've heard Jews emphasize that their religion is not missionary, usually to distinguish themselves from evangelical Christians, who want everyone to believe like them. In this day and age, not being a missionary religion is consistent with pluralism, and perhaps post-modernism.

Tom's Jesus

Last night, I read Chapter 43 of Stephen King’s The Stand: The Complete and Uncut Edition. In this chapter, Nick Andros meets Tom Cullen, a developmentally-delayed man.

On page 404, we read the following: “…and [Nick] had heard about how Tom had found his mother at Mrs. Blakely’s house and they were both dead in the living room and so Tom had stolen away. Jesus wouldn’t come and take dead people up to heaven if anyone was watching, Tom said (Nick reflected that Tom’s Jesus was a kind of Santa Claus in reverse, taking dead people up the chimney instead of bringing presents down).”

I had two reactions to this passage. First, I had somewhat of a cozy feeling when I read about Tom’s superstitious religious beliefs, and I thought for a few minutes that superstition was not a bad thing, if it gave people comfort. But there are plenty of cases in which superstition can be a bad thing and can cause harm to others (i.e., the Salem Witch Trials, parents killing their children in an attempt to exorcise them, or, in Tom’s case, believing someone is in hell because that person’s corpse was seen), and so that’s why there are people who are opposed to all superstition, or even belief in the supernatural.

Second, I liked how Nick used the phrase “Tom’s Jesus”. Nick is an atheist, at least at this point of the book. When he thinks on page 405, “Everybody left on the poor sad planet picked up by the Hand of God and either rocked in the everlasting harms of the Same or set down again in Kansas City”, he’s not saying that he believes in God. He’s just saying that some people died, and some people went to Kansas City. Because Nick is an atheist, he views religion as a subjective thing—it’s not about “Jesus”, for example, but Tom’s version of Jesus.

Of course, even Christians can have this sort of insight. But, in my opinion, it’s compromised within them because they dogmatically claim that they know Jesus. They make bold claims that the Holy Spirit believes such-and-such, and some of them don’t even recognize that their own picture of Jesus is subjective. But much of it is subjective. It’s based on cherry-picking certain things about Jesus in Scripture. Many focus on his healings and his inclusion of people, portraying him as gentle Jesus, meek and mild. Others portray Jesus as a man’s man, or as a tough guy, pointing to his cleansing of the Temple and his excoriating remarks about the Pharisees.

I’ve had a couple of online experiences that relate to this issue. One time, I was criticizing a town for protesting the construction of a mosque, and a conservative Christian woman asked me if I knew and loved Jesus. That lady could probably find plenty of material that would inspire her to ask such a question (i.e., my dislike for Christian fundamentalism), but I think it’s sad that her basis for asking it is that I’m against marginalizing a whole group of people. And, of course, she appealed to Jesus cleansing the Temple, while ignoring Jesus’ inclusion of the marginalized.

Then there is another lady who is posting anti-Jesus comments. I think that she’s putting important issues on the table, for many of her friends emphasize that theology should be about Jesus, while not recognizing that they themselves have a picture of Jesus that emphasizes some things, while ignoring others. Many of them casually dismiss the Conquest stories in the Old Testament, for instance, affirming that we should base our picture of God on Jesus, but they don’t realize that there are things about Jesus that can strike some people as quite problematic. As the anti-Jesus lady points out, Jesus says that he will deny us before his Father in Heaven if we deny him before others. How’s that for unconditional love? Jesus also tells a parable in which those who reject the ruler are slaughtered in the ruler’s presence. I’m open to alternative ways of interpreting such passages—ways that are more consistent with love—but I wish people would at least acknowledge the subjectivity of their own images of Jesus, rather than judging others for not seeing things their way.

Yet, I’m not exactly a relativist, for I believe that some views are better than others. There are views that are conducive to personal and communal health, and there are views that are not conducive to it. Then there’s the importance of freedom.

Where I am with Jesus, I don’t know. I want to focus on Jesus as loving. At the same time, I’m open to Jesus being tough but fair.

Intellectually Viable

I'm continuing my way through Louis Feldman's Jew and Gentile in the Ancient World:

I have written about the prohibition in the Babylonian Talmud (Chagigah 13a; Sanhedrin 59a) on teaching Torah to Gentiles. Feldman states that Josephus was aware of this, and yet that Josephus asks if the Greeks have learned the history of the Jews and proceeds to talk about that history with a pagan audience in mind. I have also written about how the Gentile intelligentsia tended to view the Jews as anti-intellectual, as people who were unwilling to put their ideas out there in the realm of debate and to yield if they were proven to be wrong.

Although the Talmud later banned Jews from teaching Torah to the Gentiles (a rule that may have come before the Talmud), Jews sought to demonstrate that they had something to contribute intellectually. Philo said that the Greek philosopher Heraclitus stole the theory of opposites from the Torah. Josephus quotes the historian Hermippus, who lived around 200 B.C.E. and supposedly said that Pythagoras got ideas from the Jews, which made sense to some because Pythagoras condemned the use of images.

Then there was proselytism, which was rooted in the notion that the Torah (or Judaism) was for all peoples. Wisdom of Solomon 18:4 says that the law is light for the world, and the second-first century B.C.E. Testament of Levi (14:4) contains a similar idea. The second century B.C.E. Sibylline Oracles (3:5-10) says that all made in God's image should walk in the straight path, the oracle, which Jews should proclaim. Philo presents the conversion of Gentiles to the Torah as a journey from darkness to light, virtue, and holiness. Josephus in Antiquities 1:162-168 portrays Abraham as one who went to Egypt to persuade the Egyptians, and Josephus notes that Abraham was willing to change his mind if the Egyptians presented more compelling arguments. Joseph in Genesis Rabbah 90:6 and 91:5 refuses to sell grain to Egyptians who will not be circumcised. Not all of these items necessarily relate to the Gentiles embracing the Torah, but there was a view that the Torah or the religion of the Jews belonged to the marketplace of ideas and exemplified wisdom, which was for all peoples.

The Mysterious Note-Writer; Ben Faulkner

The Desperate Housewives episode this week had good scenes. Last week, I was speculating about who left the note in Bree’s mailbox, which had the exact same wording as the note that Mary Alice Young got in Season 1. I thought that Paul Young may have arranged for someone to put the note there, for he knew the contents of the note that Mary Alice received. In the most recent episode, Bree apparently thought so, too, for she visited Paul Young in jail. But Paul denied Bree’s charge, and he told Bree one more person who knows about Mary Alice’s note: the cop Bree is currently dating.

I don’t know if the cop will turn out to be the one who left the note. Arguments for the “no” side are that he acts like he doesn’t know about it, and it’s too early in the Season for a mystery like this to be solved. Arguments for “yes” is that he’d have to be blind not to figure out that something is up (unless he’s blinded by love), and I can somewhat envision him playing games with Bree to make a point—about the importance of even society’s elite obeying the law, or something like that. But I am inclined to say that somebody else left the note.

I enjoyed a couple of the scenes with Ben Faulkner, a contractor, who is played by Charles Mesure, an actor I recognize from V (which I’m sad was not renewed for a third season). Renee is attracted to Ben, and, when she learns that Ben reaches out to the elderly, she tries to make him think that she likes the elderly, too (which she doesn’t, since she’s rather self-centered). Ben then takes her on a date, and the date turns out to be serving senior citizens at a seniors’ home. Renee walks out the door in disgust, and Ben goes after her. When Renee tells Ben that she hates charity work and that places like the senior citizens’ home make her uncomfortable, Ben responds that he’s the same way, but he knows why they make him uncomfortable. Ben and Renee both learn that they have something in common: a time in their lives when they were poor and had to accept charity from others.

I liked this scene for two reasons. First, it overlaps with some themes that I discuss in my post, Self-Recognition, Glenn Bateman’s Summary of Sociology, in which I talk about Larry Underwood’s (of The Stand) honest realization that he is a self-centered taker. In many cases, knowing who we really are is an essential step in our progress to become better people. Ben knew why charity work made him uncomfortable, and he was able to take who he was and move on from that point so he could help others. Could the same thing happen to Renee, or would she simply know why she avoids charity work and keep on avoiding it? That brings me to point two: perhaps Renee could remember why she hated being the target of charity, at least be happy that there were people who were willing to help her at that time, and then go on to help others in need—and yet do so in a manner that shows respect to those receiving the charity, respect that she herself did not receive when she was the recipient.

In another scene with Ben, Ben is hiring Mike Delfino for his company, but he cannot “bond” Mike because of Mike’s criminal record. Years before, Mike killed a cop who tried to rape his girlfriend (or, actually, the cop said he wouldn’t arrest her for drugs if she slept with him). Ben wonders why Mike did not tell him this, and Mike replied that he did not like to lead with that foot, and he’s not the same person today. Ben says that he hopes Mike is the same person—one who will defend the people he loves. Ben said that life is about two things: getting what you want, and protecting the people you love. This statement somewhat surprised me, since Ben does a lot of charity work. But I did like Ben showing Mike understanding.

Self-Recognition, Glenn Bateman's Summary of Sociology

For my write-up today of Stephen King’s The Stand: The Complete and Uncut Edition, I’ll talk about two passages:

1. On page 380, Larry’s female companion on his journey, Rita, has just died, and Larry feels a great deal of relief at that. He thinks back to how he tried to take care of her and avoid getting mad at her regardless of what she did. For example, Larry kept his cool when Rita held a can of peas over the fire without ventilating the top, even though that could have caused the can to explode, resulting in “flying hooks of tin shrapnel” blinding them. As Larry looks at his relief at Rita’s death, the following goes through his mind: “‘I ain’t no nice guy,’ he said guy, and having said it, he felt better. It became easier to tell the truth, and truth-telling was the most important thing.”

Larry probably felt better because he no longer had to justify himself and his character to anyone. Up to this point, people called Larry a taker, and Larry tried to prove them wrong—primarily to himself. Now, he doesn’t feel that he has anything to prove to anyone. Yeah, he’s flawed, but that’s how he is, and (to his credit) he did try to be patient with Rita while he was alive.

I read this after I had read more of Tim Keller’s The Prodigal God for my church’s Bible study group. Tim Keller was talking about how our recognition of our own flaws is a necessary step to salvation. But, in my opinion, there is some difference between what Christianity says about being conscious of one’s own flaws, and what Larry was doing. Christianity says that we should look at our own flaws, feel guilty, and conclude that we deserve to go to hell because of them, which is why we need Jesus Christ to save us. Larry, however, did not feel shame at his self-centered relief at Rita’s death. But does that eliminate any potential for the development of his character in a positive direction? Some have suggested that self-acceptance can be a path to becoming better.

2. Page 387 has the following, which are the thoughts of Glenn Bateman:

“That is the curse of the human race. Sociability. What Christ should have said was ‘Yea, verily, whenever two or three of you are gathered together, some other guy is going to get the living shit knocked out of him.’ Shall I tell you what sociology teaches us about the human race? I’ll give it to you in a nutshell. Show me a man or woman alone and I’ll show you a saint. Give me two and they’ll fall in love. Give me three and they’ll invent the charming thing we call ‘society.’ Give me four and they’ll build a pyramid. Give me five and they’ll make one an outcast. Give me six and they’ll reinvent prejudice. Give me seven and in seven years they’ll reinvent warfare. Man may have been made in the image of God, but human society was made in the image of His opposite number…”

This passage was refreshing to me because of how so many things I have read and heard (especially from evangelical Christianity, but also elsewhere in society) are really down on people being loners. Perhaps they have a point, but maybe Glenn Bateman is also right that the formation of groups is not exactly hot, either—that groups lead to cliquishness, power-plays, prejudice, etc., things to which we may be less prone on our own. There is a sense in which groups make sense, for people can as a collective accomplish good that may not be possible if everyone were out solely for himself or herself, for taking care of the “we” can take care of the “me”. But groups can come at a price. And Glenn perhaps did not feel that he needed a group to survive: he had his garden, his home, etc.