Watch, Wallet

When I was a child, I understood the Holy to be my left shoulder and Spirit to be my right shoulder, following on from the Father at my forehead and the Son at my chest.

When I was old enough to memorise the Creed and the Gloria, I understood the Holy Spirit to be connected to the Father and the Son in some distant way. In the Creed, the Father gets an introductory paragraph, Jesus gets a long story, and then the Holy Spirit gets bundled into the closing paragraph and has to share random billing with the Prophets, the Church, baptism and resurrection: none of which seemed to me to be connected in any way. In the Gloria it’s a similar deal: Father gets the intro, Son of the Father gets the lion’s share, and the Holy Spirit gets a cursory mention in the closing. So, the Holy Spirit wasn’t the runner who sprang powerfully out of the blocks at the loud crack of the starting pistol, nor the athlete who crossed the finish line in glory to the buzz of the crowds cheering in such adulation that they drowned out Vangelis’ plinky-piano-over-reverberating-synthesizer-snaps title theme from Chariots of Fire blaring over the loudhailers; he/she/it was surely on the relay team, but in a quietly unobtrusive way.

When I was a teenager, the Holy Spirit was some strange thing they had in other churches, something spoken about in hushed tones that implied the presence of frighteningly supernatural goings-on. As an adolescent fascinated by horror movies like Carrie and The Shining, I would think very carefully before going to those churches; and when I did go, I would be completely on my guard, even though the other kids seemed to be good friends and they talked about the fun stuff they did at Youth. Maybe that was just a cover story to get you to come inside, and then you would be possessed and sorry, and walking towards the light would be the worst mistake you could make.

At the time of my Confirmation, I gave very little thought to the Holy Spirit because my attention was all wrapped up in trying to memorise my line in the second reading taken from the Acts of the Apostles, Chapter 2: Sr Loreto thought it would be a great idea to have us Candidates lined up along the altar rail, facing the congregation, no notes in hand, to recite the readings. We were each given a line, or a part of a line, to say in turn. God bless Richard Mackrill, standing two people before me in the nervous white stripe, who loudly proclaimed that we could hear “Croutons and Arabs!” speaking in our own tongues. He got me so tongue-tied on my stifled shoulder-shaking laughter that when my turn came I could barely utter my astounded bewilderment or ask what it all meant.

When I had quit church, the Holy Spirit was a facetious explanation for drunkards and people who were behaving strangely. “What’s wrong with him?” “Dunno, maybe he’s got the Holy Spirit?!”

Despite my flagrant lack of regard for God, when I was in my mid-twenties I suddenly and inexplicably felt the lack of God in my life. It was visceral. I woke up one Sunday morning with a strong desire to go to church. But not to the Catholic Church, mind you! On 26 September 1999 I braved the 18:30 evening service at the local Assembly of God, where I knew not a single soul. Just my luck: an itinerant preacher called Maureen Onions had come to do a ‘Holy Spirit service’. That was quite some service; it frightened me half to death, but it kicked my prayer life into top gear. Suddenly I was talking to God again after years of angry silence, it was like someone had slammed opened the sluice gates at the last possible moment before the dam walls holding my life’s chaos would be breached. My prayers burst forth in a soundless torrent, with a sincere intensity they had never had before:

“Dear God, please save me from these crazy people! If you get me out of here alive, I will go to a proper church, I promise you, I promise, I do SO promise!”

I was all for keeping my promises. After visiting a string of churches in my neighbourhood, I attended The Alpha Course hosted at the Catholic Church (and the story about that invitation needs its own page, so I won’t include it here!). Here I got the benefit of distinctly charismatic Holy Spirit teaching, but in a more mainstream church environment. Compared with my encounter at the AoG, this was only marginally scary, but it was still scary: what would happen to me if I asked to be filled with the Holy Spirit? And what if I asked and nothing happened at all? What if everybody else started speaking in tongues, getting words of knowledge and prophesying, and I was left out? The Alpha Course encouraged me to give serious thought to the person and work of the Holy Spirit. Apart from the serious thought – which was interesting but quite confusing at the same time because everybody had their own ideas and it didn’t seem like anybody was being told their ideas were wrong, which gave the impression that even priests and deacons are not completely sure about the Holy Spirit – the course also gave me an opportunity to connect with God at a deeply intuitive level. I was always very comfortable living in my head, and Alpha challenged me and helped me to begin to open up and start living from my heart, to start learning to let go enough to get in touch with my spirit. My experience was a profound one, and relatively unique: I wasn’t seeing a resemblance reflected back or articulated by others in my circle, and I was a little unsettled by some of the blank looks I would get when I spoke about my experience. I felt like I was a submarine sending out sonar pings but getting no response echo, surrounded by the silence of an empty ocean. But at the same time, some of the testimonies given by people that I had prayed with, seemed to bear out my gut feeling that God was moving powerfully in the liminal space between our heads and our hearts in those prayer meetings.

Since I was having a lot of experience of the Holy Spirit, but didn’t feel that I had gained any sound understanding of the Spirit, I thought it best to pursue whatever teaching I could find in churches that seemed to be a bit better equipped for this Holy Spirit business. I got hands-on training from roving youth prayer animator Jeannie Morgan from Soul Survivor church in Watford, UK. Rather than teaching me theoretical knowledge, she taught me how to still myself and open my being to God, and to be brave enough to share whatever I saw and felt during those sessions. My barriers began to come down and I felt connected to a benevolent power beyond imagining, and I had an overwhelming sense of glimpsing eternity: all things, all people, all places, and for all time, held together in love and unconditional goodwill. These were awesome experiences, but in some respects they had me swimming across very deep water, when the truth was that I could barely manage dog paddle with water-wings. I suppose it was progress of a sort: I had abandoned the submarine!

Looking back on it now, I think that the feeling I had of wanting to know everything I could about the Holy Spirit was really an unconscious fear of the dark waters of the unknown. My faith failed me, and instead of walking on the water towards Jesus’ outstretched hand, I succumbed to an impulsive need to be in control of my world at all times, and I sank down into that deep green sea. I imagined that if I could learn enough about the Holy Spirit, then I would know how to tap into or unplug from the God grid at my leisure, the way Luke Skywalker learns to use the Force in Star Wars. I would be able to choose when to use the power, and when I didn’t know how to deal with something, the power would know and sort stuff out for me. I could turn stones into bread, I could jump from a parapet, man the world was my oyster! I would finally be in charge of whatever happened to me in this life. I would see things coming, and I could duck and parry as necessary; I could avoid getting thrashed or kicked to the kerb. I was trying to make God and His cruel world safe by learning how to harness and channel the Holy Spirit’s boundless Karate Kid energy. I can laugh about the absurdity of this now, but at the time I had no clue what I was doing. I was like a crouton in a bowl of Shourabat El Qeema.

A lot of water has passed under the bridge since then! From 2004 to 2007 I spent my Monday afternoons on a shrink’s couch and my Wednesday nights in Monsignor Borello’s theology class, and in both of those places I was challenged to move out of my own space, my self-absorption and my insistence on an exclusive relationship with God who was there to look after me and my demands, into a new realm of growing in relationship with God through encountering other people. I began to experience the Holy Spirit as the thread that weaves its way through the universal tapestry of billions of people’s life stories, and the energy that makes dialogue and relationship possible, regardless of the barriers that exist between gender, race, religion, levels of education.

I still have a lot to learn about co-operating with the Spirit. I am a unique individual and it’s important that I know who I am, and that I am true to who I am, because only then can I be fully the gift that I am intended to be for others – but I have to balance my own inner journey with reaching out and being prepared to move beyond my boundaries and my comfort zones. I need to allow other people to challenge me, even change me. To do this with integrity, I depend on the life of the Holy Spirit within me to move me and guide me, and keep me connected to God through increasingly healthy relationships with other people. The Spirit is also my memoria passionis and teaches me compassion.

Conversion

Describe how you have experienced conversion as an event and a process.

If you had asked me in the year 2000 to describe how I experienced conversion as an event and a process, I would have told you in all sincerity that the process by which I experienced the event of my conversion was fourfold: I went on an Alpha weekend in mid-February, I got up out of my chair and went forward for prayer on the Saturday night (12 February, around 19:30) just after the Holy Spirit talk, I stood there looking and feeling stupid for some minutes, and then I went back to my seat. And there it was; a done deal. I had fought long and hard with my demons, but I had taken the big scary step that would change my life forever: I had given my life to Christ, I was converted.

Ten years later, my answer to this question is much more complex.

Being a converted Christian was wonderful, for the first few months. But it took all of the energy that I could muster to be nice to everyone all of the time and restrain my darker impulses, the way I knew a good Christian should. I poured all of my energy into reading the Bible and other spiritual writing, and into prayer groups and a variety of church activities. This kept me busy and out of the way of mischief. In my quest for perfection, I signed myself up for far too many activities and pushed myself to a point of exhaustion. And that’s when it happened. A helper on a church course did something stupid and irritating: they stood idly by and made critical comments while they watched me wear myself out trying to do the million things I had voluntarily taken on, instead of making themselves useful by helping me, the way a proper Christian should. I lost my temper.

And so the spell was broken: clearly I was not the holy converted Christian I thought I was, instead I was the same old devil I had always been. I was gutted.

I was not ready to throw in the towel. Not just yet. But the harder I tried, the more slip-ups I made. I lamented: can a mean girl change her tongue? The leopard her spots? As easily would I be able to do good, accustomed to evil as I was. Realising this, I could hardly believe it took as long as it did to get to that first watershed temper tantrum! This posed a dilemma indeed: if I was a new creation in Christ, why had the old things not passed away? Why was it so hard to cease to do evil and learn to do good? If it takes a caterpillar two weeks to be metamorphosed into a Monarch butterfly, how long would it take me to be conformed to the image of Christ? I was not the least bit consoled by Paul’s irremovable thorn theory. Why would God give a person a weakness just to keep them humble? That hardly seemed fair: keeping holy perfection of out of someone’s reach was akin to holding an ice-cream cone over a child’s head where they could see it but couldn’t grab it. Cruel.

Nobody has ever justly accused me of being a highly disciplined person, so it was against the odds that I decided to persevere with my quest for Christ even though I was becoming increasingly convinced that I was never going to succeed at becoming Christ-like in this lifetime. Something resilient in the depths of my stubborn soul decided to stick to the commitment I had made on that Alpha weekend in early 2000. Maybe it was because of the amount of flak I had taken from people who were unimpressed that I had ‘gone all Christian on them’, maybe it was because conceding defeat would be tantamount to denying the truth of a very deep spiritual experience, and doing that would mean refuting my grasp on reality along with my affinity for Christ. I could not explain the spirit of what had happened to me on that all-important Saturday when I’d gone away on a Christian weekend instead of going out clubbing with my so-called friends, but it had profound meaning for me, and it had changed my life by making me more open to real – and not just superficial – relationships with other people. And that was why turning around and going back to how things had been Before Christ was just not an option! My spirit had grown too much for it to fit back into the hole it had crawled out of.

So, since going back was not an option, and given that my inclination towards sin was coupled to my inclination to finding and holding onto God, what were my options? The way I saw it, I couldn’t afford to step off the gas with attending talks and courses and reading and reading and reading everything I could get my hands on that would help me to see how other people had gone about achieving enlightenment. I also frequented the cinema more and more regularly: most of the material screened at Cinema Nouveau offered food for thought about people and relationships, and these forays into the darkness of the movie theatre presented me with glimpses of light and transcendent beauty that proclaimed God’s real presence in this broken world and offered me hope. It might not be easy for characters to change and grow and become something quite different by the time the credits roll at the end of the movie, but every fleeting frame of celluloid whispers the promise that transformation is possible.

Somewhere in amongst all of this, I found myself more at home in the Catholic Church again. As a youth I had forsworn my mother’s hypocritical religion, but as I became more and more sincere about my own flaws and failings, there was something about the faith of my childhood that appealed to me and offered me reassurance. If I was prepared to acknowledge and confess my sins, I could be sure of receiving forgiveness. This wasn’t available in the other churches I had attended: you said sorry in the silence of your heart, but how did you know for sure that you had been forgiven? There is something liberating, even healing, about hearing an authoritative human voice confidently speaking the words in God’s name: “Go in peace, your sins have been forgiven”.

I even got to a point where I felt that I was ready to be confirmed in the Catholic Church. This was a pity for me, because I had already been confirmed when I was in high school, and Church law is quite clear that Confirmation is a sacrament that can be administered only once. I had some regrets about that: it would have been so nice to have received the sacrament now that I was really ready to belong to the believing community. To get over my disappointment, and to affirm my uncelebrated intention of becoming properly Catholic, I decided to attend Monsignor Borello’s theology course.

Borello’s teaching about the Sacraments opened my eyes and I began to understand what Baptism and Confirmation and Eucharist are about. I was baptised when I was nine and I had been reverently taking communion since the day after my baptism, and I’d even kept going after I was confirmed under duress in order to do what was required of a Catholic daughter, but I honestly had no idea what God had been doing in me through those sacraments of Christian initiation! Luckily for me, being clueless was no barrier to receiving God’s grace, and it seemed that I must have received enough grace in my early years to preserve my life in Christ through the days when I had no intention of taking refuge in God. With no knowledge of the meaning of the words ‘proper disposition’ in receiving the Sacraments, and without conscious knowledge of Church teaching about man’s capacity for God, the desire for God was written in my heart; and God never ceased to draw me to himself. God’s grace was enough to inspire, revivify and advance my innermost quest for God. From the moment I came into being, God never withdrew the invitation to converse. It took one Andrew Ivo Borello to read that invitation to me in a translation I could appreciate!

While I was doing theology every Wednesday night for four years, I was also becoming more active in ministry at Archdiocesan level, where I was being pushed out of my middle-class white comfort zone and discovering how much I don’t know about other South Africans: from language, to culture, to Auntie Abrahamse’s koesisters (not the twisted plaas variety, the ones with aniseed and coconut!)

This past decade has seen me being radically transformed. An interlocking series of changes and developments are flowing out of this: my psychological, educational, sociological and cultural horizons are shifting. My basic stance towards reality is being fundamentally altered: what had once gone unnoticed is becoming present and vivid, what had once been of no concern is now of the highest importance; my direction is altered, my eyes are open and I perceive the world in a new way. Indeed, I perceive a new world. I am shifting from the level of thought to the level of action: I am recognising myself as free and responsible, able to make decisions that are based not on personal satisfaction but on value, not just on what gives pleasure but on what is truly good and worthwhile. My emotions, decisions and actions are all being shaped and directed anew – because I find myself being-in-love with God: heart, soul, mind and strength*. In this new world, I talk to total strangers in public as though they were my friends and family. If I keep this up, I might even start loving my neighbours! The more I am converted, the more I realise how much I need to be converted.

* Concluding paragraph borrows much from McBrien, Richard P. 1981 Catholicism New York, Harper & Row, pg 961-963 (on conversion, explaining Bernard Lonergan’s Method in Theology)

My Redeemer Lives - Job 19:25-26

I think that Job’s assertion is a statement of faith: in the face of extreme suffering, his hope of release and vindication is his lifeline. Job knows that his own actions cannot save him, and neither do his friends seem able to help him (indeed their efforts only compound his suffering). But while Job cannot understand or explain his suffering, he is convinced that God exists, and he believes that God, who is both benevolent and omnipotent, will redeem him in time. Job cannot conceive of giving up hope of salvation while God exists: God is good, and everything will work out in the end.

Like Job, I experience occasions and patterns of suffering in my life, some of which are brought about by my dogged determination to do the right thing, and some of which are entirely beyond my understanding. Even so, I have no intention of admitting an aversion a Deo, of revoking my fundamental option, that deep-seated inclination that I have towards God. I am convinced that despite my unworthiness God will come to my aid and will save me from distress. My vindicator will help my enemies to understand what I have been unable to articulate in all of my dealings with them: that I’m just a soul whose intentions are good, O Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood *.

Unlike Job, I live in a world where Christ has already come, and his perfect work of redemption has already been concluded. There is no need for God to “Just Do It” because it has already been done. In some respects this makes it both easier and more difficult to be a person of faith: easier because I know that it is finished, salvation has been achieved, and failure or inaction on God’s part is no longer an option post-Christ; and more difficult because I need to make sense of a lived experience of suffering in the face of completed redemption, and have patience with the ‘always only becoming’.

My best analogy for this experience of redemption is to say that it is like watching a film that is based on a true story: we know how it must end, but we watch it anyway, because the telling of the story and the creative use of imagery and music and the interpretation of the characters by the cast are all as valuable as the storyline itself. Simply outlining the plot does not come close to doing a proper job of telling us what happened; we need to see and hear and feel the spirit of the story.

Monsignor Andrew Borello once suggested to his theology students that judgement day might be like sitting next to God while you watch the movie of your life, and then together you make an assessment of how you spent your time on Earth and how you used your freedom: judging by what you know is contained in Scripture. When judgement has been made, you will then be shown mercy †.

I am a big fan of cinema, and I quite like Borello’s proposal, it works for me. So I get out of bed every morning wondering how this day’s scenes will play out. I ask myself what choices my freedom will offer me, and what decisions I will make. How will the characters (especially mine) develop in terms of what motivates them and how they interact with each other and how they respond to, or drive, plot developments? How will the plot progress? Will the cinematography and the score come anywhere close to capturing the beauty that I see and hear all around me? And, most importantly, will God enjoy watching this movie with me, when it’s finished and done? (In a manner of speaking, God is the Executive Producer and owns the rights to my film: if He dislikes it, I have a problem!)

Of course, I know that in the movie of my life, some of the scenes will be ugly and regrettable and I’ll be tempted to excuse myself and go to the ladies room while those bits are on screen. But all is not lost: while I’m the lead character in my own doubtful movie, I’m also a supporting character in my friends’ movies, and I have walk-ons and cameos in literally hundreds of other people’s life stories. I’m hoping that if my biopic is not a winner in and of itself, I’ll be redeemed by the majority of my appearances in other people’s films. If I have brought life and hope and humour to most of my fellow beings, and if my presence in their lives has enriched the telling of their stories, then hopefully my body of work will have endeared me to my creator, my redeemer and my inspiration, even though my character is flawed and my overall performance has been variable and sketchy, morally unconvincing in parts, and compellingly villainous in some of my roles.

* B.Benjamin/S.Marcus/C.Caldwell wrote the lyrics of Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood. First recorded by the sultry Nina Simone in 1964, it was vamped into an unforgettable Latin disco hit by Santa Esmeralda in 1977. There’s also an expressive 2006 version by Yusuf Islam – aka Cat Stevens.

† Monsignor Borello taught us that in the Greek icon-writing tradition, Christ Pantokrator (i.e. Christ Almighty) holds the book of the Gospels in one hand and makes the sign of blessing (or mercy, in some interpretations) with his other hand. In the Eastern Orthodox Church, during confession penitents kneel before an icon of Christ the Teacher, a variant of the Pantokrator, that depicts the Gospels held open to reveal the Word of God by which our lives are to be measured.

Interesting Snippets and Fun Facts

In Music
Monica Sinclair, the inconspicuous British operatic contralto who performed I Know That My Redeemer Liveth to critical acclaim in the 1959 Royal Philharmonic Orchestra recording of Handel’s Messiah under Sir Thomas Beecham (available on RCA Classics label), had a great gift for comedy and was married to a former Covent Garden horn player. As talented as she was, she had no need to blow her own trumpet.

In Movies
Thomas McCarthy’s 2003 film The Station Agent has a wonderful ensemble cast that includes Peter Dinklage, Patricia Clarkson, Bobby Canavale and Michelle Williams: all of whom are well known for brilliant low-profile roles in many other productions. They interpret their roles with emotional depth, warmth and humour, and their onscreen presence is almost always uplifting and hopeful.

Thomas McCarthy

Peter Dinklage
Patricia Clarkson
Bobby Canavale

Michelle Williams
Peter Dinklage

Thomas McCarthy’s 2008 film The Visitor also features an ensemble cast of mostly unknown actors apart from Richard Jenkins, who comfortably fits the same profile as the character actors cast in The Station Agent. The newcomers in this later film all have the potential to grow into the profile.

Richard Jenkins
Haaz Sleiman

Danai Gurira
Hiam Abbass

Richard Jenkins
Hiam Abbass

While none of these actors is a big headline star, their consistent appearances in a wide range of film and television productions is what makes them memorable. Eventually the viewer begins to make the connections and say “Hey, where have I seen this person before? There is something so familiar about them, they’ve got real heart. They’re grappling with the first-order questions of life in the way they portray their characters. What else are they in, and where can I see those films?”

In my circle of friends, whenever someone reminisces that this or that now-deceased person was a “real character”, my response is always that I hope that people will one day say the same about me!

A Sinful Existence...?

How do you personally experience the terms ‘a sinful existence’ and a ‘hope-filled existence’?

When I was younger, everything connected with religion spoke to me of my life as a sinful existence: my mother’s household religion of cleanliness being next to godliness, my catechism lessons from high school onwards that seemed an attempt at controlling ceaselessly shameful behaviour. If I sneezed too loudly, chalk it up on the venial sin scorecard. If I was cheeky, that’s another black mark dangerously close to the mortal sins list. I couldn’t breathe or move without being made to feel guilty about having done wrong by someone, somehow; as Hermann Hesse has Mozart enlighten the Steppenwolf, “Life is always frightful. We cannot help it and we are responsible all the same. One’s born and at once one is guilty. You must have had a remarkable sort of religious education if you did not know that.” I wanted very much to honour my religious education by being a good girl; but the pressure of having to try to be perfect at all times in order to avoid occasions of sin, or else be as much of a disappointment to God as I seemed to be to everyone else, was absolutely unbearable.

Unable to shoulder this immense burden, I decided that ‘sin’ was an illusion designed to control and manipulate me into submitting to the will of elders and others in authority, or indeed to anyone with a will to reference my subjection to God, who could use my fear of God’s retribution as a means of punishing me if I expressed an opinion or exerted my own will. I saw my experience mirrored in Antonia White’s book Frost in May, in which she describes a convent school teacher remarking about a troublesome potential scholar: “Ah, and here we have another little will to be broken”.

In order to be my own person, because I am who I am (and as Popeye-the-sailor-man famously said, “and that’s all that I am”), I claimed my independence in my late teens and early twenties by defiantly rejecting the notion of sin as a reality. It was then that hope began to blossom for me. Of course, my hope was in myself and not consciously in Christ or in Christ’s presence in me – so my lived ‘sinless’ conduct (in name but not in truth: and it took me some time to see how this philosophy was affecting my relationships with other people) was ultimately disappointing and unfulfilling. I had made of myself a god, reflecting only a distorted image of the God who still lived within me even though I had made up my mind that his existence or otherwise was no concern of mine.

In retrospect, I realise that while I thought that by rejecting all authoritarian claims over me, I was rejecting God, I was in truth sincerely searching for the freedom that comes from knowing God as wise, merciful and caring; God who wants to be connected through relationship to all people. I was looking for responsible existence in relationship with God and other persons and I was rejecting the mechanisms of power-play that coupled and characterised so many of my relationships when I was a youth: this corruption was the sin that I sought to forsake.

By God’s mercy, a sincere religious experience enabled me to encounter God, to look past the pseudo-religious construct that had obscured his visage from me until then, and to see him for who he really is. In my encounter with him, I came to know myself as loved by God. In the light of God’s love, I was able to acknowledge my own failings and sinfulness, ask for and receive mercy and pardon, and be reunited with Christ in a genuinely hope-filled existence: one that recognises sin and its effects as a reality, but that acknowledges God as the source of all goodness and God’s love as the power by which sin is overcome. Out of the ashes this phoenix arose: I grasped with both hands the opportunity to re-evaluate my personal creed, turn away from my fiercely independent rejection of what I had imagined to be God, and be faithful to the good news of God’s compassion and love.

This experience taught me that in finding freedom in Christ, I am in faith able to accept responsibility for my sin. In accepting responsibility for my failure to love fully, I find freedom to accept God’s forgiveness. In accepting God’s mercy, I find the strength to hold onto hope in a world where God’s intervention is always only the becoming historical and concrete of God’s transcendent yet embedded self-communication. In holding onto hope, I can live a life of love as far as I am able, and I can keep on learning how to love – even though I often get it wrong.

A Ship Called Dignity

In what ways might we be able to protect the dignity of the poor and stand with the oppressed in their struggle to be free of what oppresses them? Who, do you think, are some of the ‘prophets’ of today? Explain why you see them as prophets.

We can protect the dignity of the poor by encouraging generosity to the poor through appropriate channels. Perpetuating a handout culture does not empower the poor, but creating meaningful work can. In Cape Town, projects like Men at the Side of the Road and The Carpenter’s Yard are geared towards finding manageable jobs for relatively unskilled poor.

In order to effectively protect the dignity of the poor, and stand with the oppressed in their struggle to be free of what oppresses them, we need to engage in social analysis: exactly who are the poor and oppressed, why do they find themselves in the situation they’re in, are there systems that perpetuate the problems that keep these people locked into poverty and oppression? And what can be done about all of this? And once we’ve done that, then we would have to actively lobby government and whoever is in authority in the various systems that are involved.

Some of the prophets of today are those who are involved in advocacy and lobbying, and empowering the poor and oppressed by giving voice to their concerns. There are a great many of these organisations, and they do important work. The Catholic Parliamentary Liaison Office (CPLO) and Catholic Welfare and Development (CWD) are at the forefront of this work in Cape Town. There is also the Justice and Peace Commission, Rape Crisis, the Gender Advocacy Programme, the Cape Town Refugee Centre, the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (IDASA).

Internationally there are countless organisations. Some of these are:

CARE tackles underlying causes of poverty so that people can become self-sufficient. Recognizing that women and children suffer disproportionately from poverty, CARE places special emphasis on working with women to create permanent social change. Women are at the heart of CARE's community-based efforts to improve basic education, prevent the spread of HIV, increase access to clean water and sanitation, expand economic opportunity and protect natural resources. CARE also delivers emergency aid to survivors of war and natural disasters, and helps people rebuild their lives.

Fairtrade is about better prices, decent working conditions, local sustainability, and fair terms of trade for farmers and workers in the developing world. By requiring companies to pay sustainable prices (which must never fall lower than the market price), Fairtrade addresses the injustices of conventional trade, which traditionally discriminates against the poorest, weakest producers.

The Child Rights Information Network envisions a world in which every child enjoys all of the human rights promised by the United Nations, regional organisations, and national governments alike. Guided by their passion for social and legal change, CRIN is building a global network for children's rights. They press for rights, not charity, and advocate for a genuine systemic shift in how governments and societies view children.

Preda is a Philippine human rights and social development organization working to help the most vulnerable people in society to overcome injustice and poverty. Their aim is to win freedom and a new life for children in jails, in brothels, in hunger, on the street, abandoned youth and those mired in poverty. Helping abused women, indigenous people, protecting the environment and alleviating poverty through micro-credit and fair trade initiatives.

Having listed all of these, and realising how much hard work is being done by so many good people, and being aware that I am only one small voice amongst many, I am given to thinking that there are still gaps that need to be filled. In parallel to the biblical laws pertaining to agriculture that were implemented to protect the poor, I wonder if South Africa (or any other country) has laws that govern the redistribution of excess produce to the poor? I’ve heard of many instances where excess produce is dumped in the sea to keep the markets from becoming flooded and prices from dropping. This is supposedly to protect the farmers and the economy. But surely those thousands of oranges or whatever could be given to people who have no food and no means of buying food, and who would consequently not have any impact on the market because it’s irrelevant to them? I think that companies who disregard the needs of the poor and dump excess produce should be severely fined, because what they are doing is even worse than colluding to fix the price of bread.

I see the people who drive the advocacy and lobbying organisations I’ve mentioned as prophets because they play the role of calling society to act justly, the way the Biblical prophets did in ancient times. While many of these organisations are not strictly faith-based, I agree with the idea that people don’t necessarily have to claim that they know God or express belief in God before God can use them to do good work. These people ask society to do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do: if morality was the sole preserve of people of faith, the world would be worse off than it is.

In my personal view, if a person responds to an inner impulse to be merciful and just, then they are responding to God’s call, whether they realise it or not, and whether they are able to articulate their instinct as faith in a supreme being or not. So many people have had bad experiences of religion, where they have been oppressed by religious people who have used the fear of God to subject others to their own will. People who have endured this kind of injustice will vociferously reject anything that carries the name of religion, but the ethics and moral values that are valid in true religion still speak to them, and they will uphold these values at great personal cost. For me, these people are far godlier than people who claim to be Christian and go to church on Sundays but otherwise live in ways that dishonour God’s name.

Maybe I should start advocating in religious circles for the dignity of people who reject religion! Richard Dawkins makes some very good points about the evils of religion as a tool of oppression.

Interpreting Historical Events

Recall the way in which ancient Israel interpreted historical events. Now reflect on any events in your own life, or in the world today, that are or could be interpreted in a similar way. What are the strengths and the weaknesses of this kind of interpretation? What are some of the implications?

Ancient Israel saw God as good and just. When evil befell Israel it was because YHWH was angry with them; but when they triumphed over their enemies it showed that YHWH was pleased with them. If they escaped defeat, they attributed this to YHWH’s help. He was the God of their history, directing political events to redeem his captive people. If they were obedient to the covenant laws, YHWH rewarded them; if they were disobedient, YHWH punished them. If a punishment was over then the people were forgiven and granted freedom. YHWH’s agents didn’t need to know him, he could still use them as instruments of change, restoring the Israelite community and rebuilding the temple. Victory was always attributed to YHWH.

This kind of interpretation was immediately applied by some fundamentalist Christians to the 7.0 magnitude earthquake on 12 January 2010 in Haiti, and the multiple aftershocks exceeding 4.5 that happened thereafter, until 24 January 2010. It was estimated that 230,000 people had died, 300,000 had been injured, 1,000,000 made homeless, 250,000 residences and 30,000 commercial buildings had collapsed or were seriously damaged. Evangelical pastor Pat Robertson’s best estimation was that all of this was surely the result of the Haitian people making a pact with the devil when they were trying to get themselves out from under French oppression in the 1800s. Pat Robertson was also the one who said that Hurricane Katrina in August 2005 was God’s punishment on America for legalizing abortion: he appealed to the Old Testament to support his hypothesis (Lv 18:28).

The strengths of interpreting historical events in terms of obedience equals blessing and disobedience equals punishment are that:

• it supports an image of a God who is omnipotent and always in control, and the world is consequently a secure place to live;
• God is always given the glory for success and achievements;
• fear of punishment can be a very effective motivator in achieving obedience; and
• it acknowledges that God can work in and through all people, regardless of whether they know him.

The weaknesses of interpreting historical events in these terms are that:

• it promotes the notion that all suffering is the fault of the individual: if they are suffering it is because they are being punished for their own disobedience; and
• it perpetuates an image of a mercilessly just God.

Some of the implications of adhering to this principle are that religion and society can too easily become the judges of people’s relationship to God: it is very easy to interpret the circumstances of a person’s life as an indicator of how obedient or disobedient they have been to the will of God. It also relieves believers of the duty of compassion: if someone is suffering as a result of what can only be their own wilful disobedience, then I have no business interfering with “God’s punishment of them”. If I am supportive and kind towards someone who is “being chastised by God”, and if I express sympathy with their plight and regret for their suffering, or if I try to give them any kind of material help, then I align myself with their “sinfulness” and make myself God’s judge. My attempts at corporal and spiritual works of mercy in this instance would actually be the ultimate blasphemy.

From my personal experience, I can say that I am not partial to this way of interpreting events. There was a time in my life when I seemed to have it all, but I was not living a relationship with God. And once my relationship with God came alive and I started doing what I believed God was asking me to do, I suffered some really difficult consequences! I was “retrenched” from a job that paid very well and gave me social status – because I had the temerity to stand up to some very powerful people who were quite corrupt and argue for what I believed was good and right, and I refused to collude and find creative ways of taking advantage of my staff and suppliers alike, in the name of giving our client bang for his buck.

And just when I was trying to figure out how God would let me take this kind of fall when all I was doing was being obedient to what I believed was his will, there were people around me who were very quick to interpret my come-uppance (ironic terminology!) as a sign that I must have done something seriously wrong to deserve my punishment: why else would God take my grand job in advertising away from me?

Total Myth

Write a letter to a friend who is disturbed because he/she heard someone claim that there are mythical elements in the Old Testament. Reassure your friend by explaining what is meant by myth, how they come to be there, and how to interpret them. Include a couple of examples.

Yo yo yo, Miss Britney Simone Linder, xxx

I heard you were freaked out by what Mr Hattingh said in RE, about there being mythical elements in the Old Testament, and that it didn’t actually take God seven days to create the world. Don’t panic, and don’t tell your mom it’s time to leave this too-weird Catholic school, ok?! Well, not just yet, anyway, first lemme try to clarify!

I know you go to the Assemblies of God – and I know that your church teaches that it’s important to be a Bible believer and that the Bible is inerrant (i.e. completely right and true). Well, in a way I fully agree that it’s hugely important to believe the Bible, because it IS completely right and true… HOWEVER: the way I see it, the challenge is in how one interprets the Bible, and the amount of focus and importance we attach to literal meaning when we read the Bible. Does a thing have to be literally true to the letter in order to be true, or can a thing still be true even though it uses metaphor and other figures of speech to explain itself?

A kind of imaginative story that uses symbols to speak about reality beyond people’s general understanding is called a myth. Yes, I know, we usually say something is a myth if we mean that thing is totally untrue or just plain rubbish. But when we’re working with scripture it’s important that we are clear about the words we use and what they mean in their context. So for us, a myth is a colourful and creative way of explaining something that is actually true. Strange but true, I tell you!

So whose idea was it to include myths in the Bible anyway? Well, myths got there because the Biblical writers were trying to find ways to explain and explore the profound nature and reality of God’s relationship with human beings. Have you ever just been at a loss for words when you’re trying to explain something about yourself and your Mom and your sister and how you guys fit together and love each other enormously even though you constantly bicker and fight over shoes and who does or doesn’t get to sit in the front passenger seat of the car? (And no, we’re not going to digress and get onto the topic of that brick someone hurled through the windscreen that time your mom and your sister were in the car taking a back-road detour, and we’re definitely not going to talk about your sister’s scar… but yowzer, your sister is my hero! Your family sure does churn its women out strong; you guys are all survivors of note!!) Anyway, after that non-diversion… getting right back to the subject at hand: at a loss for words? Yup, well so were the Biblical writers at a bit of a loss for words when they wanted to write about God! And at the time they were writing, in the ancient Near East, myths were a form of storytelling that people understood and could relate to – so the Biblical writers borrowed this recognisable way of communicating deep truths and applied it to the stories they were writing to try and communicate deep truths about God. And because these stories do indeed communicate profound truth, they were included in the Bible when believers sat down to decide what counted as part of the Bible and what should be left out. So a lot of thought has gone into the truth that is contained in scripture, and you can be sure that if it’s in scripture, then it has most definitely been accepted as true.

(It’s a part of the canon: so can I get a BOOM! BOOM!?? … Ok, that was a lame sound effect joke­pun, I know! Forgive me! I should be working the Saturday Surgery with Roger Goode on 5FM! Yeah baby!! Hey, did I tell you that I used to work with Roger before he was a DJ? Seriously, I kid you not: 2001, but it was not a Space Odyssey. I was a new media producer at a company called Tinderbox Interactive and he was my studio runner. I used to give him all kinds of jobs to do for me, sourcing sound effects and doing voice clips. I also gave him a lift to work when he still lived with his uncle. The thing I liked most about Roger is that even though he wasn’t at all religious, he was sincerely interested in hearing about why I had Hillsongs Simply Worship tapes in my car. He’s the kind of guy who grovels through your glove box looking for clues about what you listen to, because he says a person’s choice in music tells you a lot about who they really are. He was right: nobody else at work knew I was a Christian because I kept that bit of information very quiet back then; I was only just beginning to explore my faith and I was in no way ready to defend my allegiance to a belief system that many of my colleagues considered to be narrow-minded, rigid and judgemental.)

Right. Ok. So now this letter is turning into an epic! But that’s just because I am such a legend.

This brings me to my next point:

The seven-day creation story is a myth. That doesn’t mean God didn’t create the world, it means that the way the story has been told is for the express purpose of teaching us something about God! We don’t know for sure how the world came into being or exactly how long it took. I like to think that faith and science are not mutually exclusive: if scientists are discovering that the world works or evolved differently from what we understood previously, this new information doesn’t negate everything we believe about God; just the opposite, it usually magnifies God’s glory and shows us how awesome God’s creation really is, and makes us realise how little we know about the universe! But as far as the creation story in the Bible is concerned, the narrative is not unlike ancient Near Eastern tradition and echoes elements of the Enuma Elish. The main difference between the ancient writing and the way the Genesis account is written, is that the Bible story shows us that there is one God who is good and loving, who created all things (including human beings – in the image of said loving God), and that all of creation is good, because God made it with goodness and good intentions. I think it’s quite cool that the six working days are divided up into three days of separation (light/dark, water above/below, water/dry land… all very holistically yin-yang) and three days of population or integration (the universe, birds and fish, animals and people… again very holistic in that it leaves nothing out and shows that human beings are as much a part of creation as all other living things are). The seventh day rest or Sabbath holds it all together: everything belongs to and in the loving God who created it, and this amazing reality deserves to be observed and celebrated. Plus it’s a great basis for a day of rest once a week! Can you imagine school for five days running, then a sports day and then back to school again for another five days?! Hayibo!

The story about the flood and Noah’s ark is a myth. Again, this doesn’t mean it’s just a fat lie; the story has been included to express something about God. In this case, I’m not entirely sure what the flood was supposed to teach us… but I will get back to you on this one in a couple of weeks! It’s coming up soon in my Bible correspondence course.

The story about Moses parting the Red Sea is a myth. Or is it? I was reading in this morning’s Cape Times about a study that shows it’s quite possible that the wind could have parted the waters. Some of the anti-religion lobby are crowing that this study is proof that Moses didn’t do it, the wind did it, and therefore the Bible is a lie and God is irrelevant. From my reading of the story, the wind was very definitely involved when Moses parted the sea, so depending on how you read it, this just confirms the Exodus 14 account, instead of the other way around. Anyway, the study explains some interesting fluid dynamics, regardless of whether the Exodus story is myth or hard fact. Read this online: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0012481

You’d think the awesome image of Charlton Heston as Moses in Cecil B DeMille’s epic 1956 film The Ten Commandments would have been more than enough to sway the most cynical sceptics and would have wiped out the need for any studies… the way the water wiped out the Egyptians!!

Anyway, proving something possible is not the same thing as proving something true. It’s just proven to be … possible. I think that whatever science discovers, all of the myths are there to invite us to consider the possibilities, and to believe in a God for whom all things are possible, and to remain hopeful that love abides through all things and will always win out in the end.

And that’s where I’m going to end this letter: leaving you to ponder all of this in your heart.

xoxoxo

Introduction to the Old Testament

Describe anything in Study Unit 1 that has surprised or challenged you. What relevance does the material in the Unit have for your understanding of the Old Testament? Do you know of any situations where an appeal to the Biblical text has led to an unjust situation?

It has been good to learn about the parallels in the Bible and the Ugaritic texts, and about the way in which Hebrew theologians adopted titles of Canaanite gods to better name and describe YHWH. It is fascinating to think that El Shaddai was originally a deity worshipped at Ugarit: that name for God has always struck me as beautifully mysterious, yet somehow wrong. When I first heard that name sung in a Christian church by a lone reedy voice, I was somewhat confused by it: nowhere in my prior experience of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had I heard him called by that name (not surprising: children’s Bibles tend to avoid the complexity of six billion names for God), and on some inexplicable level it just didn’t seem to fit the picture I had of God; the name felt quite alien to me. The feeling of alienation was amplified by posters I saw in the local Christian bookstore featuring a pure white dove with an olive branch in its beak, flapping away from baby blue El Shaddai lettering: it all seemed to say “This is a fragile God, handle Him with care”. But I let my cynicism about it go and came to accept it as one of God’s names. And now I find out that it’s a name that was adopted from another context and applied to God in order to demonstrate that the one true God incorporates all of the many things that the lesser deities were supposed to be. That works for me, because it validates my suspicion that God is so much more almighty than the image this particular name invokes for me.

I find the documentary hypothesis very interesting, and I quite like the idea that there were multiple sources that have been pooled and integrated to create the whole. It is interesting to see how each source has its own perspective and promotes specific areas of interest or ways of thinking about God and the people. Put together, all of these different perspectives tell a fascinating story about how our understanding of God has progressed over time, which offers hope that our understanding of God will continue to grow as time goes by.

I am intrigued by considering the structure of the Jewish and Christian canons, and how the choice of books as well as the order in which they are included is intended to convey a message, either in conclusion (for the Jewish canon) or to set the scene for what comes next (in the Christian canon). It is also helpful to be more aware of the literary form and context of the writings, and to be inspired to also look at the texts in the passages and books preceding and following any particular scripture that is being considered.

The material in this study unit is relevant in that it encourages me to interpret scripture in a wider context rather than just literally: it guides me towards becoming more aware of the social, political, cultural, religious and historical situation in which the texts were written and then to try to understand the intended message of the writer for the original audience so that I can apply the learning in my own context, by examining the current social, political, cultural and religious situation in which I am living, taking into account my own mindset, thinking and influences, as well as the thinking and influences of the society in which I live. Doing this will give me a fuller appreciation of scripture and enable me to be more comprehensive in the way I interpret and apply Biblical texts. It will also help me to avoid being unreasonably rigid or literalist in my interpretation.

There are a great many situations where appeals to isolated Biblical texts have led to unjust situations! Some parents appeal to the Bible as their justification for being unnecessarily cruel to their children and using excessive corporal punishment. Proverbs is packed full of sanctimonious counsel for these folk: Pr 13:24, 19:22, 22:15 and 23:13-14.

Other unjust situations traditionally exacerbated by appeals to Biblical texts include the treatment of women (Lv 12:2), the keeping of slaves (Gn 9:25-27), the condemnation of homosexuals (Gn 19:24), and the persecution of nonreligious persons or people of other faiths (Nm 25:12-13).

Woman's Work

Some people say that:

• because the Bible says that God made Adam before Eve,
• because the Bible says that Eve was created to be Adam’s servant (helper), and
• because the Bible shows that it was easier for the snake to tempt Eve,

it proves to us that God does not want men and women to be equal in society.

What do you say to this?

The given assertions prove no such thing. The stories in Gn 1 and 2 are about the human race, not just about the male of the species.

We know that the writer of the Gn 1 creation story was himself a priest, writing in the time of the Babylonian exile. As such, his way of thinking would have been formed within the framework of the priesthood, as well as the social, political, cultural, religious and historical situation in which he found himself. If there was any inference of male supremacy in the Gn 1 account would derive from the writer’s context. However, I don’t believe that there is such an inference from the writer’s perspective, because in Gn 1:26-27 we see that the terms man, them, male and female, are used interchangeably, and it’s clear from this treatment that the writer does not see the male as superior to the female: they are equal and in perfect partnership.

In the Gn 2 creation story, both woman and man are made from the same substance and God breathes life into both of them: explicitly in the case of the man, and implicitly in the case of the woman. Substance alone does not make a human: the breath of life is also required. The names given to man and woman mean ‘ground’ and ‘life’: they are the two elements that make a complete living, breathing human. The substance cannot fulfil its purpose without the life within it, and the life needs the substance to contain it and give it form and expression. The fact that God made Eve after he made Adam serves to highlight that Adam alone was not the full and complete expression of humanity: woman was needed as well as man.

God did not make all of creation to supply Adam’s needs and desires; rather Adam was given the job of cultivating and caring for the garden. It was God’s idea to provide a partner (not a pet or a slave or an afternoon’s entertainment) for Adam. When God created the various animals and offered them to Adam for his consideration, God clearly thought that the animals had great dignity and worth. When none of the animals was found to be suitable as a partner, then God created the woman, also with great dignity and worth. When God brought the woman to Adam, the man recognised that the woman was bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh: if he were then to disrespect her or insult her dignity, he would thus disrespect himself and insult his own dignity.

When the Bible says that the woman was created as a helper, the terminology supports her respectability in that it is using the same descriptor often given to God in his relationship to Israel. A helper is in no way inferior.

Adam and Eve had a perfect, open relationship with each other: this is conveyed by the inclusion of the details about their nakedness without shame. They were partners. When the snake came to tempt Eve, Adam was with her, as her partner. He didn’t try to dissuade her from eating the fruit; neither did he reject the offer of the fruit for himself. Adam and Eve together succumbed to the temptation to do what God had forbidden them to do. The assertion that it was easier for the snake to tempt Eve holds no water: there is no reliable evidence that the snake tempted the woman and man equally in turn, separately from one another and outside of the other partner’s influence – which for me would be the only way to draw a conclusion about who was easier to tempt.

God made men and women equal, and he wants them to work together in perfect partnership.

Wow. Breathtaking!

Reflect on the wonder of the cosmos, and of our planet Earth with all its inhabitants, and compose your own psalm of praise and thanks to God for the gift of creation.

O LORD, our Lord, how awesome is your name through all the earth!
Your majesty is infinite, expanding forever like the universe!
When I see your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and stars that you set in place;
clusters of galaxies, stars and gas;
planets and cabbages* and kings†;
dark energy, quantum vacuum, black holes,
parallel light rays, Euclidian geometry,
solar eclipses, light speed, the Milky Way,
supernovas and shooting stars,
particles blinking into and out of existence--
What are humans that you are mindful of them,
mere mortals that you care for them?

Yet you have made them little less than a god,
crowned them with glory and honour.
You have given them rule over the works of your hands;
put all things at their feet:
all sheep and oxen, even the beasts of the field,
the birds of the air, the fish of the sea
and whatever swims the paths of the seas.

When I go up Mount Kilimanjaro, you are there,
where your presence is as wide as the whole world,
great, high and unbelievably white in the sun,
where Hemingway’s snowy prose echoes your name;

When I set off to Canada’s Hudson Bay, you are there,
where the polar bears gather in hungry vigil,
waiting for the November water to freeze;
And you are there, too,
in the breathtaking beauty of multicolour lights,
spinning the aurora borealis into vision.

When I swim the Great Barrier Reef, you are there,
amidst dreamy green turtles, force 5 cyclones,
rising sea levels and colourful photosynthetic zooxanthellae-rich coral.
I cannot escape you
in the joyously reverberating harmonics
of didgeridoos dancing across the crown of Uluru in the vibrant red Outback;
nor can I hide from you in the mists of the Ugandan Virunga Mountains
where serene silverbacks play silly boys‡ in the highland forests.

What about Victoria Falls and the Grand Canyon?
Yes, you are even there:
despite crowds of tourists, Japanese cameras, loud American voices.

And in the relative ease and comfort of home, you are there,
with squawking hadedahs in the park,
a garden full of silent roses greeting gentle spring raindrops;
and Rusty the genial convent dog.

O LORD, our Lord, how awesome is your name through all the earth!
Praise and glory and thanksgiving to you, whose mercy endures forever!

NOTES:
* all of that gas had to come from somewhere!
† thanks to Lewis Carroll’s The Walrus and the Carpenter; the cabbages needed a companion
‡ the polite form of the traditional Australian expression

Genesis: History or Promise?

Consider the following statement: If you attempt to read the first eleven chapters of Genesis as history, as if the details are factually true, you will miss much of the richness of the text and in fact miss the message inherent in these texts. What is your personal reaction to this statement?

I agree wholeheartedly!

I think that trying to read this material as factually correct history would be a major obstacle to faith in God, because I can’t understand how a reasonable, intelligent and well-informed person living in today’s world where we have access to so much sound scientific information, would be able to reconcile all of the contradictory “facts” that abound in the stories of Genesis 1-11. Such a reading would likely encourage one to engage in an implacable attempt to disprove all scientific information that disagrees with the text.

As all good scientists know, it’s a bad idea to start your investigations with a conclusion in mind: one has to remain impartial, familiarise oneself with established scientific principles and accepted truths in any given field, devise carefully structured experiments and observe the evidence that presents itself. Hypotheses are formulated from observation, and theories develop from hypotheses. While some hypotheses can never be proven, they can be disproven. Good science recognises this, and is always open to further investigation and discovery. Claiming that one’s findings are ever absolute and incontrovertible truth is not a rational way to do science.

If one takes science seriously – and I do, because I have no valid reason to do otherwise – one couldn’t read Gn 1-11 as an entirely scientific report.

I find it a much more satisfying endeavour to read the text with a view to exploring the richness of the storytelling and the message that the writers were trying to convey through their accounts.

Of course, if the details were actually true and consistent – with accepted scientific fact, as well as between the various versions of events presented in scripture – then I think it would be possible to read the account as a history and also get the intrinsic theological message: in that case there would be no conflict of the reader’s interests, no either/or condition. Just because something is factual doesn’t mean it can’t be theological as well.

[I tacked on that last proviso just in case some bright spark manages to rework the contents of the canon so that there are no inconsistencies in the text, and just in case science finds the particulars of such last remaining origins story to be true in the next millennium! You just never know…]

A Beautiful Mind. Extended Version.

A friend of yours has asked you for advice about enrolling for a short course on the New Testament. Write your friend a letter of encouragement giving reasons why he or she should enrol.

My dearest and bestest buddy

I’m stunned that you’re interested in studying the New Testament! But I’m excited at the same time, because it’s a book that has had a profound impact on my life, and I’m sure that it will have a similar effect on you. I can’t say how, exactly. But I know that reading it will enrich your experience of life on earth, because there are so many things about this planet that just don’t make sense without an appreciation of the contents of the canon. Then again, I think you already know I feel that way, because you’ve asked me more questions about faith in this last year than you did in the sum of the other 14 years we’ve known each other. And I never feel qualified to answer all of your questions: I am flattered that you trust me enough to ask me, and I always try to answer as honestly as I can, but really, the best thing you can do is to search for your own answers. You will find them!

Right. Enrolling for a course is a great idea, because otherwise you might find yourself bogging down quite quickly, there is just so much material, and so many areas of interest. It can be quite overwhelming. There are a few foundation stones that will help you, and a good short course will cover the basics of these:

1. Understanding the nature and origin of the New Testament
2. Learning how to read the New Testament – appreciating styles of writing and different genres
3. Appreciating the political and social world of the New Testament
4. Gaining insight into the religious and philosophical world of New Testament times

The NT was developed over a long period of time, and it will help if you understand how it all came together, who was involved in the writing and the way in which writers sourced their material: these books didn’t fall out of the sky with Gideon’s Bible stamped on the cover! The more you understand how the works came to be, the more fully you will appreciate the contents. Otherwise one risks reading most of the material out of context and making overly literal or just plain wrong interpretations of the texts, and we both know how badly that can go: we’ve both seen too many people suffer as a result of sincere but ill-informed Christians forcing their narrow-minded understanding of the Bible on the people around them. That’s unfortunately the experience of religion that sticks in people’s memories and keeps them from encountering a loving, merciful, good God.

The Gospels are a huge challenge, but if you stick with them you will learn surprising things. You’ll also understand why there are four Gospels and not just one. You’ll figure out why pastors always tell new Christians to read John’s Gospel: it’s packed full of theology! Studying Acts will help you to understand a great many things that go on in the average Christian church that might seem a bit bizarre otherwise. And then there are the letters, most of them by Paul. Yes, yes, I know: that misogynist. But there’s more to Paul than chauvinism, I promise: there are some real gems of wisdom lurking in this fascinating man’s psyche. And while you may learn something about Paul while you scrutinise his letters, you will definitely learn something about yourself. Your course might or might not include a segment on the book of Revelation: if it focuses on apocalyptic literature as a genre, you will learn something useful; if it encourages you to count verses and do complex calculations about the number of earthquakes that have happened in the last year in order to get a fix on the exact day the world will end… run away, screaming “Aaargh, bad movie, Nicolas Cage, bad movie!!”

All of that said, if you gain nothing else from your New Testament course, you will feel the satisfaction that comes from seeing how ingeniously the Gospel texts were put together. Matthew, Mark and Luke would have made amazing colleagues in our sub-editor days; I would have loved to watch any one of them handle that Germany travel guide that gave me so many headaches!

Okay, right – I must dash, pressing business. Call me if you have any questions, okay?! Love you. S

Hunting High and Low

Reflect on the Christologies of Karl Rahner and Albert Nolan. What similarities and what differences do you detect? What approach do you prefer, and why?

Rahner and Nolan’s Christologies are similar in that they are both reflecting on what they know and understand (or concede that they don’t know and don’t understand) about divinity and humanity, and using that understanding (or lack thereof) as a basis for exploring a fuller understanding of God, and Jesus as both man and God.

Their Christologies are different in that:

• Rahner is doing high Christology and approaching the question from the top down: starting with what he knows of God and the nature of divinity and working his way into understanding the meaning and implications of Jesus’ divinity for his humanity – i.e. because he is fully God, he is able to be most fully human and be loving and compassionate and everything that God is, as a human being; and
• Nolan is doing low Christology and approaching the question from the bottom up: starting with what he knows about Jesus’ humanity and working his way into understanding the meaning and implications of Jesus’ humanity for his embodiment of divinity – i.e. because we see Jesus the man being loving and compassionate and everything that he is as a person, we are able to understand something of the nature of God, whose divinity lives fully and is fully expressed in Jesus the man.

I prefer both approaches, I can’t choose just one! They’re completely complementary.

I hold fast to the notion that I myself am really only able to be loving by God’s spirit at work in me: left to my own very human devices I instinctively become selfish and mean, whereas in working at being open and available to God’s presence and love I am more able to see further than my own self­-serving agendas, and have mercy and compassion for other people, and do kind things for God’s sake that I would otherwise not do. At some point, if I let God’s spirit get enough of a foothold, I may even find that I will learn to be able to forgive! From this starting point, I like Rahner’s approach: if Jesus was fully human he must have had moments of human weakness and wilfulness – but because he was fully divine he was able to transcend his every weakness and be continuously present to the people around him, absolutely faithful to his mission, and always mindful of his Father’s presence in the depths of his very being. (We mere mortals can only aspire to this, and gaze in wonder and awe!)

At the same time, I am completely puzzled by the whole question of God, and some days I even wonder if there IS a God, or if I’m holding onto a lovely fantasy that makes it easier for me to get through the tough times and challenges. Religion is the opium of the … minorities, and all of that. Seriously, what can a person actually know about God?! Especially given how much scientific evidence there isn’t for his existence?! And from this starting point, I like Nolan’s approach: if Jesus was fully divine, then taking what I know of Jesus the man and how he lived and loved and got through his days, and extrapolating that to speak to me about divinity, then I begin to see God all around me in the people I encounter everyday. These are average folk, who are as loving and as kind as they are able to be, even in the midst of their struggles and heartaches. Wow. Finding God this close is enough to take your breath away! Amen.

Fanmail

Write a short letter (about a page) to one of the four evangelists (Mark, Matthew, Luke or John) thanking him for his Gospel and telling him what it is that you really like about it.

Dear Luke,

Thanks for your Gospel. Here’s what I really like about it:

You don’t waffle and keep on repeating things for effect the way Matthew does, and although he’s doing it for dramatic effect and it could be said that he’s using wonderful literary style and clever devices, sometimes he makes me feel that he must think I am stupid. You don’t do that, and I appreciate your estimation of my intellect. Clear communication of information is a huge help to me.

Your telling of the story is quite pragmatic and although you do include stern warnings, you write them in such a matter-of-fact way that the reader’s focus doesn’t dwell in the dark but shifts effortlessly into the light. The way you structure your information leads your reader quite effectively to a place of hope and trust. You don’t deny the darkness – in fact you’re quite scary in how much you talk about Satan and the very real power of darkness compared to any of the other Gospel writers – but you never let us feel like darkness will have the last word, you always shift us into a position of hope and faith in God’s power and goodness.

Thanks for keeping your telling of the Beatitudes on the level. The mountaintop experiences where we catch a glimpse of who Jesus really is, are amazing and give us food for the journey. But the reality is that the bulk of our lives are lived on the floor of our existence: in our domestic relationships, our earning a crust, our ministry, our play, and all of the unscheduled crises that go on around us on a daily basis. Giving us Jesus’ amazing teachings in this context helps me to feel less guilty about living a life on the ground, amongst the people and their noise and bustle. You don’t make me feel like I need to escape my life in order to encounter Jesus and hear him speak to me.

I also really appreciate your sense of liturgy as a living thing: so much of your Gospel lends itself to daily communal prayer in the midst of all of the busyness; it is real and alive and present and calling out for simple participation. Awesome stuff, and so very beautiful.

Oh, and I love that you include the bit about Jesus calling Herod a fox! Haha! Classic!!

I could write twenty more pages, but nevertheless I must go on my way today and tomorrow: I’m preparing for a youth camp with 40 hooligan kids from Tafelsig. And the third day? Well, I wish I was finishing my course, but there’s a bit more to go yet! In the meantime it cannot be that a student should perish away from her books; I’ll catch you on the flipside.

With loads of love and grateful appreciation,
Sister Christian

P.S. I also like that your Gospel’s traditional symbol is an ox. One of my other heroes was distinguished for referring to himself as a “dumb ox” – and it’s clear that in both of your cases “the ox knows its owner”. I can only hope that someday Isaiah’s text might apply to me too: “the ass knows its master’s crib”. I am most grateful to you because I think your Gospel might be of some assistance in that regard! (Please excuse the asinine pun, it was from top to bottom accidental, and certainly no matter of substance).

P.P.S. I was only bold enough to include that last parenthetical attempt at comedy because I know from your Gospel that you have a wry sense of humour and would be able to handle my chutzpah!

P.P.P.S Yes, I know, after lambasting him in my intro, I’m being a bit Matthean now myself. Sorry!!

Ball of Confusion

Write a reflection about your experience of studying the New Testament, and include any observations you might have about parallels between first century CE Palestine and your own country

The thing that I find difficult about reading the New Testament is the sense that one gets about how much struggle and conflict there has been between people of faith throughout the history of the church. Everyone has the best intentions of knowing and understanding and keeping God happy, but out of these good intentions arises a fearful attempt to control and manage faith: so much of the story of the development of the New Testament seems to be a bunfight about who was right, or who was more convinced they were right and able to assert their claims in this regard, even going as far as burning people at the stake if they didn’t like a translation of a text, or the fact that someone didn’t know their place well enough to know that they shouldn’t dare involve themselves in the business of trying to understand or talk or write about God! And so much of this conflict was over language, which in itself is completely inadequate as a means of expressing the nature of God. Good grief, what is it with people? Talk about a manufacturing fault – maybe I should write a letter of complaint to Him about that:

“Dear Sir, you could have toned down the human gut-level fight-or-flight fear instinct you programmed into your creatures. Is there any chance you can rectify the problem with the next batch before planet-wide distribution?”

The other thing that is significant is being reminded that the modern mind probably works quite differently in some respects from the minds of ancient times: I wouldn’t know how to un-80’s my head enough to begin to grasp what those old Greek ideas of divinity were all about. My love of Greek mythology I imbibed as a secondary effect of hero-worshipping Magnum and MacGyver: if the god of Hawaii had Zeus and Appollo for guard dogs on Robin Masters’ estate, and the god of the creative quick-fix-in-a-pinch knew stuff about Greek gods that could help him solve complex cat­-and­-mouse riddles put to him by his nemesis, then by Jove it made sense that I too should know at least something about Kronos, Chaos, Dyonisus, Eros, Hades and all of the rest. You never know when you might need to get yourself out of major nonsense, with nothing to help you but a bottle of wine, a charming smile and no fear of hell! So clearly I have a lot to learn before I even begin to understand how Greek thought has impacted Christian thinking.

Even though the thinking might have been quite different back then, it seems that first century Palestine was quite like modern-day South Africa: the rich and the poor we still have! We might not have kings, but we do have tribal leaders, and politicians and church officials, big business, SARS, and corporate conglomerates buying up land and leaving the poor nowhere to lay their heads. We have middle class artisans, dwindling numbers of priests and small farmers, who are still often in debt. We have the workers, the unemployed, people who have been trafficked, and the sick and disabled, who often live on grants and alms (or whatever people on the train are willing to toss into the blind singing beggar’s tin cup on a Monday morning while they wend their way to work nursing hangovers and pondering the intrigues and excesses of the weekend now past).

First century Palestinian society had:

• Sadduccees: we have the Christian equivalent in the “prosperity churches” where they preach that you reap what you sow and that material wealth is a sign of God’s blessing on your life. If you’re not reaping, you can’t be sowing in faith, brother!
• Pharisees: we have arch-conservative Catholics who know Church teaching so well that it’s clear everyone around them just doesn’t measure up to the Catechism and will contaminate their children if they aren’t homeschooled.
• Scribes: we have doctors of Canon Law.
• Zealots: we have … um… Bikers for Christ who wear their leathers and look tough on a Sunday morning breakfast run, as well as many other more anonymous people who send volumes of Christian chain letters through the email demanding that Christians must prove to Jesus how much they love him by forwarding said letters to at least 12 people who are not Christian and need to hear about Jesus before they die and go to hell. It’s violence of another sort.
• Samaritans: we have Jehovah’s Witnesses – who don’t have their own territory as such (outside of their Kingdom Halls), but who are probably at least as hated as the Samaritans were, and whose brand of Christianity strikes most Christians as false. They’re not an entirely bad bunch; I have an uncle and some cousins who count themselves among the 144,000.
• Essenes: we have Calvanists and Seventh Day Adventists, among others.
• Herod the Great, Herod Antipas and Pontius Pilate: we have JZ, Julius and Judge Hlope. Ok, so they’re not quite the same thing. I couldn’t find better analogies!
• Academy of Jamnia: we have the Council of Churches.

If you think about it, everything changes so much, and yet everything remains the same. I’m starting to sympathise with the writer of Ecclesiastes: vanity of vanities, all things are vanity! What profit has man from all the labour which he toils at under the sun? One generation passes and another comes, but the world forever stays.

I console myself that the last word, when all is heard, is to fear God and keep his commandments, for this is man's all; because God will bring to judgment every work, with all its hidden qualities, whether good or bad. Thanks be to God!

Ye-eah We Wept, When We Remembered Zion

How would you have felt if you were in Paul’s place as a prisoner, after all you had tried to do to bring others to know and love the Risen Jesus? From what we read in Acts, how do you think Paul feels? Is there a lesson in this for us?

If I were in Paul’s place as a prisoner after all I had tried to do to bring others to know and love the Risen Jesus, I would be an absolute wreck: fuming at the injustice of it, frustrated by my own inefficacy and inability to solve the problem, disappointed in the God who was supposed to keep me safe from all harm while I worked in His name, indignant that my fellow workers hadn’t done more to save my bacon or at the very least end up in the clink with me…! I would be writing a mental autobiography that cast me as the betrayed hero down on her luck and alone against a cruel and indifferent world, and I would be loudly singing Boney-M style laments intended to torture anyone within earshot.

From what I read in Acts, Paul is an interesting and complex character, and while I find it difficult to imagine or empathise with how he feels, the things that he says and does show that he’s steadfastly committed to sticking with the task that God has given him, and making every effort to restrain himself from doing or saying anything that might sabotage his own best intentions and efforts.

When he is falsely accused, he doesn’t become aggressively defensive but manages to be diplomatic (Acts 24:10) and states the facts of his case: he knows he has right on his side. When his trial is postponed and he is kept in custody, he bears it out: he dares to speak to Felix about righteousness, self-restraint and the coming judgement (Acts 24:25), and even though he stops short of making a personal inference for Felix that he would be judged for failing to do justice for Paul, Felix probably hears the implication just before he becomes frightened. So I think Paul is being a bit of an undercover bully – which takes serious chutzpah and a lot of reliance on his status as a Roman citizen. And so Felix and Paul play a bit of cat-and-mouse (Acts 24:26) that seems to go on for two years before Felix makes a last play of leaving Paul in prison to be dealt with by the next governor.

When Paul is again falsely accused, and the new governor makes a political play to move the trial to Jerusalem in order to score points with the Jews (Acts 25:9), Paul insists on his due and appeals to Caesar. Before Paul is taken to Caesar, Festus brings him before King Agrippa – and Paul, whose patience must have been wearing thin by this time, is ever the diplomat (Acts 26:2-3) as he tells his story, publicly confesses his previous errors in dealing with the Way, and explains in detail the reasons he has for the choices he has made: even when his reasons might make him sound like a delusional madman. When he is indeed accused of being mad, he holds his ground and speaks assertively, even persuasively. He prays for those who are persecuting him (Acts 26:29).

Then he gets sent on a sea journey, and he warns his captors that setting sail is a bad idea (Acts 27:9-10). Even so, they set sail and disaster strikes. Paul takes a moment to squeeze in an “I­-told-you-so” (Acts 27:21) but he nevertheless depends on God to save him and everyone else – and he shares his conviction and the message he received from the angel (Acts 27:23-26). He continues to shepherd everyone aboard through each uncertain moment of the unfolding drama. He gives clear directions, he tells people what is expected of them, and he cares for their needs. Paul’s mere presence is enough to save his fellow prisoners from death (Acts 27:42-43). On landing on Malta, Paul has the rotten luck to get bitten by a snake, and the people around him take this as evidence of how he must have deserved some kind of punishment. Paul doesn’t berate them or wish snakes on them in return; he just calmly carries on with the business of living and curing the sick.

And so the story continues: some form of disaster strikes or some persecution is encountered, and Paul unwaveringly and unceasingly relies on God. He’s quietly determined to keep going, to persevere in speaking the truth about God’s kingdom and about Jesus as best he can whenever he’s given the opportunity. He remains open to dialogue and welcomes all comers. There is a great deal to be learnt from Paul’s example! I could do a bit less “fighting-to-convince-people-that-I’m-right” and more “calmly-and-assuredly-asserting-the-truth-of-God’s-love”. And if I can’t resist the compulsion to squeeze in an occasional “I-told-you-so”… well… I sure hope it won’t come back to bite me. And if it does, then I’m counting on Paul to put in a good word on my behalf with the Boss!

Battered Suitcases Piled on the Sidewalk Again

Reflect on Paul’s strategy of re-visiting the Christian communities that he had founded. Does this practice of his hold any lesson for you in your own life, or for your own church community?

The obvious lesson in Paul’s strategy of re-visiting the Christian communities that he founded is that those of us who are in ministry need to understand and appreciate that consistent follow-through is necessary. It’s not enough to sow seed once and then move on to other ground and hope that what has been done will be sufficient: one has to tend to what one has planted, and sow further seed where necessary.

If I think about my personal development and growth as a Christian, I can give credit to particular individuals who have guided and taught and supported me along the way. And because I’m a fairly insecure person, I need a whole lot of reassurance! So the people who have encouraged my growth have on frequent occasions reminded me of things I had been told previously. I’m a bit like the guy who looks in the mirror and then goes away and forgets what he looks like. The Christians around me are my mirror – as long as I keep seeing myself (that is, who I am in God) reflected back to me in the things they tell me and show me, then it’s so much easier to remember who I am called to be, and to continue to live that reality.

From this perspective, it’s hardly surprising that burgeoning Christian communities would need some support and encouragement from leaders in ministry who can continue to remind them what they are called to be: to hold up a mirror so that people can see the truth of their situation, appreciate what’s good, identify what needs work, and be able to monitor their own progress in this regard over a period of time.

Growth in relationship is also important. The Good News is all about a relational God who calls people into relationship with himself and with other people. So it follows logically that there should also be relational development between ministers and the community. For a community to receive input from a skilled and insightful “travelling consultant” can be useful, but it’s far more helpful for a community if a minister is able to speak to their particular situation and context by applying his/her skill and insight to the community’s lived reality. This means that the minister has to make return visits, and spend some time getting to know the people and the issues that affect the community, in order to be able to give constructive input that will effect positive change and growth over time.

People Come To Church To Daydream About God

Reflect on Luke’s description of the ideal Christian community and on ways in which your own parish or Christian community compares favourably with that description. Reflect also on ways in which his description is a challenge to your community. Write a one-page summary of your reflections.

I have had a variety of different experiences in parish communities. As far as my current parish is concerned, I am a member because I don’t have the option to choose otherwise at this point in time: the novitiate house is right next door to the church. As I’ve mentioned in my previous portfolio piece, this is a very traditional and conservative parish, which is not a problem in itself, I just don’t feel very free to express my thoughts or feelings about my spiritual journey, or talk about the truth of my life before coming to Christ: which is the basis for understanding how much of a difference an experience of the Holy Spirit has made in my life. It’s also the basis for understanding how much of a difference a vibrant and welcoming parish community can make to ‘outsiders’ who are looking for a way to come to Christ themselves and who would participate fully in the life of the church if they found true communion!

I regard the Church of the Resurrection in Table View as my spiritual home, where I can say that I have had an experience of koinonia: real community, warm fellowship and intimate friendship – and a sense that there was a place for everyone in the parish, whether they were conservative or progressive, whether they were contemplative or charismatic. There may have been some pointing and laughing from one group to another, but generally the different groups accepted that it was okay that there were differences, “to each, his own”, and all of the groups would join in and help make the various parish initiatives (and fundraisers!) a roaring success. Amongst my Alpha Course friends there was also evidence of incredible material generosity: people gave whatever they could to whoever needed something, without keeping score or expecting anything in return. Parish life lived and breathed in the many small prayer groups that met regularly: some on a weekly basis, some three mornings a week (at 6am!), and the parish intercessory team was available to pray for whatever needs people had. There wasn’t an adoration chapel, but that didn’t mean people weren’t praying around the clock! Liturgical celebrations were well prepared and well attended, and were a source of grace in more than just theory. There were also plenty of opportunities to participate in a variety Bible study groups and other pastoral activities and ministries, so there were lots of opportunities for getting teaching from ‘‘the apostles”. The more I reflect on my time at the Church of the Resurrection, the more I realise how incredibly blessed I was to have found that kind of community at the moment in my life when I most desperately needed to experience God’s love and merciful kindness.

And as much as I’m grappling with my current parish experience and telling myself that I’m idealising my time in Table View, I am really battling with being in such a “heady” parish: where knowing and obeying the rules and regulations seems to be a much higher priority for most than understanding the spirit of the law or showing compassionate feeling for people. Even so, it’s not all horrible: there are good people in this parish who do join in with parish activities, and who try to reach out and be supportive of others. The challenges that Luke’s description poses for this particular parish are:

• finding a remedy for the “skinder stories” that do the rounds: too many people freely criticise their fellow parishioners, and it’s not the kind of commentary that helps people to grow in faith or in the exercise of their giftedness, it’s the kind of cruel and snide petty judgemental commentary that “cuts people down to size”, nips a person’s potential ministry efficacy in the bud, breaks down trust and limits the progress of intimacy in relationships, which in turn works against building the kind of community that Luke describes;
• embracing a wider variety of prayer styles: there are a lot of devotional practices on offer, from devotion to the Sacred Heart in the adoration chapel, to various rosary recitations, and benediction; but there’s very little in the way of anything “freestyle”, so it feels like one is obliged to accept very structured prayer as the rule if one wants to participate actively in the community’s prayer life;
• finding a way to soften the hard legal edges on our “formal temple worship”: it would be great if participating in the liturgy of the Eucharist would feel more like breaking of bread amongst friends and less like performing a demanding ballet for the Great Adjudicator who’s just waiting for someone to put a foot wrong so that he can deduct points from the overall score;
• encouraging people to explore the scriptures and the teachings of the Church in an open and respectful discussion forum where thoughtful dialogue is considered to be an invaluable aid to mutual understanding, which in turn is necessary for building healthy community relationships.