Perspectives: Open Doors

Role of Attitiude in life

What is the role of attitude in life? How does how we approach life change our lives?

A couple of days ago I was in a hotel at their free breakfast bar.  I picked up my coffee and spilled it.  The woman standing next to me (I had never met her before) grabbed napkins and started helping me to clean up the mess.  A couple of previously clean paper coffee cups had been splashed, so I tossed them to the trashcan and missed.  She laughed, and said, "Your day is off to a bad start."

My response: "My day has started by meeting a very nice person."  It just popped out of my mouth, unthought.  

Attitude: how we see what is in front of us.  A positive attitude does change that I spilled my coffee.  It did open my eyes to the helpfulness of a stranger.  

Do we only see the negative? Or do we open our eyes among the negative to find the positive? And what difference does that make?

David and Bathsheba

At the beginning of the Sunday school lesson I mentioned yesterday, the teacher read from the material that the author called the story of David and Bathsheba one of rape.  The teacher was started by this, and had never thought of it before.

Read the story.  It is rape.

Most of my notes following are based on the comments in my study Bible (The New Interpreter's Study Bible) which I highly recommend.

1. David is standing on his roof, and he sees Bathsheba bathing.  She is probably in an inner courtyard bathing - a totally normal thing for a woman of her day to do. 
2. He sees that she is beautiful, and he finds out that her husband is away.  David sends people (more than one messenger) to get her, and to bring her to him.
3. According to Tikva Frymer-Kensky, another telling sign about the situation is that the Scripture does not say he loves her. "For him it is enough that she is beautiful."
4. He knows she is married, and that to give into the temptation as he desires, is to commit adultery.  Adultery is a serious transgression in David's time.  Again, according to Frymer-Kensky, "...all subjects belong to the king.  And whatever the king desires should be his."
5. She came to him, and he lay with her.  She is alone; her husband is away.  She has been summoned by the king.  She has no choice, and no power in this situation. 

When choice is taken away from someone, the action of "laying with her" becomes rape.  She can't say no.  

Which brings us back to the original statement.  Why was the Sunday school teacher surprised? I think, in our culture, and in our Bible study, we see the man's action as "men will be men" or "boys will be boys."  Bathsheba, in our culture, is often seem as a temptation - she must have wanted David to send for her.  Its purity culture as seen in some modern evangelical churches.

Let's stop blaming Bathsheba when we don't have any evidence that she was to blame.  Nathan speaks the truth.

Psalm 51

In Sunday School a couple of weeks ago, we read Psalm 51.  The background is an assumption (I'm not sure it is accepted by scholars) that the Psalm was written by King David after Nathan came to him to tell him he had committed adultery (more on that later) with Bathsheba:

Here are a couple of questions for you regarding the Psalm.

1. "Against you, you alone, have I sinned, and one what is evil in your sight...."  (verse 4a)  My study Bible says, "the harm done to others is by no means overlooked.  All sin, however, affects one's relation to God."  I understand that all sins affects one's relationship with God, but I'm not entirely certain that I see that the harm done to others is not overlooked.  Nathan certainly tried to make it clear, but this verse doesn't reassure me that David "got" it.  What do you think?
2. "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me." (verse 10).  The Sunday school teacher said this mean that David's heart - and sinners' hearts - are dirty, and they need to be made clean.  Is that what it means?  I wonder if the sinner's heart is broken instead of dirty.  Go on to verse 17b: "A broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.  Doesn't our heart break, sometimes, when we realize how we have sinned and hurt others?  Maybe this is evidence of David's repentance. I think it could be our song of contrition. 

And I'm probably being too picking.  Nit Nit Nit.

Perspectives: Creativity

Ancient vs Modern

Look at yesterday's quote again:

Stories are not waiting to be molded to fit our experience.  They are waiting for us to take the risk of entering their world of the story and be changed by it.  (Peter Enns and Jared Byas)

The quote is at the beginning of the book Genesis for Normal People.  The authors are attempting (and doing a good job) to convince us, the reader, that Genesis is an ancient story.  We can't just walk into the story with our own expectations - our modern view of the world - and then twist the story to fit what we know.

What difference does that make? Think for a moment how much difficulty we can have understanding the experiences of someone of a different age: the Millennials vs the Greatest Generation, for example.  They seem to speak different languages, have different life expectations,  approach situations differently.  That doesn't mean that have different values - they love their children, they value generosity, they want to serve.  Their cultures in time are different, though, and that makes stepping into a different generation's story difficult.  

Extend that thought to 3000 or 4000 years.  Why do we ever expect that we can walk into a biblical story and just have it fit our viewpoint?   Look at it through the eyes of those to whom it was written and the meaning changes. The story has a different life transforming effect.  

Why is that so hard for some of us to understand?

Sharing the Adventure

Thinking about stories, still:

Stories are not waiting to be molded to fit our experience.  They are waiting for us to take the risk of entering their world of the story and be changed by it.  (Peter Enns and Jared Byas)

I was moving through Facebook the other day - going down the rabbit hole - when I stumbled across a video of a sermon.  The sermon was based on the story (parable) we call the Prodigal Son.  The point the "pastor" was determined to make was that the story did not include the mother.  Where was she? Was she out getting her hair done? Why wasn't she home where she belong?

Grr.

Setting aside my disgust with this twist on a sermon, think for a moment about the story.  I wonder if the pastor had ever taken the risk of actually entering the story and allowing himself to be changed by it.  He certainly seems (to me) to be trying to mold the story to his own purposes.

If you are a preacher, this is a temptation. You have something you want to say, and you'll use the Bible to support your idea.  Instead, we are called to enter the story, and then share with those listening our adventure.

Genesis as Story

In the book Genesis for Normal People by Peter Enns and Jared Byas, the authors describe the literary style of the book of Genesis: not textbook, not a book of principles, but instead an ancient story, written in a particular time to a particular people.

That started me thinking about story.  What does it mean that Genesis is an ancient story? What role does story play in our lives?

A few weeks ago I attended the funeral of the brother of a friend.  Joel was - it was made clear that day - a storyteller.  Why did he tell stories?  His brother, our friend Jeff, related a story Joel told about an experience he had on his birthday.  Through this story, we learned about Joel's personality, his parents' reactions to him, and had a glimpse of the way life was for Joel at the time.  Jeff was able to tell the story because Joel had shared it - but it was before Jeff had been born.

Through stories we learn about the people, their relationships with each other, and we glimpse what life was like for them.  Through stories, what we didn't experience ourselves becomes clearer, in a way that a textbook or a book of principles could never accomplish.

The truth of a story isn't its factual basis, but is instead its underlying truth.  This is what I was like.  This is what life was like.  This is what it was like in my community, and with the people I loved or hated.  

In Genesis, we have the story that helps us to understand that God created the universe, the world, the animals, man and woman.  In Genesis we learn the truth that God created us.  In Genesis we hear the struggle of those following God - or trying to follow God - and what is was like to learn how to do that.  In Genesis we see how God didn't give up on his creation, even when his creation gave up on him.  In the story of Genesis, we see the Israelites beginning to learn that they are the people of God - and from that truth, we can learn that we are the people of God.  Created, loved, and never abandoned.  

Let's see a history book do that (although I do love history books).