When I was in middle school, our poor science teacher had to teach the class about the origins of the universe. Growing up in the Bible Belt, this was no small task, and there were plenty of students ready to most righteously make a show of how false all of this talk about the creation of planets was, when we know God created everything 6,000 years ago. Students were ready to get an F on their test for daring to Speak the Truth, and then use that as some mark of pride. The passion and vitriol was real. The science teacher ended up in tears multiple days because of how cruel the students were being.
I went home after being caught up in that frenzy one day. I was worked up and going on and on to my mother about how I was going to be righteous too and stand up for faith! My mother calmed me down and explained to me that there was a better way. She said I didn't have to put my faith aside or hide it, but I could express it in a positive way. Her recommendation was that on the test, rather than give "God" as the answer to all the questions and fail the test, maybe I could write "The book says X, but I believe Y". I followed her advice and answered all of the questions in that style. I professed my faith proudly, but I did it humbly.
I remember that discussion. I remember taking it to heart. I remember answering the test questions using my mother's suggestion. I think I remember getting an A on the test. I don't remember much beyond that, but I do know that it always stuck with me. My mother's wisdom changed the way I approached these faith conflict issues. I still often get passionate and forget, but for the most part, my entire view towards faith challenges changed with that event.
At some point nearly 20 years later, I was recalling this conversation with my mother, expressing how much of an impact it had on me. She told me that after this whole ordeal, my science teacher came to me and asked me to pray for her cat. Apparently that posture of humility had a significant impact on her. Note that at no time did I apologize for my faith or give it up, I just professed it in a matter-of-fact context rather than a defensive or aggressive one.
As I grew up, I learned to believe in and accept the scientific research and consensus rather than a particular narrow interpretation of the Bible. I now believe in what the textbook said about the creation of the universe. What's interesting to me about this whole matter is that in no way am I embarrassed about that whole event even though I now view matters differently. The openness in speaking humbly allowed me to learn as well.
Now this is just a single anecdote, and I'm sure many people have stories where their combativeness was rewarded, but I can't help but shake that last part. I have had many, many arguments with people where I got aggressive or defensive. Sometimes I was right, but I felt awful about the way the conversation went, as it wasn't fruitful. Sometimes I was wrong, and I had to eat a massive amount of crow, while navigating whatever destruction I left in my wake. On the other hand, a posture of humility leaves me with a sense of peace regardless of the opinion I hold, and it appears to be more fruitful, too.
Tuesday, May 28, 2019
Thursday, May 23, 2019
Relational Learning: Questions are a Good Thing
When I was a young buck fresh out of college in the mid 2000s, I moved to South Dakota for my first job, far away from the South that I'd lived in for my entire life. I had no friends and no community there, and a small number of coworkers I had any meaningful interactions with. These coworkers introduced me to a game called World of Warcraft. For those unfamiliar, World of Warcraft (WoW for short) is a game that puts players in a big virtual world with monsters and factions and quests and treasure. The game also has guilds, which are basically communities with an in-game infrastructure for communicating and working together. I joined a guild and found a community to play the game with. I spent many hours on that game, as I didn't have a social life outside of it, and the guild became my community.
I have so many fond memories of playing back then. There were dungeons that were designed for groups to conquer, too difficult for one person to clear themselves. The guilds were often great at putting together parties of people to clear these dungeons. If you didn't have a guild, or if you didn't have enough people to put together a party at that time, you would go into big towns and shout out that you were looking for a group for that dungeon. It was challenging to pull together these pick-up groups, so you dealt with what you had. When you entered a dungeon, the team had to solve mechanics of various enemies in order to defeat them and obtain the valuable treasure they held. There was a lot of communal learning of what to do, what not to do, and a lot of educating new adventurers in this manner.
This was also in the early ages of google usage. People didn't spend a lot of time researching the game, watching videos, etc. I was one of the few in my guild that spent any time really researching various things, so my guild members frequently asked me questions about where to find certain things or how certain mechanics worked. I loved being able to teach them or have us discover together the mysteries of this giant world. When we explored a dungeon, at least some of the team was doing it blind, and we had to learn together how to tackle these challenges.
Around 5 years after the game launched, a mechanic called "Looking for Group" (LFG) was added that allowed a player to enter into a queue for a dungeon, and when enough people with the right roles queued up, a group was created to explore the dungeon in question. This eliminated a lot of the challenge of pulling together a group, which allowed people to frequently explore dungeons without needing a guild or a lot of effort. This also had the added effect that if someone didn't like the party they got stuck with through the tool, they could just leave and queue up for a new party, leaving the other players abandoned. There is a pretty overwhelming feeling among former WoW players that the LFG tool was the major negative turning point in the game's life cycle. Many people feel it destroyed the need for communities, leaving everyone to fend for themselves.
A couple of years after I started playing, I went to graduate school, and didn't have time to play anymore, so I canceled my subscription. The game underwent several expansions since then, and a lot of the original charm to me had been lost due to those expansions, so while I had fond memories and frequently desired to go back and play, I knew I couldn't ever really go back. Nearly a decade later, I found this place online where people had created a private server that was reproducing the game in its original state before all of the expansions. It meant I could play the game the way I remembered it, and I started playing again. So many memories came rushing back, and I was excited to find a guild and start exploring dungeons again. Without LFG to ruin everything, the value of community was back.
Except it wasn't. When someone didn't know something and would ask out loud how something worked, the answer would come back to them to google it. If someone didn't know how to fight a major enemy, they were told to go watch YouTube videos. No one seemed to have any interest in helping someone explore or experience the game. Questions or difficulties were ridiculed, and people would kick you off teams if you hadn't done your research first. This was when I realized that LFG wasn't what destroyed community in WoW, it was Google. It was the expectation that people wouldn't just play the game together, but rather you needed to educate yourself before you attempted to join with a group.
I find this to be a common problem in the real world today as well, especially online. There is a site called LMGTFY (which stands for "Let me google that for you"), that brands itself as "For all those people who find it more convenient to bother you with their question rather than search it for themselves." I have been directed there after asking questions several times. The idea that someone would ask another person a question that can be googled seems to be an affront to our modern sensibilities. Somehow the opportunity to teach has gone from a privilege to a nuisance*. The act of one person asking another rather than asking a computer is seen as a problem. Questions have become a sign of laziness.
It's a chicken-and-egg kind of thing, but I think a lot of our modern discourse is shaped by this dynamic. Learning through asking questions to others is frowned upon, so when a question is asked now, it is looked at as a challenge rather than an opportunity to learn. This results in a dynamic where discussion is now framed in debate terms. A look at responses to posts on Facebook or reddit or Twitter shows that people are willing to take anybody's thoughts as an opportunity to debate or argue. Any opportunity to show someone they're wrong is jumped on. In fact, there is a joke on reddit that if you want to know the truth about something, just make a post stating a false fact about it, and people will rush in to correct you and tell you the truth.
Google continues to worsen this dynamic, as people can search for resources to support their pre-existing viewpoint to strengthen their ability to debate and "win" against people with other viewpoints. It has a siloing effect that I think is amplifying this debate-centered discourse, as now anyone who sees things a little different just becomes an opponent. If we aren't parroting the same thoughts to each other, then we are enemies. There's no opportunity to learn from people that think differently, as they are no longer our community. It's now us vs them in a battle rather than it just being us side-by-side with room for disagreement. We've all become caricatures because we are entities to debate rather than people to relate to.
Recently, abortion bans passed in several states, and it caused quite a stir online (and rightfully so). Any time abortion comes up, you get pro-life people calling pro-choice people baby-killers and murderers, despite the fact that most pro-choice don't like abortions either, they just want them to be an option. On the other hand, we get pro-choice people painting pro-life people as anti-woman, completely ignoring that pro-life people are struggling with the fact that they consider the fetus to be a living being, and so abortion is a loss of life which should not be flippantly dismissed. I am pro-choice, but I have many pro-life friends and family, and I know they struggle with the balance and trade-off (or at least most of them do). These people that I know do not fit the woman-hating caricature. On the other hand, I hate abortion and wish we didn't have it. I do not celebrate it. I may be pro-choice, but I still recognize the fact that the fetus is a living being and should not be flippantly discarded. I just think a woman should have a choice given the toll a pregnancy takes on her body and life. I do not fit the pro-abortion caricature.
We see this in modern Christianity, too. People go to the Bible by themselves, determining for themselves what it says, and then use their pet passages and interpretations to argue with anyone else about it. I see this in conservative and evangelical churches, where anyone who doesn't agree with their interpretation is picking and choosing from scripture, ignoring what scripture "clearly" says. The truth is that progressive Christians read scripture too, and come to different conclusions, because scripture isn't as clear as we pretend it is (not to mention there is a lot of historical and linguistic context needed to understand some parts). I see a similar attitude from progressive Christianity, where people who hold to heavy dogma and detailed doctrine are considered judgmental and childish, ignoring that these people love scripture and Jesus and are just following what they think it says. I grew up in the conservative church, and the truth is that it is made up of so many people who give so much of their lives and love to other people because of their belief. I know several who would love to be more open, but feel like scripture (and thus God) is clear about a matter.
We are relational people, but we don't often learn in relationship anymore. We are expected to learn in isolation rather than in communities. Communities are viewed as spaces for argument and debate rather than joint education. We assume that all questions should be answered before the conversation starts, and if that's the case, there's no discussion to be had. Relational learning is a core Biblical concept, and for most of Christianity's history, scripture was learned in a communal environment. Questions should be welcomed and embraced, pre-determined answers should be viewed with caution. Academic answers are no replacement for personal ones. We need to be willing to educate each other and learn together.
*A caveat related to marginalization: I have heard the "It's not my job to educate you" response from people on the margins when they are asked to explain topics (related to the marginalized trait). I feel like this response is mostly justified for two main reasons. First, a lot of bad faith actors say some awful things under the guise of "I'm just asking questions". They want to turn the marginalization into a topic of debate rather than learning (this is a tactic called sealioning). Secondly, people who are marginalized are often on the margins because they are viewed through a specific lens related to the cause of the marginalization. When a person gets asked the same question over and over because they have a specific trait, it can have an othering effect. When people are expected to be a representative of their entire demographic, that implies that the questioner views people with these traits as the same rather than unique people with unique characteristics. As a person from a major position of privilege, it's important for me to acknowledge that there are legitimate reasons that people who are being oppressed might not want to answer these questions, so I am not referring to this particular case in the post.
I have so many fond memories of playing back then. There were dungeons that were designed for groups to conquer, too difficult for one person to clear themselves. The guilds were often great at putting together parties of people to clear these dungeons. If you didn't have a guild, or if you didn't have enough people to put together a party at that time, you would go into big towns and shout out that you were looking for a group for that dungeon. It was challenging to pull together these pick-up groups, so you dealt with what you had. When you entered a dungeon, the team had to solve mechanics of various enemies in order to defeat them and obtain the valuable treasure they held. There was a lot of communal learning of what to do, what not to do, and a lot of educating new adventurers in this manner.
This was also in the early ages of google usage. People didn't spend a lot of time researching the game, watching videos, etc. I was one of the few in my guild that spent any time really researching various things, so my guild members frequently asked me questions about where to find certain things or how certain mechanics worked. I loved being able to teach them or have us discover together the mysteries of this giant world. When we explored a dungeon, at least some of the team was doing it blind, and we had to learn together how to tackle these challenges.
Around 5 years after the game launched, a mechanic called "Looking for Group" (LFG) was added that allowed a player to enter into a queue for a dungeon, and when enough people with the right roles queued up, a group was created to explore the dungeon in question. This eliminated a lot of the challenge of pulling together a group, which allowed people to frequently explore dungeons without needing a guild or a lot of effort. This also had the added effect that if someone didn't like the party they got stuck with through the tool, they could just leave and queue up for a new party, leaving the other players abandoned. There is a pretty overwhelming feeling among former WoW players that the LFG tool was the major negative turning point in the game's life cycle. Many people feel it destroyed the need for communities, leaving everyone to fend for themselves.
A couple of years after I started playing, I went to graduate school, and didn't have time to play anymore, so I canceled my subscription. The game underwent several expansions since then, and a lot of the original charm to me had been lost due to those expansions, so while I had fond memories and frequently desired to go back and play, I knew I couldn't ever really go back. Nearly a decade later, I found this place online where people had created a private server that was reproducing the game in its original state before all of the expansions. It meant I could play the game the way I remembered it, and I started playing again. So many memories came rushing back, and I was excited to find a guild and start exploring dungeons again. Without LFG to ruin everything, the value of community was back.
Except it wasn't. When someone didn't know something and would ask out loud how something worked, the answer would come back to them to google it. If someone didn't know how to fight a major enemy, they were told to go watch YouTube videos. No one seemed to have any interest in helping someone explore or experience the game. Questions or difficulties were ridiculed, and people would kick you off teams if you hadn't done your research first. This was when I realized that LFG wasn't what destroyed community in WoW, it was Google. It was the expectation that people wouldn't just play the game together, but rather you needed to educate yourself before you attempted to join with a group.
I find this to be a common problem in the real world today as well, especially online. There is a site called LMGTFY (which stands for "Let me google that for you"), that brands itself as "For all those people who find it more convenient to bother you with their question rather than search it for themselves." I have been directed there after asking questions several times. The idea that someone would ask another person a question that can be googled seems to be an affront to our modern sensibilities. Somehow the opportunity to teach has gone from a privilege to a nuisance*. The act of one person asking another rather than asking a computer is seen as a problem. Questions have become a sign of laziness.
It's a chicken-and-egg kind of thing, but I think a lot of our modern discourse is shaped by this dynamic. Learning through asking questions to others is frowned upon, so when a question is asked now, it is looked at as a challenge rather than an opportunity to learn. This results in a dynamic where discussion is now framed in debate terms. A look at responses to posts on Facebook or reddit or Twitter shows that people are willing to take anybody's thoughts as an opportunity to debate or argue. Any opportunity to show someone they're wrong is jumped on. In fact, there is a joke on reddit that if you want to know the truth about something, just make a post stating a false fact about it, and people will rush in to correct you and tell you the truth.
Google continues to worsen this dynamic, as people can search for resources to support their pre-existing viewpoint to strengthen their ability to debate and "win" against people with other viewpoints. It has a siloing effect that I think is amplifying this debate-centered discourse, as now anyone who sees things a little different just becomes an opponent. If we aren't parroting the same thoughts to each other, then we are enemies. There's no opportunity to learn from people that think differently, as they are no longer our community. It's now us vs them in a battle rather than it just being us side-by-side with room for disagreement. We've all become caricatures because we are entities to debate rather than people to relate to.
Recently, abortion bans passed in several states, and it caused quite a stir online (and rightfully so). Any time abortion comes up, you get pro-life people calling pro-choice people baby-killers and murderers, despite the fact that most pro-choice don't like abortions either, they just want them to be an option. On the other hand, we get pro-choice people painting pro-life people as anti-woman, completely ignoring that pro-life people are struggling with the fact that they consider the fetus to be a living being, and so abortion is a loss of life which should not be flippantly dismissed. I am pro-choice, but I have many pro-life friends and family, and I know they struggle with the balance and trade-off (or at least most of them do). These people that I know do not fit the woman-hating caricature. On the other hand, I hate abortion and wish we didn't have it. I do not celebrate it. I may be pro-choice, but I still recognize the fact that the fetus is a living being and should not be flippantly discarded. I just think a woman should have a choice given the toll a pregnancy takes on her body and life. I do not fit the pro-abortion caricature.
We see this in modern Christianity, too. People go to the Bible by themselves, determining for themselves what it says, and then use their pet passages and interpretations to argue with anyone else about it. I see this in conservative and evangelical churches, where anyone who doesn't agree with their interpretation is picking and choosing from scripture, ignoring what scripture "clearly" says. The truth is that progressive Christians read scripture too, and come to different conclusions, because scripture isn't as clear as we pretend it is (not to mention there is a lot of historical and linguistic context needed to understand some parts). I see a similar attitude from progressive Christianity, where people who hold to heavy dogma and detailed doctrine are considered judgmental and childish, ignoring that these people love scripture and Jesus and are just following what they think it says. I grew up in the conservative church, and the truth is that it is made up of so many people who give so much of their lives and love to other people because of their belief. I know several who would love to be more open, but feel like scripture (and thus God) is clear about a matter.
We are relational people, but we don't often learn in relationship anymore. We are expected to learn in isolation rather than in communities. Communities are viewed as spaces for argument and debate rather than joint education. We assume that all questions should be answered before the conversation starts, and if that's the case, there's no discussion to be had. Relational learning is a core Biblical concept, and for most of Christianity's history, scripture was learned in a communal environment. Questions should be welcomed and embraced, pre-determined answers should be viewed with caution. Academic answers are no replacement for personal ones. We need to be willing to educate each other and learn together.
*A caveat related to marginalization: I have heard the "It's not my job to educate you" response from people on the margins when they are asked to explain topics (related to the marginalized trait). I feel like this response is mostly justified for two main reasons. First, a lot of bad faith actors say some awful things under the guise of "I'm just asking questions". They want to turn the marginalization into a topic of debate rather than learning (this is a tactic called sealioning). Secondly, people who are marginalized are often on the margins because they are viewed through a specific lens related to the cause of the marginalization. When a person gets asked the same question over and over because they have a specific trait, it can have an othering effect. When people are expected to be a representative of their entire demographic, that implies that the questioner views people with these traits as the same rather than unique people with unique characteristics. As a person from a major position of privilege, it's important for me to acknowledge that there are legitimate reasons that people who are being oppressed might not want to answer these questions, so I am not referring to this particular case in the post.
Tuesday, May 21, 2019
Examining Sin vs Self-Abuse
I have found in my journey that the messages I hear from the evangelical church is very focused on brokenness. I have heard message after message focused on understanding how unworthy and awful we are. The general idea is to emphasize God's grace and our need for Jesus. For someone like me who suffers from depression though, all that means is that I'm basically getting reinforcement of all the negative messages I already tell myself. It's not a healthy existence, and that constant barrage took quite a toll on me.
Beyond that, I had some people in the church telling me that the reason I was depressed was because I had sins I hadn't repented of. They encouraged me to pray to find hidden sins that I needed to confess. Fortunately for me, these particular people loved me and listened to me as I educated them about depression (and credited me later for teaching them), but I have heard many stories where people weren't so fortunate. Linking depression to sins is a dangerous approach.
Another interesting thing I've noticed from people in the evangelical church is this urgent need to create sin where there is none. I have had conversations with people where they were telling me of a relationship or a bible study or an event that they were really excited about, but then they would say that they are afraid they might be making an idol out of that event. Even in entirely spiritual endeavors, the idea that the focus might be off a couple of degrees was ever present and a concern towards idolatry. This kind of "surely I have to be screwing up somehow" mentality is quite common in evangelical environments. Repentance has value, but creating sins to repent of is problematic.
However, even as I find myself trying to break free of this mentality, I find myself afraid of the results. If I offer myself grace, how long until I start excusing myself for anything? There are ethics I still need to adhere to, and there are sins I still need to avoid and repent of. I don't want to fall into a mentality of allowing myself do things I shouldn't or avoiding things I should, so I remain excessively harsh on myself. This is not an uncommon facet of depression, but even knowing that, the truth of it still remains ever present in my mind.
So how do we hold ourselves accountable responsibly while not destroying ourselves in the process? What marks the line between examining sin and self-abuse?
Beyond that, I had some people in the church telling me that the reason I was depressed was because I had sins I hadn't repented of. They encouraged me to pray to find hidden sins that I needed to confess. Fortunately for me, these particular people loved me and listened to me as I educated them about depression (and credited me later for teaching them), but I have heard many stories where people weren't so fortunate. Linking depression to sins is a dangerous approach.
Another interesting thing I've noticed from people in the evangelical church is this urgent need to create sin where there is none. I have had conversations with people where they were telling me of a relationship or a bible study or an event that they were really excited about, but then they would say that they are afraid they might be making an idol out of that event. Even in entirely spiritual endeavors, the idea that the focus might be off a couple of degrees was ever present and a concern towards idolatry. This kind of "surely I have to be screwing up somehow" mentality is quite common in evangelical environments. Repentance has value, but creating sins to repent of is problematic.
However, even as I find myself trying to break free of this mentality, I find myself afraid of the results. If I offer myself grace, how long until I start excusing myself for anything? There are ethics I still need to adhere to, and there are sins I still need to avoid and repent of. I don't want to fall into a mentality of allowing myself do things I shouldn't or avoiding things I should, so I remain excessively harsh on myself. This is not an uncommon facet of depression, but even knowing that, the truth of it still remains ever present in my mind.
So how do we hold ourselves accountable responsibly while not destroying ourselves in the process? What marks the line between examining sin and self-abuse?
Thursday, May 16, 2019
How did Jesus feed the crowds?
There are multiple stories in the Gospels about Jesus feeding crowds. He fed the 5,000 in Matthew 14, Mark 6, Luke 9, and John 6. He fed the 4,000 in Matthew 15 and Mark 8. We look at these feedings as a miracle, which they certainly are. However, I'd like to look at these stories in a slightly different light.
For backstory: in the story of the 5,000, Jesus wants to feed the crowd. The disciples are trying to figure out how to purchase enough bread for everyone. Jesus asks them how much bread they have, and they have five loaves and two fish (in John, these come from a boy). In the story of the 4,000, Jesus expresses concern for the crowd as they have been following him for 3 days and have nothing to eat, and he doesn't want to send them away hungry. The disciples have 7 loaves of bread and a few small fish.
Here's how the four passages describe the ensuing events for the 5,000:
Matthew 14:
Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full.
Mark 6:
Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to his disciples to set before the people; and he divided the two fish among them all. And all ate and were filled; and they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish.
Luke 9:
And taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke them, and gave them to the disciples to set before the crowd. And all ate and were filled. What was left over was gathered up, twelve baskets of broken pieces.
John 6:
Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted. When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, “Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.” So they gathered them up, and from the fragments of the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten, they filled twelve baskets.
And for the 4,000:
Matthew 15:
he took the seven loaves and the fish; and after giving thanks he broke them and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. And all of them ate and were filled; and they took up the broken pieces left over, seven baskets full.
Mark 8:
he took the seven loaves, and after giving thanks he broke them and gave them to his disciples to distribute; and they distributed them to the crowd. They had also a few small fish; and after blessing them, he ordered that these too should be distributed. They ate and were filled; and they took up the broken pieces left over, seven baskets full.
Turning 5 loaves of bread into enough to feed 5,000 people and turning 7 loaves into enough to feed 4,000 people is indeed miraculous. What always interests me is the mechanism of it. Did the bread regrow every time he pulled off a piece? Did he finish one loaf and another one suddenly appeared in the basket? Did the broken pieces grow into full loaves themselves? After the meal, they gathered up the remains and they were more than they began with. What happened to the pieces that remained? Why didn't they keep growing? Nothing in the above passages gives any indication as to that. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, he breaks the bread and fish and gives them to the disciples to give to the crowd. That's the extent of the explanation. Nowhere is the regeneration of bread actually described.
When Jesus goes into new cities or sees new crowds, he heals their sick and drives out demons. He tells his disciples to do the same thing. The gospels don't appear to say he goes to feed their hungry. As far as I can tell outside of these two stories, there is not another example in the Gospels of Jesus feeding anyone (at least not physically). I would think the miracle of self-reproducing food would be just as useful of a tool as miraculous cures in Jesus ministry, yet that's not a regular occurrence. That leads me to believe that there is something different with this miracle of feeding of the crowds.
Thus, I like to imagine these stories a little differently. There were people of all walks of life following Jesus. I'd imagine some of the wealthier followers probably still had enough food to keep them going or at least had the money to buy more food. In Mark 6, he orders the crowd to sit in groups of hundreds and of fifties. In Luke 9, he asks them to sit down in groups of about fifty. Maybe he did that as an opportunity to turn the mass crowds into small enough groups to become personal. Now imagine if this crowd watches the man they are following offer all the food he has to them, even if the amount of the food was laughably small.
When watching their leader offer all of what he had to try to feed the crowd, think of what the followers that still had food or had money for food may have been thinking. What if they used that example to give their food freely to the others in their groups? What if they used their money buy food to bring back to share? Imagine how every group could have people so generous that they not only fed their entire group, but offered so much that there was food left over.
What if this was a lesson of feeding the hungry and taking care of the poor? What if the actual miracle was Jesus' followers following his example?
Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food
For backstory: in the story of the 5,000, Jesus wants to feed the crowd. The disciples are trying to figure out how to purchase enough bread for everyone. Jesus asks them how much bread they have, and they have five loaves and two fish (in John, these come from a boy). In the story of the 4,000, Jesus expresses concern for the crowd as they have been following him for 3 days and have nothing to eat, and he doesn't want to send them away hungry. The disciples have 7 loaves of bread and a few small fish.
Here's how the four passages describe the ensuing events for the 5,000:
Matthew 14:
Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full.
Mark 6:
Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to his disciples to set before the people; and he divided the two fish among them all. And all ate and were filled; and they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish.
Luke 9:
And taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke them, and gave them to the disciples to set before the crowd. And all ate and were filled. What was left over was gathered up, twelve baskets of broken pieces.
John 6:
Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted. When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, “Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.” So they gathered them up, and from the fragments of the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten, they filled twelve baskets.
And for the 4,000:
Matthew 15:
he took the seven loaves and the fish; and after giving thanks he broke them and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. And all of them ate and were filled; and they took up the broken pieces left over, seven baskets full.
Mark 8:
he took the seven loaves, and after giving thanks he broke them and gave them to his disciples to distribute; and they distributed them to the crowd. They had also a few small fish; and after blessing them, he ordered that these too should be distributed. They ate and were filled; and they took up the broken pieces left over, seven baskets full.
Turning 5 loaves of bread into enough to feed 5,000 people and turning 7 loaves into enough to feed 4,000 people is indeed miraculous. What always interests me is the mechanism of it. Did the bread regrow every time he pulled off a piece? Did he finish one loaf and another one suddenly appeared in the basket? Did the broken pieces grow into full loaves themselves? After the meal, they gathered up the remains and they were more than they began with. What happened to the pieces that remained? Why didn't they keep growing? Nothing in the above passages gives any indication as to that. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, he breaks the bread and fish and gives them to the disciples to give to the crowd. That's the extent of the explanation. Nowhere is the regeneration of bread actually described.
When Jesus goes into new cities or sees new crowds, he heals their sick and drives out demons. He tells his disciples to do the same thing. The gospels don't appear to say he goes to feed their hungry. As far as I can tell outside of these two stories, there is not another example in the Gospels of Jesus feeding anyone (at least not physically). I would think the miracle of self-reproducing food would be just as useful of a tool as miraculous cures in Jesus ministry, yet that's not a regular occurrence. That leads me to believe that there is something different with this miracle of feeding of the crowds.
Thus, I like to imagine these stories a little differently. There were people of all walks of life following Jesus. I'd imagine some of the wealthier followers probably still had enough food to keep them going or at least had the money to buy more food. In Mark 6, he orders the crowd to sit in groups of hundreds and of fifties. In Luke 9, he asks them to sit down in groups of about fifty. Maybe he did that as an opportunity to turn the mass crowds into small enough groups to become personal. Now imagine if this crowd watches the man they are following offer all the food he has to them, even if the amount of the food was laughably small.
When watching their leader offer all of what he had to try to feed the crowd, think of what the followers that still had food or had money for food may have been thinking. What if they used that example to give their food freely to the others in their groups? What if they used their money buy food to bring back to share? Imagine how every group could have people so generous that they not only fed their entire group, but offered so much that there was food left over.
What if this was a lesson of feeding the hungry and taking care of the poor? What if the actual miracle was Jesus' followers following his example?
Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food
Monday, May 13, 2019
Thomas gets a raw deal
For many years, I have railed that the apostle Thomas gets a raw deal. In John 20:24-29, we get the story where Thomas expresses doubt in the resurrection of Jesus, claiming “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” For this story he has earned the moniker "Doubting Thomas."
I don't know about you, but watching people rise from the dead doesn't happen to me very frequently. I would doubt anybody claiming a resurrection, and I would say the laws of nature would make me reasonable to do so. The other disciples had the luxury of having already seen the resurrected Jesus, and yet...
From Luke 24:
36 While they were still talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.”
37 They were startled and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost. 38 He said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts rise in your minds? 39 Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.”
40 When he had said this, he showed them his hands and feet. 41 And while they still did not believe it because of joy and amazement, he asked them, “Do you have anything here to eat?” 42 They gave him a piece of broiled fish, 43 and he took it and ate it in their presence.
From Matthew 28:
16 Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. 17 When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted.
It sounds an awful lot to me like we had many apostles who had their doubts well after seeing Jesus in the flesh. Thomas believed as soon as Jesus appeared to him and showed him his wounds. Other disciples seemed to doubt well past that. But poor Thomas got an entry explicitly describing his doubt, so he gets to be remembered more for doubting than for his bringing the gospel to India.
Modern Christian culture (especially in the more conservative traditions) seems to recoil from doubt and claim lack of faith as a character flaw. However, if even the people who witnessed the events firsthand couldn't believe it, why shouldn't we have issues? Doubt is reasonable and it is certainly not disqualifying for belonging to Christ.
I know that every rational thought in my head scoffs at the idea of the resurrection. The brilliant Rachel Held Evans wrote a poem on her blog called Holy Week for Doubters which expresses the idea “What if we made this up because we’re afraid of death?” She also frequently said that the story of Jesus is one she was willing to risk being wrong about. It's a pretty unbelievable story.
How does Jesus respond to Thomas? He appears and shows him the holes in his hands and sides. How does he respond to the doubting disciples in Luke 24? He asks for some food. How does he respond to the doubting disciples in Matthew 28?
18 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
Yes, he wants us to believe, but Jesus doesn't appear to be particularly bothered by doubt. His response to doubt is to tell the world about him. That sounds like a vote of confidence to me.
I don't know about you, but watching people rise from the dead doesn't happen to me very frequently. I would doubt anybody claiming a resurrection, and I would say the laws of nature would make me reasonable to do so. The other disciples had the luxury of having already seen the resurrected Jesus, and yet...
From Luke 24:
36 While they were still talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.”
37 They were startled and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost. 38 He said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts rise in your minds? 39 Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.”
40 When he had said this, he showed them his hands and feet. 41 And while they still did not believe it because of joy and amazement, he asked them, “Do you have anything here to eat?” 42 They gave him a piece of broiled fish, 43 and he took it and ate it in their presence.
From Matthew 28:
16 Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. 17 When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted.
It sounds an awful lot to me like we had many apostles who had their doubts well after seeing Jesus in the flesh. Thomas believed as soon as Jesus appeared to him and showed him his wounds. Other disciples seemed to doubt well past that. But poor Thomas got an entry explicitly describing his doubt, so he gets to be remembered more for doubting than for his bringing the gospel to India.
Modern Christian culture (especially in the more conservative traditions) seems to recoil from doubt and claim lack of faith as a character flaw. However, if even the people who witnessed the events firsthand couldn't believe it, why shouldn't we have issues? Doubt is reasonable and it is certainly not disqualifying for belonging to Christ.
I know that every rational thought in my head scoffs at the idea of the resurrection. The brilliant Rachel Held Evans wrote a poem on her blog called Holy Week for Doubters which expresses the idea “What if we made this up because we’re afraid of death?” She also frequently said that the story of Jesus is one she was willing to risk being wrong about. It's a pretty unbelievable story.
How does Jesus respond to Thomas? He appears and shows him the holes in his hands and sides. How does he respond to the doubting disciples in Luke 24? He asks for some food. How does he respond to the doubting disciples in Matthew 28?
18 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
Yes, he wants us to believe, but Jesus doesn't appear to be particularly bothered by doubt. His response to doubt is to tell the world about him. That sounds like a vote of confidence to me.
Monday, May 6, 2019
A whisper into the void
On Saturday, the world lost one of its greatest prophetic voices in Rachel Held Evans. She influenced the faith of so many people, keeping them from losing Jesus in the midst of doubt (the #PrayForRHE and #BecauseOfRHE hashtags are a testament to that). Personally, she is the leading reason why I'm even going to church anymore, and the sole reason I am attending an Episcopal church now.
I've spent time over the last couple of days trying to figure out my grief over this whole ordeal. I've only read one of her books, Searching for Sunday, and even that was only three weeks ago. I had only been on her blog from time to time over the many years. I followed her on twitter. That's it.
She left behind a husband and two little children. I've been aching for them and how massive their grief must be. I think of Sarah Bessey and Jeff Chu and Nadia Bolz-Weber and the many other people she was so close to and did so much good with, and I can't imagine the pain they are fighting. I read countless stories of women who became pastors because of her, people that gained platforms because of her, people who were given random encouragement of her, people who interacted with her on her blog. These are all people whose lives she directly touched because of her heart and her presence. These are people who deserve to mourn.
Me? I was just a twitter acolyte and occasional blog visitor. I didn't even know what Searching for Sunday was really about until my wife bought it for me. I've never met her, never been to hear her speak, never had any personal connection with her. Realistically, my day-to-day life isn't going to be any different than it was before she died. What right do I have to mourn? Why has her death affected me so deeply? This is what I've been pondering over the last few days, and I think I finally found an answer.
When I was young, I was a very lonely kid. I had a personality that drove people away. I had a temper, I had a loud, high voice, I had opinions, and I had the need to correct people. I had very few friends growing up because of this (and those that stuck around were saints in retrospect). I hated this loneliness, so as I grew up, I developed this shell. I wanted to stifle everything that pushed people away, and in response I outwardly became what I term "Generic Guy #2". I did nothing to push people away, but I was just a shell of a person, and didn't draw anyone in. I became a background character.
When I was a young adult and was looking for a wife, I felt stuck in an impossibility. I needed someone who could at least put up with my "crazy" ways of thinking, who wouldn't condemn me for the unique ways I might approach scripture, or for my progressive views, but still was someone who took their faith seriously. Even though I held both positions, I thought that as a general rule, progressive thought and serious faith were at odds with each other. I was willing to settle for someone who could at least put up with me. (Fortunately, I didn't have to settle, and I now have an amazing wife that fits a similar mold as I, but that's a different story).
I may have only been a twitter follower, but Rachel was the one and only theologian or Christian voice I followed on twitter (this has changed in the last 3 weeks). That's because for me, Christian voices were not ones I wanted to hear or amplify. I didn't trust anyone who claimed Christianity, as the voices I have heard all my life were those that were conservative evangelical voices, and especially after the most recent presidential election and the aftermath of it, I wanted nothing to do with those voices. Those voices that didn't fall under the conservative evangelical paradigm seemed to me to not really care about faith at all (though that may be due to my short-sightedness due to my church experience). Rachel seemed to be the one voice that violated both of those expectations.
As is evident in this post, I'm not a gifted writer. Rachel was. I can't organize or articulate my thoughts well. In the last three weeks, I have read over years of Rachel's blog posts, and frequently I come across posts that tell me what I believe. Not because I don't know what I believe or I just blindly agree with her, but because she is able to put into words what I believe better than I've ever been able to.
What I've realized over the last few days is that beyond mourning for everyone who lost a family member or a friend in Rachel, I'm mourning the loss of my voice. The background character who didn't know how to synthesize his doubts, progressive views, and his faith found a voice who not only articulated his thoughts better than he could, but amplified them to a wide audience and allowed them to see they weren't alone. Now that voice is gone, and I'm not sure how to speak.
Throughout these last 3 weeks, I have come to follow and listen to a wide array of brilliant Christian minds that I've been introduced to through Rachel. I have rapidly grown to respect and listen to these amazing people. I am immensely grateful for them, but they don't and can't speak for me in the same way.
I have to find my own voice now. And this is my first whisper.
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