Rape and Retribution. Genesis 34 - 37.

I've read a couple of interesting articles on morality recently (like this one), and it seems it was good timing as I'm still surprised by the base nature of this not-yet-Jewish-but-getting-there culture. In response to their sister's rape, Jacob's sons trick the tribe of the perp into circumcising themselves. Unsurprisingly, the men find this a little more painful than sandal blisters and so whilst incapacitated Jacob's sons move in, kill the men, plunder the village and generally behave like football supporters. Jacob's response was not so much to reprimand them but to feel a bit bleak that he would now have to move out to avoid retaliation from the locals.

Our team understood rape was wrong, but retribution was OK? I am reminded in chapter 35 that this nation still has a bunch of other gods they carry around with them, so it made me wonder if the rights and wrongs of the 10 commandments and other moral laws are innate (I think C.S. Lewis held this argument) or if they have had to be worked out over time as God revealed himself to this nation and so to us (as this account suggests)?

What do you think?

A quick irony

Seen today at the local bookshop. I guess it's religion for many.........

The Diet of Zara

I asked my German Shepherd how she found Eugene Peterson's The Message. She said "filling"

A theory of relativity: Genesis 31 - 34.

It's funny how we justify our actions, seeing right and wrong through our own mental filters. Jacob, now a rich man with more goats, sheep and camels than there were cast members in Ben-Hur, feels the pressure to leave and sneaks off towards home (wives, children and livestock in tow). His father-in-law-stroke-uncle (fluncle? unclaw?) thinks this is well off-sides and tracks him down. After a bit of 'you started it', Jacob accuses fluncle Laban of trying to cheat him out of the wages he earned. Laban defends himself saying "hey, they were my daughters, my sheep, my goats, so what do you mean I try to cheat you?". I wonder if he was genuinely convinced that he had done no wrong, or was just trying to convince himself in order to justify his actions.

Don't we do this all the time? The big things like murder and stealing are easy to spot (I think I've managed to avoid those so far), but I seem capable of a thousand excuses for the small things. It's all relative isn't it? And ultimately I guess I'll always do it, which is why I'm grateful for grace.

By the way, I've worked out why Esau disliked Jacob. You see, when Jacob heard Esau was looking for him along with 400 men, he split his travelling party into two camps in order to hedge his bets. So big, burly, hairy, stew-eating Esau must simply have thought his brother was two camp. Take your time.........................

Sex, thugs and rocky wells: Jacob's exploits

Seriously, the initial bits of Jacob's trip away from his family are filled with lying, cheating, shagging, deceit, and other stuff of a generally insidious nature. When I stay 'zoomed out', I have to admit I battle to see anything more in these first parts of the story than examples of how selfish human nature is. Richard Dawkins would agree I'm sure!

Jacob's uncle tricks him to marrying his older daughter (c'mon over cuzzin!), gets him to work for free in order to have the second daughter, and then tries to wangle his way out of paying Jacob an agreed wage. Leah and Rachel vie for first place in the household whilst wanting to scratch each other's eyes out, and Jacob is kept occupied (willingly) making the maids his wives offer him pregnant. Talk about a pink ticket! The sons they have are all given Zulu names like "Look-it's-a-boy", "Vindication", "Lucky" and "Happy". Jacob also experiments in genetic engineering by setting up a method to get patchy sheep from plain ones, although I doubt science could reproduce his experiments.

There are some interesting bits in here, but since I promised myself I'd read this as broadly as possible, so I'm just going to keep looking for the reasons these stories have been kept in the bible (hey I'm skeptical but the christian in me has to think there's a reason for all these stories right?). Stay tuned..........

Are we that rotten? Genesis 25 - 27

It seems these bible characters just can't help making bad decisions. The characters in the plot are Abraham's son Isaac, his sons Jacob and Esau, Isaac's wife Rebekah and that pork-eating philistine king, Abimelech. Check this out:

Jacob (the mommy's boy) steals his brother's birthright through manipulation (Esau being really thick or really hungry or probably both). Isaac repeats the lie his father told by saying his wife is his sister (this must be some sort of custom!). Rebekah encourages her one son Jacob to lie and cheat in order to steal his father's blessing from Esau (maybe she figured Esau too stupid for anything but hunting). Esau, unsurprisingly, plots to murder his brother. The only guy who does nothing wrong is the philistine.

This is early days in the story of a young nation of clearly unsophisticated people, and if I were to be a bit analytical I'd say the superego is underdeveloped, the ID is winning, and the ego has no idea what to do to get things right. Human nature is not pure - it wants what it wants.

One quick observation: Rebekah tells Jacob to run away until his brother 'forgets what you did to him'. I doubt it Beckie!

The last of Abe - God gets Fleeced

Abraham needs a wife for Isaac, so he sends a servant off with a list of requirements to find the right woman. Lucky girl. Anyway, the servant really wants to get it right, so he asks God the 'if' question: "If a girl does this and that, then I'll know she's the one". The girl does, and the next thing you know Rebekah is Isaac's wife. I think this is the first "fleece test" reported in the story so far.

My wife uses fleeces to perfection and God always seems to answer her. I never get an answer, and I seldom say "God, if you park a Ferrari in my garage, then I'll know to throw an extra 10 bucks in the offering bucket". OK, maybe just the once. But I wonder if there's a condition around this because asking God for a sign is pretty common in the bible. Is it Faith? Cazz always gets 'Jesus Parkings' at the malls simply because she expects to. Hmmmmm......

Do we use the 'if test' with God too much or too little?

Abe continued: Sometimes it's faith and sometimes it's money

In last week's episode: Abe has a spit braai then negotiates with God on some conditions to destroy a city, unmentionable stuff happens with Lot's daughters, Abe pimps Sarah again and soon after sends his first son to desert boot camp, God finally delivers on his promise to give Abraham a son from Sarah, and Abraham narrowly escapes slitting his throat. Like sands through the hourglass, these are the days of Abe's wives......

I'm skipping huge chunks of often-repeated bible stories, but I wanted to record one thing I found interesting. Abraham is all about faith: He goes where God asks, believes in God's promises, does what God tells him too etc. However when Sarah dies, the woman who is pretty special in the whole account, there's no big faith decision or heavenly fireworks around her burial. Abraham simply negotiates a price on a place to bury her. In isolation these seems pretty ordinary, but it comes straight after the story of Abraham being willing to sacrifice Isaac.

It made me wonder if there are some decisions in our lives that God sees as big, but others that he might not be so bothered with. Sometimes it's all tears, faith, snot and prayer as we petition God for guidance, and other times we just need to buy the flipping field.

Abe continued - zoomed out

Eugene Peterson's 'The Message' is a great way to read through the bible if you want to avoid getting too bogged down in the details. I was about to do just that by looking up some commentaries on Genesis and Abraham, but Eugene Peterson's introduction to the books of Moses reminded me that Genesis is the conception of God's engagement with humanity. So things are not necessarily clear, and these are stories and 'signposts' that tell the baby is there and full of life (as he says), but we're not exactly sure of the fingers and toes.

So I'm looking at the whole story of Abraham as a process of working things out. Working out faith, sacrifice, destiny, promise, custom, right and wrong, and negotiation - these all seem to be in the stories of Sarah's inability to fall pregnant, the building of alters, circumcision, meeting with God, the behaviour of Lot and of Sodom and all the other bits in between. It makes me feel a little more free to work things out with God myself, and not rely on any prescriptive methods. There are things I like, and things I don't; understanding, and confusion; comfortable stuff, and things that make me squirm - but if I keep God (faith) as the foundation, then that's OK by me.

A quick aside - I noticed how Abraham told Sarah to quickly make bread whilst he himself dashed off to pick a cow to roast for three mysterious visitors one day. Hurry up and knead the dough? Quickly roast a cow? Sure - just pop them in the Microwave Abe!

Genesis 12 to 28-ish: Abraham.

Abraham. Big, burly, bearded father of three religions. I was hoping to get through the early bits quickly, but this Abraham is an interesting guy. Wherever he goes, he builds an altar. He also seems to do whatever God tells him to, even though there are times he is fearful or doubtful. He's even a bit of an altruist, giving his Nephew Lot first pick on where to settle and refusing a bounty from the King of Sodom after Abraham's posse of servants took out an organised army (probably after passing around a copy of "Guerilla Tactics for Desert Folk, first edition").

But perfect he sure isn't! Early on in the story he pimps his wife off to Pharoah (he says Sarah is his sister) in order to save his own skin and gets pretty wealthy in the process. He does this again later with another king - Abimelech - saying Sarah is his sister. And by the way it's the guys who take Sarah who get punished, not Abraham. Is it just me or is that really heavy? Or perhaps this wasn't such a strange thing to do in a strongly patriarchal society at the time.

This whole story to me seems to be about destiny and determination. God had a plan for Abraham and a contract in place, and God chose to honour that whilst Abraham bumbled his way along. Maybe I sweat the small stuff to much and that's what this story could be telling me. But I don't think I'll be offerring my wife up for sale anytime soon.

More on Abe to follow........

Genesis 11 - Odd, God.

The tower of Babel, a well known story about how a group of people who decided to build a tower in order to 'reach heaven' and 'be famous and not scattered' everywhere. The story says that God didn't like that idea, so he popped their balloons by scattering them everywhere and made them talk different languages.

It's odd to me how vulnerable God seems in this account. Why would he be upset that people spoke one language and built a tower? Is it because they wanted to pursue their own goals? Is that a bad thing?

I'm still finding these early bible stories easier to understand if I invert them: See them from the perspective of a relatively young Jewish culture with a theological view of the world. Then Babel would be a great way to explain why a nomadic nation kept bumping into other people who spoke different languages, and that God considered them, the Jewish nation, set apart.

Genesis 6 - 10: A Damp Discourse.

"Captains log, 3764BC. Still raining, and the only end in sight is when Ham puts his coat on backwards. Strange kid that, I'll bet his decedents end up as slaves.....".

OK, we all know the Noah's ark story. Water, animals, a boat, rainbows and a twig seeking dove-missile. Like the creation account, many take this literally, others no so much, and there are plenty of arguments that support these views. So I want to raise some other questions and comments:


- Before the flood we were vegetarians, apparently. I still hate cabbage though.

- After being a huge floating zoo for an extended period, Noah promptly burns one of each animal as an offering to God. Besides that being an odd thing to do just off the bat (except if viewed retrospectively by a Jew already doing it...), it makes God happy. I can't think that God actually enjoys a multi-species braai, so is it more that Noah chose to honour and acknowledge God as one of the first things he did? After all, it seems that's what saved him from a tragically long swim in the first place (remember the story goes that God saved Noah and his family because he walked with God and had integrity). Is this story just another example of "God First?".

- Noah must be really ugly naked, as there's quite a storm when he passes out boozed and then gets covered by his sons who do everything possible to avoid looking at his wobbly bits. This is duly followed up by Ham and his decedents being cursed with slavery because he either noticed his father's nakedness, told his brothers to have a bit of laugh, or sat his lazy butt down whilst his brothers took the old drunk home. Whatever the reason, I'm seeing an early pattern developing here, which is that right-standing with God keeps you out of the poo, and selfishness/greed/other bad things land you in hot (or cold) water. This is going to lead to more questions later on, I just know it.....

What's your take on the story of Noah?

Genesis 4 and 5 - Incest and Family Trees

Lots of people begat lots of others, and there may be many reasons for this diligent recording of heredity. It sounds a bit folk story doesn't it? I don't mean that it's a pile of poo, I just think it was written with the audience in mind i.e. "Where did we come from"?

A couple of questions though:
1.) Cain kills Abel, a murderous act which we'll all agree is frowned on in all cultures. So God tells Cain he'll be punished. Cain objects and says he'll be killed, to which God replies he'll protect Cain against death. Why?

2.) The story goes on about people living for 800 and 900 years, but one poor lad (Enoch) only gets 365 years despite special mention of his dedication to God and right living. Generally, right-living is mentioned alongside long-life, so why did Enoch get snatched up by God so, errr, "early" in life?

3.) The story makes mention of people starting to pray and worship in the name of God around the time of the birth of Adam's grandson, Enosh. What did they do before that? Does this hint at the progression of an awareness of God moving from something like Pantheism into something more complex (in Freudian fashion maybe)?

Genesis 2 and 3, the end of the nudist colony

Much has been said of the end of innocence in the garden of Eden, and I don't think I was impressed by any new thoughts on these chapters besides having a few questions on the details and the weird imagery. It's clear we were intended to have a close relationship with God without fear or sin, and many preachers and teachers have commented on Jesus' role in allowing us to restore the connection with God and return to a 'garden like' relationship with him. Interestingly, I have read a Jewish commentary that says the law (moral and ritual) was intended to do the same - give us a guideline on returning to this Eden experience where we simply walk with God. Maybe that's what Jesus was referring to when he said he came to fulfill the law?

Genesis - the Creation Story

I can't help thinking that many of the stories in this first book are better understood when prefixed with "Daddy, where did we come from?", or "Mommy, why is the sky blue?". Don't take that as a curve-ball to exclude God from all of it, but I do battle with the idea that it's intended to be literal. If others want to take it like that, that's fine, but I think arguing either way is actually besides the point, and I am siding with Eugene Peterson's view that Genesis is about God as a foundation illustrated with stories of real people. God in the centre; life about God (living that out takes different forms so I'm not off to the priesthood) and God all the time.



So the Creation story you can take as you wish, but I would like to think that God used tools, like evolutionary processes, to create the earth and us rather than click his fingers to do it. I look at the creation process as God producing a masterpiece - I am far more inspired by a table that took years to make and carve than one that was knocked together in some factory. I imagine God stepping back after the process and feeling proud at this incredible creation like I imagine one of the Renaissance greats would have felt on the completion of a work of art. Maybe like Michelangelo after dolling up the ceiling at the Sistine chapel, if you'll pardon the irony.

What do you think?