Psalms

6/29/06

Upon reading of the book of Psalms, I am struck by a number of things; descriptions of the natural world showing God to be analogous to nature, references to oaths and swearing, interesting to me because of the Quaker and Anabaptist emphasis on not taking oaths, an emphasis on righteousness, revenge and redemption, and finally, descriptions of sheer desperation, the horrid nature of mankind’s impulses and the vagaries of the world. The sheer descriptiveness of the writing is also impressive.  I’ll go through these categories and intersperse commentary as I go along.

In Psalms, God is shown to be many things, of which to understand, is a complicated matter. Some things don’t make sense, others do and the material is frequently contradictory. Multiple tacks can be taken and who is to say any are better than others?  

You can turn the Bible to any purpose. Everybody ultimately cherry picks the Bible. See William Blake, “both read the Bible day and night, whilst thou readest black while I readest white.” Cherry picking the Bible is inevitable yet results in a partial understanding. All analyses are partial anyway; you can’t say everything all at once. Different people will find different things.  So I might as well go with my own grain. I’m not saying what is the Truth for all: just how I see it might be for all. I am going with how I see it. And, this is an academic study, not a religious study.

In Psalms God is shown as Nature.  More than a just a personal god, God represents ALL of what we call creation. This god has a direct lineage with the old animism gods and spirits. The beliefs are similar, derivative of seeing intentional forces behind the movements of nature. Psalm 19:1, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the sky proclaims its builder’s craft. One day to the next conveys that message; one night to the next imparts that knowledge. There is no word or sound, no voice is heard; Yet their report goes forth through all the earth, their message, to the ends of the world. God has pitched there a tent for the sun; it comes forth like a bridegroom from his chamber, and like an athlete joyfully runs its course. From one end of the heavens it comes forth; its course runs through to the other; nothing escapes its heat.”

This is great; it is an attempt to make sense of nature; it hearkens back to earlier mythology, it is an attempt to make sense of the power of the natural world.

Gods seem to like to live on mountains, Mt. Zion, Mt. Olympus, Baboquiviri Peak, the Sierra Pinacate. Here again the whole monotheistic thing hearkens back to a more pluralistic, naturalistic metaphor, nature. Monotheism had to come out of somewhere and that somewhere was polytheism, paganism and animism.

And back to creation and explanations for how things got to be the way they are on earth, Psalm 33:2, 6-7, “By the Lord’s word the heavens were made; by the breath of his mouth all their host. The waters of the sea were gathered as in a bowl; in cellars the deep was confined.”

This sounds like alternate metaphor for the Big Bang, you had all matter and energy concentrated to an inexplicable singularity, which unfolded as if gathered into a container, the bowl of the heavens and the universe. And God tamed the sea, and tamed the Sea god and the Storm god, tamed the dragons and tamed leviathan, to make them part of his creation, not slaying them, just as order emerged out of chaos in the equally unknowable creation of the Big Bang. Somehow the physical universe came to be, and life came into it as well. We need creation stories to handle our impulse to know the unknowable. How did man get to be amidst whales and lions on this earth? Who doesn’t want to know that?

Psalm 145, 15-16, “The eyes of all look hopefully to you; you give them their food in due season. You open wide you hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing.” In the Noah story, God let two of every living thing on the ark; God did not say “no wolves, no coyotes, no rattlesnakes, no scorpions, no sharks”. If God cares for all, where is it man’s business to exterminate entire species? Here is where you have trouble using the Bible to justify anything, as it also says that man will have dominion over the animals. All will multiply and prosper yet man has dominion, and so all have not multiplied and prospered under man’s rule. Is this going against God or with God?

And again, Psalm 147:2, 8, (God) “who covers the heavens with clouds, provides rain for the earth, makes grass sprout on the mountains, who gives animals their food and ravens what they cry for.”

God is nature too, God is necessary to explain not only the world of men but the natural world as well, as there are plenty of vagaries to pass that have nothing to do with the shortcomings of men. The world is not all about people, it is about all of other life as well; it is about whole realms of inorganic forces too.

And now, onto oaths and swearing, I have always wondered why not taking an oath was such a big deal to Quakers and Anabaptists. The whole question of whether or not to take an oath, to swear something, is an interesting one. Psalm 24:1, 5 “to not swear falsely”. It seems to me that this swearing comes in two categories, one, if you believe it to be true, then you are not swearing falsely. And two, if someone else forces you to swear against your own convictions, then that is false. That is coercion. The issue is to have one standard of truth. The implication is that the standards of men are inferior to the standards of God. Since Quakers and Anabaptists are convinced that they have good systems and that they are in good with God, then they will not swear any oaths other than to the highest source.

Swearing and oath taking can and has become a bone of contention between the religious and governments. It becomes an opportunity to exercise power and control over people politically. The emphasis probably results from state religion days, when Quakers and Anabaptists were citizens of states and proto-states, England, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, which had state religions, mainline Protestant or Catholic. The Quakers and Anabaptists were persecuted, jailed, murdered, burned at the stake and forced to take oaths to the state religion, against their beliefs. This is what happens when an individual stands up to a state or a religion.

Testimony obtained through torture is necessarily false testimony. Everyone knows that when the tortured person swears something, that it is a lie; they don’t believe it, they are not true to themselves, they are being coerced; somehow the torturing entity has a need to hear you admit they are right. When you challenge the supremacy of the state or of a religion, you could be in for big trouble. Shoot, look what happened to Jesus, Martin Luther King, you can get killed, murdered. It’s like making someone say “uncle”, it has nothing to do with truth; it is about power and control.  Perhaps governments demanding an oath are all in the same general class. They have the right, by power alone; to demand you say something that is not true to yourself. If you refuse to swear allegiance, you challenge their legitimacy and right to exist. If you provoke them, they make life difficult for you.

The Quaker idea is to stay with a single standard of truth. I had to swear allegiance to Vermont to get a driver’s license. I figured I couldn’t possibly be held accountable for that! How could, and in what situation, would Vermont demand accountability for my oath?  It is the principle of it that seems to end up mattering more, in an innocuous situation like driver’s licenses. If they want me to swear that the USA is always right in foreign affairs, I wouldn’t.

Psalm 59:2, 13 further delves into the problems with taking an oath, “For the sinful words of their mouths and lips let them be caught in their pride. For the lies they have told under oath.”  I have to wonder what the difference is between plain lying and lying under oath? False is false, eh?  I guess an oath is an opportunity for formalized lying.

In matters of faith and religion, making someone swear an oath really gets down to mind control. It’s about who is controlling you, you or a collective entity?, a government?, a religion?, a fanatic? The whole trajectory of humanity has led to the ascendance of the individual, and rights and freedoms to construct your world, as you are able. In this sense, oaths seem primitive. How can the state, the United States, in reality demand fealty of 300 million individuals? Especially when we have as part of our founding mythology, the freedom of religion and the freedom of speech. Any state will be paranoid about those questioning it’s right to exist, but we, as US citizens, have the right to believe whatever religion we want and to have that religion be separate from the state. We have freedoms baby! There are many ways to put down the USA, but our freedom to believe and speak is pretty darn great.  It is easy to find a lot wrong, our freedom to believe is one thing really right.

In Psalm 89:3, 36, God “swears”. Why can God swear but humans cannot do the same? If God does it, it must be OK to swear. I suppose it is only OK to swear to that jealous god, but to none other.  I suppose people in the US have a problem with oaths and swearing, particularly with marriage vows; you’ve got this huge percentage of the population who have broken their vows, broken their solemn oath. One issue here is that with the ascendance of the individual, why should people endure a lifetime of marital unhappiness just because of some words? Why can’t people change their minds about something as grave as the rest of their life?  And yet, if words mean nothing, then anarchy rules, it is willy nilly every dog for himself. Where is the order in a world where the individual is triumphant?

Psalm 144:2, 4-8, “They are but a breath, their days are like a passing shadow. Their mouths speak untruth; their right hands are raised in lying oaths.” So, again, it is not necessarily that false testimony is being given, but that just perhaps their testimony is different, and therefore unacceptable. False and different are not the same. But false and different can be both lumped into heresy by the controlling entity. So the core issues are, of power and control, who gets to say who takes what oath, and whether people actually believe in their oath or not.

And what little expose of Psalms would be complete without delving into a little idol worship? Psalm 115:2, 4-8, “ Their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have mouths but do not speak, eyes but do not see. They have ears but do not hear, noses but do not smell. They have hands but do not feel, feet but do not walk, and no sound rises from their throats. Their makers shall be like them, all who trust in them.”

This is kind of a Lord of the Rings oath in its style. This passage shows the sheer hypocrisy of people, and also illustrates the “intimate enemy” phenomena, Christians have statues (idols) galore, and a trinity as well, not just one god, and cults of saints with all their talismans and yet others who have their own symbols, statues, talismans, are idol worshippers. This just doesn’t make sense; it’s too exclusionary, too childish. This is like sandbox inability to get along and share.

I find myself in awe of the unabashed intolerance that the Chosen People use against anyone different from them. It could be that times were just really violent then, but how could things be more violent than they are now? We’ve got genocides, murders, wars, terrorists, kidnappings, beheadings, so it is not like humanity has advanced that much in 2500 years. I think it is the same basic tendency to vilify strangers that we have always had as a species. Some of the Psalms are a great example of this vilification and I have copied some of them out for review.

Psalm 119, 155 “ Salvation is far from sinners because they do not cherish your laws.” This is exactly the type of thought that leads to total strife in the world; you condemn everyone who is not with the in-group, they can then be reduced to being sub-human and killed whenever possible, disrespected and banished, given no quarter. I wonder how the world can carry on with this type of thought emanating from all groups, this kind of blatant intolerance. Of course different groups do not cherish each other’s laws, but they are just carrying on with the business of being human, with all the problems therein. Let’s get real and not have to make sinners out of those who are not in our group.

And now for some descriptive revenge, desperation and righteousness, Psalm 17:3, “My ravenous enemies press upon me, they close their hearts, they fill their mouths with proud roaring. Their steps even now encircle me; they watch closely, keeping low to the ground. Like lions eager for prey, like young lions lurking in ambush.” If people think they are the smartest species, the most advanced, they ought to think again; it is clear that in critical ways we ARE animals, and we fight, compete, kill, violate, we are run by passions of jealousy, control, lust for sex, food, and we do whatever it takes to achieve our ends, even with great articulate justifications.

The next one is very strong on the creative writing and also plays up being the pathetic victim, Psalm 22:2 “many bulls surround me; fierce bulls of Bashan encircle me. They open their mouths against me, lions that rend and roar. Like water my life drains away; all my bones grow soft. My heart has become like wax, it melts away within me. As dry as a potsherd is my throat; my tongue sticks to my palate; you lay me in the dust of death.

Many dogs surround me; a pack of evildoers closes in on me. So wasted are my hands and feet that I can count all my bones. They stare at me and gloat; they divide my garments among them; for my clothing they cast lots. But you, Lord, do not stay far off; my strength, come quickly to help me. Deliver me from the sword, my forlorn life from the teeth of the dog. Save me from the lion’s mouth, my poor life from the horns of wild bulls.” 

The thing is, people want help in a tough world, but God doesn’t just show up, for all of the eons we have had to suffer from the sword, evildoers, the teeth of dogs, lion’s mouths and the horns of wild bulls. Only now, in addition to the above, we have telephone companies, endless recorded messages, credit bureaus, bill collectors, rip-off money schemes, flashing internet ads and mindless materialism to complain about.

Into new descriptive depths of self-pity and depravity goes Psalm 31:2, 10-14, “…with grief my eyes are wasted, my soul and body spent. My life is worn out by sorrow, my years by sighing. My strength falls into affliction; my bones are consumed. To all my foes I am a thing of scorn, to my neighbors a dreaded sight, a horror to my friends. When they see me in the street, they quickly shy away. I am forgotten, out of mind like the dead; I am like a shattered dish. I hear whispers of the crowd; terrors all around me. They conspire against me; they plot to take my life.” 

Like a shattered dish! Man is this guy paranoid or what? There does not appear to be any accepting of any responsibility by this person for how they got to be in this situation. This is classic victim consciousness. 

Here is some good old folk wisdom: Psalm 32:3, 9, “Do not be senseless like horse and mules; with bit and bridle their temper is curbed, else they will not come to you.”  Yes, we are animals thank you. But then we switch gears fast to 32:4,10, “many are the sorrows of the wicked, but love surrounds those who trust in the Lord.” 

I have to wonder if the characterization of being wicked comes from having no faith. Or is being wicked just part of being human, a baseline characteristic? Is faith in the Lord a panacea for the human condition, and faith makes you then, not human any longer, with no more human failings? Surely people are not dumb brutes like mules, in need of a bridle to curb their savage impulses. I guess, actually, people are in need of some social control, and religion is a major force of social control. But if you only control your own in-group, and other in-groups laws only apply to them, where is the social control at the meta-level? There is no meta-level social control, that’s why we have so many wars and conflicts among cultures, religions and governments. And then, again, where is social control in a world of individuals?

And as if humanity contains a seed of the chaos from which it emerged, to plague us through the generations, with stuff like chance and circumstance, the weather, opportunists and thieves, animals, predators of all stripe, Psalm 55:1, 2-9, “Listen, God, to my prayer, do not hide from my pleading; hear me and give answer. I rock with grief; I groan at the uproar of the enemy, the clamor of the wicked. They heap trouble upon me, savagely accuse me. My heart pounds within me; death’s terrors fall upon me; Fear and trembling overwhelm me, shuddering sweeps over me. I say, “If I only had wings like a dove that I might fly away and find rest. Far away would I flee; I would stay in the desert. I would soon find a shelter from the raging wind and storm.”

What could be this storm if not life itself? How did things get so bad for these guys that is not essentially the same for us today? There is nothing new under the sun (Ecclesiastes), so what we are dealing with here is that things are tough all over and they always have been. There is nothing particularly worse about the world at any one time. There is always strife. That is life. But if you just follow this prescribed course laid out in this here Bible, then everything will be made to be OK, if not now, then later. You must suspend belief and have forbearance, as things are never really OK in this life. You have to hope that somehow the next life will be your just reward for suffering the wicked and not becoming like them, i.e., a non-believer, an infidel, a heretic. 

Here, a person harps on the lack of fairness in life, Psalm 69:1, 2-5, “Save me God for the waters have reached my neck, I have sunk into the mire of the deep, where there is no foothold. I have gone down to the watery depths; the flood overwhelms me. I am weary with crying out; my throat is parched. My eyes have failed, looking for my God. More numerous than the hairs of my head are those who hate me without cause. Too many for my strength are my treacherous enemies. Must I now restore what I did not steal?”

What great descriptions! This reminds me of people who get road rage for no apparent reason; like get out of their way or face their puny wrath. Play constant defense to handle those always on the offense. Indulge your inner victim! A person can be buffeted by the savage impulses of humanity. The vagaries of life are many; life is not fair and in the midst of this unfairness and suffering it is natural that people would cook up an omnipotent god to serve them. In this sense, the Jewish god is no different than any other god. God is a projection of people’s hopes, fears, wants and needs. Biblical times were tough and violent and so therefore you need a violent and vindictive god to help you. Times are tough today too and you see angry gods and people today as well. How can we ever tell who is right amidst all the conflicting claims of truth?

In my opinion, claims of truth are just words, it is the actions that show who is moving beyond the animal level.  Truth doesn’t need human defense, it can stand on its own.

And these guys stay after it to emphasize their suffering, Psalm 88:1, 4-10, “For my soul is filled with troubles; my life draws near to Sheol. I am reckoned with those who go down in the pit; I am weak, without strength. My couch is among the dead, with the slain who lie in the grave. You remember them no more; they are cut off from your care. You plunged me into the bottom of the pit; into the darkness of the abyss. Your wrath lies heavy upon me; all your waves crash over me. Because of you my friends shun me; you make me loathsome to them; Caged in, I cannot escape; my eyes grow dim from trouble.”

Here you have a guy who is trying to do good but luck just seems to fall against him. He tries to have faith but God still wants to see him suffer, to count him among the wicked. There is an element of testing the faithful here, to maybe see if they have the mettle to live in heaven and get their eternal reward, to have the mettle to deserve God’s help against the wicked, as why would God give all blessings for nothing, there has to be some quid pro quo. But if God is concerned not with the affairs of men, but only with their souls, as evidenced by events like the holocaust, it does a guy no good to appeal to God for the vagaries of everyday life. God obviously does not intercede in the affairs of men, as how then could there have been a holocaust? How could there be and have been so many wars and genocides against the innocent? Why are the Jews still fighting with no peace in the Holy Land? What is up God?

Well, God does not intercede in daily affairs; that is the only way to explain the lack of action against such evil and wickedness. We are apparently on our own. Yet it is curious to note those who claim to communicate directly with God as if he were a person to respond to their every whim and fear and challenge. This just makes NO SENSE. Why would God concern himself with an individual’s petty troubles yet allow the holocaust to happen? The truth here is that God seems to have no power to intercede directly in our affairs.  People make their beds and they have to lie in them.  God or whatever force set this universe in motion and now sits back to watch only.

And here is a thread that I do not get; apparently part of being upright is to hate others in the name of God. This just seems wrong to me, but this is perhaps due to me growing up in a Christian/ Quaker milieu. Because if you hate, how will you know where to draw the line between a hate sanctified by God and a hate that grows out of your own “wickedness”? Psalm 97:1, 10 “The Lord loves those who hate evil.” To hate evil seems to just perpetuate it; if you are going to break the chain, getting out of the cycle of vengeance is a good start. Anybody can be righteous, self-righteous, and that is one of the great masquerades of all time, to present one’s own, or one’s own group’s ideals as equivalent to the truth. The rest become heretics and you have the exact same dynamic as here in Psalms all over again.  It is very difficult to motivate people without recourse to a boogieman or a negative comparison. People motivate well with a hate to rally around. I guess it is just not as emotionally satisfying to work otherwise. A perfect example is the whole Democrat/ Republican dynamic.

And number 113 of Psalm 119, “I hate every hypocrite…”  Even though every individual is a hypocrite, it is acceptable to hate other hypocrites. The Christian god is the direct descendent of the Jewish god, there is no avoiding the lineage to Jehovah. Christians did not come from Hindus. Jesus was Jewish, and even though he tried to broaden the scope of God’s message, to be less angry, Christians still have a pretty healthy smattering of being the chosen people, arrogant, vindictive, vengeful and self righteous people. What I’m saying here is that the New Testament is founded in the Old Testament, and a lot of this negative stuff is with the New as well.  Presumably the “wicked” indulge in hating, so what differentiates this hate from God sanctioned hate? This is kind of like a Brooklyn Bridge situation, if so and so jumps off the Brooklyn Bridge, are you going to too? It just illustrates that to be a follower sometimes leaves one in an untenable position, even if you are following a god. Plenty of gods have been wrong before.

When you hate, you only perpetuate more hate. Productive change comes not from force, forcing people to see it your way. Maybe there is no productive change; life is just messy as long as we allow our inner animal to run the show. If you can’t allow others to be different, then it will just be more of the same.

Psalm 109:2, 6 – 15, this is over the top of being a victim!  “My enemies say of me: “Find a lying witness, an accuser to stand by his right hand, That he may be judged and found guilty, that his plea may be in vain. May his days be few; may another take his office. May his children be fatherless, his wife, a widow. May his children be vagrant beggars, driven from their hovels. May the usurer snare all he owns, strangers plunder all he earns. May no one treat him kindly or pity his fatherless children. May his posterity be destroyed, his name cease in the next generation. May the Lord remember his father’s guilt; his mother’s sin not to be cancelled. May their guilt be always before the Lord, till their memory is banished from the earth.”

That is a no-fooling-around punishment, and the third section of this Psalm 109 goes on to open up big swaths of revenge and vindictiveness, but it is OK because it is righteous…….The only trouble with this is that when you hate others so much, you are opening up the potential for endless conflict. It is stupid to create or be a part of creating such a mess, as God isn’t going to cure it. This hating is actually counterproductive and the hating phenomenon is universal, beyond religion, you have it with environmentalists, Democrats and Republicans, feuding neighbors, and on and on and on. The dynamic doesn’t work in the long run, but it is emotionally satisfying.

Here in Clear Creek we have upstanding neighbors, fire chiefs, civic minded people, who hate the renters who are sloppy and make noise. The neighbors hate each other for God knows what. The fire chief said that if the renters house caught fire, he would vent it so it would burn to the ground. Is this moral? Does being right in ones own eyes justify any means?

The cycle of revenge and the ability to rationalize anything prevents people from taking the steps necessary to overcome their differences. People box themselves into a way of thinking and they then see nothing but that, only trouble is, it is only evident to them and their cohorts. It is their illusion, individual or collective. The real stumbling block in my opinion is in the definition of how things really are. How things are, is not some inherent property that everyone can see. How things are stems directly from beliefs and assumptions, not from facts. Facts follow the beliefs. People argue about facts when they should be arguing about illusions and assumptions.

Even when life sucks, is a mess and all is darkness, one must stay faithful to God or risk losing whatever reward is waiting in the afterlife. Psalm 119: 82-88 “ My eyes long to see your promise. When will you comfort me?  I am like a wineskin shriveled by smoke, but I have not forgotten your laws. How long can your servant survive? When will your edict doom my foes? The arrogant have dug pits for me; defying your teaching. All your commands are steadfast. Help me! I am pursued without cause. They have almost ended my life on earth, but I do not forsake your precepts. In your kindness give me life, to keep the decrees you have spoken.” 

And still, strangers are after our guys, Psalm 150, “malicious persecutors draw near me; they are far from your teaching.” I wonder why there are malicious persecutors? Surely some are from just basic opportunism, guided by greed and animal impulses, but I’m sure that many malicious persecutors come from being made villains by the way these Bible people think, by the way that the Bible people characterize them. The “persecutors” are angry at being called names and being disrespected. Maybe malicious persecutors are not only born, they are made too. One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. Can we maybe see that the whole dynamic here is flawed? You go around and around and around and it only gets worse.

Psalm 120:1, 1-7, “The Lord answered me when I called in my distress. Lord, deliver me from lying lips, from treacherous tongues. What will the Lord inflict upon you, O treacherous tongue, and what more besides? A warriors sharpened arrows and fiery coals of brushwood. Alas, I was an alien in Meshech, I lived in the tents of Kedar! Too long did I live among those who hated peace. When I spoke of peace, they were for war.”

OK, wait a minute here; it is OK for the people of the Lord to hate all sorts of things, but then when others hate something, that is not OK? There has to be some consistency for this stuff to be believable.  It seems that having faith in the Lord does not cure one of human shortcomings, it just allows them to be forgiven, as the Bible people are just as violent and intolerant as the wicked, they are just legitimized in it. All people appear to be the same, they are just different by their cultures, aims and gods. The gods tell them that it is OK to be who they are, kind of like cultural therapy, cultural legitimization. This opens up some of the Tower of Babel phenomena, the tongues are confused, people cannot see that they are the same. People have a good nonsequitor going, they hate each other, but they are the same.

In Psalm 125:3, 4-5, “Do good, Lord, to the good, to those who are upright of heart. But to those who turn aside to crooked ways may the Lord send down with the wicked.”

Karma is different, you reap what you sow, what goes around, comes around. This vengeance and condemnation is a different story, not learning from your mistakes and shortcomings, but being punished for them. I can see why many westerners go for Hinduism or Buddhism, they are a bit more palatable; they are not so harsh and vindictive.  In the Eastern schools it is maybe not a matter of punishment but of learning, of how to realize your humanity rather then being punished into it. Or maybe the Eastern schools see that it is the person who punishes them self, through their own choices.

Psalm 141, 10 “Into their own nets let all the wicked fall, while I make good my own escape.” OK, this is just burning the bridge, we made it, now we burn the bridge for the rest, we are the righteous, the Chosen, the purveyors of Truth and WE will arbitrate what is right and wrong.

Psalm 140:1, 2-6, “Deliver me, Lord, from the wicked; preserve me from the violent, From those who plan evil in their hearts, who stir up conflicts every day, Who sharpen their tongues like serpents, venom of asps (1) upon their lips. Keep me, Lord, from the clutches of the wicked; preserve me from the violent, who plot to trip me up. The arrogant have set a trap for me; villains have spread a net, laid snares for me by the wayside.” 

It is OK to be all these vindictive things if the Lord is on your side, but somehow the same behavior is no good if you have another god, then you are wicked. If you are an outsider, Psalm 140:2, 11, “May God rain burning coals upon them, cast them into the grave never more to rise.” Christianity may have been a reaction within Judaism, to this harder side, a reaction opening up a softer side, not that this tolerance remained for long once Christians came to power themselves.

This opens up the difference between Jesus’ message and how it has become distorted by the faithful. And of course arguing about what Jesus really meant is a major trip-wire. Anyhow, Christianity is now an industry. There was no Christian church in the time of Jesus. Jesus spoke for people to act as individuals. Christianity has split in 100s of splinter groups, all purporting to be the most faithful to Jesus’ message. From the total power of the institution with Catholicism to the ascendancy of the individual with Quakerism, you have conflicts and disputes within Christianity for power and control, which is FAR FROM anything Jesus said. Where is it that Jesus said you need priests as intermediaries? Where is there the command for one church only? But then if you take the Quakers as having the real deal, they then deligitimize all church hierarchy; if a person can experience the divine as an individual, there is no need for any church. Church’s however seem to fulfill a function to allow people to formally belong to and formally have a spiritual element in their lives. Churches satisfy a craving, but they can end up taking advantage of peoples impulses by turning them into mindless sheep who can then be directed to hate other poor sheep. Maybe it gets down to whether you have the wherewithal to go it alone or whether it is just easier to belong and leave the thinking to others.

For myself I enjoy going to Quaker Meeting as much for the social intercourse and to be stimulated by other’s deep thoughts. I grow by attending; I am not going for some future reward.

And a few addenda of miscellaneous interest: Psalm 137:1, 1-4, these are the source lyrics for the reggae song, By The Rivers of Babylon.

And Psalm 146, 9, “The Lord protects the stranger, sustains the orphan and the widow, but thwarts the way of the wicked.” Alright, one I like! Count one for the strangers! Here it says you can be different, just as long as you are not wicked, then God will be on your side.

And finally, here is one that I discovered marked by my Dad, after he had died, Psalm 102:1, 2-12, “Lord hear my prayer; let my cry come to you. Do not hide your face from me now that I am in distress. Turn your ear to me; when I call answer me quickly. For my days vanish like smoke; my bones burn away as in a furnace. I am withered, dried up like grass, too wasted to eat my food. From my loud groaning I become just skin and bones. I am like a desert owl, like an owl among the ruins. I lie awake and moan, like a lone sparrow on the roof. All day long my enemies taunt me; in their rage, they make my name a curse. I eat ashes like bread, mingle my drink with tears. Because of your furious wrath, you lifted me up just to cast me down. My days are like a lengthening shadow; I wither like grass.”  Dad knew he was coming to the end of the line, he was in a Shakespeare group and he underlined some good ones there too. Interestingly the Bible you get sets the tone for your Bible experience, this same Psalm is written with more flair in Dad’s bible, the New English Bible.

Psalm 102:1, 2-12 New English Bible

“Lord hear my prayer and let my cry for help reach thee. Hide not thy face from me when I am in distress. Listen to my prayer and, when I call, answer me soon: for my days vanish like smoke, my body is burnt up as in an oven. I am stricken, withered like grass: I cannot find the strength to eat. Wasted away, I groan aloud and my skin hangs on my bones. I am like a desert owl in the wilderness, an owl that lives among the ruins. Thin and meager, I wail in solitude, like a bird that flutters on the roof-top. My enemies insult me all the day long: mad with rage, they conspire against me. I have eaten ashes for bread and mingled tears with my drink. In thy wrath and fury thou hast taken me up and flung me aside. My days decline as the shadows lengthen, and like grass I wither away.”

As Dad would be glad to note, the very fact that the Bible is even translated to English, and made available to the common man, was made possible by John Wycliffe, one of the key players in the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. This began the wresting of power from the church towards the individual, and made possible this very exercise.

And to Fate and Time, Psalm 103:3, 14 – 16, “For he knows how we are formed, remembers that we are dust. Our days are like the grass; like flowers of the field we blossom. The wind sweeps over us and we are gone; our place knows us no more.” And this brings up a thought I had the other day, this as I revisited a place where I once was with two SCA groups, where I was alone, where I just was with Kim, that the land is a mute stage for what has gone before. The events of the past seem not to impress themselves upon a place. How can we know what winds have blown through there before? The trees speak not. This place holds only a memory for me and that memory lives within me, not as a property of the place. The grave of my grandparents and of my father speaks not of their memory, only wind blows, none of them speak. Yet the sun rises and sets just the same upon these places; the seasons pass, there is a continuity. This brings to mind this poem, “Don’t stand by my grave and weep for I’m not there, I do not sleep, I am a thousand winds that blow,  I am the diamonds glint on snow, I am the sunlight on ripened grain, I am the gentle autumn’s rain.    When you awaken in morning’s hush, I am the swift uplifting rush, Of quiet birds in circle flight, I am the soft stars that shine at night, Do not stand by my grave and cry, I am not there, I did not die.”

(1)  A snake in the grass is an asp; a grasp in the ass is a goose.

Here is some random commentary that didn’t seem to fit anywhere above, the Jews were given Israel by God, and so they swept away the Palestinians, 1000s of years ago, and they are still fighting about it. For people to be able to justify their actions and behavior, for them to be 100% right, they need an absolute substrate of morals and commands. The words of men are shifting sand, God has the Word, and men have words and Towers of Babel. And yet God has left untold millions to lead brutal lives and die horrible deaths; it is almost as if the moral justification (authorized by God) really just allows you to mistreat and brutalize others and have that be OK, no guilt, God justifies you mistreating all others. The “just” are members of the people who are obedient to God. It seems then that justice is a matter of faith and not of the laws of men. Justice is about being congruent with your beliefs. Unfortunately, beliefs can be different.

There is an element of social control with this vindictiveness and severe tone; everyone is watching the others to make sure no one strays from the fold. There is holier than thou pressure, like the East Germans, always spying on each other, trying to be the most loyal. When you have faith, then you are OK. All the rest, the wicked, evil, non-believers, their just dessert is to be stricken, cursed, punished and banished forever. There is this strong undertone of vengeance and also reward for the faithful. Practical experience shows that the reward is more often than not only postulated, as something that occurs after death. You get screwed in this life and hope for something better next, if you are good enough. It is a pretty good ploy, playing on fears of mortality, insecurity against the abyss of death, promising eternal life just by staying with the script. Then the game becomes about enforcing the script on all others. 

And furthermore, if the Bible is supposed to be literally true, the whole thing being the Word of God, then I have a problem with that. And if I cherry pick it, picking only that which suits my fancy or supports my precepts, and everyone else cherry picks it too, then how can there be any standard of anything coming from the Bible? Everybody either cherry picks it or they see it as all true. The all-true crowd is beyond conversation like this and the cherry pickers are caught in a shell game of partiality. I see that there is no standard of which to use the Bible, so we will just use it as we see fit. It is fun to check it out. But I don’t see how the Bible can represent an absolute moral substrate; it just can’t; it’s too contradictory and the disputes between literalists and metaphorists further muddy the waters.