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Susan brought us worship for the evening from the Northumbrian community, full of images from nighttime: angels, dreams, sleep, and spirit. The gathering question was, what's your super power? The EfM Universe includes Speed Reader! The Soothing Soprano! Cat Lady! (but she likes dogs, too), the Connector! Multiple Man! and The Aura!
Yr. D, Living Into the Journey with God, Unit 1 Spiritual Autobiography and Listening: 1st yr: Lanie, Daniel; 2nd yr: Donfred, Joyce, Susan; 3rd yr, Jessica; 4th yr, Scott. Mentor: Scott. Absent: None.
Daniel was bothered by Collins’s comment that the talking serpent in Genesis 2 is a sure sign that we are in the world of a fable. Daniel read that as Collins condescending to all those who have read this story literally. Susan said that reading the Bible as an academic is different from reading it for spiritual edification.
Scott recalled a professor who was also a preacher: “Today, I’m using literary criticism to identify sources and make comparisons; but Sunday I’ll tell you how to live by it.” After the break, Scott gave an example how literary criticism can enhance our spiritual reading of Scripture. Contrasting two creation stories, very different in language, style, and content, too, we appreciate the cosmic theology of one, while the other emphasizes the human behavior and Scott's favorite detail: God makes them warm clothing from animal skins before he sends them out of Eden. (See image by Gustav Doré)
Both Susan and Scott feel it’s important to understand a difference between the popular meanings of “criticism,” “fable,” and “myth” and what scholars mean by those words. Literary criticism of passages isn’t finding flaws but only drawing distinctions between poems, historical record, and narratives intended to teach spiritual truths (as Lanie pointed out how the priests who wrote Genesis 1 emphasized that Creation is VERY GOOD and organized it in seven days to elevate the Sabbath. For scholars, “myth” isn’t a false story but one whose truth happens again and again. Here’s a link to the essay from an earlier EfM textbook that Susan and I found helpful during our own first year studies.
We had several Ah-HA moments:
- Jessica in reading “The Crucified Messiah” thought how unlikely that we are all sitting here 2000 years talking about Jesus Christ! If that humiliating death had been the end of the story… it would be obscure today. She also was amazed to learn about politics in the Roman Empire: the split of Jewish Christians from the Jewish faith because of attacks from the Roman Empire – (“Christian” was a political designation that exempted you from taxation!)
- Donfred noticed how Paul, popularly assumed to look down on women, actually thanks women for their leadership and material contributions to the growing church, as we see in some of his letters and in Acts.
- Lanie realized that she hadn’t really thought much about Genesis since she learned the stories in childhood. Now she wonders where Adam and Eve’s sons found their wives, for example, and what to take from all those genealogies. She wondered whom God was speaking to when he said “Let us create them in our own image.” Overall, she found chapters 1-11 in Genesis to be a series of disappointments for God that followed the VERY good Creation.
- Daniel, relating to what Lanie said, noted the shift of focus from God’s actions to what people are doing independent of God…. Then God floods the world and tries again.
- Joyce wondered about a passage that questions did Jesus WANT to die, or was he FORCED to? Joyce – asked to take human form because the Law couldn’t save us. If we still have injustice – then he’s looking to us as his hands and feet to take care. P. 168
- Susan's comment relates to Joyce's. Levine pokes holes in the oversimplified view that Judaism was legalistic before Jesus came along.
Daniel found the secret square. He won a trip to Chicago's Shedd Aquarium on the 8th (that's OCTO) of OCTO-ber to swim with an OCTO-pus. We hear they're friendly, intelligent, curious creatures. We look forward to hearing how that went.
The prompt this week was to tell of an intellectual conversion. While we won't put any chapters from our lives in this space, we did identify common themes: starting over, a leap of faith; and maybe a lesson, too, "think before you act." (In a few of the stories, great good came from NOT thinking, but deciding on impulse.)
Daniel brings us worship and a gathering question. We're all reading what the RRG has for Week Six, and preparing the next chapter in our Spiritual Autobiographies, "Political" conversion (in the sense of "community," whether converting to one or away.)
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