Whoa!

Ok, so this is a sort of non-post post. I've been dealing with some shit in my personal life that's put me behind, and also I'm working on a post dealing with abortion, even though I'm pretty sure no one wants that, because, quite often, writing these things is how I sort them out myself, in my own head. I need to do that. That topic, however, is WAY more tangled and confusing than anything I've tackled thus far, to my own very great surprise.

Anyway, I caught wind of a fabulous discussion happening in my vicinity, and thought I'd share part of it with you (none of it is my own words).

I have an internet friend who is a cultural Jew, an actual atheist, an expert historian on Victorian sexuality (specifically same-sex relations [if I understand that correctly]), a regular Anglican church attendee (while she was in Cambridge), and an all-around interesting, thoughtful, and lovely liberal person. She undertook to read the Bible, in an attempt to understand more of her own heritage and the prevailing cultural norm, etc. I have great respect for that - not a lot of people would do it (Interesting! Thoughtful! Lovely!) She's been posting little updates and questions as she goes. Today's was this:

"My jaw drops lower with each chapter of Leviticus, which manages to top the last in moral precepts completely and utterly at odds with the world I live in. Liberal members of the Abrahamic faiths, how do you even cope with the fact that this text is a central part of your scriptural tradition?!
...the way I'm reading it, God is giving the Israelites all these rules to set them apart from the other people who live in this region (even as he casts other peoples out of their land in order to give it to the Israelites... disturbing contemporary parallels anyone?!), and ways of negotiating the picking and choosing trouble me. Kashrut comes from this book, as do the observances of Yom Kippur, Sukkot, and some of the other major Jewish holidays. (The thing that disturbed me about loving your neighbor and giving your goods to the poor in this section is that it is pretty clearly only meant to apply to fellow Israelites, not to anyone. And I find this abhorrent. For me if there is any value in reading these things from a Christian or Christian-sympathetic perspective it is to see how exactly the New Testament engages with Jewish precedent when stating those same precepts.) So why take seriously that God says to do those things, but not so seriously that you would put to death adulterous women or men who lie with men? What value or force or, if you like, level of literalism is given to the fact that God has dictated any of these things?

The point about different parts of the Bible having different functions is really great. That helps me to see how the whole thing might still have value to a faith tradition like Christianity when understood as a cohesive text, even though it is clear to me from the last three years of Anglican Communion churchgoing that some parts are more central to the religion's present-day tenets than others. But I guess I'm still really confused by the problem of canonicity. I don't want to be the classic atheist (and I'm not), but I guess I am stating the classic atheist's objection: if you can pick and choose, then how do you know you're making the right choices? And does that affect what it means to say that these texts--as bound between two covers, as enumerated in the lectionary (my understanding was that everything in the canonical bible is in the lectionary, but you have a couple options each day so that the priest or whoever is setting the service can choose something appropriate to the season, or something less objectionable to modern sensibilities? but correct me if I'm wrong) or the Jewish cycle of Torah readings--form a cohesive and really fundamental aspect of the faith tradition?
I guess many liberal Jews and Christians are less committed to their Bibles as cohesive and comprehensive statements of faith, and I guess many liberal Christians would probably say that what God is and what their faith compels them to believe transcends any human attempt to describe it, and that maybe sometimes the humans who wrote the biblical texts got stuff wrong. I don't see any way to read the entirety of Leviticus as metaphor or allegory or myth, unlike Genesis, but maybe the fact (for a given definition of fact) that ancient Israelite priests sought divine approval for their Hammurabi-Code-like laws to ensure cleanliness and social cohesion is separable from anything that the God of modern-day Jews and Christians is ontologically or might have to say on sexual morality, the role of women in society, and other things. These are the kinds of intellectual moves I make in my own idiosyncratic engagement with theism and organized religion. But my previous experience has suggested that when I make these moves, I don't satisfy those people who believe that the Bible--all of it--has some kind of special divine status. But then, to me, positing that throws up problems--I mean what, is "And God said unto Moses, that if a woman does xyz, she shall have committed an abomination, and shall be put to death" to be interpreted metaphorically?That's like Benjamin Jowett saying that Platonic paiderastia is to be interpreted metaphorically! However much you want an ancient people you respect not to have done this thing you think is horrible, and however much higher philosophical content may be involved, erotic/sexual contact between erastes and eromenoi was a thing and to pretend otherwise is to obscure one level of "truth," even if there are other levels also that might depend on the reader and their intent and the use to which the text is being put.

I fear this is an insuperable barrier in my attempts to understand what religion is, especially when many religious people I've talked to seem so much more certain than I do about the answers to these questions. But I really do mean to be sincere and respectful, and in my own way I do take this stuff seriously: thanks all for engaging me on that level, even though my initial status update was pretty flippant. One of the reasons I keep sharing my reading experience with you is because you're such an amazing group to discuss it with."

It's an interesting discussion - and one happening, sadly, way over my head or in super different circles than the ones I grew up in (WELS bubble-dweller that I am, despite my own horror at this fact). But there was one response that sort of took my breath away - a response that speaks to the joy of religion. Even if I don't agree with everything she says, I got very caught up in what she was saying because she speaks of religion as something beautiful and joyous. Anyway:

"I think of the whole Bible as a chronicle of a deeply human struggle to understand what it means to live in right relationship with God and one another. And the story is seen through human eyes and told by human mouths -- long before everything gets written down, and certainly before it gets put together canonically in *either* tradition! -- so it's going to be super-flawed like the human storytellers. But the value of reading the whole thing is that it gives all these flashes of encounter with the divine, so there's a lot of accumulated insight that you'd never have access to if you started from scratch on your own. And it emphasizes that we're in relationship with God as part of a human community stretching across time, not as little solo agents in our own moments. I think that's part of the deep value of religious traditions, Jewish & Christian -- to bind you into that tapestry, to show you that you belong within this story. We're physical entities living in finite time -- if God is Love, we can only understand that iteratively, as a series of interventions in our own lives and the lives if those who have come before us, not as some kind of abstract eternal truth. It’s because Christ walked around in Palestine and ate fish and made his mother anxious that I can engage with his presence in my real time and place; we’re human, we have to touch the wounds.
From a Christian perspective, the story of Hebrew faith is providential and teleological — the call to obedience to all those rules is part of what binds that particular people into relationship with God, a relationship which paves the way for the Messiah to come and crack open God’s covenant with the Israelites to apply to all people. The Jews are chosen to be the saving instruments of all humankind; that’s what it really means to be ‘elect’. But they didn’t know this—anymore than Christians do nowadays who think that salvation is about their own personal righteousness, rather than the redemption of the whole human community.

But Christianity inherently ‘instrumentalizes’ Judaism. In my view, of course, that’s no insult; we’re all instruments of God. But I do hope you’ll have a chance to talk to some Jewish friends about this, because I think the Christian dismissal of Leviticus as not-my-problem (because Paul had a dream) is a bit too glib. I guess my feelings about those rules are two-fold—on the one hand, some are just human hierarchies perpetuating themselves by ventriloquizingGod. Seems to me that Paul’s views on women are much the same. On the other hand, I’ve noticed that my observant Muslim and Jewish friends, who abide by many more religiously-imposed rules in their day-to-day lives (re: diet, prayer, etc), are in many ways made more mindful by it. If you’ve just prayed, it’s often harder to be cruel. If some foods are forbidden to you depending on their origin, you have to think about where your food comes from. If you wear something on your head, it can be like the hand of God resting there. This is back again to the fact that we’re embodied creatures; we have to practice things, have to cultivate the right outlook in ourselves. I think that, in our distaste for ‘arbitrary’ rules, we moderns underrate how disciplines can be real gateways into meaning and understanding.

Now you ask the classic question—once you start cherry-picking, how can you have any of it at all? It’s always a little funny to me that “classic atheists”, as you call them, and religious fundamentalists have the same all-or-nothing hermeneutic attitude on that front. I guess the point is — do we know, from history, that people put words into God’s mouth for their own purposes? Yes, we do. In fact, the Bible warns us of as much (‘false prophets’, etc). Is there a good reason to think that people do that kind of thing nowadays, but they didn’t ‘back in the day’? There’s reason to WISH that were so (would make interpretation easier), but no actual reason to believe so, methinks. Especially since we see such a resonant picture of human nature reflected back at us in the earliest biblical texts; folks haven’t changed that much! SO, we have good reason to think that portions of our scriptural tradition are very humanly skewed. But is that sufficient reason to think that it’s ALL humans masquerading as God? No. So we’re left with a mixed, human-divine tradition.

What a mess! But c’mon, that’s the nature of our existence, perched between the physical and spiritual. It’s why the Jewish tradition leans on the wisdom of learned Rabbis, cataloguing their contradictory interpretations and carrying on an open conversation across the centuries, and it’s why the Christian tradition puts trust in the workings of the Holy Spirit within the living community of the Church. Because “God is still speaking”, as the congregationalists say, in our own moment and also across time, through these ancient texts. Now, there’s no way to know for sure when we’ve gotten insight into God’s truth and when we’ve fallen for one of our own delusions. To me, recognizing that degree of uncertainty is a strong argument for religious tolerance: when you approach the mysteries of the divine with proper humility, surely you see that you can’t have it all right. But I find it's still it’s worth the endeavor, because in my experience the moments of insight can transform your life, like light bursting into a dark room. And frankly, I don’t think any hermeneutic should get you out of having to read with a humble, open, and loving heart, and to engage your reading in light of your experience of God moving in your actual life and actual relationships. Because that’s just as much where divinity resides as in the text; the text is a way that we tell one another about the mystery. So remember that faith is a whole-life thing, given nourishment through prayer and religious services and acts of love and moments of wonder, not just scripture reading."

Good stuff. Until next time, folks.