April Resolution: “Be Still for God”

Hello Friends & Family!

Happy Friday & May Day! As another exciting week and month draw to a close, I thought I would keep you cats updated on the most recent monthly resolution.

 

 Pre-Amble to the Pre-Amble

As I was deciding if I should write about this month’s resolution, I struggled a bit if I wanted to talk about faith in my blog because it is such a serious topic and didn’t want to step on toes.  And then… I realized that the people who read my blog would be equally indifferent and/or accepting of this post for vastly different, yet valid reasons.

Half of the readers are from the Mid-west (whoop, whoop… aka No Coast) and would largely think, “most of us are Christian and if we aren’t, many of the people around us are… thus, not a big shocker that someone would write a post about the Christian faith”  (if I am being really honest, the next thought would likely progress to “why people shouldn’t have to say Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas is just fine, yadda yadda yadda”).

The other half of my posse are my San Francisco homies (whoop, whoop again?).  While they are less likely to have a specific faith (for instance, only ~20% of my MBA class said they practice some form of religion/spirituality), they are pretty accepting group.  In this instance, I imagine the thought process would be something like, “I don’t really believe in God, but it’s cool if you do” (and again, if I am being honest, they next would be something like, “I feel the same about your faith as I do about nude sunbathers at Dolores Park, crazy people protesting nuclear testing in Berkeley, and Tindr.  It’s not for me, but if works for you.. go for it.”)

 

Pre-Amble

Normally, I wouldn’t feel compelled to qualify my blog post, but given I am going to touch on the ultra-sensitive topic of faith… I figured I’d put a small pre-cursor out my observations and learnings were 1) intended to help me understand my own faith a bit more and 2) as accurate and “true” as I could I verify.

So with those many qualifiers established… let’s go!

 

“Be Still for God”

For the month of April, I decided on a faith-based theme, “Be Still for God”.  There were a lot of reasons for choosing this resolution now, but two biggies.

First, this theme was fit perfectly with April given Good Friday and Easter occurred at the beginning of the month.

Second, I watched HBO’s Going Clear documentary about Scientology at the end of March.  In that documentary, one of the interviewees talked about how most major practitioners of a faith can summarize the basic tenets and rationales of their faith in one or two sentences.  This prompted me to try to explain my faith, which I could do… but, as I was reciting the “what” and “how”, I realized I was a little less clear on the “why”.  So I said, “let there be a resolution, and there was a resolution, and it was good.” <- This is a little old testament humor, in case you didn’t pick up on that.

 

 

Background

For those of you who don’t know, I am Christian and have been for a pretty long time (like… my entire life).  As a family, we started out Catholic and made a mid-race switch to Lutheran when I was 10(ish) … basically, the same thing with less guilt.  Or as I like to say, “Lutheranism: all of the salvation, none of the sin!”

But, let’s be clear… less guilt; not, no guilt.  I think all parents are skilled at cajoling their children into doing the right things, but faith-based cajoling is extra effective. I remember trying to skip out of church when I was a teenager by explaining to my mom that I was too tired to go.

My mom would respond, “When you die and get to the pearly gates outside of Heaven, do you want St Peter to tell you that he is too tired to let you in?”

Checkmate, mom, checkmate.

 

What I set out to do…

When I set the theme of “Be Still for God” for the month of April, I had big plans! Like all my resolutions, I quickly overcommitted and fell drastically short of my goals.  In short, I aspired to:

*** If I say something you don’t understand, page down to the “What I learned section, it’s explained there” ***

 Read the Bible – 11% Complete – I somewhat arrogantly assumed I would just cruise through the Old Testament (aka Torah) and the New Testament. I even thought I might pick up a few books from the Apocrypha for giggles.  Suffice to say, that didn’t happen.

If you are questioning the specificity of the 11%, I know exactly how much I have read because my Kindle tells me so.  (I just had a moment where I imagined little Sunday School students 10 years from now singing a new age “Jesus Loves Me” where they swap ‘bible’ for ‘kindle’…”Jesus loves me. This I know, for the Kindle tells me so.”)

Back to the 11%, translates to: All of Genesis (7%), Exodus (3%), and 8 chapters of Leviticus (1%).

 

Make time pray / meditate – 25% Complete – Strong, strong start with a quick tapering off after the first few weeks.

 

Read Supporting Literature/Theological Studies – 0% Complete – Again, super uppity in my ambitions. Unless, you count reading part of the C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, I didn’t really have a chance to get to any of this.

Attend Church – 75% Complete – Crushed it! Bernice turned me onto a sweet rock band church called Reality SF.

Definition: “rock band church”

Beyond the fact that the church is amazing and I really enjoy the blend of historical exploration with theological application, it also is the largest collection of really attractive, really wholesome people I’ve ever come across in California.  At this point, I suspect they screen unattractive at the doors or there is some divine power making everyone amazingly beautiful/handsome/etc.   If I was Reality SF, I would rebrand myself to, “Come for God, Stay for the Beautiful People”.

Let’s pause, if you got this far.  You deserve a small reward.  Here is a longish, but worth it video created by the church Jack & Jenny attend.  Short explanation, the church leaders as the kids to help them write a song and then perform it based on the lyrics provided – it’ll make your day – https://vimeo.com/105906114

 

Top 11 Things I Learned that were TOTALLY Fascinating

As I was start this spirt journey / faith quest / [other badass sounding name], I quickly got a little confused by what I was reading.  For instance, how was Noah living to be 900 years old.  So, I decided I needed to augment my reading with some research.  I ended up listening to:

Dale Martin’s Open Yale Course “Introduction to New Testament History” – link 

Shaye Cohen’s Harvard Course “The Hebrew Bible” – link

I learned a lot and I’ll share some highlights.

1. Canon vs Gospel vs Holy Scripture?
   1. Canon – Collection of divinely inspired books, listed in a prescribed order, comprising a bible
   2. Holy scriptures – Texts that religious traditions consider to be sacred
   3. Gospel – Holy scriptures that account of the life of Jesus and his teachings.
2. Biblical authorship – When I was growing up, I sort of thought that Moses wrote the Old Testament and Jesus wrote the New Testament. When I hit confirmation, I figured out that there were disciples and followers who wrote some of the texts. As I studied the Bible from a historical context, there emerges a number of writers who have written or contributed in some fashion – anonymously or explicitly to the written scriptures.  This analysis is often called documentary hypothesis.
   1. Old Testament – Turns out Moses probably didn’t write it all (I could be wrong). Historians have an alphabet soup of individuals who contributed:
      1. J Writer – Yahwehist source, writes God in a more human fashion who expresses emotions and can be bargained with, etc.
      2. P Writer – Priestly source, writes more about rituals and laws, offering specific instructions on things like how to build a tabernacle
      3. R – The redactor, or person who compiled and edited the Torah together
   2. New Testament – Equally as interesting, historians believe a variety of scholars contributed.  The most fascinating idea is the belief that there is a common document (the Q Document) that 3 of the Gospels (Matthew, Mark & Luke)  drew from when writing their versions of Jesus’s life.

3. Languages … Hebrew, Aramic, Greek.. oh my! – Languages had a pretty big impact on how certain aspects of the bible are interpreted, compiled, and shared.
   1. Apocrypha Books (Tobit, Maccabees, etc) – These books are left out of the Protestant Bibles (but included in Roman Catholic Bibles) in part because their divinity was questioned based on the grounds that copies of the text existed in Greek but not Hebrew.
   2. Names – This can and does get confusing really fast, because sometimes names of individuals aren’t translated the same in all the books. For instance, the name: Judas (Greek) = Judah (Hebrew) = Jude (English)
4. When the Christian Bible became the Christian Bible – While I hate to draw on any learnings from Dan Brown’s DaVinci code – there is some truth to the idea that there are many different gospels and literary books. The Christian Bible as we know it wasn’t structured or canonized as we know it until 300-400 AD.
5. Out loud – The bible was intended to be read out loud. Initial writings were in scroll format and written in all capital letters without spacing, so it would have been difficult if not impossible to read it silently.  Moreover, reading it out loud allowed individuals to share it with others.

   Reading it out loud is definitely the way to go, even today.  I found listening to the Audible Bible 1 MILLION times better than trying to read it myself.

6. Prophecies & Prophets – There were a lot of prophets. The ones I found most fascinating where Apocalyptic Prophets, or individuals who foretell the end of time (which means most prophets).  One of the most fascinating aspects about prophecy is how biblical writers 1) established credibility and 2) historians use prophecies to date when a text is written.
   1. Credibility – When an individual wanted to make someone (or themselves) a prophet they would write themselves back in time. For example, if I wanted to establish prophetic gifts I would write as if I was born in 1960s and start predicating what would happen in the future up to present day and then make guesses about what happens next. Sound crazy, this definitely happened.
   2. Historical dating – The reason they know this happened is because there were prophets would get literally everything right up to a certain year and after that would never get things correct. Historians used these inconsistencies to determine when different texts were written
7. Revelation = Terrifying – If you’ve read this part of the New Testatment, it could literally give you nightmares. Two things, I learned…
   1. It is Revelation_ not Revelations. Lots of people say this wrong, it is the biblical equivalent of saying “Anyways”.
   2. Some historians believe that the Book of Revelation was meant to describe the downfall of Nero and the Roman Empire and may have already occurred (and/or has definitely occurred given the Roman Empire no longer exists).
8. YHWH – Pronounced, “Yahweh”, it is the tetragrammaton of the Old Testament spelling of the name of God. As I understand it, there was no way to summarize God in words, so early bible writers used YHWH to represent God without naming him .  Bonus fun fact from Noa… Religiously observant Jews are forbidden from saying the name of God when reading the Torah.
9. Creation Stories – Some historians believe that Genesis has two separate but equal creation stories, not one. (I’ll pause because I am sure your mind is blown). It is subtle, but grab your Kindle or Bible, flip to Genesis 1 and Genesis 2.  Beyond the obvious redundancy of the stories (where man is created twice), the two chapters have events occurring in different orders ([insert gasp here]).

Genesis 1:
Day 5: God whips up some fish and birds,
Day 6: God makes animals and Man,
Day 7: Rest.

But as the Thai like to say, Genesis is “Same, Same but Different”

Genesis 2:
Day Unknown: God forms Man. Boom.
Little Later: God seems man is lonely…
Little Later: God “will make a helper suitable for him” and brings forth wild animals and birds for Adam to name. So on and so forth… neat, huh?

10. Jesus = Fact – Specifically, historians agree with some certainty that Jesus existed. No credible historian would attempt to tackle the question of his divinity, but there is evidence to suggest that a person named Jesus existed and had followers.
    1. When you start to get to the divinity of Jesus, lots of really interesting ideas are offered, including:
       1. Jesus was always divine and came down to be with humans
       2. Jesus was adopted by God, while on Earth, and made divine through
       3. Jesus was human on Earth and became Divine when he died and ascended
       4. (My favorite) Jesus looked like he was human but was in fact divine, such that he was weightless. If Jesus walked on a wet beach he wouldn’t leave foot prints.

11. Jesus is a Ninja – Fact, Jesus trained as ninja under a wise shogun in Japan between 1207 and 1241 AD. Just seeing if you’re still reading.

 

Have a great weekend!