Category: Religion

One of the reasons I came to Yemen was to learn some things about Islam. I have been consistently disappointed with this religion. It is the first one that I have looked into that hasn’t offered me anything at all. Jainism, Mormonism, pure land Buddhism, Soto Zen, Catholicism, everything I have ever looked into has given me something to think about. I get nothing, nada, zilch from Islam here in Yemen. A conversation I had with Matthew (a fellow student here and an incoming Cambridge student in their Islamic studies program) explained part of that to me. He pointed out that while Christians frequently engage in discussions or talks about the nature of God, Muslims frequently engage in discussions on the nature of piety. All of the Islamic thought and practice that I have seen is about what you are supposed to do instead of what it means. Most Christian thought revolves around salvation through faith and belief in Christ the savior as opposed to what you do. Not surprisingly, all of the muslim thought that I have encountered seems really shallow, and quite frankly, dull. I would never make it as a muslim (at least not in Yemen) because I would constantly be asking “Why?” Maybe my western biases are showing, but I need some mystery in my spiritual life. How can Jesus be God and His son at the same time? How could they be separated at the time of the crucifixion? Is Judas in hell? I know that these questions make a lot of people simply give up and figure that it’s all a crock. The trick is to assume that they are legitimate questions and explore what the ramifications of them are. Does Islam have questions like this? Do they encourage critical thinking about Mohammed (PBUH) and what the difference is between the teachings in the Koran vs. the cultural situation that the Prophet lived in? I believe that the answer to both of those questions for most people here in Yemen is “No.” I would love to hear about some of the “mysteries” of the Islamic faith and the kinds of spiritual depths that they can instigate. Nat, I’m looking at you:-) Do I need to talk to some Sufis for this kind of knowledge?

OK, everything I said about the Old Testament doesn’t go for the New. I’ve read Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Acts and I am most impressed. I had read one of the accounts before, but i don’t remember which one, probably Mark. Here are some random thoughts I’ve had so far:

Jesus totally kicks ass. He is the first one in the entire Bible that speaks with any authority. Everyone else (Moses, Abraham, Jacob, David, et. al.) would probably shrug their shoulders and say “That’s what God said,” if anyone questioned them. Jesus is the only one that knows which way is up. Perhaps my frustration from the Old Testament makes Jesus’ teachings seem even more authoritative.

My favorite Jesus moment. Someone asked about the truth of the resurrection, after all Moses and everyone else didn’t seem to mention it. Jesus pointed out that David and other prophets referred to “The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,” God is the God of the living, not of the dead so those people mentioned are alive. That blows my mind…

Matthew starts with the heritage of Jesus as traced through Joseph. What does Joseph have to do with anything? I thought God was Jesus’ father, so why trace through Joseph? Jesus wasn’t a descendant of David, there is none of David’s (or Joseph’s) blood in Him. I can understand if they did it through Mary (they don’t of course), but I see nothing that would change my notion of Joseph as the supportive step (or foster) father…

I begrudgingly admit that my reading of the Old Testament helps understand the New. I still stand by my thoughts that most of the Old Testament isn’t very useful and that most of the “prophecies” about the Messiah are incredibly vague. Why not a little more clarity? Perhaps I’m missing some stuff, but I don’t recall any prophecies about the Christian era other than the end of days. It sounds like people were expecting a literal descendant of David to rule on the throne forever, none of this dying and living in heaven stuff.

It’s shocking how dense the Apostles were. Jesus told some parables that I thought were pretty straightforward, but they stumped the Apostles. it makes me worry what else they missed of His teachings…

What, exactly, did Thaddeus and Bartholomew do? Maybe they come in later, but so far I don’t think they were credited with doing anything.

Judas is portrayed in a much more narrow way than I was anticipating. According to what I have read, there wasn’t any deliberation or even any thoughts as to what he was going through, he was just evil. I’ve always found this to be odd, he was one of Jesus’ disciples and he was instrumental in the events that lead to the salvation of all mankind, so where’s the love for Judas?

Jesus admitted that Moses had “put in” that whole thing about divorce to make people (men) happy. Was there anything else he put in there?

Since Gentiles weren’t expected to follow Mosaic or Levitical law, what is it that we nonJews are supposed to do? Jesus mentions a handful of commandments, but it sounds like the whole of Mosaic and Levitical law are not applicable to us. That raises interesting questions about a variety of “sins.”

There is a tremendous amount of duplication of the description of what Jesus did. On one hand, this makes it seem that these were the most important things that He did. Of course, if He was God, then it would seem like everything He did would be important. Even “Pass the salt,” would have some sort of importance if God said it. This is my biggest frustration with the New Testament, we get relatively little Jesus. Not only are huge parts of His life missing, but huge parts of His days of preaching. He did that for what, three years? And we get a couple hundred pages worth of description and several thousand of His words. Very disappointing… The other thing that the duplication does is it makes you winder about the provenance of the books. It really sounds like they were copied from a common source with minor embellishments…

More thoughts to come as I think of them…

OK, I’ve basically finished the Old Testament. I did not read every single word, I really don’t have the patience. Many of the books (especially the prophets) were simply the warnings about the judgement of God on Israel and Judah. They talk about how the people and kings of Israel and Judah worshiped other gods and how angry God was over and over and over. Seriously, I estimate that 3/4 of the Old Testament can be paraphrased with, “You have sinned against God, you and your descendants will be punished by marauding armies from other nations. You will mostly be wiped out, but the people that survive will come back from exile and enjoy a great life as long as they do what they are supposed to.” If idol worship isn’t a problem, you can pretty much ignore the vast majority of the Old Testament if you’re a Christian. I also did not have the patience to read about the judgement on the other nations like Babylon and Edom. What are we supposed to do with prophecies that have already come to pass? Why should we care about these particular passages when those nations and gods are long gone? There were a few opaque references to what I assume is the Messiah. Most of them are pretty vague, and there is more than a little reaching needed in order to think that the Messiah is involved at all. On top of that, for every sentence about the Messiah, there are probably 100-150 about Babylon or the Philistines. I also couldn’t help but notice the complete lack of prophecies about the Romans, Islam, or the Nazis. Sure, maybe God expected everyone to follow Jesus, but there are zero prophecies about Christians and their troubles with the aforementioned groups. The signal to noise ratio is pretty low in most of the books. I really had to search for anything of value that I could take away from most books.

There are exceptions of course. Jonah was illuminating, and mercifully short. Job is, in my mind, the standout in the Old Testament. It asks some pretty direct, critical questions of God, about faith, and the payout we should expect. Some of those questions are answered, sort of. It’s complicated, but at least it deals with some real religious issues and isn’t mostly irrelevant history like the rest of the Old Testament. Read Job, maybe Jonah, but don’t bother with the rest unless you need to know every prophecy against those good for nothing Israelites…

In my mind, Job is the first book in the Old Testament worth reading. The books before that don’t really engage the (Christian) reader with any sort of religious thought. It’s mostly just history and laws that don’t necessarily apply to you. I will say that Ezra was a relief. Up until that point, the books were written in such a way that God was a tangible, known quantity when He clearly wasn’t. They wrote the books with the idea of, “Look, there’s God and He’s doing X.” Well, if God’s motives and intentions were so transparent, most of what happened in the Old Testament wouldn’t have happened. It’s clear to me that all of the things that happened in Judges, the Samuels, both Kings, and both Chronicles were histories of things that happened and were later ascribed to God’s actions. God may or may not have been involved but it is clear to me that the authors of those books didn’t really have any idea. After all, if God were directly involved with everything that they wrote about you wouldn’t come away from those books with the idea that you better do what God says or else he’ll smite you… eventually. Or maybe the generation after you, or maybe not. In any case everything in those books are really important… if you’re the king of Israel.

Seriously, everything was about the kings, but what about all the people? Yes, they did what was evil in the Lord’s sight, but it sounds like there were entire generations, with their kings, that got away with it. I would hope to see a more consistent doling out of justice… This gets back to my question about the afterlife. All of what happened in those books would have been OK if there were some mention of people getting their just desserts after they died.

So yeah, I’ve been pretty disappointed in the Old Testament so far, but Job is different. Job is troubling, complicated, and I don’t quite understand it. There does seem to be some good information in there though and some really good questions. This was the third time I had read this particular book, and I think I’ll need to read it a few more times… Some of the more interesting tidbits for me are:

1) Satan is named and shown to be a real tormentor, but with God’s cooperation. God gives him permission to do these things to Job. Does that imply that all bad things are done with God’s permission?

2) Job calls out for an intermediary between him and God. This would seem to put the Catholic practice of praying to Mary or any one of the myriad saints into question. After all, no one in the Old Testament was shown to be praying to Abraham or Moses for intervention. Maybe it’s just a time issue, maybe God hadn’t gotten around to implementing that yet. I have a feeling that some people will see this as foretelling the coming of Jesus. The only problem with that is that if Jesus is God, how is He an intermediary?

Anyway, Job made me think and that’s a good thing. I hope there’s more like Job to come!

There were a few terms I kept running into during my reading of the Old Testament that I wanted to know more about. First up was Baal. Turns out there were a bunch of Baals, it was also a term for “father,” “lord,” or “master.” He was your typical fertility, crop, good weather god for the most part. Some people worked in human sacrifice, probably from the cult of Molech. How’s this for creepy, there was a huge bronze statue of Molech that was hollow. They would keep a fire burning in it, making the statue glow a dull red. People would place their first born son or daughter in its hands and through an ingenious mechanism, the hands would move up and drop the child into its mouth where the baby would drop inside and burn to death… The priests would dance around and cut themselves while this was going on and there would be musicians playing flutes, harps, and tambourines to drown out the screams. Can’t say as I’m sorry to see that cult fade away…

I made the mistake of looking up “temple prostitutes” on the web. I had seen this term a couple of times and didn’t really know what it meant. Well, it turns out that various cults used sex as part of their services. It was to call the divine power, bring good luck, etc. There were both male and female shrine prostitutes and there is little or no evidence that they had sex with the same sex. Well, this has caused considerable outrage among the more wacko, gays are evil incarnate crowd. Apparently, the term shrine or temple prostitute replaced “sodomite” that was used in the original King James version of the Bible. People are outraged that any reference that paints gays in a negative light be changed, accuracy be damned. Granted, I don’t have the background to argue this from first hand sources, but from what I can tell, the term shrine prostitute is a more accurate translation and it is MUCH more specific as to what is being disallowed. The anti-gay folks should just relax, there are still plenty of references of man on man sex as being forbidden and/or shown in a negative light. The whole incident with Lot and the angels in Sodom, God’s judgement on Sodom and Gomorra, there’s a part in Leviticus that explicitly states that sex between men is forbidden (or is anathema to the Lord or some other language like that). If there really was a plot to make homosexuality look “more acceptable” in the Bible, those last things would be the things getting revised, not a correction of sloppy translation of a vague term.

i really get a kick out of people getting all in a lather because a verse in a Bible is not how they learned it, inevitably from the King James version. They say you can’t alter the “word of God” and that it is blasphemy. How can people be so thick to miss the fact that they are reading a translation? And the texts that the translators are working from aren’t from anywhere near the time of those things happening. Especially when it comes to the Old Testament, who knows how many times those books were revised, edited, or just “neatened up” in order to clarify things. There is no way to know what was originally written. To me, this is a good thing. How can anyone, with a straight face, tell me that God’s will can be explicitly stated with something as clumsy as language, especially through so many translations. Anything, yes anything, that God “says” will be considerably simplified and yes, mangled when put into one of our languages. We can only receive or understand a small portion of “The Truth.” Get over it people…

As I read through Samuel I and II (why is the second one called Samuel? he only makes a brief, posthumous cameo…) and Kings, I got to thinking about all of the Idol worship that was going on. Clearly, we are not getting the entire story. I would think that people would only worship whatever benefitted them. There are several references to the foreign women corrupting the Israelite men, but I don’t think that their worship patterns can be chalked up to something as simple as getting laid. I wonder what worshipping Baal did for them? Any religion that calls for sacrificing your own son or daughter must have some sort of pull if it is to continue. It would be interesting to see what miracles people ascribed to Baal and the other gods that they worshipped.

So far, there hasn’t been any reference to heaven or hell. I think that this is probably a big reason why there was so much idol worship. If all you have is this life, you will do whatever takes to make it a good one. If there is no afterlife, there isn’t much downside to worshipping idols. You’re going to die either way, you might as well worship whoever promises, and delivers the goods. I’m not sure when the concept of an afterlife comes into play. The cynic might ask if the afterlife was always there or if it was created by God (or His priests?) to keep people in line. I, as always, would never ask such a question… Incentives matter, and it is always profitable to look at how people react to given incentives. In Kings, worshipping God definately seemed to be on the wane, I’ll see what kind of incentives are created to bring people back. That’s the trouble of reading a book when you already know when it ends:-)

I read Judges last night and there was yet another rather disturbing story that I don’t know what to make of. So a guy and his concubine go to a town on the way back to his place. They specifically picked this place in order to be in a Jewish town and not a Gentile one. Some old guy offers them a place to stay in his house. Then it’s a repeat of what happened with Lot and the angels with a twist. Various townspeople pound on the door of the old man’s place demanding that he put the visitor outside because they want to have sex with him. The old man says no, that would be terrible, but he offers his virgin daughter and the man’s concubine instead. There is some discussion and then they throw the concubine outside. She is raped all night until she dies. The next morning, the man collects the body and goes home. He then cuts here body into 12 pieces and sends a piece to each tribe of Israel as “evidence” of the crime. The Israelites are so outraged they band together and attack the tribe of Benjamin (they were the ones responsible for the town in which this happened). There are heavy losses on both sides, but the tribe of Benjamin is almost wiped out, there are only 400 something men left. The Israelites feel bad for the men because they swore that they would never allow their daughters to mary someone from that tribe. So they arrange a plan where the men from the tribe of Benjamin can steal women from other tribes. This would be OK since they weren’t given to them…

I have a very simple question. WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT ALL ABOUT? It seems as though there is at least one story like this in each of the old testament books I’ve read so far. What are we supposed to do or think about these things? What are you supposed to say to your children when you encourage them to read the Bible and they come across a story like this? I am willing to believe that there are very useful parts of the Bible, and that sometimes terrible things can be very instructive, but I haven’t seen anything useful about these types of stories so far. I sure hope that the quality of material improves in the Old Testament, I’m getting downright discouraged…

I finished up Deuteronomy and Joshua. I think that everyone should read Joshua, not because of the deep religious insights contained in it, but to get a feel for the old testament God. When God gave the Israelites their land, He gave them orders to kill every living thing in the towns and cities. Every man, woman, child, and animal. When they did not do this once, God came down on them very hard. For every person that says that “God is love,” or some such nonsense needs to read these books. The people that were slaughtered (that’s the word used in many parts, at least in this translation) had never had any dealings with the Israelites, most had never shown any animosity to them either. God commanded that they be killed completely, that they be wiped off the face of the earth, so they were.

It’s quite chilling really. I think that it’s important to remember this episode when dealing with other religions that are still stuck in “Old Testament mode.” Many Jews and Muslims still feel that they might be commanded to kill people in God’s name. Christians shy away from this thank God, but they need to keep their heritage in mind.

I mentioned being confused about who Cain married. Seems like I’m not the only one. The question actually played an important role in the Scopes’ monkey trial. The inability of the expert witness to identify who Cain married supposedly lead to an inability to trust scripture and thus played a role in the ultimate outcome of the trial… Cain’s wife is not named, but the Bible says that he went to a city to find his wife. There are a couple of options here for the believers of the literal word. One of them is that Adam and Eve had many children, not all of them are named in the Bible. Cain simply married one of his many sisters… The fact that he went to a “city” doesn’t bother these people, the word just means something different than it does today. Not that any other words would mean something different…. Here’s my take, people need to embrace the fact that the Bible is not complete, that there are huge gaps in it. According to the Bible, Adam lived for 900 something years, but after fathering Cain and Abel, you don’t hear anything else about him. It’s as if he retired and didn’t learn anything or do anything in his remaining 800 years… These gaps don’t necessarily have to lead to not trusting it (although they certainly could), it just means that we have to use our heads and, dare I say it, our imaginations to fill in the blanks.

In Leviticus, there is a rule saying that you shouldn’t weave linen and wool together and that you should not wear clothes made of two different cloths. That seems really odd, at least with a lot of the other nit picking rules there was a health upshot to it. Not this one. I can imagine the conversation between Moses and God going something like this…

“YOU MAY NOT WEAR DACRON/POLYESTER BLENDS, I AM THE LORD YOUR GOD AND THIS IS MY RULE GIVEN TO MY PEOPLE”
“Ummm, OK Lord, but what is it?”
“OH, IT IS EVIL, YOU HAVE NO IDEA… TRUST ME, IT IS AN ABOMINATION TO WEAR CLOTHES MADE OF THIS COMBINATION”
“Alright, what was that again? Dcranonester?”
“DO NOT TRY MY PATIENCE! I HAVE GIVEN YOU MY RULE, NOW GO TELL THE PEOPLE!”
“Yes, of course…”
So it comes out as the only thing Moses could understand, linen/wool combinations…. I personally think that there had to be quite a few misunderstandings between the supreme being and His creations. Look at what Jesus did to Levitical law, he pretty much gutted it. Either they got it wrong to begin with, they modified it over time, or God just changed His mind… I lean towards the first two options, but the third is certainly a possibility…

Another thing that strikes you as you read the Old Testament is how everything takes place in one relatively small area of the world. There isn’t any mention of Africa, Europe, the vast bulk of Asia or the Americas of course. At the time it was written, and for the people reading it, it probably covered everything that needed to be. But we are reading it now and we are aware of parallel histories happening all over the globe. Ancient Greece, ancient China and Japan, etc, these histories are completely outside of the Biblical narrative. Only a fool would deny that they existed, but what to make of them from a Christian perspective? It’s a deep question. To me, the only way to make sense of it is one that many Christians don’t like. God (if He truly is all powerful and the only God) most likely communicated with these people as well. I know that many, if not most Christians do not like the “many religions, one God” theory, but I don’t see any way around it. I’d like to hear some other reason why “the message” still has not gotten to many people on this earth despite the fact that all this stuff happened at least 2000 years ago…

OK, I’ve finished Numbers. This one was at least interesting since stuff happened. It’s a real page turner… The Israelites did this, they killed people, the Israelites disobey God, God smites the Israelites, etc… If a cynic were to read this, it would only confirm his idea that this stuff is all made up. Despite being led around by a pillar of fire and eating manna from heaven, the Israelites continue to doubt Moses and question God. Obviously, the miraculous things didn’t actually happen and people were reacting to the bossing around by Moses. How else could people rebel? I have to admit, this has some appeal, it is far easier to believe that Moses did all this stuff (minus the pillar of flame and the appearance of God) himself and this caused the Israelites to rebel. Of course that also raises the question of how did they get out of Egypt if it wasn’t for the miracles? If Moses was indeed manipulating the Israelites for his (and his brother’s) benefit, why didn’t he go across the Jordan river?

Lots of questions either way really. I find the story of the Israelites rebelling to be rather comforting actually. They were living with obvious signs of God every day and managed to question Him anyway. I dunno, maybe they were stupid, but I think that it’s a great example of human behavior. “Sure, OK, He feeds us with manna from heaven every day, leads us with a pillar of fire at night, delivered us from Pharaoh, but defeating the people across the Jordan river? C’mon, how stupid does He think we are?” That is far more extreme than the typical jew or Christian today, but the basic concept and lesson still applies…

Once again, I can’t recommend this book to anyone that wants to be convinced, there is plenty to question if you are so inclined. I keep hoping that one of these books will really show me what all the fuss about the Bible really is, I haven’t seen it yet…

My mother brought me a Bible when we met up in China. I’m interested in some of the things that people can get out of it on matters of freedom of choice. I have read some books in there before (Genesis, Job, John) but I’ve never read the entire thing before. I’m starting at the beginning and making my way through it. So far, I’ve gotten through Genesis, Exodus, and Leviticus. I’m halfway through Numbers…

I’ve said it before, Genesis doesn’t make much sense from a religious standpoint. It tells the story of the creation of course, but it also tells the story of the earliest people. For me, it gives me more questions than answers. Who did Cain marry? Why did everyone, including babies and animals, need to die in the flood? Genesis also has many examples of betrayal, incest, lying, etc. among the “chosen” people with no commentary given. Lot’s daughters get him drunk and have sex with him to have children. Was that good, bad, or what? What the hell are we supposed to think of that now? Jacob stole Esau’s blessing and birthright with no consequences. So is lying and deception OK? Genesis is, IMO, a terrible thing to read if you’re looking for information or clarification on… anything really.

I also do not understand the relevance of Leviticus. The ark of the covenant does not exist so there is no reason for the tabernacle to exist either. Granted, if you are jewish, there are parts of Mosaic law explained there, but what are Christians supposed to do with this information? I also have a very hard time believing and/or understanding why God would care about the tiny details of the tabernacle. What materials to make it of, what dimensions each piece should be, the exact dimensions of the buildings, etc. A cynic might say that Moses was just making it up as he went along, setting his brother up with the sweet position of high priest etc. I of course would never suggest such a thing..:-) Anyway, it seems like most, if not all of the book is overturned for Christians, so I’m not sure why we read it…

I’m reading the New Living Revised translation and I have to say that it is very readable, but sometimes the language is a little jarring. Language like “bumper crop” is very clear, but doesn’t seem to be in the spirit of the language of the old testament. So far, my opinion that the Bible is a lousy book to read if you want to understand Christianity is fully supported. I’ll report back if something changes my mind.