Tag Archives: Old Testament

Thomas Mann Poignantly Presents Shame in Old Testament Story

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PREFATORY NOTE: I have discovered that I have failed to respond to many comments over the past few years. This is not because I have so many responses! but because I am not completely on top of things, especially the intricacies of WordPress. I will try to do better!

I have a brother-in-law who has been a key figure in the development of my intellectual and spiritual life.  He is better educated, more accomplished, and more successful in all respects than I have been…or will be.  One gift several decades ago from his erudition was the Thomas Mann novel, “Joseph and His Brethren.”  I stumbled across that tome moments ago when perusing my library and it fell opened to a page, a paragraph of which I will quote shortly.  In this fictionalized story of Joseph from the Hebrew Old Testament Jacob has just learned of the apparent death of his beloved son, Joseph. Jacob was so overwhelmed that he proceeded to tear off, not only his upper garments in grief, but was in the process of what his friends and family realized would be a complete stripping of all his clothing.  This was such a profound gesture that the people turned away.  The following is one of the most powerful descriptions of shame I have ever discovered, reflecting the depth and power of this wonderful German novelist:

There is only one right and proper word for the feeling which was at the bottom of their action:  shame.  But one must understand it in its ultimate and often forgotten sense, as a monosyllabic description of the horror we feel when the primitive breaks through the layers of civilization, at the surface of which it is only active in a much softened and allegorical form.  We must regard the tearing of the upper garments in heavy sorrow as being of such a nature; it is the civilized and domesticated form of the original custom of shedding every covering and adornment considered as the badge of human dignity now destroyed and ruined by the extremity of human woe.  It is the abasement of man to mere creature  So it was with Jacob.  In the depth of his grief he went back to the original meaning, from the allegory to the crude thing itself and to the horrible reality.  He did what “one does not do”—and that, rightly considered, is the source of all horror.  For therein the undermost becomes the uppermost.  If, for instance, it had occurred to him to give utterance to the abandonment of his misery by bleating like a ram,, his people could not have felt more nauseated than they did.  (“Joseph and His Brethren,”  Thomas Mann)

Clinging to Guns & Religion, “Part Deux”!!

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Religion, like guns…as explored in my last post… is a contrivance but one that is a Divine intervention if we find the courage and humility to reach maturity and slough off the “letter of the law” dimension and wrestle with “the flesh,” the term the Apostle Paul used to describe the abysmal baggage of human-ness that we seek to avoid.   The word religion stems from, “re-ligio” which means “to bind together,” reflecting the human wisdom that we are a divided soul and need to be reunited with our self.  But this reuniting is painful as “the Fall” into human cognition, necessary for the creation of human culture, created us delightful…to a fault… personas that we are fearful of laying aside and allowing reunification with our inner Essence so that S/he can have expression.  We don’t realize that if we find the courage to go through the “crucifixion” necessary for this resurrection our persona will not be destroyed but merely integrated with our inner essence, giving the buried “Christ child” a chance to find expression in the form of a fully functioning authentic human being. But the “clinging to religion” that Obama recognized (see last post) gets in the way of the life process, individually and collectively.  And it is no accident that God—we find the perfect symbol for power and authority.  The ego has found a perfect expression to assert itself and with the slogan, MAGA, our country has found a mantra to energize a desire to return to past imperialistic glory.

“Clinging” in itself is central to the problem.  There is a popular bromide, “Love holds with an open hand.”  But in some circles, especially the conservative culture in which I was raised, “clinging” is an essential dimension of faith, illustrated in the classic hymn, “The Old Rugged Cross” with the line, “So we’ll cling to the old Rugged Cross….”  This is a stage of faith, very much related to a developmental stage in which we “cling” to our momma until maturity allows us to diminish the “clinging” and relax into a more open trusting with relationship with our Source.  This usually corresponds increasing trust in and with our very self, with others, and even life itself as we relax into the “loving embrace” of the One who “shaped us from our mothers womb.  Reminds me of the Old Testament wisdom, “Even the darkness is not dark to You, And the night is as bright as the day. Darkness and light are alike to You. For You formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother’s womb. I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Wonderful are Your works, And my soul knows it very well.…”

Are We Just “Dust Bunnies” Here on Earth?

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I like to tie together different pieces of literature together at times when the connection is very subtle at best.  Here is a collection of wisdom about the existential predicament of humankind, starting with the very creation of itself from the Psalmist David in the Old Testament:

Note here the relevance of the Shakespearean wisdom that I quote so often, “There is a Divinity that doeth shape our ends, rough hew them how we may.”  The Psalmist recognized the sentiment of many men and women that life is as if some architect is spinning the web of life in which we are all caught up and, indeed, is spinning the web of our own individual life.

14 I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.

15 My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.

16 Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them. (Psalm 139:14-16 King James Version (KJV)

Compare with this excerpt from the W. H. Auden poem, “In Sickness and In Health”:

What talent for the makeshift thought/a living corpus out of odds and ends ?/What pedagogic patience taught/Pre-occupied and savage elements/To dance into a segregated charm?/Who showed the whirlwind how to be an arm,/And gardened from the wilderness of space/The sensual properties of one dear face?

And then Shakespeare’s Hamlet, overwhelmed with existential angst, bemoaned his fate with the following:

… that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air—look you, this brave o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire—why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors. What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world. The paragon of animals. And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?

Here three literary greats, indeed one of them “Divinely” great, artfully put into words the mystery of how we came into being and asked the question, “What are we doing here?”  And take note of the “quintessence of dust” notion which brings to my mind the biblical admonition that we are but “dust of the earth,” an humble state to which we will return.  There is a sense in which we are but dust bunnies, bouncing about this lonely planet for a while.  However, therein lies our glory if we but have the courage to look beneath the surface of things, things which can appear grim on occasion.

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Here is a list of my blogs.  I invite you to check out the other two sometime.

https://anerrantbaptistpreacher.wordpress.com/

https://literarylew.wordpress.com/

https://theonlytruthinpolitics.wordpress.com/

The Courage to Be

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To be is to be vulnerable. To be is to live life on the edge, outside the comfort zone of those “well-worn words and ready phrases that build comfortable walls against the wilderness.” (Conrad Aiken) Theologian Paul Tillich wrote a marvelous book on this subject entitled, “The Courage to Be” in which he related this matter to Jahweh’s Old Testament declaration, “I am that I am” or “I am the Being One.” And it does take courage to venture into “be-ing” in our life and not merely living it on automatic pilot.

T. S. Eliot described this vulnerability as “an infinitely gentle, infinitely suffering thing.” Life is so fragile and we know this in the depth of our hearts but are mercifully spared too much awareness of this vulnerability. Eliot noted, “Human kind cannot bear too much reality.” And it is good that we know that we can’t and know how to find “fig leaves” to hide this nakedness most of the time. But it is so important to know that the “fig leaf” is there and to take it off occasionally and find that God will meet us there.

Silence is Golden

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Most of my life I have viewed Quakerism as quite strange. The notion of a service consisting almost entirely of sitting quietly just didn’t make any sense. “That’s just silly” I would have wanted to say. “Say something!” But now a significant portion of my weekly worship is spent in silent meditation and I see so clearly the significance of silence. Silence is necessary from time to time to give our “monkey mind” a rest, to follow the advice of the Psalmist, “Be still and know that I am God.” There is some fear that this “literarylew” thing I got going on is largely chatter and that one of these days God is going to “Todd Akin” me and just “shut this whole thing down.” I understand that the great Catholic theological Thomas Aquinas had a profound mystical experience in his early fifties and, after written many basic theological treatises of the Catholic faith, never wrote another thing the rest of his life. “It is all straw,” he supposedly said.

And the notion of silence in spirituality is very Indian. And the Quaker about whom I blogged this morning, Thomas Kelly, noted that he had consulted with Hindu spiritual teachers and had studied the teachings of the Vedas. That must have been a daring move for a Quaker in 1931 for I think of Quakers as a very conservative variant of the Christian faith and conservatives Christians look askance at Indian spirituality.

I have been drawn to the wisdom of Gerard Manley Hopkins on the subject of silence long before I had any reason to know why. In the poem, “The Habit of Perfection” he declares that only when we “shut up” and embrace silence can we acquire eloquence:

ELECTED Silence, sing to me
And beat upon my whorlèd ear,
Pipe me to pastures still and be
The music that I care to hear.

Shape nothing, lips; be lovely-dumb: 5
It is the shut, the curfew sent
From there where all surrenders come
Which only makes you eloquent.

Be shellèd, eyes, with double dark
And find the uncreated light: 10
This ruck and reel which you remark
Coils, keeps, and teases simple sight.

Palate, the hutch of tasty lust,
Desire not to be rinsed with wine:
The can must be so sweet, the crust 15
So fresh that come in fasts divine!

Nostrils, your careless breath that spend
Upon the stir and keep of pride,
What relish shall the censers send
Along the sanctuary side! 20

O feel-of-primrose hands, O feet
That want the yield of plushy sward,
But you shall walk the golden street
And you unhouse and house the Lord.

And, Poverty, be thou the bride 25
And now the marriage feast begun,
And lily-coloured clothes provide
Your spouse not laboured-at nor spun.

Jacque Ellul critique of the church

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Jacques Ellul (1912-1994) was a French philosopher and law professor who wrote also extensively in the areas of religion and sociology. His most important book was The Technological Society in which he argued that the rise of industry had created a “technological society” which had more or less destroyed the soul of man. His thesis was that as mankind adjusted to machine age he did so with such success that he was basically nothing more than “The Hollow Men” noted by T. S. Eliot.

But my favorite of his books is an exegesis of the book of Jonah, entitled, The Judgment of Jonah. The preface to this book, by Geoffrey Bromiley, describes the book as a “Christological commentary.” I would describe it also as a hard-hitting indictment of Christianity and the church. He argues that faith has succumbed to the pressures of the age and has become merely a sociological phenomenon, that faith is basically the function of indoctrination. He argues that the truth of the Bible is for the needy, the spiritually needy, who do not have comfort from the accoutrements of civilization. For example, he notes, “God always takes seriously the cry of a man in distress, of suffering man, of man face to face with death. What, perhaps, he does not take so seriously is the cold, calculated, rational decision of the man who weighs the odds and condescendingly accepts the hypothesis of God.” He writes that mankind “has the pretension that he can solve his own problems” and consequently has invented technology, the state, society, money, and the state. And I would add “religion” to the list.

God responds not to our better feelings, but to the desperate cry of the man who has no other help but God. God responds just because man is in trouble and has nowhere to turn.

…when man has somewhere to turn he does not pray to God and God does not come to him. As long as man can invent hopes and methods, he naturally suffers from the pretension that he can solve his own problems.

 

The wrath of god

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Michelle Bachman noted Sunday re the recent natural disasters, “I don’t know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians. We’ve had an earthquake; we’ve had a hurricane. He said, ‘Are you going to start listening to me here?'”

So Bachman again trotted out her Old Testament world view but then, conferring with her handlers, realized this was imprudent and tried to explain she was only speaking in jest.  “No, Michelle.  You can’t get out that easy.  Your mind is teeming with that…ahem…stuff.”   Her religious affiliations and her speech has been replete with material which reflects the view of God as some vengeful, punitive tyrant.  And, as is always the case, our perspective on God always reflects our perspective on life itself and reflects our own view point on life.  As the Bible says, “As a man speaketh, so is he.”  And, “out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.”

And, this perspective she offers is the reason she is a marketable political commodity in our current world.  Our country has millions of people who function on the basis of “concrete operational thinking.”  (See Jean Piaget re stages of cognitive development.)