Sheep and Goats

Category: Workmans Theodicy

  • Moab the Blowhard: Isaiah 16

    With the congregation schedule calling for Isaiah 14-16 to be considered, I was a little bummed to be assigned the 16th chapter for the oral Bible reading. 14 looks more interesting. That’s the one where the Grave is greeting newcomers, as though Mick Jagger, ‘Pleased to meet you. Hope you guess my name. Didn’t you used to be a hotshot back in the day?’ I avoided that song for a long time upon becoming a Jehovah’s Witness. How can a Christian show “sympathy for the devil?” But, in time I discovered it’s not sympathy for him at all—it’s just an expose of his methods.

    Sympathy for ‘Sympathy for the Devil’

    In the case of Isaiah 14, it is ‘sympathy for Sheol,’ usually translated the Grave—big G because it is not an individual grave but the fate of all humankind. Good or bad, it makes no difference. It is also anthropomorphized. It’s not a place of conscious existence. Isaiah 14 is very much in the spirit of Odysseus popping in on Hades during his long voyage home. ‘Man, it sucks here,’ everyone tells him. But it is only a metaphorical place—the state of the dead.

    Ah, well—no use pining away for what isn’t. For me, it is Isaiah 16. Maybe it’s sort of a penance for me for squabbling with my brother when we were both kids. 16, too, is sort of a sibling rivalry on steroids, except it is cousins, not siblings. There is a long, long history of bad blood between Moab and Israel and in 16 it comes to a head. It was Moab who long ago hired a prophet called Balaam and sent him into Israel just to mess with them. As for me, I long ago got over my contentions with my brothers. Though, there are times when I review family photos, like this one, and feel bitter regret that I did not ram his fat head into this cake. I mean, it was a perfect opportunity and I let it slip right through my fingers. It has tormented me my entire life:

    Isaiah 16 begins—it’s a missive to Moab: “Send a ram to the ruler of the land, From Sela through the wilderness To the mountain of the daughter of Zion.” Yeah, that’s what I wanted my brother to do for me: send me a tribute! I was the “ruler of land.” I was the firstborn! That means he should kowtow to me. Instead, he did everything in his power to annoy me!” 

    “Sorry, Tom” he says now, “it was just that you were so easy to annoy.” I was not! And even if I was, wasn’t I the firstborn? Where did I read that the second-born causes major upheaval in a family, since the parents now have to split their attention?

    There are some real overtures to Moab in the next few verses, that they will do the right thing in the face of Assyrian onslaught and show mercy to the refugees. “Conceal the dispersed and do not betray those fleeing.” (vs 3) But then, Isaiah has to go talking Jesus to them (vs 5) and it all comes to naught because they already gots their own church—that of Chemoth. (Grumble, grumble—what’s a wannabe Bible scholar to do? When I enter Moab’s god, Chemoth, AI changes it to “chemotherapy.”)

    Alas, we come to the real problem with verses 6-7:

    “We have heard about the pride of Moab—he is very proud— His haughtiness and his pride and his fury; But his empty talk will come to nothing. So Moab will wail for Moab.” THAT’S who they will be concerned for: themselves.

    Why do I take such perverse satisfaction in the fact that Stanley Kubrick, the director of 2001: A Space Odyssey, couldn’t stand Carl Sagan? ‘Keep that supercilious fellow away from me,’ he told his collaborator Arthur C. Clarke, who had thought their initial luncheon date had gone well. I think it is a lifetime of Bible training to the effect that modesty is more befitting in a human than pride. There are enough brilliant people around who are humble (Kubrick was one of them, consistently described as friendly, unassuming, and even a “peasant” in Michael Benton’s book on the making of 2001) that to suffer through an arrogant jerk is simply unnecessary—unless you are unfortunate enough to find yourself working for him.

    Cornell, where he hails from as a professor who never showed up to teach class, treats him as a god. The “Sagan Planet Walk,” a scale model of the solar system, characterizes that town, spanning three quarters of a mile, with the sun in the Ithaca Commons. Notwithstanding that Kubrick didn’t like him, he invited him and a few other leading scientists to introduce 2001, because he feared the movie might be too far ahead of its time. Sagan was the only one who wanted payment. He was the only one to demand editorial control. The offer was withdrawn. 

    If he had ever ordered his wine from Moab, he would have found that offer was withdrawn to. A one-time agricultural powerhouse, though Moab’s vineyards “reached as far as Jazer,” extended “into the wilderness,” and “spread out and gone as far as the sea,” (implying exports) it would all come to nothing when Assyria was through. (vs 8-9)

    If he strutted around in life, nonetheless, Sagan was humble in death—I’ll give him that. His gravesite is in Ithaca’s Lakeview Cemetery, a serene and park-like place on the hillside. It features a simply headstone, not the 2001-like monolith that one might expect. As though it was, however, pilgrims will leave blue marbles as tributes referencing his “Pale Blue Dot” characterization of the earth from space. It recalls for me a plea on social media from a scientist to his fellows that they be “intellectually humble.” Is humility such a quality that you can sub-divide it, that as long as you are intellectually humble, you don’t have to worry about being actually humble? 

    It sort of recalls what I wrote in ‘A Workman’s Theodicy’ about the social benefits of being as scientist: “It’s a good gig to be a scientist. You don’t see poverty. You don’t see dirt. You get to hang out with smart people at the university. Everyone you meet likes to read. To be sure, you do see plenty of proud and stubborn people, but as a fellow scientist, they admit you into the club. What’s not to like? You get to hang up in your lab Far Side cartoons, such as the one of the scientists fleeing the lab like kids in frock coats upon hearing the ting-a-ling of the ice cream man—nobody enjoys those cartoons more than scientists, I am told.”

    But enough of bashing scientists. I’m just envious because I missed the boat on that one. It’s Moab’s pride that we’re talking about.* Here it is revealed in the Mesha Stele (Moabite Stone). It’s a black basalt monument erected around 840 BCE by King Mesha of Moab. It stands about 3–4 feet tall, inscribed with 34 lines in the Moabite language, a Canaanite dialect very close to Hebrew, written in a Phoenician-related script. The original was destroyed but not before a paper-mâché impression was made of it, which not sits in Louvre Museum in Paris. On it, Mesha boasts how Chemosh totally crushed Israel. “Israel has perished forever!” it reads. A light dusting, the Bible itself reveals at 2 Kings 3.

    These ancient kings were invariably blowhards. Their scribes had no choice but to record victories, if they valued their heads. Typically, the would up the numbers along the way, to keep their bosses happy. Bob Brier, the Egyptologist tells of one pharoah who records stunning victory after victory, each one closer to home, as he was retreating. It is in striking contrast to Bible writers, who recorded not only Israelite victories, but also defeats.

    The Mesha Stele is also the earliest known reference to the Tetragrammaton, outside of the Bible itself. There is, arguably an earlier Egyptian reference, but it is in that language and thus is truncated to three consonants, making in a ‘Trigrammaton’—who gives a hoot about one of those?

    *(the expression ‘That’s what I’m talkin’ about’ is so dumb that it became an instant hit in our family. Even my 90-year-old dad, upon laying down a Scrabble word, would say, ‘That’s what I’m talkin’ about.’ This is the same dad whom I never knew had a Jersey accent until one day when my daughter took to imitating him.)

    ******  The bookstore

  • The Scrappy Days of Long Ago

    The really scrappy days of Jehovah’s Witnesses versus mainstream denominations was forged in the time of the World Wars. Then, the clergy ardently followed the flag on both sides during both wars, afterwards presuming to slip once again into that comfortable chair of spokesman for the Prince of Peace. Witnesses called them on it. After all, if you are not going to stand up for peace in time of war, just when do you stand up for it?

    “It was long ago. The burning heat has quelled. Religion is too busy licking its wounds to mess much with the Witnesses and the Witnesses in turn no longer provoke them. I regret how I once answered a fellow at the door who sneered at my introduction with, “No thanks. I’m Christian!” The unmistakable implication was that I was not. In faux befuddlement, I replied that only a Christian would do what I was doing, and that “frankly, I’m a little surprised that you’re not doing it yourself.” Fade smug smile—a beautiful sight. But I regret it and would not do it today. It made an enemy. True, he already was one but why cement it in place? Why feed the next Witness who visits him to the sharks? And it didn’t have to be. It could have been modified so easily had I only thought of it. That second line could have been an observation that he, too, has a ministry. We may not go about it in the same way but we both go about it. If it turns out that he doesn’t—that he just sits on his rear end—why rub his nose in it? What purpose does it serve? You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.

    “Another house to call on was the rectory of a church. When it came up, Sister Hardliner wanted to accompany me, but I declined. “You’ll get into a fight,” I said. Instantly, I was struck with remorse, for her feelings were hurt. But it would have turned out that way. She is from the 60s generation. She would have heard out the man patiently, then interjected. “Okay, now let’s see what the Bible has to say,” as though taking for granted that he knew nothing of the book.

    “At another door, an evangelical determined to fight—and if it is not they, it is us—launched into his spiel on what was wrong with Jehovah’s Witnesses. I said, “Look, why don’t we just agree that you think we’re doing it all wrong and we think you’re doing it all wrong? You’d steal our sheep in a heartbeat if you could and we’d do the same to you. Got it. We do it differently. But the point is, we’re both doing it, and we live in a world where more and more people are not.” Instantly, an antagonist became a confidant. We went on to discuss mutual challenges to those who would live by faith.

    “The thaw is slow to develop. It doesn’t catch on everywhere. It doesn’t mean that Witnesses have grown chummy. The differences remain and will have to be ironed out at some point, but why lead with them? Some still prefer the old days of squabbling. Some even feel it their duty to lambaste “Babylon the Great.” But why kick the old lady when she is down? Witnesses kicked her when she was up! These days, everyone kicks her. All Witnesses ever wanted was to level the playing field, a goal that was realized decades ago.

    tree branch covered with frosted ice
    Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

    “However, in a developing land, the clergy appears to be up to its old tricks. My missionary friends tell of visiting a few remote families of their congregation so as to keep them in the loop. Their visits are a sensation; they end up playing sports with the children. All the area children join in and a group Bible study follows. Word soon gets around that the village church pastor is upset and has ruled that any child of his parishioners, by far the majority, who join in can neither attend community services nor receive presents during the holidays.

    “It is so mean,” my friend says. “They’re ten-year-olds!” fatherless for the most part, their dads killed off in war or genocide. Some are orphans.”

    (from: ‘A Workman’s Theodicy: Why Bad Things Happen’—except for the first paragraph, which serves as introduction here.)

    ******  The bookstore

  • An End of War: What is God Waiting For?

    Q: If God really can bring an end to war so easily, then what is he waiting for? After all, the longer he delays, the more generations live and die in suffering.

    Yes, they do, but it is reversible through the provision of resurrection. In time, former distresses will be forgotten, as though a bad dream.

    One must not rush a trial. One must allow it to play out, distressing as it may be to those under the gun. For Witnesses, the question to be determined arose at the very beginning of human creation, with Adam rejecting God’s right to rule for his own. God could eliminate them and start again, but who’s to say the next pair won’t raise the same point? Better to let it play out.

    The overall Bible tale is that, starting with this rebellion, God allows humans to make good on their claim of independence from him. He allows them to devise their own governments down through the ages, their own economies, justice, ethics, inventions—organize or disorganize any way they will. Only when the results become the absolute trainwreck that human rule is today does the question begin to be answered. Questions answered and precedent supplied, then God can forcibly bring about the rule by his Son.

    It’s the theme of a book I wrote not too long ago, entitled “A Workman’s Theodicy: Why Bad Things Happen.” A theodicy is a theological term referring to the attempts to answer how a God of love would coexist with evil and suffering. It is among the oldest questions of time, and likely the most important:

    ​

    This ‘Workman’s Theodicy’ is centered in free will. Is such a vital component of life or not? Free will does make a bad course possible, but it also makes a good course so much more meaningful. How meaningful is someone’s love if you know they have been programmed so that they cannot respond in any other way? The trial has to play out. The consequences of human independence from God must become manifest.

    God has chosen not to be an enabler, allowing human rebellion but making sure nothing REALLY bad happens. Those who deal with harmful and/or addictive behaviors know that enabling is a dead end. Enablers allow, and even encourage, destructive behavior, charging someone else to prevent the mess that inevitably results. Such ones don’t actually hate what is bad. They just hate the symptoms of what is bad and want someone else to clean those up. There are critics of the Witnesses who complain about “manipulation” and “control,” but appear to want manipulation and control to be woven into the very fabric of life, so that humans never have to face the consequences of their destructive conduct.

    There are no end of negative consequences from going independent of God. Were their wish to come true, that the really bad consequences of independence from God were wiped away, complaints would soon coalesce about the next worst things on the list—why doesn’t God prevent those, too? No. This is just recommending that God be an enabler. It is something he will not do, for our sakes as well as his own.

    “A cat that sits on a hot stove will never sit on a hot stove again”—attributed to Mark Twain. “Nor will it set on a cold stove, because they all look hot.” That is the goal: to keep humans away from the “stove” of self-rule, cold that can so easily turn to hot, with all its inherent hobbling consequences.

    A million years into everlasting life, when people have been unshackled from sin to be all that they can be, the intense suffering some underwent during a few of their 70 or 80 years will not be something they hold a grudge over. It is as that illustration goes that Witnesses sometimes use: parents will submit a child to a painful operation if they know that it is necessary to future happy and healthy life.

    ******  The bookstore

  • A Gilead Instructor Speaks About Job

    In a group, one Witness said. “I really like Brother Noumair’s talks. He’s a good speaker.” My friend waited . . . and waited . . . and waited . . .and then burst out laughing. She was waiting for a B part—an example, a qualification, a contrast. Nope. That was it, the complete comment. “*Everybody* likes Brother Noumair’s talks,” she told me. She had just assumed there would be a B part.

    I thought of that exchange with regard to a short talk he gave recently about Job. “He’s a digger,” my wife says. I mean, the guy conducts the Gilead school, so of course they are going to select someone who has a gift for “digging.”

    My latest book, ‘A Workman’s Theodicy: Why Bad Things Happen’ opens with a verse-by-verse discussion of Job. It takes up 30% of the book. For the most part, it departs from whatever the Witness organization has said. In fact, it has to. A review of the JW Library app reveals large swaths of Job untouched by Watchtower publications, and some of the verses that are touched just lead to some type of ‘Bible trivia,’ like what the “skin of your teeth” means. My book instead considers a wide range of commentators. Since some regard the Book of Job as the greatest literary work of all time, it is not hard to find commentators

    I would have squeezed Noumair’s remarks in there, somehow, had the book not already been released. They are that unique. He highlights the confrontation between Jehovah and Satan that results in a permitted test on Job’s integrity. He reviews verses to show that every inch of the way, Jehovah is in complete control, as he reveals what is in the Devil’s heart and allows an issue to be settled. As soon as it is settled, “the gavel goes down” and Job’s state of captivity, which likely lasted less than a year, is reversed. The lesson? Confidence in God’s power, which in turn leads to confidence on the part of those who trust him. And the assurance that trials, once they are endured, come to an end.

    ‘A Workman’s Theodicy’ goes on to cover a wide range of theologians, some of whom have asserted things nearly unrecognizable to those of any traditional Bible community. Scholars widely regard Job as a product of two books fused together. The first two and the final chapter are part of a “fable.” The poetry in between represents the “theology” of maybe one, maybe multiple authors. (Opinions differ) “Is the intellectual appeal of this approach that by so dividing Job into two portions, you are in position to understand neither?” I explore the question.

    The book also looks at the theology of a popular Jewish rabbi, Harold Kushner, who has written much on Job and the light it sheds on God’s coexistence with evil. Guided by modern critical techniques, he all but presents Satan as God’s hit man, assigned to do his dirty work. He does not sense any particular enmity between the two parties—they work as a team, in his view. He also resolves the question of evil by deciding that God is not all-powerful. He means well, but he is at time outmaneuvered by “Leviathan,” to whom he assigns a new meaning.

    It is too bad I couldn’t have squeezed Noumair in the book. Maybe I will in case I revise it later. He would have made a fine addition. See: “We Can Endure Like Job,” a talk searchable at JW*org.

    ******’available here:  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F2HDS4Z1

  • Jehovah’s Witnesses—“Micro” “Macro” evolution and abiogenesis

    In the main, Jehovah’s Witnesses have no problem with “micro-evolution,” the stuff of bird beak variations that Darwin found on the islands. Where they object to it, it is because of correctly anticipating the truckloads of dogma that atheists will drive through the door it cracks open. 

    One can always argue with “macro-evolution” but there hardly seems a point. Plenty of religious people will say: ‘Yes, God created life and he did it by means of evolution.’ Better to focus on ‘abiogenesis,’ the origin of life. Did it happen on its own? Or did it require the “spark” of God? Standing up to macro is probably worth doing, but nothing gets the job done like standing up to spontaneous abiogenesis. This is what the most recent Watchtower publications do, such as ‘The Origin of Life: Five Questions Worth Asking.’ The last book to seriously take on macro was 40 years ago: ‘Life—How Did it Get Here? By Evolution or by Creation?’

    I wrote a book recently entitled: ‘A Workman’s Theodicy: Why Bad Things Happen.’ (searchable on Amazon) An appendix section examines the progress that scientists specializing in origin of life have made. As much as I would like to say, ‘just buy the book,’ most of that material is available free, in less polished form, here.

    It fits in the Workman’s Theodicy book because a successful quest to show life came about on its own makes any theodicy, even the theodicy that works, little more than a work of fiction.

    I put three appendixes into the work, all items that are relevant to the theme but don’t easily fit into the main narrative. One is the origin-of-life investigations. Then, there is an item on slavery and those who say the Bible condones it. Lastly, there is coverage of a recent book by Benjamin Labatut entitled ‘When We Cease to Understand the World.’ That piece of historical fiction curiously intertwines themes of advance mathematics, quantum physics, world war, and madness. Somehow it seemed to have a place, especially for its contention that the madness took on serious form around the time of the First World War, something that especially resonates with Witnesses. It also fits for its suggestion that when humans pour of full strength all they have to offer (mathematics, quantum physics) it does not negate the ‘man is dominating man to his injury’ verse of Ecclesiastes 8:9 but merely accelerates the chaos. That too fits into the Witnesses’ narrative that God’s universal sovereignty is the prime issue before all creation today.

    ******  The bookstore

  • A Gilead Instructor Speaks on Job

    In a group, one Witness said. “I really like Brother Noumair’s talks. He’s a good speaker.” My friend waited . . . and waited . . . and waited . . .and then burst out laughing. She was waiting for a B part—an example, a qualification, a contrast. Nope. That was it, the complete comment. “*Everybody* likes Brother Noumair’s talks,” she told me. She had just assumed there would be a B part.

    I thought of that exchange with regard to a short talk he gave recently about Job. “He’s a digger,” my wife says. I mean, the guy conducts the Gilead school, so of course they are going to select someone who has a gift for “digging.”

    My latest book, ‘A Workman’s Theodicy: Why Bad Things Happen’ opens with a verse-by-verse discussion of Job. It takes up 30% of the book. For the most part, it departs from whatever the Witness organization has said. In fact, it has to. A review of the JW Library app reveals large swaths of Job untouched by Watchtower publications, and some of the verses that are touched just lead to some type of ‘Bible trivia,’ like what the “skin of your teeth” means. My book instead considers a wide range of commentators. Since some regard the Book of Job as the greatest literary work of all time, it is not hard to find commentators

    I would have squeezed Noumair’s remarks in there, somehow, had the book not already been released. They are that unique. He highlights the confrontation between Jehovah and Satan that results in a permitted test on Job’s integrity. He reviews verses to show that every inch of the way, Jehovah is in complete control, as he reveals what is in the Devil’s heart and allows an issue to be settled. As soon as it is settled, “the gavel goes down” and Job’s state of captivity, which likely lasted less than a year, is reversed. The lesson? Confidence in God’s power, which in turn leads to confidence on the part of those who trust him. And the assurance that trials, once they are endured, come to an end.

    ‘A Workman’s Theodicy’ goes on to cover a wide range of theologians, some of whom have asserted things nearly unrecognizable to those of any traditional Bible community. Scholars widely regard Job as a product of two books fused together. The first two and the final chapter are part of a “fable.” The poetry in between represents the “theology” of maybe one, maybe multiple authors. (Opinions differ) “Is the intellectual appeal of this approach that by so dividing Job into two portions, you are in position to understand neither?” I explore the question.

    The book also looks at the theology of a popular Jewish rabbi, Harold Kushner, who has written much on Job and the light it sheds on God’s coexistence with evil. Guided by modern critical techniques, he all but presents Satan as God’s hit man, assigned to do his dirty work. He does not sense any particular enmity between the two parties—they work as a team, in his view. He also resolves the question of evil by deciding that God is not all-powerful. He means well, but he is at time outmaneuvered by “Leviathan,” to whom he assigns a new meaning.

    It is too bad I couldn’t have squeezed Noumair in the book. Maybe I will in case I revise it later. He would have made a fine addition. See: “We Can Endure Like Job,” a talk searchable at JW*org.

     

    ******  The bookstore