Sheep and Goats

Tag: Vermont Royster

  • Who We Are and Why We Are and Where We Are Going?

    “How can people believe Bible texts the way they do? People were superstitious then. And it is violent.”

    Maybe because they are enamored with its main character, God. Those not enamored with him are not attracted to the text. Psalm 34:8 is a favorite of mine: “Taste and see that Jehovah is good.” Some people think he tastes bad. Taste is not a provable topic. It resonates with some and not with others. It is not primarily a matter of intellect. Some people hate asparagus. Good luck trying to ‘prove’ to them that it tastes good.

    The reason God and the texts long associated with him ‘taste good’ to people of faith is summed up in this quote from a newspaper editor, as true today as when he wrote it 60 years ago: “Here is a curious thing. In the contemplation of man himself, of his dilemmas, of his place in the universe, we are little further along than when time began. We are still left with questions of who we are and why we are and where we are going.” (Vermont Royster) People of faith want to know “who we are and why we are and where we are going.” They are convinced secular society has no answers (“we are little further along than when time began”), so they look to God. They are not put off by the fact the Bible is old. (You would hardly expect a message from God to all mankind to have been written recently) They don’t consider those ancients inferior. If anything, with less to distract them, they had the time to think deeper thoughts.

    Nor do they think science answers Royster’s question. Professor Viskontas* addresses how our present life is but an hour or two on the year-scaled cosmic timeline. “Does this mean that our short little lives hold no meaning? I would argue that it certainly does not. In fact, it gives us a sense of how far we’ve come and how connected we are even to the very beginnings of the universe. And surely life gains meaning through the connections that we make to each other and to our world,” se says. I dunno. It’s not nothing, but it doesn’t compare to the thought of everlasting life. Isn’t it more akin to persuading a speed bump to find meaning in its role on the highway of life?

    Too, God’s revealed personality attracts some. To Moses, he presented himself as “a God merciful and compassionate, slow to anger and abundant in loyal love and truth, showing loyal love to thousands, pardoning error and transgression and sin, but he will by no means leave the guilty unpunished.” (Exodus 34) Those are good qualities to have in a God, particularly in a world not typified by such qualities. They draw people. He ‘tastes good’ to them. They see a world deteriorating at an almost visibly increasing rate. They see human governments have no answers. They look for one in the Scriptures, and there they find it.

    They do not find it offensive that God would have requirements, as is intimated at the end of the Exodus phrase. It instantly strikes them as right that he would. They like the illustration of an owner’s manual for a product, say a new Ford. It makes perfect sense to them that Ford would be the one to consult as to how to care for the product it created.That’s why “people have believed in this text for so many years.” It is a vehicle through which one may get to know one’s Creator. Ordinary people find that very comforting, even if some more independently minded others find it offensive.

    Is there concern that there is much violence in the OT? Don’t think people are any less violent today. It is just that modern societies have found a way to sanitize and corporatize violence, so that it can be inflicted from afar by horrific weapons, while the ones congratulating themselves at their supposed moral progress safely watch on TV. Some have heard the terrorist argument for attacking innocent civilians. There are no innocent civilians, they say, because these ‘innocent’ civilians willfully empower governments that go on to commit atrocities in their homeland.

    No need to fuss about things that happened 4000 years ago, which is when most of the OT violence occurred. Parties have had plenty of time to reform, if they see fit to do so. Besides, you can always assign that Bible reading of Elisha calling down bears on the jeering children to a bald brother, who will tap his own shiny dome as though to say, ‘Don’t mess with me.’

    …* Indre Viskontas, lecturer of 12 Essential Scientific Concepts, from Great Courses

     

    ******  The bookstore

  • The Personification of God—Part 2

    In the personification of God—giving him hands, a face, eyes, ears, and so forth—and even extending it to the emotions of a family that people can identify with (See Part 1), can one oversimplify Jehovah to the point that it is a turn-off to modern people?
     

    Q: “The problem happens when this kind of personification that worked for people thousands of years ago, no longer works for people in our days.”

    I think the trick is to make it work. The prime reason NOT to make it work is to give in to the feeling that we are above such “primitive” narrative, that we are more sophisticated, that our predecessors may have been stupid but not us, that we are not to be talked down to as though we were children. 

    But we are children. Certainly we are in the eyes of God, but even in the eyes of those not completely drunk on the Kool-Aid of human independence from God’s direction, we are children. Look at how people snipe at each other on social media. Look at how they do it on TV. Look at how they do it on “the news.” They are adults when they do that? No, they are children. Look at the mess of a world they have collectively built and the relatively petty matters they elevate to monumental importance. They are children.

    So a bit of humility is in order. You don’t puff yourself up as though you are the smartest people who have ever lived, when you may well be the dumbest. “There is a generation that is pure in its own eyes but has not been cleansed from its filth,” reads Proverbs 30:12. You don’t let the fact that you can make iPads and Teslas blind you to the “alternative fact” that you still can’t answer any of the deep questions of life—as Vermont Royster put it  “In the contemplation of man himself, of his dilemmas, of his place in the universe, we are little further along than when time began. We are still left with questions of who we are and why we are and where we are going.”

    Some of the best lines, to my mind, are still to be found in the Truth book of the late 60s: “True, there has been progress in a materialistic way. But is it really progress when men send rockets to the moon, and yet cannot live together in peace on earth?”

    Some people think it is. Let them be separated out if they will be so spiritually dense.

    I think the language of the Bible simply serves to separate people—to cause them to reveal what is in their heart. Yesterday our Zoom group discussed the daily text: “Whoever trusts in his own heart is stupid”—(Proverbs 28:26), and the focus was on weighing in on matters when we don’t have all the facts. Why would anyone do that?—and yet we do it all the time. These days the TV positively encourages us to do that, presenting a single scene or a single line repeatedly and without context, causing viewers to form instant verdicts.

    I can recall Watchtower articles to the effect that when you hear a bad report about a trusted friend, you are inclined to say: “Well, I wasn’t there. Maybe there are things I don’t know.” How that plays out in the morass of current world news I haven’t a clue—apply it however you like—but it certainly is apropos when considering Bible accounts thousands of years old.

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