Furnaces, Bones

Evil learns.

When the Nazis started to mass-murder the Jews, they made soldiers or police battalions line the Jews along trenches and fire bullets into the back of the heads of these men, women, and children. The trenches took the corpses.

But there wasn’t enough land for all of the trenches for all of the corpses that the Nazis wanted to make.

And when a soldier fired a bullet into the back of a head, blood and brain and bits of skull blew back on him. That added to the demoralization of the killers.

The Nazis learned to have their servants fire the bullets into the spines in the back of the necks of their victims. This made less blowback.

But this method, too, was superseded. The Nazis made gas chambers. And trenches were superseded by the furnaces that sent the ashes of Jews into the skies over Dachau and Auschwitz and other death capitals.

      My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
        Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?
      O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer;
         and by night, but find no rest. [Psalm 22:1-2 (NRSV).]

1. Nick-of-time stories.
 
Nick-of-time stories are popular – all is lost, but the hero bursts in at the last moment to make things right. Some are in the Bible.

The Egyptian army is bearing down on the Israelites. God parts the Red Sea to save his fleeing people.

God is about to rain firey hell on Sodom, where Lot lives. Angels in the form of men urge him to go. But he tarries. Finally, they literally take him by the hand to lead him out of the city. Then the destruction comes.

The Assyrian army surrounds Jerusalem. The Assyrian general taunts the people listening to him from the city walls. He says their God sent him to crush them. He tells them to come out to him, lest, holed up in their city without supplies, they eat their own dung and drink their own piss. In the night, and angel of God kills 185,000 in the the Assyrian camp. The Assyrians withdraw. At home, the Assyria king is assassinated by his sons.

Jesus is sleeping in a boat and his disciples are with him. A storm sweeps upon them, but Jesus keeps sleeping. When the boat is about to go down, they awaken Jesus. He rebukes the storm, and the sea becomes calm. (Then he rebukes his disciples.)

2. After-the-nick-of-time stories.
But the Bible also has stories where the last moment goes by, and there is no rescue, but things turn out well anyway.

In the book of Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are Jewish officials in the court of King Nebuchadnezzer of Babylon. The order goes out that all must worship the king’s golden image when they hear the music of the"horn, pipe, lyre, trigon, harp, drum, and entire musical ensemble" (NRSV). Shadrach, Mesach, and Abednego refuse to worship the image.

So they are condemned to die in a blazing furnace. Men throwing them into the furnace themselves die from the fire. No rescue comes at the last moment.

Rescue comes after these men are thrown into the furnace. Looking into the furnace, people see Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego walking around, and even their clothes are not singed. And there is a fourth man with them.

The children of Israel saw themselves in Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Both pieces of the split kingdoms of Israel and Judah had been conquered; the people had been taken far away from their homeland. But, after this annihilation of their kingdoms, they were restored to their homeland by a benevolent king, and they began again as a united country.

Israel in that time was exactly the vision of the prophet Ezekiel in the valley of the dry bones. Skeletons reassembled themselves, sinews connected the bones, flesh and skin and hair grew over the skeletons, and the bodies stood up.

The after-the-last moment theme continues in the New Testament. Martha and Mary and Lazarus are friends of Jesus. Lazarus becomes sick, and Martha and Mary send a message to Jesus and plead with him to come so that Lazarus will not die. Jesus tarries. Lazarus dies. Martha and Mary are devastated.

Grieving Martha acknowledges to Jesus that she trusts that Lazarus will rise in resurrection of the dead on the last day. But Jesus immediately calls Lazarus forth from his tomb and restores him to his sisters.

The Gospels themselves are after-the-last-moment narratives. The resurrected Jesus appears, unrecognized, to two disciples on the road to Emmaus. They tell him about their hope that Jesus would redeem Israel, but he had been crucified. Jesus opens their eyes, and they recognize him, alive and with them.

3. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the furnaces of Dachau.

I am uncertain that I have any right to write about the Holocaust. But whatever its other effects, the Holocaust led to the restoration of Israel in Palestine. After the Holocaust, the Jewish state became a 20^th Century expression of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the furnace. The skeletal survivors of the death camps made the scattered skeletons in Ezekiel’s vision live again in a resurrected Israel.

The prophet Ezekiel had a wife whom he delighted in. God told him that she would die, and she did. So when he saw the bones in the valley reassemble and rise, I suppose that Ezekiel must have thought about more than his helpless nation.

I think about the millions of victims of the Holocaust. I might be unorthodox, or I might not be. But God is God. On the last day, I would rather be a Jewish victim than a Christian predator. I want to believe that the fourth man who was in the furnace with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego was with the Holocaust victims in their hour of death.

4. Dream.

I slept between beginning and ending this essay. I dreamed that my mom was young, happy, and alive. It was a good dream, until I remembered that I had gone to her funeral. Then I was frightened, because I thought that I had lost my mind.

5. Prayer.

Lord, I am not the first to say: I believe. Please help my unbelief. Amen.

The Silence of Women

Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church. [1 Corinthians 14:34-35 (NIV).]

The Apostle Paul’s passage contradicts many people’s ideas of women’s rights and freedoms. To others, it accords with their beliefs; but I suspect that those beliefs originate in this passage and did not arise organically and independently.

Question for thought: "Paul – huh?"

1. An injected passage?

Some scholars think that this passage does not come from Paul. They think that it was injected later by someone else with a smaller soul.

Strong evidence exists that some parts of the Bible were added after-the-fact. For example, Robert Alter is an excellent translator of books of the Old Testament, and he is a professor of comparative literature. He marvels of the excellence of the Hebrew poetry in the Book of Job. Mostly. He is far less impressed with the poetry of the speech that is attributed to Elihu. Also, after Elihu’s speech, the other speakers are referred to, but Elihu is not. Alter concludes that Elihu’s speech was added by a later, lesser poet, and that the final editor of the Book of Job blundered by keeping it in.

Maybe the 1st Corinthians passage was injected after-the-fact, not by Paul. But that conclusion is not frictionless. For one thing, that passage accords with what Paul said elsewhere. So:

A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. But women will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety. [1 Timothy 2:11-15 (NIV).]

It’s easier to say that one passage was jammed in after-the-fact; two is harder. You would have to believe that two like-minded persons coincidentally wanted to add to Paul’s letters their ideas about the silence of women. Or you would have to believe that the passages were added by one person, but after the letters had been accumulated together. But the accumulation of the letters from disparate parts of the known world suggests a later stage in the canonization of the Bible. In that case, it seems likely that someone else would then have noticed these additions and would have raised a hue and cry against this gloss on the words of the esteemed apostle.

Also, some argue these passages must be authentic because the Old Testament supports this theology of women’s subjugation. In Genesis 3, after Adam and Eve succumbed to the serpent’s cunning, God speaks to Eve. Eve is presumably a proxy for all women. He says: "Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you." (NIV)

2. The happy disunity of scripture.

In another post, I have a very un-troubled discussion of the fact that the Bible un-self-consciously says one thing in one place and another thing in another place. This happens without a doubt. ("Wildness and the Word of God". http://justsayinghere.blogspot.com/2012/07/wildness-and-word-of-god.html )

There are several valid explanation for these variations. I won’t go over all of those explanations here. But I will highlight one: the Bible is pastoral, and a stated principle might not apply to all persons, at all times, in all places. The Bible says different things in different places to allow the earnest seeker of guidance to discern what principle applies to his or her specific circumstance. What is true for him might not be for someone else; the Bible speaks to them both.

This truth applies to these passages about the silence of women.

3. Women as prophets.

The 1st Corinthians passage quoted above comes in context of Paul’s discussion of the value to the church of prophecy – hearing from God and speaking for God. In context, this 1st Corinthians passage says that women should not prophesy.

But women in the Bible were prophets. For example, shortly after Jesus was born, Mary and Joseph took him into the temple in Jerusalem. There, they encountered the prophet Anna. She prophesied over Jesus (not keeping silent). The gospel of Luke says:

There was . . . a prophet, Anna, the daughter of Penuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was very old; she had lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, and then was a widow until she was eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshiped night and day, fasting and praying. Coming up to [Mary and Joseph and Jesus] at that very moment, she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem. [Luke 2:36-38 (NIV).]

And Philip the evangelist had four daughters who prophesied. (Acts 21:8.)

The Old Testament prophet Isaiah called his wife "the prophetess". (Isaiah 8:3.)

Mirian, Aaron's sister, was a prophet. (Exodus 15.)

Huldah was a woman and a prophet. King Josiah sent a deputation to her to inquire of the Lord. That episode is described in 2 Kings 22.

4. Women as leaders.

The 1st Timothy passage says that women should have no authority over men. But in early times after the founding of Israel, Israel was ruled by "judges". One such judge was Deborah, who had more courage and brains than her male military commander. Her story is told in Judges 4-5. As Israel’s leader, she clearly had authority over men, Paul notwithstanding. She also was a prophet.

5. Women as teachers.

And even though Paul apparently did not want women to teach, a teacher he admired was a woman. Her name was Priscilla. She and her husband encountered a zealous but misinformed evangelist named Apollos. Priscilla and her husband took Apollos into their home and they both improved his understanding. (Acts 18.) Paul describes Priscilla and her husband as his "co-workers". (Romans 16:3.)

6. The first witness to the resurrection.

According to the tradition of the Gospels, the first witness to the empty tomb of Jesus was Mary Magdalene. She also was the first to see him, after he rose from the dead. Jesus instructed her to bear news of his resurrection to the others. (John 20:11-18.) This was a turning point in history, and Jesus gave the honor of being the herald of that turning point to a woman.

7. The apparent uniqueness of the silence of women.

So it is clear that the Bible is not single-minded in its counsel about the silence of women.

So the passages about the silence of women fit with the Biblical habit of saying one thing in one place and another thing in another place. But passages about the silence of women are also somehow different. This is true because Paul’s teaching about the silence of women seems, to the modern mind, singularly discriminatory. The discrimination is obvious. It is singular in the sense that, after the resurrection of Jesus, the grace of God exploded outward from the Jews to all peoples and nations in addition to the Jews. This is a great theme of the Book of Act and a preoccupation of Paul’s Letter to the Romans. The passages about the silence of women seem perversely contrary to this explosive spread of the grace of God.

8. The meaning of the silence of women.

Or are they?

I suggest that they are actually a token of freedom for women.

These passages must be considered in light of the other passages about women as prophets, women as leaders, women as teachers, women as heralds. These passages about the silence of women say what they say, but they can’t un-say the other passages that contradict them.

So a woman who is rudely shushed in church, literally or figuratively, can point to Deborah, can point to Miriam, can point to Isaiah's wife, can point to Huldah, can point to Anna, can point to Mary, can point to Priscilla, can point to the daughters of Phillip. And based on these she can shush back.

But here’s the thing: because of Paul’s passages, if she doesn’t want to, she doesn’t have to.

In my mid-teens, I absorbed from my career-driven mother a condescension toward stay-at-home moms. For a long time, I had a sense that women who did not work outside the home were old-fashioned. In my youthful mind, they were weaker and less valued than their liberated sisters. I think that many people today retain that condescension.

Paul corrects us. If a woman chooses to come under the protection and guidance and support of a man (who hopefully proves worthy of her trust), then Paul tells us that nobody may hold that against her. Nor is that woman compelled to hold that decision against herself.

Some women may prefer that psychologically restful role. I take this to be the implication of the unexpected popularity among women of the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy. I haven’t read those books, and I don’t endorse them. I only hold them up as credible token of resistance to the Helen Gurley Brown measure of feminine success. If it’s a poor example, forgive me.

9. Scripture is hard.

Sometimes scripture is plain and easy. Sometimes it is hard. I think the subject of this essay is middling hard. I also think that this essay does not begin to exhaust the importance of these controversial passages from Paul. Infinite is the variety of the human condition. Therefore infinite are the possible applications of various parts of the Bible to the human condition. That includes these controversial passages.

10. Freedom in restraint.

But for now I choose to interpret these passages in tandem with clearly contrary passages in the same Bible. I choose to see them as permission to women to choose the old ways. I choose to see them as freedom of choice for women who might not find to their liking a driven, world-beating lifestyle.

In the sixties, women became liberated from dependence on men. But if a woman’s only real choice were that form of liberation, it would be only half-liberation. These passages, in tandem with contrary passages, make it clear that women’s freedom to choose is not partial but complete.

Less Smart than we Think

We are often overconfident. Sometimes that wrecks lives.

1. The case of a serial rapist.

A man was raping elderly women in Long Beach. This man would find apartments of elderly women, strip off his clothes, enter the apartment (usually through an open window), and sodomize his elderly victims. The Long Beach Police were frantic to end the lengthening chain of violated elderly women.

They brought in tracking dogs. The tracking dogs followed a scent, allegedly, to an apartment building. The scent, allegedly, led to a particular floor. On that floor, there was an apartment with the lights on. The police knocked on the door, but nobody answered. The police concluded that the perpetrator was in that apartment, and that he did not answer the door to impede the investigation.

The police learned who lived in that apartment. It was a man named Jeffrey G. They put together a photo lineup with his picture in it. The lineup had five Hispanics and one White guy. The White guy was Jeffrey G. An expert, a former detective who was also the former chief of an urban police department, later said that that was the most suggestive photo lineup he had ever seen used. Most of the victims identified the photo of Jeffrey G. as the perpetrator from the suggestive photo lineup.

The police arrested Jeffrey G. for the serial rapes. He worked for the City of Long Beach, and, when the police came to arrest him, he thought that his fellow city-employees were pranking him. His mother hired my firm to to defend him.

We started to accumulate evidence of innocence. We found that on the night of one Long Beach rape, our client had been visiting his mother in Grand Terrace. He drove back to Long Beach in the morning. On his way back, he got a traffic ticket. Also, within twenty minutes of another rape, Jeffrey G. was 15 miles away in a grocery story, cashing a check. The check had a time-stamp.

The police were accumulating evidence, too. But we learned that the police were shading their recollections to tilt the evidence toward proving the guilt of Jeffrey G. In fact, the real perpetrator committed one of his signature rapes while Jeffrey G. was in custody. The police suppressed news of that. They did not tell us that the Long Beach serial rapist had struck again while Jeffrey G. was in jail for  being the Long Beach serial rapist.

But Jeffrey G. caught a break. In one of the rapes, the perpetrator had ejaculated on his victim. The perpetrator tried to lick off the semen, but he missed a little. This semen was collected as evidence. In another case, after he sodomize his victim, the perpetrator exited through a window. As he exited the window, a little fecal matter, with a little semen on it, fell from the tip of his penis onto the window sill. This evidence also was collected. These two incidents, one at the beginning of the chain of rapes, and one toward the end, gave DNA to compare to the DNA of Jeffrey G. It did not match.

We were not surprised. But everybody in law enforcement was stunned, from the detectives to the prosecutors. They were so certain that Jeffrey G. was guilty that they concluded that somehow the wrong DNA had been tested. So they sent a detective by airplane to hand-carry the DNA samples to the Justice Department laboratory in Sacramento, to make sure that the right samples were analyzed. The results were the same: Jeffrey G. was innocent.

The case was soon dismissed. But the Long Beach police continued to be certain that a guilty man had somehow been freed.

Years later, the actual perpetrator was caught. He was not even the same race as Jeffrey G. He and Jeffrey G. did not look alike. Jeffrey G. also was much taller. But the perpetrator’s DNA matched.

This tale should make us humble and cautious. The Long Beach detectives did not think they were sending an innocent man to prison for the rest of his life. They were sure that Jeffrey G. was guilty. Their certainty grew from the moment nobody answered the door of Jeffrey G’s apartment. Jeffrey G. wasn’t home. He had left the lights on to fool potential burglars.

The Long Beach detectives drew a conclusion that they should not have drawn from so little evidence. Being certain, they then started sculpting the evidence to create the appearance that Jeffrey G. was guilty. For example, a detective told us about certain evidence that she had observed; when we pointed out that that evidence actually helped our client, she gave different testimony under oath.

This points out a human trait: we tend to form conclusions before the evidence supports them. We are sure about things that we should not be sure about. This can lead to terrible consequences. It almost sent an innocent man to prison for the rest of his life.

2. The case of the self-made man or woman.

Sometimes, we enjoy a measure of material success in life. Our business thrives. Our investments prosper. Like the Long Beach detectives, we infer from that what is not warranted. We might conclude that we have prospered because of our own virtue, talent, and effort.

And, in our pride, we might condemn those who have not prospered. We might consider them less worthy than ourselves.

In the eyes of the world, this is right. The idea of a self-made man or woman is prominent in our culture.

3. The Bible’s point of view: Hannah.

But it defies the Biblical point of view. The Biblical point of view is that we are all subject to God, time, and chance.

A woman named Hannah who lived in ancient Israel was childless. She was devastated because of that. She prayed to God to open her womb. A priest saw her praying in the temple. He thought she was drunk because her lips moved, but he heard no words. (Apparently, that was not customary in that era.) She mad a vow to God, if only he would give her a son.

And God did. That boy became the prophet Samuel.

That woman’s prayer of gratitude will live forever (1 Samuel 2:1-10 (KJV)):

1And Hannah prayed, and said, My heart rejoiceth in the LORD, mine horn is exalted in the LORD: my mouth is enlarged over mine enemies; because I rejoice in thy salvation. 2There is none holy as the LORD: for there is none beside thee: neither is there any rock like our God. 3Talk no more so exceeding proudly; let not arrogancy come out of your mouth: for the LORD is a God of knowledge, and by him actions are weighed. 4The bows of the mighty men are broken, and they that stumbled are girded with strength. 5They that were full have hired out themselves for bread; and they that were hungry ceased: so that the barren hath born seven; and she that hath many children is waxed feeble.

6The LORD killeth, and maketh alive: he bringeth down to the grave, and bringeth up. 7The LORD maketh poor, and maketh rich: he bringeth low, and lifteth up. 8He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth up the beggar from the dunghill, to set them among princes, and to make them inherit the throne of glory: for the pillars of the earth are the LORD's, and he hath set the world upon them. 9He will keep the feet of his saints, and the wicked shall be silent in darkness; for by strength shall no man prevail. 10The adversaries of the LORD shall be broken to pieces; out of heaven shall he thunder upon them: the LORD shall judge the ends of the earth; and he shall give strength unto his king, and exalt the horn of his anointed.

Hannah's prayer gives glory to God for raising up and for putting down

4. The Bible’s point of view: David.

David, a man after God’s own heart, fought Goliath. When David approached Goliath, Goliath told David that he would kill David and give David’s flesh to the birds of the air. David answered. And he did not speak of his own prowess as a fighter. He spoke of the power of God. He said (1 Samuel 17:45-47 (KJV)):

45Then said David to the Philistine, Thou comest to me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a shield: but I come to thee in the name of the LORD of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou hast defied. 46This day will the LORD deliver thee into mine hand; and I will smite thee, and take thine head from thee; and I will give the carcases of the host of the Philistines this day unto the fowls of the air, and to the wild beasts of the earth; that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel. 47And all this assembly shall know that the LORD saveth not with sword and spear: for the battle is the LORD's, and he will give you into our hands.

5. The Bible’s point of view: Job.

The book of Job is the story of a good and prosperous man who had everything taken from him, and then he was restored by God to his former prosperity. In his suffering, his friends came and, for a time, sat in silence. But then, in the certainty of their knowledge of God, they spoke out. And they said that Job must have offended God to be brought so low. In fact, the point of the book of Job is that it was Job’s very righteousness that made him a target of a bet between Satan and God.

6. The Bible’s point of view: Ecclesiastes.

And one of the Bible’s more famous passages occurs at Ecclesiastes 9:11 (KJV):

I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

7. Defiance.

So, for all this Biblical witness, why do we insist that there are self-made men and women? A believer cannot.

We cannot believe that we are completely in charge of our own prosperity or poverty; intellect or ignorance; faith or un-belief; salvation or damnation.

Certainly, we have to cooperate with God to bring about good things. There would be no point to the urging in Proverbs to do right and be diligent if we had no responsibility to choose to do right or to be diligent. We do. The point is only that there are forces unseen that have a great deal to do with the rise and fall of persons, companies, churches, nations, and peoples. To say otherwise is to defy the Bible.

So if we know something, let us be humble about our knowledge.

If we have something, let us be humble about what he have.

If we keep from evil, let us be humble about our righteousness.