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Week 23 Isaiah

I’ve started in on Isaiah.
Right away I notice that Isaiah knocks religious practices – sacrifices, ceremonials, prayers, etc. He quotes the Lord: I have had enough of burnt offerings… Bring your worthless offerings no longer… I hate your new moon festivals… Even though you multiply prayers, I will not listen.
Surprising since I was reading Moses about twenty weeks ago when he was setting up these rituals & sacrifices. And they were okay then.
Now Isaiah is saying they aren’t.
What’s going on?
After he slams Moses Isaiah goes right on to list things Judah should be doing:
Learn to do good
Seek justice
Help the oppressed
Defend the orphan
Fight for the rights of widows
Is this a replacement list?
Can I overwrite Moses’ laws with Isaiah’s list?
That seems like the simplest option, but I think I’ll be cautious; look-before-I-leap.
I’m only in chapter one so there’s time to decide.
As of today it occurs to me that Isaiah could be saying something like: if I don’t practice some things then that non-practice will negate some other things that I am practicing.
Or, not doing some things can unravel things I am doing. Like there’s an interactivity going on, an interdependent value-retention or value-loss factor in play.
Dumping Moses has a certain tidy appeal to it. So I’ll try to keep that temptation in mind, try to see what else Isaiah says about formal religious practices and ritual.

Note: quotes from Isaiah 1:11, 13, 14 (NASB), 17 (NLT version)

May 31, 2020

I ran my numbers today.
Page totals for Genesis-to-Job + Psalms 1-90 + Proverbs & Song of Solomon = 891 pages.
In my 1730-page bible that’s 51.44%. Which is good. And now I’ve got to make a quick decision on the best way to tackle the prophets.

Note: I read Psalm 90 today – a prayer of Moses. In the middle verses he talks about the anger of the Lord.
Thinking about the Lord’s anger is a good bible-content-and-subject-management exercise. Basically a reader asks: what-do-I-do-with-this-topic? What is it with divine anger?
One popular remedy is to say the OT-God is a terrible bad-tempered surly & fearsome ogre.
Another option might be to split the testaments, leaving the awful god of the OT replaced by a sunnier, friendlier NT-God.
Moses didn’t land on either of those.
The Lord was angry and Moses knew it. Moses had experienced it firsthand. But he was pretty calm, subdued, free from psychic-agitation, phlegmatic, aware of what invites the anger: you (the Lord) spread out our sins before you – our secret sins – and you see them all.
The Lord’s anger wasn’t random & inexplicable & incoherent. It was focused & predictable, and it gained momentum over time.
Moses didn’t think the Lord’s anger was unsolicited and unfair. If he did the prayer wouldn’t be so forlorn, dejected. And if he did I’ve got to think he wouldn’t have asked the Lord to: come back to us.
Quotes are from Psalm 90:8 & 13 (NLT version)

Week 22 Job

In Job 38-41 the Lord asked Job roughly seventy questions in a row and Job didn’t answer any of them. He just admitted: I am nothing – how could I ever find the answers? I will put my hand over my mouth in silence. I have already said too much. I have nothing more to say.
Which is a pretty hard place to land: I am nothing.
In Alberta we don’t encourage people to express themselves that way. It’s more: you’re good, you’re okay, you’re awesome, like that.
Of course Job didn’t live in Alberta, and he wasn’t exactly dealing with low self-esteem.
Job had arrived at the I-am-nothing place because he was being interrogated by the Lord. And he realized the simplest way to express his self-estimation was to say he was nothing. I’m guessing that the word nothing is used in a contrastive sense: there’s Job, and there’s the Lord, and looking at the two Job admits: I’m nothing. It wasn’t nothing where nothing is absolutely nothing, not Job-has-zero-valuation. More like nothing by contrast.
Job was still Job.
And Job was a great, great guy.
But the fact was that compared to the Lord Job was close enough to zero (without actually being zero) that he thought it was better to round down to nothing.
Up to chapter 37 Job figured he had a case, at which point he had to make an adjustment.

Notes: quote from Job 40:3-5 (NLT version). Seventy questions is an estimate.

Week 22 Job

Without even trying the book of Job is a One-Story-Story-of-the-Bible book.
Reading Job-in-a-week is like reading the bible-in-a-year.
In both there’s a short brilliant and satisfying beginning and a short brilliant and satisfying ending and in between those two there’s a long interlude. The interlude isn’t brilliant or satisfying. It’s as different as Montreal smoked meat and rye bread.
The interlude features things like loss, sadness, despair, tragedy, gloom, sorrow, anger, uncertainty, sickness, death, ruination. Like that.
Another feature of the interlude is guys sitting around trying to get a handle on what’s happening – the book of Job could be subtitled The Book of Unsuccessful Efforts to Dope Out Undopeables.
These days I’m reading one psalm a day and today I read Psalm 88. The sons of Korah wrote 88 but Job easily could have:
O Lord, God of my salvation, I have cried out to you day and night…for my life is full of troubles, and death draws near. I have been dismissed as one who is dead.
You have thrust me down to the lowest pit, into the darkest depths.
O Lord, why do you reject me?
Your fierce anger has overwhelmed me.
You have taken away my companions and love ones; only darkness remains.
88 is a great psalm. An awful psalm. A psalm still in the middle. A desolating psalm that’s as sad and true as the Job interlude.

Note: quotes from Psalm 88:1-4, 6, 14, 16, 18 (NLT version)

Week 22 Job

A month-and-a-half ago I read the story of Micaiah, a prophet who had an other-worldly vision of the Lord sitting on a throne surrounded by heavenly beings, discussing king Ahab and how he would decide to believe a lie that would lead to his death.
There’s a similar thing in Job: there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them.
Two behind-the-scenes accounts of what else is going on.
At least two times, location not precisely known, there were gatherings of beings, maybe ranked in an escalating hierarchy of transcendence but all inferior to the Lord, and the Lord was discussing events in the world and what people were doing.
These are sobering stories; a little frightening; kind of eerie; dangerous.
If I’m a material guy and know that the only real things are materials-I-have-sensory-access-to then I’m not concerned with Micaiah’s cock-and-bull vision.
But Job and his colleagues weren’t material guys. They were all pretty religious guys who you’d think knew that things were going on out past the skin of this world. But they go on and on and on talking, the whole time missing a big piece of the puzzle, forgetting to remind themselves: we have a huge knowledge-deficit. But if it crossed their minds how much they didn’t know they didn’t let on.

Note: quote from Job 1:6; see Michaiah in I Kings 22:19 (NASB version)

Week 22 Job

The basic story: Job experiences a series of catastrophically terrible things that smash him into a kind of physical-psychic pulp. Four friends visit him.
Even though technically they’re friends, I would draw a double-line down the middle of a page and write Job on the left side and Eliphaz Bildad Zophar & Elihu on the right because soon enough they look like adversaries. Friendly adversaries, but a little more adversarial than friendly.
The thing I notice is that even though EBZ&E are opposed to Job each of them say some things that are pretty good, things that sound just about right. I’m up to chapter 14. So far EBZ have chipped-in about ninety verses of right-side-of-the-page input. And out of those ninety I count sixty-four that sound pretty good, pretty okay. For example Eliphaz says: God will not reject a man of integrity. Nothing wrong with that.
There’s still about eighteen chapters of back-and-forth so I don’t know if EBZ&E will keep saying good-sounding things at a 70%-clip. But so far it’s definitely not goofy stuff.
And on the other hand Job sounds like he’s edging toward the dark side when he says things like: though I am guiltless (God) will declare me guilty.
Anyway wherever the right-side and left-side will end up, to this point they’re both having trouble explaining the experience of pain. Neither one seems to have the horsepower to do the job.

Note: quotes from Job 8:20 and 9:20 (NASB version)

Week 22 Job

Right away as I start reading Job I’m kind of forced to think about Non-Preference-Based Faith.
In general Preference-Based Faith is preferable.
Preference-wise I personally prefer the idea of Preference-Based Faith, a faith that the Lord will give me some pretty good and enjoyable outcomes.
With Job I see a guy with a faith that seems to say: religious faith does give me some pretty good outcomes and it also gives me some pretty bad outcomes. Both…and.
I don’t guess I’m alone in being more partial to Preference-Based Faith than I am to Non-Preference-Based Faith. Let’s say I do a poll among religious people in Alberta:
Do you prefer a religious faith that gives you pretty good outcomes; or
Do you prefer a religious faith that gives you pretty bad outcomes?
Predictable results: 1000-0.
But it’s a dumb poll, really. I don’t think Job would even answer it because his personal preferences weren’t the issue, didn’t determine his state of faith.
After a bunch of bad things happened to Job: he fell to the ground and worshiped. And he said…the Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Through all this Job did not sin nor did he blame God.
A bit later he asked his wife: shall we indeed accept good from God and not accept adversity?
Job was a Preference-Based and Non-Preference-Based guy.
And one was way, way simpler to be.

Note: quotes from Job 1:20-22 and 2:10 (NASB version)

Week 22 Esther

When Haman’s Extermination Law was enacted Mordecai told Esther she had to do something. Had to make a decision.
His appeal wasn’t very sensitive. He just bluntly told her she wouldn’t get out alive anyway: you and your father’s house will perish.
I’ve wonder about that forecast, wondered if it was true, wondered if Esther couldn’t have finagled her way, kept under the radar. Mordecai made it seem like she had no chance. But maybe she did. Even a slim chance would be worth a shot.
Mordecai’s second argument was a bit different: who knows whether you have not attained royalty for such a time as this?
So Esther’s dilemma shifts from: can I save myself? to: is saving myself my top priority?
I thought about the story of the widow of Zarephath. Elijah asks for food. She says I only have food for one last meal and then my son and I will starve to death and Elijah says okay will you give me some of that?
Elijah and Mordecai are just about equally demanding. And the widow and Esther are just about equally heroic in deciding – in the face of their different potential deaths – to look out beyond themselves.
So the big question for these women was: is there something bigger than you?

Notes: quotes from Esther 4:14 (NASB version). Widow of Zarephath story is I Kings 17.

Week 21 Esther

If a gallery curator mounted a photo exhibition of the worst guys in the OT and arranged the display in ascending order-of-badness Haman would be right near the end. He was lunatic-bad.
I’m tempted to go to the Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and find a technical term to classify Haman. I’d be able to convince myself there’s a huge gap between him and me. And there is a big gap between us at the end when Haman was hanged. But there’s also how the whole thing began.
Mordecai the Jew wouldn’t defer to Haman. So Haman got mad, enraged-mad. Of course while Haman’s rage stayed inside his own head, ricocheting around in a kind of random-animation, well, that was okay. But then his rage slipped through into the real world of action. That means, unfortunately that my Big Gap is quite a bit smaller at the front-end, the anger-end, like the point of a flopped-over V. 
Haman’s extermination plot started in anger. The bible is interested in dots that connect, and it connects the dots of anger and murder, sees an evolution taking place, a murderer’s scheme the symptom of his indigenous anger.
In Alberta we have an unwritten law that says as long as my internal anger doesn’t spill out into anti-social action then I’m okay.
But the bible is attentive to the disease, not only its symptoms.

Note: the Mordecai-Haman story begins in Esther 3.

Week 21 Esther

My guess is that if a guy is living his life in the natural world and figures the natural world is pretty much all there is – no gods, no angels, no postmortem places of the dead, no supra-normals, things like that – and if that guy wanted to read a book in the bible that wasn’t cluttered up with mysterious interventions from some non-material source, then my best recommendation would be to read the book of Esther.
As far as I know God is not once mentioned in the book, so a guy could read it as an outside-influence-free book.
The story of Esther is an account of life in the Persian court in the 5th century BC. Things happen, life goes on, decisions are made, people get divorced and remarry, they act out their romantic and sexual instincts, anarchist’s plot assassinations, state history is chronicled, personal mania blossoms into an extermination campaign, an inattentive king is influenced by his right-hand guy, predatory laws are enacted.
In Esther’s book people’s lives are lived out in a normal series of events. It’s a natural story; no rabbits, no magicians hats. As great stories go, I would rate Esther as number one for the natural guy.

Note: Esther was likely one of the last books written in the OT. I figure that by that time the narrator assumed his readers would fill-in-the-blanks, could read coincidence and see purpose. Still, it’s a great natural story for the natural guy.