Sneaky List of Internal Links to Skip the Scrolly Roller Hunt to Find What You Are Actually Interested In

There are two basic types of posts in this blog:
1) For those who have ears to hear: prophetic ramblings aimed at purifying the church (a prophet's main job-incidentally, i would contend that a prophet's main job is not to tell the future--t's to tell the present, and what bearing the past and future have on the present vice versa)
2) Reveling in what Scripture Reveals: an informal walk through Scripture particularly for those who have been intimidated by the task of 'getting' the Old Testament

For Those Who Have Ears to Hear*:
(*you know, as opposed to those have them as mere visual accessories (: )
Mad at God for letting your loved ones die? A letter
What's Your REAL Name?
Who CARES whether God created the earth?
Despise child molesters? The bitch of Christianity
Can I actually sin by quoting scripture?
Think you are too skanky for God? Let's talk.
Hearing God's call on your life-a letter
To the Spirit-filled English Majors and Wordmiths at Heart A letter
What sucks about the cradle up Christian predicament
Can I actually sin by ministering to others?
and what does the Lord your God require of you?
Does God have a crush on me? He's definitely crushing me
a famine of purpose
Don't be dissin' My Name. . .
What you take in vain
Children of the Light. . . I hope you dance.
Jesus was not a "nice" man-you shouldn't be either
Christians are the Ultimate Hedonists-and yet He loves us
Are you authorized to use My Name?
Taking off from Rousseau on Inequality
On Top of the Globe


Reveling in What Scripture Reveals:
Items marked with *** are new, even though they're placed in the order of the biblical books

Some Notes on Genesis and Reading the Whole Bible Through
Genesis: Leah's Growing Pains. . .
Genesis: Rachel's Quest for Wholeness
Genesis: Joseph's Family Transformed Through Suffering
Genesis: Reframing the Joseph Narratives- Putting Some Stuff in Perspective
Exodus: First Born Sons, Crown Princes, and God's Favor
Exodus: Entering Exodus-The Great Exit
Exodus: Moses, Man of the Millennia, Mouthpiece of God
Exodus: Who Gets a Birth Narrative and Why?
Exodus etc: Embryonic Thought about Birth Narratives After Jesus
Leviticus: Book of Fire (under construction)
Numbers: Just What the Title Suggests?
Dude-eronomy (Deuteronomy): Jesus' Favorite Book?
Joshua: Just a MicroBlurb
Judges: Aka Tribal Leaders-The First Five
Judges: Six Through Ten***
Judges: Shechem and the Richness of Reference
Judges: Samson-Personification of the Apostasy of the Age***
Judges: A Beautiful Flower in the Samson Narratives-His Mother***
Judges: The Ghastly End of the Age of Judges***
Ruth: OT Chick Flick? A Nobody Who Chose and Was Chosen
I Samuel: One Day Hannah Stood Up!
I Samuel: A Note About Samuel and God's Involvement with Man

Mad at God for letting your loved ones die? A letter...

You know, honey, we humans are so bizarre. We know in our heart of hearts that only Good comes from God. We know He created everything beautiful and glorious and loving and safe, and that evil comes from two places- Satan, and Mankind. Death came to us because Mankind made an unsavory deal with Satan one day in the Garden, electing to believe the devil over the Divine and to trust in himself rather than the One in Whose image he was created. God's heart almost exploded when we brought Death into the world by choosing to cut off our umbilical cord with Him and go float with the other Self-Worshipers in the ‘we can make ourselves good without your help God thank you very much” club.

Satan managed to make us believe that God was the selfish one who was trying to keep something good from us, rather than the reverse, which was true, that choosing to trust in ourselves would ultimately mean we couldn’t sustain Life—you can’t cut yourself off from the Giver of Life and expect to not also cut yourself off from Life-not rocket science and yet, that urge to put oneself in God’s place is strong in human kind…we brought death to earth when we chose to believe that God was holding out on us and we broke the rules He had put in place to keep us safe.

I’ve heard it explained that the reason God banished Adam and Eve from the Garden after they ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was that they would then most certainly also eat from the tree of life and if they ate from that tree before they got redeemed, they would be stuck eternally in their state of damnation, cut off from God. He banished us to save us again. The way we put fences around our yards to keep our children from walking under trucks.

When shit happens to us we shake our fists at God. It’s so amazing. We ALL do it (or at least, have done it at some point in our lives). It’s an interesting proclivity that we see in people who have been molested as children by someone other than their father. Though their father was innocent, they are often unbelievably angry at their fathers! Why? He didn’t molest them! But he didn’t protect them either. In our minds we are angry at the one who is supposed to protect us. You always hear people talking about how angry they are at God. I have often felt that way myself. Trust me, way toooo often. And yet you never hear people saying that they are so mad at Satan, from whom all the crap comes. From Satan and our own fallen selves, that is. It’s a bit like getting furious at your mom because you got burned by the stove which she told you to stay away from for precisely that reason.

Well, it is and it isn’t. You didn’t specifically do something evil to make the people you love die. (Even though sometimes you doubt this because of the normal processes of grief, I understand). But you’re a part of the human family and we share in the inheritance of the sins of our fathers. And we do choose ourselves on a daily basis. So we do participate in the chain of self-worship and stubborn heartedness against God. We do know that we desperately need a Savior to make us good and to redeem us in all our ugliness. . .

Now, I don’t want you to feel even crappier about what’s happening right now than you already did, which you may be doubting based on my comments so far, but hear me out! (: God’s heart breaks when yours does! And He’s not the heart breaker! It’s just that He has all the power and we think He should whip it out to protect us whenever bad stuff starts happening. It’s a natural human response. Unfortunately, His power is under man made constrictions for this era in history--this was the grand experiment of letting man be in charge. Adam made that choice for us by choosing to live by his own rules rather than God's. I believe that it is man's prayer and faith and collaboration with God that releases Him to act on our behalves even though He hasn't resumed His full reign on earth yet because the time has not yet come.

However, the weird thing is…it’s actually very logical. Basically since the world got f’ed up, the only way for us to get un f’ed up is to go through a kind of reverse f’ing. If you get shot with a bullet you can only get well by having the bullet dug out of you the reverse of the way it got there. Which is going to hurt just as much as getting it in there in the first place did. Get your arm pulled out of socket, the only way to fix it is to pop it back in, which is going to hurt like hell, but that’s the way it works. Jesus made the reversibility stuff possible. He paid the ultimate price so that we wouldn’t get stuck with eternal death. So that we would get a second chance to make that choice about Whose/whose laws we wanted to honor and thus which kind of universe we want to live in.

All we have to endure is temporary death. Which in our finite little minds feels pretty permanent. But you have to read the end of the Book-WE WIN!!! Everybody that chooses to get back with God after the Great Divorce, gets to be Raised from the Dead. I mean holy crap! How awesome is that! And here is the big paradox and part of the reason theologians often refer to the Fall of Man as the Fortunate Fall— If nobody ever died, we’d never get to see anybody raised back to life! If nobody was blind, we wouldn’t get our breath taken away when God made them see again. God didn’t create the Fall and didn’t plan it; there is no way we can pin it on Him. However, the glorious thing about His redemption plan is that He can make all these amazing miracles happen that could never have happened without our grand F-Up in the grand garden at the grand entrance to humanity’s grand story.

Because here’s the thing. If you don’t know ugly, you can’t know beauty. If you’ve never been lied to, you can’t fully appreciate the precious gift of honesty and transparency in others. If you’ve never felt agony, you won’t really know Joy even if it tap dances right across your nose! The big mystery: the degree of joy and ecstasy you are able to experience is directly proportionate to the degree of agony you are also able to experience. . . and thus you have James urging us to consider it pure joy when we encounter hardship...

English speakers are fond of citing the shortest verse in the bible as the one in John11:35 that says, Jesus wept. (I'm not sure what the shortest verses are in Hebrew and Greek). If you look it up in context you see that it is His response to the death of Lazarus when He finally gets to the tomb (after deliberately waiting a couple of days after receiving news that Lazarus was deathly ill) and He sees Mary and Martha absolutely beside themselves with grief. Jesus loved those two women. And He loved Lazarus as one of His close friends. But Jesus also knew that He was about to raise Lazarus from the dead! Why did He weep if He knew how Very Temporary this state of affairs was going to be for this family for at least another decade or two?? Why would God weep when He knows the happy ending?

Apparently the Greek word that gets translated “wept” is only used like twice in the whole Bible and gets translated with some other much stronger word in the other use-of course I can’t remember it right now. . .but Tim Keller is a pastor who says that the word we translate as ‘wept’ here is more like ‘snorted with fury!’ It’s a word for a grief that is so angry it makes you want to explode! Jesus’ heart was breaking with Mary and Martha because theirs were breaking and He loved them so much. He didn’t want them to be in this horrible suffocating gut wrenching agonizing pain.

But He was also about to perform His greatest miracle yet, only surpassed when He would do it Himself 3 days after the crucifixion. Jesus was letting Lazarus’ story be a foreshadowing of His own story—He was giving everyone a sneak preview. And a preview that was probably necessary so they could get their heads around His own resurrection later on—how could they believe He would be raised from the dead if they’ve never seen that happen before? He was preparing them to hope and believe and experience the joy rather than feel lied to and stolen from when His body went missing!

Still, He knew about the happy endings for both 3 day stints in a smelly tomb…why did He weep/snort with furious grief??!! Keller suggests that He was taking in the whole picture of ALL the death of ALL the humans from the beginning of time till the end of the Age, He was taking in that picture of all the mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters and husbands and wives and friends throughout time whose hearts would be stabbed again and again with the horrific power of suffering and death—Jesus was feeling all humanity’s pain at once—He was furious at Satan and sin and death for wreaking this agony on His beloved humanity.

And then He put some teeth in His anger and He ordered Lazarus to come forth!!! He was screaming it because He was screaming against death and giving us that preview of how He was going to kick sin & death’s ass in the end and rescue us all, resurrect us all, every last one who reaches out to Him and asks for it—And then we can rock out and sing with Petra, Tell me death, where is your victory, where is your sting? When the Grave Robber comes and death finally DIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!?????????????????

So you feel like God doesn't know how weak you are. But you really know He knows just exactly what you can and cannot bear. Not like He wants to rub our face in it, but every time we get to the end of ourselves, we have to reach up and take His hand and let Him carry us...every time we fall and skin our knees or whatever, we are reminded that we are weak and He is strong, that we cannot save ourselves from suffering, but He is always right there ready and willing to get us through it. Moreover, every time we experience weakness is an opportunity for His power to be displayed in our lives...

Our whole lives are theses series of painful reminders that we are not all that after all-we were dead wrong in the garden of Eden and are dead wrong now when we think we can just go our own way...there is a way that seems right to a man but the end thereof is death and destruction...each time we feel overwhelmed it is a reminder that we were never intended to fly solo and constantly crash--we were intended to fly on His strong and perfect wings...and never crash. But since the crashes are here now, He's going to make beautiful things come out of them. He's going to use the fire to refine us into the purest gold. He is, as my mother likes to say, an economical God--He will not waste a single tear or trial--He will use absolutely every crappy thing that ever happens to us to grow beautiful flowers in our hearts and lives if we'll just surrender the crap to Him.

Humans are amazing at attributing their own successes to their own hard work and awesomeness, and the crap in their lives they blame on God. That is why we desperately need to fail with some regularity so we don't get confused about Who has all the power and who is frail and fragile and fraught with flaws and fears and failure...and James, who may have sounded like he was on crack to the first century Christians who were getting tortured and killed for following Jesus...James said consider it pure joy when you encounter trials of many kinds....because when these are allowed to do their work they will make you perfect and complete...

If you want to be like Jesus, you have to suffer. You have to go through all kinds of trials and tests. But that means that every trial and test is a gift-it's a promise. It's an opportunity. It's a door behind which is more of Him, more beauty, more Love, more Power, more of you, lost (and found!) in more of Him.

Death sucks, no two ways about it. But it ain't God's gig!! And it's ok to be angry at death, God is angry about it, too. But for all who choose to be redeemed, it's only temporary. And God can use the suffering to make us strong and beautiful, children He can be proud to call His own. (:

Ruth-a story about a nobody who chose and was chosen...

Ruth was neither a prophet nor a princess. She was not a judge. She performed no miracles and wielded no power. She didn't win any beauty contests. SHE WASN'T EVEN A JEW!!! And yet, in a period in history when women had no rights and were rarely even mentioned in any kind of literature or public discourse, this woman had an entire Old Testament book dedicated to her story. Who was she? Why does her story matter?

This story comes after the book of Judges in our current arrangement of OT books, but it actually occurred during the time of the Judges. Interestingly, there are no judges mentioned in it-you might expect there to be some judge who was instrumental in God's work in Ruth's family, but no. The judges from that period were so hit and miss...

Ruth's story can stand alone, but should be seen against the backdrop of apostasy that was that whole dark period of the judges (read in the voice of a monotonous chorus: when everyone did as he saw fit). Because that makes this little diamond that much more glorious. And it's nice, after finishing that ghastly story at the end of Judges, to come up for sweet, fresh air and see into the hearts and lives of a couple of godly women, struggling through very hard times globally and personally, who cling to their faith and become a beautiful part of God's salvation history.

There are three heroes in this story, Naomi, Ruth, and Boaz. And there are really three stories here. One is the story of two women who love each other and whose relationship is centered on their commitment to the same God. Another is the story of an older woman who has lost her children and seemingly has no way of ever having another child or grandchild. The other is the story of providence, a romance, between Ruth and an older man of means, Boaz, also committed to God's laws and to social justice.

Ruth converted to Judaism when she married her first husband, Naomi's son, as did her sister-in-law, Orpah. During a horrible regional depression all three of these women lose their husbands. They are destitute and childless. Orpah decides to go back to her people. But Ruth decides to stay with Naomi and Naomi's God. The most quoted bit of dialogue from Ruth and one of the most quoted scriptures ever comes after Naomi's selfless (and maybe just a tad pessimistic) directive to her daughters in law that they go back to their families, to which Ruth replies (chapter 1:16-18),
Don't urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me , be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me.

This was a commitment the woman was making to her mother-in-law! Till death do us part...beautiful, beautiful scene, as chick flicky as they get. (:

I'm sure these words and this act meant the world to Naomi, but the fact remains that they are both widows with no income, practically destitute, and, understandably, she is still just a little pissed at God. What was our first clue? When they get to Bethlehem, she says (1:20-21), Don't call me Naomi anymore. (Naomi means pleasant and agreeable) I'm changing my name because I'm somebody else now--my story has given me a different identity. Call me Mara, because the Almighty has made my life Bitter. I went away full, but the Lord has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi? The Lord has afflicted me, the Almighty has brought misfortune upon me. Now there's a pleasantry to start a conversation with!

And there too, is our age old response to the crap that happens to us--God does not create crap, no evil comes from Him. It clearly comes from our sin, from the natural evil that our sin has wreaked on the earth, and from Satan, too often glorified as God's opposite- he's way too finite to be God's opposite. But if you wanted to point your finger at someone other-worldly and blame them for the tragedy in your life, it would be more theologically correct to point it at him or back at mankind. But no, when crap happens who do we blame? We blame God! It's just a fascinating little dysfunction we have going and it is so dyed into the wool of our human worldviews.

Naomi may still have her faith, and she may even have discipled someone else who converted to her faith through the course of their relationship, but she's still pissed.

Even if the Israelites never actually followed the law of jubilee and took care of the poor in the grand way God had intended them to every 50 years (we have no evidence that they ever actually did), they still maintained some customs that followed the law that was intended to protect the poor--land owners would routinely leave some of the crops along the way as they harvested and would let poorer people follow behind and glean from these, a kind of pro bono, I guess.

Naomi happens to have a relative who is just such a land owner and when Ruth decides to go out and gather grain from someone's fields, apparently by coincidence, she winds up in Boaz's fields. And she catches his eye. And he asks around. And he learns of her story about being a foreigner and being devoted to Naomi and her God. And he shows her favor in providing food and water and protection (from leering male workers). And when she expresses her surprise and gratitude for his kindness, he replies, May the Lord repay you for what you have done, May you be richly rewarded by the Lord the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge. (2:12) Clearly Boaz is acting as a co-laborer with the God of Israel in providing this refuge beneath his wings. He understands how God uses him--uses His people-- to achieve His purposes.

We should also note here that, according to Matthew 1:5, Boaz was actually the son of Rahab (and by son it could mean descendant of several generations) and some Jewish dude named Salmon. Rahab, of course, was not only a non-Jew, she was a prostitute at the time when her city, Jericho, was overtaken by the Israelites and she helped hide the Hebrew spies who had come to canvass the situation. Because she helped them they basically brought her and her family in to a witness protection program outside the city until the invasion, and after that, she ended up becoming a God-fearing Jew...and an ancestor of Boaz...so Boaz had some converted foreigner blood in him too...he wasn't a purely 100% homogeneous Jew.

This gratitude and mutual admiration turns into something more and, after making sure he isn't breaking any laws and clearing it with anyone else who might lay claim, he goes before the council and asks to become her kinsman-redeemer according to the law by marrying her. Remember, Ruth is not a virgin, she is a widow. Besides being destitute, she could be considered leftovers. MOREOVER, according to the law, Boaz marries Ruth in order to maintain the name of the dead (her husband) with his property, so that his name will not disappear from the family or the town records. It is a selfless act. In this Boaz is a type, a foreshadowing, of Christ, towards Ruth and Naomi.

The council responds favorably with a blessing that says, among other things, may you have standing...and be famous in Bethlehem, through the offspring the Lord gives you by this young woman...

And not only do our leading lady and landlord live happily ever after, critical to the goal of not letting Naomi's son's line die on the vine, they produced a child, Obed, who would become the father of Jesse, the father of David...they become the great grandparents of the king who leads Israel's Golden Age (and remember how at Christmas they're always saying, Bethlehem, the city of David) (Places have stories and if we will seek them we will often find them).

And not only that, this romance that blossoms in Bethlehem leads, through the lineage of David, 1100 years later, to Jesus Christ being born in Bethlehem...the great great great great (to whatever exponent) grandson of a foreign woman who became a devout Israelite, and a goodly godly selfless Jew who had descended from Rahab, another redeemed pagan whose life was transformed by contact with God's people! Ancestors of a Messiah for all nations!!! Famous in Bethlehem? Yes, I should say so! (:

As for Naomi, it is worth noting that her biographer ignores her declaration that she was changing her name from Pleasant (Naomi) to Bitter (Mara) because he continues to call her Naomi throughout the book. And as Ruth continues to be gracious and selfless in her love for Naomi, she brings the baby to her, to be cared for and counted not as Naomi's grandson, but as her son. And all the women around her are like, Guess what? God didn't abandon you! He came through and He has made you a mother--this child will make you feel young again (4:15 renew your life) and will care for you when you get old. And BTW, FYI, that girl of yours is better than seven sons!

And they (usually it says she, the mother of the baby, when a birth quote and name are recounted, so it's unclear here whether they means Naomi and Ruth, Ruth and Boaz, the three of them, or Naomi and the women of the town, at any rate...) name him Obed, meaning Servant-Worshiper. Now pleasant, agreeable Naomi had much to worship God for.

Ruth, who was a Moabite, was born neither a princess nor a Jew, and yet she chose God and He chose her to become this beautiful glorious thread in the tapestry of the genealogy of Christ, a matriarch of eternal significance. After that horrific drama at the end of Judges where everyone did whatever they felt like doing, you get an inspirational romantic movie script about 3 people who made sacrifices to do the right thing according to the law of Moses and the law of Love and are richly blessed by God as a result! (:

What's Your REAL Name?

At the end of Alias Season 4, and the beginning of Season 5 , Michael Vaughn reveals to Sidney (to whom he has recently become engaged after 6 years of being in love) that for starters, Michael Vaughan is not his real name … and then naturally, in the next breath they are in a head on collision before he can explain … No more spoilers from me on that point. But this really made me think about what a real name is. He'd been using that name for at least 10 years or so… he had been that person for all that time, what's not real about that?

They asked me what my Real Name was. Is that the name on my birth certificate? Why should that name be more real than one I may have acquired later? Does being prior make my latter self a liar? The name my parents gave me before they really knew me, why should that be more real? The names I gave myself when I sought to follow the injunction on a pagan temple in Turkey to know myself." The names my friends have given me over the years ... The new identity I was given when I was resurrected…Which one is my real name?

Abram became Abraham and Jacob became Israel. It's real. How much more real could it get?

Simon became Peter when the Lord looked into his heart and into his future, into his destiny, and pronounced him a rock. His new name not only caught up with his new self, the self he was becoming. It framed his future for him, reminded him every time he was called, what his God given destiny was. His new name defined him-gave him clarity when he doubted his purpose. The real name of his old self was Simon. His real name after he met the Master was definitely Peter. And when everything has been fulfilled, he will receive yet another name, a secret name on a little white stone, a new name in glory, one that defines his unique relationship with his Creator. As will you and as will I.

Who cares whether God created the Earth? Whose Endgame is this?

The creation/intelligent design vs. evolution debate is one that rages on and gets all kinds of people hot under the collar shouting at each other --and I have serious doubts that most people are really hearing over the shouts what this debate is really about. And as for the idea that you can change people's hearts and minds by outshouting them... dang humans are dumb.

It seems like many Christians are under the impression that the point of this debate is to answer the question, Where does the earth come from, where did man come from? This is not the real point of the debate because once you say, Ok God created the earth, the next question is, Ok where did God come from? People seem to think that they can prove the existence of God by reasoning that the earth is too complicated to have evolved out of thin non-air, as it were, through pure unmediated evolution. This is a circular argument that ends with the question of where God comes from, proving nothing, changing nothing, convicting no one. It does tend to alienate people we profess to care about though. We are so good at alienating all those people to whom we are supposed to be the fragrance of the knowledge of Him...

The reason it matters whether or not God created the earth and mankind is that if their is a Creator, if WE were created by Someone, then there is a plausible chance that we might owe Him something. There might be a higher Authority in the universe than humankind! We might be accountable to Someone. There might be rules made up by someone other than ourselves that matter. E-gads! The universe might not be a pure democracy! And if we break those higher laws, there might be consequences...

If intelligent design is True... then maybe not ALL reality and morality is purely the result of cultural construction. There might be an Architect-Developer to whom all cultural construction workers must report...

If this is True, mankind might not be God. And every moment, thought and action must be evaluated through this lens. His lens.

Oh, it's a game changer. Believe you me.

Despise child molesters? The bitch of Christianity...

Even murderers and rapists think child predators are worse than scum under their toe nails. Of COURSE you and I are far better people; heaven was made for good people like us, wasn't it. Naturally. People whose sins are relatively white. Oh that opens up a can of racist worms I won't tackle today...But I mean, our sins aren't really quite as dirty as theirs... right?

And child molesters. There's a special place in hell for them. I mean that's what we think, right. That's what we hope in the dark corners of our minds...the corners we thought were all bright and shiny but which in Truth are little bastions of fallenness, the dark 'kingdom' of self righteousness.

I currently live in a fairly small and very conservative town in the south. There is a lovely hair stylist I go to who is a transvestite. I don't have a safe pronoun to refer to this person in a way that's neutral and doesn't plant myself firmly in one view or the other of their (there's the pronoun we settle for in the abstract, but it's hard to get by with when you're talking to an acquaintance of the person in point) current gender. This person was male and is transitioning into a female identity, which is pretty persuasive, and has chosen a genderless name, but I'm going to use Valentine as a pseudonym.

In a town this size that's overrun with the most self righteous God squads you could find anywhere in the U.S., people gawk and judge. That's what we humans do. It's like we think it's our birthright. After talking to this gentle, wounded soul, I learned that all of their 3 siblings died in separate incidents the same week! Their father was never present and rejected his child because of their gender issues...and this year their mother died too. My heart broke for Valentine. Eventually I would hear people talking about Valentine the transvestite, people who liked V. But amazingly it seemed that all anyone really knew was the transvestite part. I didn't meet anyone who knew about him but who also knew the horrible, horrible pain and brokenness Valentine was dealing with.

I was so struck by how mesmerized people are with the tawdry side of one person's biography, so much so that they were totally oblivious to the gaping wounds that beg for salve and bandages. We are gawkers who want to see some gore, who find some sick attraction to knowing about people's stigma (which we may regard as sin), but who allow ourselves to be completely distracted by the by that fascinating aberration from the norm and completely sidetracked from the mission of saving and healing people--bringing them rescue... we don't come with a stretcher and a first aid kit. We come with hand cuffs and a big stick. And a video camera. And we often come disguised as vigilantes when in our sick, not yet fully sanctified minds, we are really voyeurs.

Jesus never approached people and said, Hey, you suck and you're going to hell. Wait, Jesus never did that to 'sinners.' Meaning He never did it to people who knew how lost they were. He only did it to the Pharisees and the teachers of the law... and boy did He have some choice insults for them.

You want to talk about the emperor's new clothes? I give you religious people.

But to those who were not wrapped up in their own so called 'holiness'. . . With everyone who knew that they were not righteous in themselves, Jesus did not begin with their sin. He always began with their wounds. He saw their pain and He spoke healing into their pain and THEN after healing them, He would say, Go and sin no more. The fact is that we don't have the power not to sin until He heals us. Nobody does. Not one stinking human. First He has to heal us, then we can be made whole, and then we can be made holy.

I can't believe how many American evangelicals seem to think that the Good News they're supposed to be sharing with the 'lost' is that they are vile and filthy and fall short of the glory of God, "but if they repent and put their faith in the blood of Jesus and His sacrifice, AND you follow this list of 300 rules about what you can say and wear and eat and drink and speak and think, THEN you can join our group and get into heaven (maybe, if you don't f up along the way, depends on how many points you rack up and how recently you confessed your sins when the rapture strikes)'. They seem to think that the good news is Hey we've got even more rules you have no hope of following on your own--come feel even crappier about yourself than you already do, and that is the road to salvation.

It is like they are finding a person being chased by wild animals at the foot of a cliff and saying, Good news, climb this 1 mile sheer cliff and when you get to the top you'll find someone there to help you climb it. We make people get holy before we'll talk to them or welcome them among us. That's not what Jesus did. That's not what the good news is. When you are Jesus to people, you come to that person and you say, 'Get on my back and I'll carry you to the top (because somebody carried me, and now I have the grace to help you too) and then we'll work on your wounds and I'll introduce you to this Person who took away my sin and set me free...'

When I heard that Michael Jackson died last night I was shocked. They had just taken him to the hospital, and then he just... died. That's not the script. He gets sick but he recovers...He's too young, he's too famous...I wanted him to recover so he could have more time to find healing for all the wounds in his heart. I was talking to my transvestite friend and was amazed to hear Valentine dismiss Jackson as a child molester and express his preferred sympathy for Farah Faucet (who had better hair). It seems that no matter how marginalized you are in a society, you can still hate and despise someone else, usually the child molesters. (And I am reporting what someone said about MJ, I'm not professing to know what he did or did not do) Because their sin doesn't emerge from holes in their hearts that they are trying desperately to fill to deaden the horrifying pain??? Sin is people trying to meet legitimate needs through illegitimate means. Putting the wrong things in the holes in your heart to try to fill the gaping wound, and wounding others in the process, and widening the holes in your own heart, too.

Every American Christian I think knows/believes/has heard that if they had been the only person on earth Jesus would have died for them.

Here's the bitch. Jesus loves the person whose entire identity you are summing up as 'child molester' enough to die on the cross for him or her even if s/he had been the only person on earth, too. He would have died for him. The bitch is that Jesus loves the child molester just as much as He loves you! The bitch is that you stand at exactly the same place at the foot of the cross, right beside the child molester and the serial killer and the rapist...

Again, for those who have ears to hear, Here's the bitch. Yes, Jesus would have died for you had you been the only human on earth. But guess what? Your sin (and mine) is so filthy and despicable next to the holiness of God that YOUR SIN would have REQUIRED that Jesus die for you to save your sorry ass even if you had been the only person on earth. Put that on a T-shirt and tell them I sent you. I crucified Jesus. With my own self absorption. With all the messes I've made in my life and those of everyone connected to me, whether it was my express intention to do so or not.

I'm so glad that God has the same mercy for me that He has for Michael Jackson. Who may not have committed all deeds attributed to him. But even if he did, I'm so glad that Jesus looks at him and looks at me and sees our brokenness and our wounds and is able to let His compassion overrule His wrath as long as we but humble ourselves and acknowledge that whatever our sins are/were, they are/were black enough to require the ultimate sacrifice from the one perfectly beautiful innocent loving Person who ever lived.

How dismaying that at our core, we almost always want mercy for ourselves, but justice for others.

Oh that He would transform our hearts and we would wish the same mercy we have received on even our greatest enemies. Here is the test of how much Jesus there is in you. Thankfully, His mercies are new every morning and His compassion never ceases- all we have to do is cry out for mercy and throw ourselves on His, and He will give us Jesus' righteousness to wear straight into the Holy of Holies. Right after the child molester in front of us, who has found grace.

I hope that something happened in Michael's heart in a realm we could not see that enabled him to surrender to God's grace before he died.

There are so many people who really do not want a part of any God who could forgive a child molester or some other low life, say hanging on a cross next to Him, where there was obviously not going to be any opportunity for him to 'redeem himself' by his good deeds after getting sanctified.

How critical that event in the life of Jesus-that it was recorded for us--that we see Him promise paradise to a person who had no way in this life of deceiving himself that the real redemption was in what he achieved after he became a Christian. The beautiful deeds He does through us as He transforms us after the salvation experience are evidence of His glory and His love and His amazing power. How easily we think them evidence that we are redeeming ourselves. That we were really pretty good after all and deserved saving.

Thank God for the thief on the cross. Thank God for every repentant child molester and murderer He has had compassion on and sanctified with the same blood of the Lamb that sanctifies you. Thank God that He has the same mercy for me that He has for them. Thank God for His mercies which are new every morning! Thank God, Thank God, Thank God, Thank God! Glory to God in the highest! Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah. Holy Holy Holy.

Judges: A beautiful flower in the Samson story- his mother

So we've established that Samson is the weightlifting brainless thug who swings constantly from rage to lust and back to rage again and manages to kill a lot of Philistines (Israel's main enemy at the time) in the process, but only because God was weaving whatever Samson did into a nice tapestry that worked to good for God's people in spite of Samson himself.

Samson's story might be where I first started pondering birth narratives and who gets them. With people like Isaac, Moses, Samuel, John the baptist, Jesus, you have leaders who work with God to achieve His master plan. They're all good guys who do what they were meant to do-they find their purpose and stick with it. Samson seems to be the only one who gets a birth narrative but does not pan out.

And it's not just any birth narrative--he gets an entire chapter devoted to his birth announcement, and it is even more dramatic than the visitation to Mary the mother of Jesus! And Samson was really a creep. But he was a creep called by God. His story really reveals an interesting facet of the truth that the calling of God is without repentance. God never revokes His call on Samson's life even though Samson allows himself to be ruled completely by his liver-his lusts, following whatever his passions dictate, without as much moral integrity as a decent man or woman has in their little finger.

Unfazed by this, God ultimately weaves everything into good for His people and makes Samson a deliverer of Israel in spite of himself (but notably, showing him to be far more valuable to Israel in his death than in his whole life of heroic exploits). Samson does actually pray once or twice, though even then, it’s all about his personal quest for vengeance, his own passions. And we may never know what God would have done through Samson if he had yielded his heart completely to the Spirit of God. But Samson is not the flower I have for you today.

The real story of godliness in the Samson narratives rests in the character of his parents. More particularly, and more interesting for all my God fearing girlfriends (thank you, Martina McBride, for this phrase), the real heroine in the Samson narrative is Samson’s mother, the wife of Manoah, who is never even NAMED. It is to this godly woman that the Angel of the Lord appears and announces Samson’s impending birth, her history of barrenness notwithstanding.

Manoah, not around for the first visitation, asks the Lord to send the angel again, allegedly “so that they can get more details about how to raise the child.” The Angel of the Lord does appear again, but does he appear to Manoah out in the field? NO. He appears to the unsung godly woman who has to go out and track down her husband and bring him into (what turns out to be) the presence of the Lord. Moreover, please note, there was not even one more detail added in the second visitation than there was in the first visit to the lowly nameless woman about how to raise Samson as a Nazirite.

Of course, the most riveting point of interest for me in this story, with my ongoing captivation with fire imagery in scripture, is what happens in the offering they make to the Lord. Judges 13:15 Manoah said to the angel of the LORD, We would like you to stay until we prepare a young goat for you. The angel of the LORD replied, Even though you detain me, I will not eat any of your food. But if you prepare a burnt offering, offer it to the LORD. (Manoah did not realize that it was the Angel of the LORD).

Manoah asks the Angel of the Lord what H/his name is, because, he says, he wants to know it so that he can honor the visitor when H/his word comes true. You might think, if you happen to be tuned in to interactional norms and gender differences, that there are some things that women just know not to ask. But Manoah rushes in where angels—well, angels and women—fear to tread. And he is probably embarrassed a tad that he doesn’t get an answer. He is bluntly told that it is beyond his understanding and is asked why he asked. The key point here is that Manoah doesn't know exactly who he's talking to right now but if he is talking to an angel, and not the Lord Himself, what he is proposing is idolatry. So the Angel dude puts the kibosh on that right away. Whatever you offer, you offer to the Lord.

Then Manoah takes a young goat, together with the grain offering, and sacrifices it on a rock to the Lord. And then the Lord does an Amazing thing while Manoah and his wife watch:
20 As the flame blazed up from the altar towards heaven, the angel of the Lord ascended in the flame. Seeing this, Manoah and his wife fall with their faces to the ground. 21When the angel of the Lord did not show himself again to Manoah and his wife, Manoah realized that it was the angel of the Lord.

This is one of the most dramatic demonstrations of the Spirit of God responding to and with fire in His pleasure/acceptance of worship in Scripture. Tucked away in a story about a guy people don’t want their sons to grow up to be like. But a guy who was raised by some godly parents in the midst of the period of the judges when people lived like hellions, each doing as “he found fit,” complete corporate amnesia about those Ten Commandments and several books of laws that had been given to detail what God found fit.

The next thing you notice that is really lovely here is that the lovely nameless woman is the voice of reason in her family. Not shocking to those of us who come from families in which a woman is often the voice of reason, but throughout history it has been a literary standard that men are the voice of reason, and women their emotional counterparts. This is really visible in the Elizabethan literature where men are at the top of the hierarchy of beings because they are, allegedly, ruled by reason.

Manoah, however, gets overcome and decides they are going to die when he realizes they have seen God. 13:22 We are doomed to die! We have seen God! His wife coolly explains that if they died, Samson could not be born, thus defeating the purpose of the whole visitation and announcement.

Then she has the baby and names him Samson and does her best to raise him according to the rules the Angel had stipulated. Throughout the rest of the Samson narratives though, you find Samson sinning, but always behind his parents’ backs—he feeds them honey from a dead animal which was a huge violation of kosher dining etiquette (i.e., it was a big fat sin), but does not tell them where it comes from. And when he insists on marrying a Philistine, his parents protest and try to get him to marry a nice Jewish girl instead. But Samson is always going to do his own thing. To his eventual destruction.

Anyway, I just wanted to draw your attention to this nameless flower in the Samson narratives (which start in chapter 13) who displays more of the splendor of God than her named male counterparts. Sometimes we miss the really tasty bits of scripture that seem backgrounded to the more dramatic actions and characters. Some wonderfully beautiful flowers are hidden in those out of the way corners of the Old Testament woods, off the main path, but very worth tracking down.

Samson- Personification of the Apostasy of the Age

Samson is judge number 13. He is the only judge recorded who gets a birth narrative and is explicitly called by God from birth to deliver Israel, and is given special gifts (mainly physical strength) to accomplish this call. What he does not have is moral strength, so his life is messy—however, he is used by God in spite of his selfish, lust driven nature.

A) Birth narrative (all of chapter 13)
a. The Angel of the Lord appears to the sterile, nameless wife of Manoah and explains what part of the Nazirite vow she must keep herself and what for the child
b. On hearing of the visitation, Manoah asks through prayer for the “man of God” to come again to give more details about how to raise Samson. The Angel of the Lord again appears to the woman, who then goes to fetch her husband.
c. The Angel of the Lord repeats what he had told the woman in the first visitation (13:13-14), No grape products, no fermented drinks, nothing unclean
d. Manoah offers hospitality, but is told that the 'man' will not eat his food, but if he prepares a burnt offering, he should offer it to the Lord (13:15-16)
e. Manoah asks the 'man’s' name so that they may honor H/him when H/his word comes to pass, but is told that H/his name is beyond understanding
f. Manoah offers goat and grain, and as he and his wife watch the flame blazing up from the altar toward heaven, the Angel of the Lord ascends in the flame!!! (13:19-20)
g. When they realize who their visitor was, Manoah fears that they will die. But his (nameless) wife reasons that H/he would not have accepted their offering or revealed all of these things if he intended to kill them (after all, Samson could not then be born)
h. Samson is born, a boy. (13:24) (How would this tale have gone on if a girl had been born!!)
i. God blesses him and the Spirit of the Lord begins to stir him while he is in Mahaneh Dan, between Zorah and Eshtaol.

B) Arranging a Marriage to a Philistine
a. Samson sees a Philistine woman at Timnah and goes home to insist that his parents get her for him-parenthetical insert says that this was really part of God’s plan to confront the Philistines, but does not explain how it can be God’s will to break His own laws about marrying a non-Hebrew) 14:1-4
b. Samson and his parents go to Timnah and are attacked by a young lion which Samson tears apart with his bare hands under the Spirit of the Lord

Problem: The subnarrative here, v. 5-7) has parents & Samson traveling together, but as they approach the vineyards, a young lion comes roaring toward him-He killed the lion and didn’t tell his parents—where were they? Also, are we not meant to find it meaningful that it was as he approached the VINEYARD, a threat to his Nazirite vow, that he faced this challenge?

c. He goes and talks to the woman and he likes her (14:7)
d. (Returning home) he finds bees and honey in the lion’s carcass, which he not only eats against God’s law, but gives to his parents to eat unknowingly, so that he makes them sin in ignorance.

C) The Wedding
a. Wedding riddle-the point here seems to be that marrying a woman from among your enemies is not smart. He ends up telling her the answer to the riddle to prove his love for her (or to make her stop crying, which she has done for 7 days!), and she, of course, betrays him by telling the answer to his people, where her highest loyalty still lies.
b. To pay for the riddle with 30 sets of clothes, however, Samson KILLS 30 Philistines and gives the clothes from off their bodies to those who had answered the riddle.
c. He then he goes home in anger without his bride, with whom he is, no doubt, somewhat disenchanted,
d. Since he abandons her, the Philistines give his wife to the friend who had attended him at his wedding, presumably the best man. It does not say whether Samson’s best man is a Philistine or not.
e. Samson gets over his anger and swings back to lust, the two poles that seem to govern his passion driven life, goes to be with his wife and learns that she has been given to his friend.
f. Swinging back to rage, Samson uses 300 foxes (how he comes by 300 foxes is not explained) with torches tied to their tails, to burn the Philistine wheat harvest.
g. In retaliation, the equally passion-driven Philistines kill both the wife (presumably to hurt Samson) and her father (presumably because he indirectly caused the burning of the harvest) by burning them to death, thus fighting fire with fire.
h. In retaliation, Samson kills many more and then retires to a cave near Etam. (15:7-8)

D) Slaying Philistines with a Jawbone
a. The Philistines camp IN Judah (pretty cheeky!) and demand the Israelites turn Samson over to them so they can repay him for his latest attacks.
b. Three thousand men from Judah go to Samson in the cave and point out that the Philistines have been/are, for all intents and purposes, rulers over the Israelites, just in case he hadn’t noticed. They consider his escapades a liability rather than an asset saying, What have you done to us?? He replies in the spirit of “an eye for an eye,” I merely did to them what they did to me, without concern about how his act may affect others of his own people. They negotiate with Samson, agreeing to bind him and turn him over alive to the Philistines (wonder how many of them expected Samson to do something spectacular).
c. As Samson moves toward Lehi, the angry Philistines come running toward him shouting (curses? Insults to his God?) and the Spirit of God comes on him in power (does not say he prayed for it), he breaks the ropes, grabs a jaw bone, and kills a thousand men (all in a day’s work).
d. Samson composes a song or poem about this exploit. (15:16). With a donkey I have made a donkey out of them…
e. Samson gives credit to God and prays for water and God answers. When he drinks of this water from God, his strength returns.

E) Prostitute in Gaza
a. Samson spends the night with a prostitute in Gaza. When the townspeople get wind of this, they surround that place with the intention of killing him at dawn, when he is all worn out. Instead, he leaves in the middle of the night and tears the city gate out of the wall, carrying it over his head (?) on his shoulders to the top of the hill that faces Hebron. If the gate was on the East side that means he turned his back to Gaza. Gaza was part of the Philistine Pentapolis at the time. Hebron was one of the highest points (3,040 feet above sea level), so I’m thinking it might have been visible from the hill where Samson stood. Since the story ends here I imagine there is meant to be a symbolic message in this act and the mention of direction.

F) Delilah
a. Samson’s 3 lies, Delilah’s 3 Tests: Samson actually falls in love with Delilah, though there is NO mention of her love for him. Whatever her motive in letting this relationship develop, she is soon working for a mother load of money, 1100 shekels of silver from each Philistine ruler, however many there were.
b. Her 3 tests were
i. To be tied with fresh thongs (seven)
ii. To be tied with new ropes
iii. To have his seven braids women into fabric on a loom.
For each of those requests Delilah only says, Please tell me the secret, don’t make a fool of me, don’t lie to me again.
c. But for the fourth attempt, Delilah appeals to Samson’s love for her, and nagging him like this for many days she finally wears him down until he is “tired to death” and tells her the secret that if his head were shaved he would be as weak as any man. So Delilah calls a man to cut off the braids and Samson’s strength leaves him, but he thinks he will not be weakened. Samson himself does not believe the truth he told anymore than he believed his own lies. He seems unable to identify truth. And underlyingly, he must believe that he is invincible, quite apart from obedience. It is unclear to me whether and at what level he might understand his strength to be a gift from God. At any rate, 16:20b reports, But he did not know that the LORD had left him.
d. The Philistines seize him and unceremoniously gauge out his eyes and take him back down to Gaza where he is bound in brass shackles and forced to grind grain in a prison like a common beast of burden-the man who lives by his passions like an animal gets treated like one. Having lived by bulk, to the neglect of his higher faculty of reason/intellect/wisdom, he is only taking on a visible role that accords with the way he had already been living. But his hair begins to grow, and the Philistines must not have truly believed the secret of his strength either, since they leave it unattended.

G) Samson "Entertains" at Festival for Dagon
a. Singing the praises of their false god, the Philistines call for Samson to be brought out to entertain them (and be living evidence of the power of their God, Dagon).
b. Samson actually prays for strength to avenge HIMSELF. A servant (could he have been a Jewish servant?) helps him find and feel the pillars that support the temple.
c. He pulls down the central pillars and kills all the rulers and people, about 3,000-- more when he dies than he had during his whole life.
d. Samson is buried in his hometown by his father’s whole family, ending 20 years of “leading” Israel.

Samson was called by God (as his elaborate birth narrative illustrates), gifted by God, and used by God, though he seems to have been used in spite of himself—God had to take his selfish acts and cause them to achieve His higher purposes.

Was Samson ever happy? Did he ever find peace or fulfillment in God or elsewhere? How would the Samson narratives be different if Samson had loved God and yielded to His Spirit at all times, not only when his selfish passions overcame him and God had to step in and use evil for good? All things work together for good for those who love God and are called according to His purpose (Romans 8:28)…In this case, God was working things out for the good of the Israelites… From that perspective, might we compare Samson to Balaam, or maybe Balaam's donkey?! (Numbers 22).

As is true for us in different ways, Samson’s strength was also his weakness: his physical power was too easy to use to solve problems. When we learn about the gifts God has given us, we also have to learn the positive and negative uses for each, powers for good and powers for evil. The power to build, nurture and strengthen versus the power to destroy… The power to not use a particular gift in a particular context if that’s what love calls for…

We do not (are not to) compare ourselves to others (Galatians 6:4), but according to the gifts God has given us as individuals. These gifts are not for us alone, but belong to the Body of Christ—if we do not use them (obediently) we deprive the whole Body, not just ourselves, as Samson deprived all of Israel.

Samson ‘knows’ the source of his strength at head level, as evidenced by his ability to articulate it to Delilah, but apparently not at the level of his heart and of an intimate experience-knowledge of God in his life, so that he does not really understand that he will be powerless when the Nazirite vow is completely broken by the shaving of his head. Thus he is surprised and dismayed when he discovers that the Lord has left him. When you learn to practice the presence of God, surely you will know what His presence feels like, and thus what His absence feels like. Jesus knew when God had turned His face away on Golgotha.

Samson's gifts and his Nazirite regimen--that set of guidelines for doing God's will with his life, were not sufficient for him to connect with the Spirit of God and to know whether He came or went. The gifts themselves are no evidence of our right relationship with God.

Shechem (from Judges) and the rich layers of reference in scripture

Every time a place is mentioned in scripture it is significant. Every place has a name and the name has a meaning, which usually comes to bear on whatever the scripture passage is. Moreover, every place has a history—events significant to God and His people took place there.

If you talk about San Francisco you probably think of earthquakes, nice weather, outrageous real estate and gay pride. Right now everything about the history of Detroit is being brought out for exhibition as the big auto makers start shutting down. References to Detroit reach back into all this—the migration of black Americans from the south, the birth of the assembly line, Motown music, eventually crime and poverty--all these associations in the hearer’s head.

So the original audiences of scripture would have had all those kinds of associations too, with every place name and every name of a group of people (the Midianites, etc). They are part of the meaning of that passage and if you skip over them like they were just extra words in the way, you’re just skimming the top of the meaning and missing a whole lot. Every name of every place, person, people, tree, flower, jewel and precious metal has some symbolic significance. If you will dig deeper into these many layers of scripture you will uncover treasures hidden there for you. Your mind and spirit will be enriched.

For example, let’s look at ‘Shechem,’ which is mentioned in Judges 9.

1) Shechem is a place of promise. Abram met God there and God made His Big Promise about becoming the father of nations to Abram there.

Genesis 12:6 Abram traveled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moreh at Shechem. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. 7 The LORD appeared to Abram and said, "To your offspring [a] I will give this land." So he built an altar there to the LORD, who had appeared to him.

2) Shechem is also a place of promise, peace, and safety for Jacob. After Abram’s grandson Jacob safely survives his encounter with Esau (when he fully expected Esau to waste him for stealing his birthright all those years prior), Jacob buys some land right there where God had made His promise of becoming the father of a great nation. He is already beginning to fulfill prophecy. And he makes an altar there, naming it El Elohe Israel, acknowledging Yawheh as God for the seedling nation of Israel, right there where it had been promised to Abram.

Genesis 33:18 After Jacob came from Paddan Aram, he arrived safely at the city of Shechem in Canaan and camped within sight of the city. 19 For a hundred pieces of silver, he bought from the sons of Hamor, the father of Shechem, the plot of ground where he pitched his tent. 20 There he set up an altar and called it El Elohe Israel.

3) While these two incidents were essentially acts of consecration and devotion to God's will, the next big event scripture records about Shechem is one of defilement-it is a place where Jacob's sons take justice into their own hands. It is the site of the rape of Dinah, and subsequently, the revenge 'rape' of a city by her brothers. After moving to Shechem, within sight of the city, that is, Dinah is seduced by Shechem son of Hamor. In reprisal her brothers trick the men of the city into getting circumcised and then they sneak in and kill every man while they are still in pain. Hamor is said to mean ass or donkey, which is believed to have been the city's sacred animal (a kind of mascot), and Shechem means son of the ass/donkey.

You should read the whole chapter (Genesis 34) for this story, but here's the beginning:

1 Now Dinah, the daughter Leah had borne to Jacob, went out to visit the women of the land. 2 When Shechem son of Hamor the Hivite, the ruler of that area, saw her, he took her and violated her. 3 His heart was drawn to Dinah daughter of Jacob, and he loved the girl and spoke tenderly to her. 4 And Shechem said to his father Hamor, "Get me this girl as my wife." 5 When Jacob heard that his daughter Dinah had been defiled, his sons were in the fields with his livestock; so he kept quiet about it until they came home. 6 Then Shechem's father Hamor went out to talk with Jacob. 7 Now Jacob's sons had come in from the fields as soon as they heard what had happened. They were filled with grief and fury, because Shechem had done a disgraceful thing in [a] Israel by lying with Jacob's daughter—a thing that should not be done.

I have not been able to find a single commentary that deals seriously with the problem of the city and the names of individuals from the city called Shechem. If the city was already called Shechem when Jacob moved there, it seems almost metaphorical to call its most prominent citizen (from Jacob's family's point of view) by the name of the city. Maybe it's like saying Mr. New York, Mr. Shechem. . .

4) Shechem is the place where Joseph's brothers were hanging out when he went to look for them, just before they moved on to Dothan, where they would hatch the plot to murder him. (Genesis 37:12).

5) Joseph buried in Shechem-he bought a tract of land there and willed that his remains (mummified) would be returned and buried there when his people returned. (Joshua 24:32)

6) When the Promised Land was divided among the tribes, Shechem was allotted to Joseph (Mannasah and Ephraim). (Joshua 17:2-10). It's nice that the descendants of Joseph could have the land where he wanted to be finally laid to rest.

7) Schechem was then designated a City of Refuge (Joshua 20:7-9, 21:21). A city of refuge was a place you could flee to if you accidentally killed someone and their family wanted to revenge. You could flee to a city of refuge and they would protect you until those who wanted your life had themselves died. I find this interesting since it figures in the story of Joseph's redemption-being sold as a slave rather than murdered, which is a little like being redeemed as a Christian for a life of service to God. I would have to study more to see if there is meant to be such symbolism there.

8) The naming problem-it appears that a descendant of Manassah's got named Shechem (Numbers 26:31) (because he lived there? because he was to inherit that?) and another (or maybe the same?) descendant was named Shechem as recorded in 1 Chronicles 7:19.

9) Joshua called an assembly at Shechem to renew the covenant. He drew up for them decrees and laws and then took a large stone and set it up there under the oak near the holy place of the Lord saying, This stone will be a witness against us. It has heard all the words the Lord has said to us. It will be a witness against you if you are untrue to your God! (Joshua 24:26,7)

10) Shechem is the site of all this trouble caused by Abimalech, which I will elaborate on later since it's what initially sparked this jaunt down Shechem's memory lane... (Judges 9:1-57)

11) The evil king Rehoboam (son of Solomon and an Ammonite princess, last king of the united monarchy and first king of Judah) went to Shechem for coronation. (I Kings 12:1-4, 2 Chronicles 10:1-4)

12) The evil king Jeroboam (Ephraimite, son of Nebat, remember Ephraim was from Joseph's line) had been appointed by Solomon as overseer of forced labor in the territories of Ephraim and Mannasah. He rebelled against Solomon and then fled for his life to Egypt where he married into the Egyptian Royal family, became the first king of the northern kingdom (probably) after the northern tribes had withdrawn their support from the harsh king Rehoboam) and who, upon becoming king, fortified Shechem and took up residence there, possibly using it as a capital.

13) Two enigmatic references in Psalms (60:6 and 108:7), God talking about triumphantly parceling out Shechem, I have to return to this later.

14) There is an incident after the Exile where some of the remnant come from Shechem, Shiloh and Samaria to bring offerings to the Lord, but most of them get slaughtered by an assassin (Jeremiah 41:4)

15) There is a poetic reference in Hosea, "As marauders lie in ambush for a man, so do bands of priests; they murder on the road to Shechem, committing shameful crimes." In other words, they murdered on their way to a city of refuge where they would not be held accountable for their crime. (Hosea 6:9, 10)

Joshua

You've got at least 19 good stories in Joshua. Which reminds me of my favorite line in Walk the Line, the movie about Johnny and June Carter Cash. Johnny's brother Jack Cash, who is 14 (when Johnny is about 12) and wants to be a minister when he grows up, is explaining to Johnny why he studies the Bible so zealously: How can you help people if you don't know what story to tell 'em? Out o the mouths of babes. Narrative is powerful and that's why so much of scripture is narrative, why Jesus told so many stories...rather than just the standard alliterative three point sermons.

major themes? well, be people of the book, tattoo it all over yourself, be strong and courageous, leave the old guard behind and come in with new wine skins for new wine.

Big point: Failure of handing off the baton of leadership at the end, setting Israel up to slip into the apostasy that would be the 300 years of Judges. After all those very explicit instructions in the first five books of scripture, Israel scrapped almost everything after Joshua's era. There is no evidence, for example, that Israel EVER actually observed the year of Jubilee. Somebody dropped the ball. And though the Law was Beautiful and Important and pointed towards holiness, it was clear that the law alone was not going to save Israel. There was going to have to be a Relationship between God and His people...one that included mercy and forgiveness...

Judges: Judges 6-12

7) Tola judges Israel for 23 yrs and only merits 1 verse! (10:1) Apparently he was not “all that.”

8) Jair rules for 22, and the most interesting thing they have to say about him is that he had 30 sons who rode around on 30 donkeys (which, granted, is reportable, but is not exactly a ringing endorsement of his leadership).

9) Jephthah is a lot more interesting, but tragic events draw the most notice to his leadership. He is a bastard son, not appreciated by the legitimate sons, and is chased away by his half brothers. But he is also a great warrior, and when the Ammonite oppression becomes overwhelming, the brothers seek Jephtha’s help. After some initial disbelief, he agrees to lead.

There are only 2 verses about his victory over the Ammonites, (32-33), (and it is noteworthy that he took military action only after diplomatic efforts had failed), and these are embedded in the story that is clearly more interesting to the author, that of the foolish vow. Jephtha had promised that if his army won the victory, he would offer as a sacrifice the first thing he saw when he got home... and that turned out to be his daughter. He then“dutifully” sacrificed her. Jephtha, his daughter, and apparently everyone else, recognize the grave obligation to keep one's vow to the Lord even if it is a horribly misguided one—they apparently fail however, to realize how utterly loathsome to God human sacrifice is.

[I think I dropped a paragraph or so about the ensuing conflict where his brothers distrust him again after the victory dust settles which is where the 'diplomacy' would have come in]

Although Jephtha demonstrated strong diplomatic skills internationally, he failed on the domestic front, fighting with Ephraim rather than smoothing things over the way that Gideon had managed to do when a similar dispute arose from the Ephraimites after he defeated the Midianites. (We are starting to get a whiny image of the Ephraimites).

This is where the linguistically legendary sh/s pronunciation test is instituted. The Ephraimites were trying to pass as main streamers but apparently had a dialect that didn’t allow for the “sh” sound (or at least not before the vowel in the first syllable of the word in point) and since they weren’t all getting Standard Israeli Hebrew instruction in their public schools, they simply didn’t notice the difference and couldn’t produce the “foreign” sound. Thus it was really easy to identify an Ephraimite by his dialect and inability to pronounce shibboleth, which apparently means ‘stream,’ which is what they were trying to cross on the occasion this little speech exam was administered. 42,000 Ephraimites lost their lives in this way.

Jephtha only ruled Israel for 6 years before he died. (10:6-12:7). And yet he gets airtime in Judges that spans 3 chapters (compared to Tola’s 23 years being brushed off by a single verse).

10) Ibzen of Bethlehem had 30 sons and 30 daughters whom he married cross clan boundaries (12:8-10). He gets 3 verses.

11) Elon of Zebulon, ruled for 10 years (12:11-12). He gets 2 verses.

12) Abdon of Pirathon ruled for 8 years. He had 40 sons and 30 grandsons who road on 70 donkeys. (12:13-15). He gets 3 verses.

And then there was Samson…

Judges--aka Tribal Leaders not completely unlike some of those those in Iraq and Afghanistan and like places today

the grand theme of this book? EVERYONE DID AS HE SAW FIT. that's what tribal leaders do. they make up their own rules. opens the people up to all kinds of abuse, very russian roulette- hit and miss-sketchy. very sketchy. one is tempted to draw parallels to wallstreet's unregulated ceo's and the like as well, but 'one' will forego the temptation for now. too many irons in the fire, as it were.

i used to put off judges for a long time after reading joshua, dreading that horrible story at the end, but i don't think i remembered until the 2002 reading that the horrible rape of the concubine doesn't happen until chapter 20, at the very end of this book about the height of the early apostasy, the darkest night right before the dawn of the age of the prophets (enter Samuel stage left) but not yet, we're doing judges. hold your horses.

you do have to ask yourself what joshua had to do with the fact that the fragile little civil society spectacularly crashed and burned almost as soon as he died -- was there a failure of vision and leadership on his part? did he not think about the fact that there would need to be strong capable leaders to take over when God took him out? there is virtually no leadership structure in place when he exits. big power vacuum. those really suck.

somehow we tend to put ourselves on automatic pilot when reading through the old testament, like it was this ordeal we have to go through to get our little bible reading star in our crowns, but already determined that we weren't gonna get nothin from it.

but if you even stay half awake, you should be able to see this beautiful little pattern that swirls around about 20 times throughout the book. ok the pattern itself is tragic and pathetic, but the structure is gorgeous and there is a message in the structure! God is a God of order, so finding the structures He's built into Scripture is a delightful sally into the well groomed garden of His mind. . .

1) The people screw up and do evil
2) Other nations start messing with them and turning up the heat
3) They come to their acute senses and cry out to God for help
4) God raises up a leader, a judge, a superheroe if you will
5) The hero saves them (well, God saves them through the hero)
6) The people, with a 3 second memory like a fish, shortly if not immediately return to their degenerate ways, taking their eyes off God, sin-king beneath the waves of their self-worshiping human nature

I mean it was quite a merry go round. Except for the merry part. Unless it was the Eat drink and be merry in steps 1 and 6. It's like a laundry cycle, only two of the cycles make the clothes filthy --it's like apply filth, rub in filth, soak in soap, wash vigorously, rinse, soak in filth, repeat. but the wash and rinse cycles are glorious. they truly are. and sometimes they're pretty long cycles. and normally in judges, after telling you about a particular judge and his/her "reign" the writer adds how long the cycle was, how many years of peace ensued after the hero performed amazing feats yada yada, before moving on to the next. so that's the cycle.

Here are some of the judges:

1) Othniel conquers the oppressor, King of Aram (3:7-11) 40 years of peace ensued

2) Ehud (a lefty) kills the fat oppressive king of moab, Eglon, with a double edged sword (funniest bathroom scene in scripture embedded here (3:12-30) 80 years of peace ensued

3) Shamgar killed 600 Philistines with an ox goad. ONE VERSE. (3:31) Shortest narrative in scripture?? Shockingly, no mention of how much peace ensued.

4) Deborah, the prophetess (Married to Lappidoth (about whom we hear nothing)) rises to power when Israel's chief oppressor is Jabin, King of Canaan and his army commander is Sisera. In the voice of God, Deborah orders her own army commander, Barak, (dang, i did not remember that was his name when i voted) to organize 10,000 troops to go to war against Sisera. Barak is weak kneed and Deborah prophecies that because of his lack of courage he will be disgraced by having the honor of taking the enemy's leader out given to a woman. (some of us think worse fates could befall you).

the woman in point was apparently not the powerful, spiritual, political and intellectual force that was Deborah, but humble tent-peg wielding housewife/ homemaker/ domestic engineer Jael! apparently this struggle between Isreal and theCanaanites was a gradual victory that sort of culminated in the incident where Jael nails the enemy commander-- "and the hand of the Israelites grew stronger and stronger against Jabin,"until they destroyed him. remember Jabin was the king they were struggling against. but his army commander was Sisera.

Sisera is the one who got nailed by Jael for underestimating the power of a civilian woman who appeared to be consumed by her domestic responsibilities. Sisera takes warm milk from the nice lady and then takes a nap under her covers and then gets violently assassinated by said nice lady (chapter 4:1-24) 40 years of peace ensued.

Incidentally, Deborah's song of Worship-history is 30 verses long and a bit sadistic for my tastes (28-30) (chapter 5:1-31)

5) Gideon (also a bit weak-kneed) rose up against Midian (Oh come on you have to appreciate a primary opponent that rhymes with the leading man's) and the Amalekites and apparently a scattering of other Eastern peoples, who would come in and destroy the Israelites' crops and force them into hiding desperately in the mountain caves and clefts.

scene 1: God gives Israel a lecture about Egypt and not worshiping the Amorite Gods.

scene 2: The angel of the Lord interrupts Gideon in the midst of his wheat-threshing and calls him a mighty warrior (is there irony here? was he hiding in the barn?) Gideon is a little whiney and a little cheeky. He complains that when God delivered Israel from Egypt He performed "wonders." apparently without 'wonders' God has obviously abandoned Israel.

scene 3: Gideon asks for a sign and his sacrifice is consumed by fire. (6:17-24) Gideon Responds "Ah, Sovereign Lord! I have seen the angel of the Lord face to face." Gideon builds an altar and names it The Lord is Peace.

scene 4: Assignment-Tear down the Ashera poles and the altar your father established to Baal and make 2 proper bull sacrifices to God. (6:15-40) He did this at night because he was afraid, and in the morning the people wanted to kill him anyway (apparently he was hiding in his house). So interesting that it was his father, Joash, whose altar to Baal Gideon destroyed, but yet Joash is quick to comply and it is he who challenges the men of the town- "If Baal is really God, he can defend himself when someone breaks down his altar." Apparently everyone accepts this because the embedded narrative ends.

scene 5: Gideon asks for signs through fleeces and gets them (6:33-40).

scene 6: 300 handlapping men best the inumberable Midianite Alliance (7:1-25) via psychological warfare achieved via sound effects (trumpet, breaking clay jars). Orebe and Zeeb (2 Midianite leaders) get decapitated and the place they were killed gets named after them (7:25)

scene 7: Gideon diffuses conflict by minimizing his own contribution to success (8:1-3).

scene 8: Two unlucky and unwise towns refuse Gideon and his 300 men bread and taunt them-they get blasted later (8:4-17)

scene 9: Gideon kills Zebah and Zalmunna (Midianites) for killing his 70 brothers (with the bearing of a prince) (8:18-21).

scene 10: Gideon refuses to rule (as General Washington first had in America's founding) and urges the Israelites to let God rule. He only asks for one earring from each of them, out of which he makes an ephod, which becomes a great snare to him and his family (8:22-27)

scene 11: Gideon dies and Israel spirals right back to its cycle of idolatry.

The 6th through 13th judges coming right up. . .