Few things have managed to be as consistently funny (OK, minus that "Homer Vs Dignity" episode, but let's just pretend that never happened) and relevant as The Simpsons, which aired its 20th season premiere last night on Fox. In honor of The Simpsons' birthday, here are some of the best religion-centric clips in the show's history. Sadly, it was really hard to find any of the Krusty/Rabbi Krustofsky clips on Hulu.com, so if anyone has better luck or a different link, feel free to email it to us or link to it in a comment.

Editor's note: My ex-boyfriend once told me that the Simpsons character I most resembled was Jessica Lovejoy. I don't think it was a compliment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As the economy struggles to recover, many families have scaled back their holiday gift-giving this year. But instead of preaching about anti-commercialization or how the real meaning of the holidays is religion/spending time with family/love, one priest took a decidedly different approach to his Christmas sermon. Father Tim Jones of St Lawrence Church in York, England, told congregants that it was acceptable to shoplift from big chain stores. That's right, kids - God (well, this guy who supposedly speaks on God's behalf) says it's OK to take things that don't belong to you. I'll meet you at the Wal-Mart as soon as this week's service is over.

Via the Daily Mail:

The married father-of-two insisted his unusual advice did not break the Bible commandment 'Thou shalt not steal' - because God's love for the poor outweighs his love for the rich.

Delivering his festive lesson, Father Jones told the congregation: 'My advice, as a Christian priest, is to shoplift.  I do not offer such advice because I think that stealing is a good thing, or  because I think it is harmless, for it is neither.

'I would ask that they do not steal from small family businesses, but from large national businesses, knowing that the costs are ultimately passed on to the rest of us in the form of higher prices.

So, if someone does that and gets arrested, is Jones the one who should go to prison? And does this mean that when you're shoplifting you should also feel free to swipe a nice present for your friendly neighborhood priest while you're at it?

Last night, as I was reading comments to yesterday's post, Multiple Spirituality Disorder, it finally occurred to me that I may be witnessing a generational shift in attitudes and perspectives toward interfaith dialogue and identity. (Does that make me a great sociologist or what? Graduate school at NYU was not wasted on me!)

These days, the world of Jewish-Christian dialogue is pretty messy, although it might not seem that way at Jewcy.com.  My week of writing and hanging out at this site has been a source of great comfort and several very good laughs.

Here, it seems, everyone takes everyone else's self-referent irreverence in stride. Here, making a big deal over the distinction between identity and practice seems to be no big deal. Here, intra-tribal warfare seems to be waged with exponentially less vitriol that it is in other venues.  Here, tikkun seems possible; that the shattered world of Christian-Jewish relations might be repaired a teensy bit.  I hope this is true because my generation has and, as far as I can tell is still, screwing it up.

My experience as an American Jew is anchored in an earlier time in history, a point when anti-Semitism was blatant and acceptable. I was in junior high when Tom Lehrer wrote and sang, "National Brotherhood Week," which included the rueful big-laugh line, "And everyone hates the Jews."  This helped shape my identity as a Jew and, as I'd discover, future interactions with other Jews about my embrace of Christianity.

Calling something a "dialogue" doesn't make it one. In my book Why Is There a Menorah on the Altar? I reprinted copies of significant dialogue documents issued by the liturgical churches as well as by the text for Dabru Emet (appearing as a full-page ad in The New York Times on September 10, 2000) and A Sacred Obligation (issued by the Christian Scholars Group on Christian-Jewish Relations). They're moving documents that become even more so considering when they were written.

Still, if my experience in writing my book is any indication, we have a long way to go.  Case in point: the pissing contest with one (Jewish, younger, scholar) reviewer over the proper transliteration of the Hebrew word for "holy."  What do you think it is?  Kodesh? Kodosh? Kadosh?  Choose the "wrong" one and your identity could be suspect.

At one point, my Conservadox Jewish therapist said, "Forget about the Jews. They're not your audience." Perhaps not, but given the realities of interfaith marriage it's time to know more about our shared heritage. For Christians, this means understanding our Jewish roots. For Jews, this means understanding how our legacy endures in other religious traditions. Dayenu? Probably not.

Confession: I've never actually met a Jew. Well, maybe I did. Growing up in the Bible Belt, the "Jesus" I practically had tattooed across my forehead may have scared them away. So I haven't knowingly met anyone Jewish, anyways. My experience with Judaism extends to the Bible, a Seder meal at church, and what I've seen on television. (Fiddler on the Roof used to be my favorite movie!) If I did, they probably wouldn't have liked me very much. While I didn't feel I was superior as a person, I did feel that my religion was superior.

See, we weren't anti-Semitic, per se. I did not hear many of the racial slurs and ridiculous rumors until I reached adulthood, or nearly so. On the contrary, growing up in a conservative branch of evangelical Christianity, we loved Judaism. I remember someone pointing out a Jewish woman at a church service I attended, and I was filled with awe: so that's what one of G-d's chosen people looked like! Though because I didn't actually meet her, I can still say I've never met anyone who is Jewish.

As respectful of Judaism as we were in some ways, we weren't quite in others. Instead of racist, we were more religionist, if you will. We were evangelical Christians. So while we backed, almost fanatically, Jewish causes in the Middle East and looked up to Jews, we still thought that Jews were going to hell. See, somehow, to us, Jews used to be G-d's chosen people, but when they rejected the Salvation He provided for them, Christians became G-d's chosen people. (See the parable of the banquet found in Luke 14.) As annoying it may be for non-Christians, it really is well-intentioned, if not sorely misguided.

Fortunately, I got out of that situation and am no longer an evangelical Christian, but an atheist. So how did that happen? How did I go from on fire for G-d, conservative Baptist minister's wife to active, passionate atheist? Not just an atheist, but one who has gone on a sort of crusade against the beliefs I once held very dear? I am not against religion in general, or even Christianity in general, but fundamentalism. Of course, there are people who are happy in their fundamentalist lifestyle, but it damages so many people, both in and out of conservative Christianity.

I would say I was the ideal Baptist girl, but I wasn't really. Not mainstream Baptist, anyway - the Good Christian Girl who never got into any trouble. I was caught somewhere between conservativism and ultra-conservatism, which meant I didn't really fit in anywhere. I bought everything handed to me hook, line, and sinker: Christianity, salvation, purity, and men's superiority. At the age of 18, I felt the "call" into the ministry.

I got into ministry because, at the time, I really just loved the Lord. I wanted to share that with people, Jews included. I thought Jesus made me happy. I didn't realize, like so many people don't, that allowing Jesus into your life seems to help solve all of your problems at first, but later creates them if you allow yourself to fall deeper into conservativism. It isolates you from friends, family, the outside world, creating more loneliness and more need for Him.

At the age of 19 - having never been kissed, having never had a boyfriend - I met my future former husband. A ministry student at my conservative Christian college, I thought he was The One. We were married eleven months later. After finishing my degree in 2006, I settled in to become a stay-at-home minister's wife, and, that July, a stay-at-home mother as well.

Things were not going as well as Jesus promised. My husband did not understand the word "no" or the concept of boundaries in the bedroom. Having the level of purity I walked in to marriage with didn't make me attractive once there, because I was so naïve. Many things he wanted made me feel dirty and used. I did them, as a submissive wife and because saying "no" didn't really matter: eventually, we did what he wanted. Usually, when he wanted, too.

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Given the option, I write in "multiple spirituality disorder" whenever asked to declare my religion. I started doing this once I noticed how checking "Catholic" would obliterate first checking "Jewish." I also noticed that if I checked "Christian," "Catholic" would disappear which, at times, is fine with me. Other times, it is not.

Multiple spirituality disorder? Makes for a good laugh and some great conversation, but it's probably more accurate to say my cultural identity is Jewish, although my religious practice clearly is not. In this regard, I'm not all that different from Jews who embrace Jewish culture while rejecting Jewish religious practices. Okay, what's different, of course, is that Jesus as Christ thing.

But why Catholic?

Want to take an educated guess at how many times I get asked about my choice of preferred provider for worship? It's an excellent question, especially given the Roman church's long, despicable history of anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism.* I could do without how the question is usually posed.

To her everlasting credit, my mother, a retired Judaica editor, has always been intellectually curious about my journey. And because of the content and tone of her questions, I've been able to respond rather than react. I mention this because, in general, the vibe coming at me is not conducive to anything that might approximate dialogue. We do want dialogue, right?

I'm thinking specifically of someone at an Episcopal church who after asking if I was a priest, physically recoiled when I copped to being Roman Catholic. I've been asked if I'm stupid or crazy, usually by Cradle Catholics and other Jews. Depending on who pops the question, I'll take it as an opportunity to point out how one cannot become a lapsed Catholic without first becoming Catholic. My more reasoned responses are designed to generate a conversation about similarities rather than differences. We do want conversations, right?

To be clear: the Roman Catholic church breaks my heart and flips my stomach on a regular basis. I'm told my angst is normal.

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Jerusalem was busy last week as thousands descended on the city for Sukkot and the annual Jerusalem March. This year's march drew around 70,000 people, up from the 35,000 who participated in 2008. 20,000 police stood by on Tuesday to oversee the controversial event, after what has already been a tense week in Jerusalem. Thousands of Christians also took part in the march, attending as part of a Feast of Tabernacles celebration hosted by the International Christian Embassy of Jerusalem (ICEJ).

Christian presence is a by now a familiar part of the Sukkot milieu, but Israelis have yet to decide what to make of these "friends of Israel." Rabbi Tovia Singer has warned that the Christian congregants want to "prey on" rather than "pray for" Israel, and in 2007 the Chief Rabbinate forbade Jews from taking part in the march and other events with ICEJ presence. Minister of Tourism Stash Misezhnikov, however, has justified the event, stating that the Feast of Tabernacles is the largest annual tourist event in Israel, and is expected to generate between $16 and 18 million in revenue.

Who are these "Christian Zionists," and should they be welcomed by Israelis? These questions return each year, and have also surfaced occasionally during events like the death of Christian fundamentalist Jerry Falwall in 2007. Israeli journalist Evan Goldstein at the time pointed out that "philo-Semites, like Falwell, seem to relate to Jews more as mythical figures from the Bible than as real living, breathing people." His analysis was based on the thoughts of German philosopher Ernst Bloch, who wrote that a "philo-Semite is an anti-Semite that loves Jews."

As an American Christian who has lived and worked in Israel, I think Goldstein's diagnosis strikes at the heart of the problem. For many Christians the term "Jews" is understood to denote a homogenous group, often conceptualized as characters in a modern retelling of the Biblical narrative. To visit Israel is to enter into that narrative, as is reflected in the names of Christian Zionist tours: Bridges for Peace offers "Land of the Bible" experiences, the ICEJ gives "Grafted In" tours, CFOIC runs tours of "Judea and Samaria," and the Christian Friends of Israel lead a "Meet the People" tour. With the ICEJ you can even "adopt a holocaust survivor" for $250 a month.The problem of "meeting the people" is that in these discourses, the people are the tourist attraction, living figurines in a life-size diorama of Biblical past and prophecy.

When I moved to Israel in 2005, I came equipped with this American Christian picture of Israelis as "Biblical," religious, and European. What I found was a diverse and modern nation of secular, traditional, and religious Jews. Some were of European descent, but there were also Russian, Ethiopian, Iraqi, Yemeni, and many other ethnicities. Among Israeli society I also found a broad variety of opinions on the conflict, and a greater freedom of dialogue than exists in American politics (where the conflict is reduced to a choice between being "pro-Israel" and being labeled an "anti-Semite" or "self-hating Jew").

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52% of Jews do not believe in G_d. Apparently, being G_d's chosen people does not preclude actual belief in said deity.

I have to admit that this is a problem for me. And it really shouldn't be. A quick mental check list of my Jewish friends reveals that most of the Jews I know are secular, atheist, "culturally Jewish," or whatever label you want.

I just feel sad that these Jews don't believe in something other than bagels and Seinfeld. Sure, you can connect to Judaism through your family, tradition, a sense of longing, history, culture. I'm not going to say that these things are wrong. They're amazing if they are right for you! I respect everyone's faith or lack of, as long as its genuine.

What I want to do is throw out a crazy idea: that believing in G_d is not as difficult nor archaic as anyone makes it out to be, and that believing in G_d can give you more than you can possibly imagine.

First, I have to tell a story. One that I don't tell a lot of people.

When I was 24, I had a profound religious experience. I was lying in bed, slowly waking up, and I felt this warm glow cover me. I had never had an experience like this before. I felt like I had a gallon of hot tea flowing through my whole body and this radiant spirit came over me. And I knew, despite disbelief in a Creator G_d, an absence of religious upbringing in my childhood and a general belief that this-is-all-there-is-to-life-get-used-to-it, that I had an encounter with the Holy.

I knew this G_d to be the Jewish G_d because the connection was singular. No Jesus, no Mohammed, no anything. It was one spirit, indivisible, that came over me and wrapped me in gentleness and love. I'm not going to explain it any further than that, because most people don't believe me and want more explanations. Sorry, I'm not here to give evidence to that.

As I began to learn my Jewish Path, I came across the Modeh Ani. Our Sages believe that our spirit leaves us in sleep and returns as we awaken. I understood that idea: it was dramatically similar to what happened to me.

So I lucked out. I touched this divine feeling without any work of my own. And I understand why it must be hard for the rational among us to believe in any of this. Frankly, I had my doubts to begin with.

But what I learned, from choosing G_d, is that the world is better when G_d is there. Simple things become easier to deal with, when you know that your life is worth more than what you make of it. Sure, there is still pain and stress, but my burden is not just mine, my families, or my friends to bear. Hashem is there to take it all on with me.

I believe that the world was created with love: that Creation is an expression of a deep, unwavering connection between all of Hashem's creatures and the Divine spark that is within everything. When you believe that the world is worth more than what you can pillage and rape from it, you develop a respect for Life that is profound.

The connection of Humanity to G_d is a relationship: part parent/child, part marriage, part adversary, part friend. And like all relationships, our relationship to G_d changes overtime. The spirituality I have as a senior citizen is going to be radically different that the one I have as a 20-something rock and roll douche bag. Through the revelations of our tradition, we find that our notion of G_d is free to change. We don't have to throw out the baby with the bath water.

The best part about loving G_d is that you realize how pathetic all the reasons to hate G_d are! Science and religion got you down? Believe in G_d, and you will suddenly find that you want to learn more about science, because you can connect to G_d through the tools used to make the world. Legalism and guilt mean nothing when you know that the sum of the entire universe times infinity is looking down on you, not scolding you for breaking the rules, but smiling because you are sincerely trying to do good for yourself, for others, and for Hashem. Tikkun olam is a great feeling: but it's even better when it goes from feeding the homeless, to feeding the Master of the Universe.

This may seem like pathetic dribble from a mindless Believer, pathetic and childish. That's OK. But here's a suggestion: if you don't believe in G_d, then fake it! Pretend like all the things I say are true. Live it. Take it in. Study it. You might find you like it. And when you do, maybe you'll feel a connection to G_d in your own way. And if you don't, what have you lost?

Wherever you are, wherever you want to go, G_d is there. Just reach out.

Fox TV's reality dating show More To Love is about much more than body size.

More To Love's opening shows tiny girls in bikinis with the caption: "The average girl on reality TV is a size 2. The average American woman is a size 14." More To Love's format is simply The Bachelor Plus Size: a total cheesy ripoff. But, like most reality dating shows, it fed my need for vicarious romance. At first, I was fascinated by the marked difference between these larger women and the usual skinny-beeyotch personalities; these women were self-deprecating instead of self-aggrandizing, weepy instead of hostile. Still, as the season went on and "Fatchelor" Luke started falling for Tali the Israeli, I totally fell for the interfaith dating storyline.

I wouldn't call myself a The Bachelor completist, but I have watched my share of the series. I never, not once, heard daters speak about their own religions. My husband and I wondered why how this extremely important subject seemed to never come up. We figured these discussions end up on the cutting room floor -- perhaps too controversial for prime time. Suddenly, More To Love starts discussing Tali and Luke's "different backgrounds." "Uh, yah!," I exclaimed to my husband, "'different backgrounds', 'different cultures'... can't they just come out and say, 'she's Jewish?'"

Well, to my surprise and joy, that's exactly what they did! Last night, on prime time TV, America got to watch an actual instance of a Jewish person getting serious with a non-Jew. Though my philosophical and religious beliefs are different than Tali's (and my husband's different from Luke's), my anxieties and experiences with meeting my husband's non-Jewish family were very similar.

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"Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh," we say to You in prayer, three times over. "Holy, Holy, Holy." And now I find myself before You, at thrice the age of a boy who has had his bar mitzvah. I cannot count the times over all these years that I have awakened and called out to You, still in my bed, that I stand before You, God. I have thanked You for the purity of my soul, for the wonders of my body. I have praised and exalted You, over and over again, in words of my own, in synagogue, joined with my people in common prayer, Sabbath after Sabbath, festival after festival, fast day after fast day. I've read psalms and even written them to You, as all of my friends have, calling out to You, O God of Israel.

When I was twice the age of a bar mitzvah boy I remember asking the rabbi of my youth this question: "After all of these years of calling out to God, why hasn't He called back?" The rabbi's answer was simple. "To the prophet Elijah He spoke, we are told, in a still small voice." I knew nothing of still small voices. Our household was always filled with people, and our prayer halls are always jammed and noisy from men's prayers. Curious about how I would ever hear that still small voice, I asked my Christian friend Rolando about silence, for I had heard that Christian monks spend long periods of time alone, silent, in prayer. He told me what he knew, gave me a book of his to read, which invoked the same passages about the still small voice. So I found places to still myself, in the attic, the cellar, in the synagogue at times when no one else was there. Once, feeling very brave, I asked Rolando if I could go to church with him, and he took me, at a time when mass was not being offered. He led me to a tiny chapel, where candles flickered before an image of a saint. I was nervous and yet curious. He knelt and I stood in silence. But I did not hear Your voice, God, although we remained there a long time, and I have tried, in the middle of the night, when I wake, to feel my way to You in the silence, to open myself up to You, in the silence. But You never spoke back to me, God, not one single time in all of those years.

Once when we were boys, and he had just come back from mass, I remember Rolando telling me about the mystery of Jesus, how he was God Himself, come to earth, come into a human body. That he was born, suffered, and died for our sins. It did not make sense to me, why the Creator of all that is would have to do that. But it makes sense to me now.

The first time I saw him, God, come into a room, I felt as if a comet had shot its way down from the heavens, down across the sky, sending its fiery tail out behind it, illuminating the night. I felt as if that comet had flared its way across the sky and then careening downward, had slammed into my chest with the force of a gigantic cannon ball, crumbling my defenses, smashing through all of my protective walls, setting me on fire. Each time that I saw him, God, walking in the city, in the market, in the bathhouse, I burned. And if I saw him with any other men, such rage flamed up in me that I feared for my actions. And I ran from him, turned my back and fled each time I saw him. I am not a boy, God, as you know, and this foolish youthful passion is unseemly.

So why did You do this to me?  Why didn't You just speak, as You spoke to the prophets, directly, or spoke to the rabbis of old, in a lesser voice, which we call the daughter of a voice? God, I would fall to my knees before You if you spoke to me in the great great granddaughter of a voice, in a voice so tiny that it would make a whisper sound like waves crashing on the shore, or the crack of lightning shattering the sky, or the thunder of horses across a plain, pulling iron chariots. Instead, you have come to me this way, turning me into a Christian. For now I understand what Rolando was telling me all of those years ago. You do enter the world. You can be born. But this time it is me who suffers, me who is dying, me who yearns to sin and live for my sins. What madness, to be twice a heretic, for now I believe like a Christian and not a Jew. But I cannot join their church for I do not believe that Yesu was Your only begotten Son, but Abdul.

Abdul ibn Rachman, the son of a minister to the king. Abdul ibn Rachman, even his name sends shivers through me. I ran from him. You know that I did. I turned and ran, double heretic that I am, falling in love with a Muslim. And now yesterday, in a voice so loud that I could not deny it, You called out to me through him, and I ran to You. A cart out of control, thundering down the Street of the Tailors, just as I was passing. I heard it before I saw it, and I threw myself up against a wall as it passed. But there ahead, there was a crowd. They too did the same, all of them, press themselves flat against a wall. But the horse was wild, and the cart was rocking from side to side, and a single man with his back to me was struck as the cart shuddered by. I saw it rip into his shoulder, and I heard his scream. Being a physician I ran toward him, as he fell into the street, holding his shoulder, in agony. A woman beside him began to scream for help, as I fell to the ground beside the fallen man. "I'm a doctor," I said to him, as I lay a gentle hand upon his back. "You're going to be all right." I did not know that. It's something that we always say. You know that. So I said it, as I slipped a hand down his back and slowly lowered him to the street.

You did this to me, God. This is the way that you have answered all of my years of prayer. For when I turned him from his side to his back, it was those same dark eyes looking up at me, now in terror. I pulled my shawl off, rolled it up and quickly put it beneath his head. He smiled at me weakly, upside down. I told him I had seen what had happened, and asked him how his shoulder was. He winced as he tried to move his left arm toward his right, to feel from the outside what I knew from his grimace must be very painful. Was his shoulder dislocated, broken, torn? Blood was seeping through his clothing. I was about to say something else when two servants came running through the crowd which had gathered. They were servants of his father's. But You know that. You know how they gently lifted him and carried him back to his father's house, and how I followed them. And You know how all the way there he clenched my hand and would not let go, and how each time the servants slipped or loosened their grip on him, he would shudder, wince, cry out in pain. Later, when I had examined him and found out that nothing was broken but skin, nothing dislocated but our hearts, he told me that he was ashamed that he'd cried out. And I said to him, "Every cry is a prayer." And he said, "This is the first cry of mine that has ever been answered." Surely this is a sign from You, that two men find each other who have been looking for You without success, who find You in each other. And so I say, thank you.

Author Benyamin Cohen's bestselling book My Jesus Year: A Rabbi's Son Wanders the Bible Belt in Search of His Own Faith is now out in paperback. Why should you buy it if there's a recession on? Cohen appeals to our Jewishness, pointing out that paperbacks are cheaper than hardbacks. Besides, it's totally what Jesus would do. Check out his book trailer here:

 

 

Last night I went to hear Joel Salatin, of Polyface Farms in Virginia, speak at a benefit for the Hollywood Farmer's Market, one of my favorite farmer's markets here in Portland. Salatin is featured in Michael Pollan's book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, and more recently in the film Food, Inc. (BTW, if you haven't seen the film, go, this minute, and take everyone you know, even if you have to drag them kicking and screaming).

Salatin is a self-described "Christian-libertarian-environmentalist-capitalist-farmer," which gives you some idea of his philosophies and approaches to, well, just about everything. His talk was about food safety, specifically how governmental approaches to it are not only not making our food safer, but are also marginalizing and criminalizing small farmers who raise animals on a non-industrial scale. I didn't go to Salatin's lecture expecting to learn anything new; I've read several of his books, including Everything I Want to Do is Illegal, and I also know a bit about this subject from other sources and from my work in the food sustainability world. I went to experience Salatin himself. And he was definitely worth the price of admission.

Salatin is, among other things, an entertaining writer, with a love of language that pays homage to his Southern roots. In person he is even more so. I felt like I was in a tent camp revival meeting gettin' some old time religion. Salatin exhorted, he roared, his energy couldn't be contained on the small stage, he overwhelmed the levels on the rather feeble amplification system he was using. It was a pleasure to hear him trace back the history of our attitudes towards food safety, going back to Pasteur and germ theory (Salatin's redux on Pasteur's approach is that germs are out to get us, so we have to destroy them before they destroy us). Instead of trying to regulate deadly bacteria out of existence, Salatin pointed out, we should be creating environments where salmonella, E-coli, campylobacter, listeria, etc. can't thrive. In other words, outlaw feedlots and other concentrated animal raising operations that feed animals things they were never supposed to eat and that make them sick (corn, in the case of cows), force animals to live hip deep in their own feces, with no access to the outside (in the case of factory poultry) and no ability to move about freely. If the USDA outlawed these kinds of operations, the proliferation and spread of these dangerous germs would be drastically reduced and our food would be measurably safer. That, along with the myriad ways government bureaucracy sets up obstacles for small farmers who want to raise animals sustainably and in a manner designed for their maximum health (not to mention ours), was the gist of Salatin's talk.

I didn't agree with everything Salatin said. He's a true libertarian as far as his contempt for anything governmental is concerned, and he believes the free market and capitalism are a sufficient corrective to industrial food abuses (He cited Upton Sinclair's The Jungle as an example; after it was published in 1906, sales of meat products dropped by 50%). I'm way too much of a socialist to ever buy into that point of view, and my contempt for capitalism is almost as deep as Salatin's is for government. But it was great to sit in a room with over 250 like-minded folks (many of them young farmers) and share a sense of purpose, to renew our individual and collective commitments to raising,  buying, eating and advocating for good (and I mean that in every sense of the word) food. And it was balm to my spirit to hear Salatin describe that commitment as "noble and righteous." Amen to that.

 

This post originally appeared on The Jew & The Carrot and is reprinted with permission.

I live in the Bible Belt, so I know a thing-or-two (or twelve) about the Religious Right in this country. The one thing I know for sure: they are smart as shit.

Am I saying that I want to leave the Chosen People for Protestant Paradise? Fuck no! But I do have to give credit where credit is due.

See, the Evangelicals in this country are amazing communicators, sales people, networkers. All the things that Jews pride themselves on being, Christians have managed to do, times one-thousand. And it's time that we learned the secrets of the Christian world, in order to better improve things for our slice of society.

What I have done is laid out ten things that I watch my Evangelical neighbors do, that I feel would strengthen the Jewish community. Call it, "Habits of Highly Effective Hebrews."

FreeBreakfast: if you want to see the smartest Christian ministry inthe world, visit www.freebreakfastchurch.com. The site of The Courageous Church (an urban, contemporary evangelical ministry),"Free Breakfast Church" offers free breakfast every Sunday, open to the public. You are invited afterwards to attend services, but are not compelled. It's better than one of those Timeshare Condo deals! And it works. The church is growing like a wildfire. 

The funny part is, they stole this from the Jewish tradition; oneg is an important part of the Shabbat ritual. So why not take the oneg concept, and flip it on its head. "Free Dinner Synagogue" could open up the floodgates to new people taking part in the Jewish experience. To stay in accordance with kashrut, meals would be vegetarian...or better yet...vegan! A Kabbalat Shabbat with vegandinner would be huge in metropolitan areas!

Having Some Fucking Pride: an annoying thing about the Christian Evangelicals: they're just so full of themselves. And damn right for it. They think they have the monopoly on the afterlife. Wouldn't that make you feel proud, too?

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Jews don't seem to care as much about Judaism as they used to.

This smacked me on the head recently when I learned that a friend of mine's step-father (born to a Jewish family) recently "accepted Christ" and attends an Evangelical Christian church.

Based on history, the two best ways to destroy Jewish populations are to kill or convert. Outside of extreme Islamo-Facsist nations, we really don't have to worry too much about Holocaust Part II. 

Conversion, on the other hand, is our own damn fault, and marketing is the only way to stop it.

Marketing has a principle called the Four P's: product (what you're actually selling), price (cost), promotion (what you use to convey your ideas) and placement (where your product stands in the market). For a company or movement to be successful, it has to have the right product, at the right price, promoted and placed well in the market.

Jews are leaving the "Jewish lifestyle" for three religions: secularism/atheism, Christianity, and Buddhism. So how does Judaism fail to meet the Four P's and how have these other religions been successful? Let's compare:

PRODUCT

Atheism: you get to be just like everyone else, living for yourself and nothing more. No rules, no responsibilities, just fun!

Christianity: you get to be like everyone else, only you get to go to Heaven, too! You have to go to church on Sunday, but there's one on every corner and every flavor you like.

Buddhism: if you're introspective and want to sit on your ass and learn the nature of everything just by chilling out, then you're in!

Judaism: you get to eat a restricted diet, can't go out Friday night or shopping on Saturday, and all your rituals seem quaint and mysterious, like a cult.

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When I worked in the Jewish world, I was at first surprised, then annoyed, and eventually amused to find that my motives for being there were often suspect. People sometimes wondered if I was some kind of missionary, which to me was the greatest laugh of all, since if I was to convert anyone it would only be to the restless, wishywashy agnosticism that was my creed at the time. As far as I was concerned, I was a harmless novelty, harmlessly enjoying a novel experience.

Except I wasn't so novel. I didn't know it then, but I had stumbled into a long and fraught history of Christians mucking about in Jewish linguistic waters.

Not too long ago, "Missionary Yiddish" was a common term used to refer to the attempts of Christians to use the language of Eastern European Jews in their evangelizing efforts. In the 1920s, the Moody Bible Institute of Chicago even began offering its own program in Jewish Studies. No strictly scholarly pursuit, the program was created for the purpose of educating evangelists in the basics of Jewish culture and language. The missionaries' hope was that the first voices Jewish immigrants heard as they entered the New World would missionary voices speaking in Yiddish - stilted, classroom Yiddish, but Yiddish nonetheless.  

If there is a funny part to all this, it is that these missionaries had no idea that the language they were appropriating to spread the gospel had already inoculated its speakers against the faith.

In Yiddish as in no other langauge, the basic assumptions of Christianity were undercut. By the time Moody began teaching it, Jesus had long been a figure of both fear and derision in the Yiddish speaking world.
The savior was regularly referred to by dismissive nicknames like Yoizel, Getzel, and most creatively Yoshke Pandre. The layers of meaning in this last name are amazing: Using the diminutive Yiddish suffix "-ke," Yoshke might be translated as "Little Joe," tweaking Jesus's non-biological relationship to the credulous husband of Mary. Pandre, meanwhile, is Yiddish for "panther," a reference to the allegations dating to Origen (and repeated in the Talmud) that the father of Jesus was neither God, nor Joseph the carpenter, but a plundering Roman soldier called Pantera (Latin for "panther"). Thus the name slyly makes Jesus's birth illegitimate and those associated with it either rapists or fools.

Thanks to the multilingual flexibility of Yiddish (and to its capacity to add insult to injury), this nickname was further elaborated upon. Taking the first part of Pandre as the Russian honorific Pan ("Sir" or "Lord"), and adding a letter to the second syllable to form the Yiddish drek, Yiddish speakers spoke derisively of Yoshke Pan Drek, applying to Jesus Christ a name roughly equivalent to a vulgarized version of Joe the Plumber: "Little Joe, Lord of Shit."

I'm still not a Yiddish speaking missionary, but I must admit I feel for those hapless fellows speaking about Jesus in Yiddish. The poor shlimazels thought Jews didn't know about the messiah they were peddling. In fact, Jews knew him well. They just didn't like him.

Peter Manseau, author of Songs for the Butcher's Daughter, is guest blogging on Jewcy, and he'll be here all week.  Stay tuned. 

Benyamin Cohen, author of My Jesus Year, spent the past week guest blogging on Jewcy about some of the experiences he had traveling church to church throughout America to write his book.  First, he told us why he thinks he's going to Hell.  Then he spilled the juicy details about Stephen Baldwin's guilty proselytizing pleasure. He described five places you wouldn't expect to see a rabbi's son, himself excluded, of course.  And finally, Cohen told us why even rabbis are now looking to Rick Warren for guidance.  If one week out of this Jesus year isn't enough, go get the other 51!

I originally logged on to Campus Life's (an evangelical Christian organization) "Ignite Your Faith" webzine to make fun of the people who write and read Campus Life's "Ignite Your Faith" webzine (I gigglingly googled "devotionals for teens" after my friend put this up as her status message). Imagine my nearly humbling discovery that I kind of liked it.

Consider this article: "Give It a Rest." Written by a youth pastor from Essex, Massachusetts, the article gives a description of the Sabbath that would be equally at home on a Jewish Renewal message board:

"Whenever the word holy appears in the Bible, it means set apart just for God. In other words, totally devoted to God. A holy Sabbath, then, isn't just any old time of rest, and it's not just rest for our physical bodies. God didn't give us the fourth commandment as encouragement to zone out while watching TV or spend an entire weekend playing Rock Band. Doing those things might help us recharge our batteries physically, but a Sabbath is more than a time of physical rest. It's also a time of spiritual rest—rest devoted totally to God."

The pastor encourages teens to take the time to do something special to bring themselves closer to God: write in a journal, take a walk, pray alone or with others. Find something holy to you as an individual. That is the essence of Sabbath rest.

It's such a simple, unfettered message. Whatever you think about Christianity, there is a simplicity to it that's sort of refreshing. Do something special. Refrain from doing something mundane. (Sorry about the heresy inherent in this paragraph.)

In Judaism, we’re told we can't do 39 specific types of work: trapping, tearing, whitening, etc. All of which have been interpreted to mean a million different things—i.e. you should probably pre-tear your toilet paper. Then there are the many required things you must do on Shabbat: prescribed prayer times and prayers, candles to light, Kiddush to say, meals to be eaten in precise amounts at precise times. It's pretty complicated, especially for a newbie who hasn't done it a million times before.

Don't get me wrong. I love a really good, thorough Shabbat with all the requisite parts. I sincerely enjoy turning off my cell phone, having fresh challah on the table, searching for three stars after the sun goes down on Saturday night. I don't always do it, but I like it when I do.

The trouble is that sometimes the essence gets lost in the trappings. It's a problem with a lot of Jewish traditions, I think.

For example, I recently took up praying every night before bed. At first, it was a meaningful opportunity to take a moment, be grateful for my blessings, ask for certain things, align my chakras, etc. But lately I've been getting home late, and I’m really tired when I get into bed, and I just race through: thank-you-for-my-family-and-friends-and-please-keep-them-safe-and-well-and-everyone-else-too-you-know-who-i-mean.

I feel like one of those Orthodox guys who prays like he brushes his teeth.

So a little essentializing might not be so bad. Some Jews—like my mother, a Renewal rabbi—have interpreted the commandment to guard (shomer) and to remember (zocher) Shabbat like our pastor does—as a commandment to both do something special, and refrain from something mundane. Be aware of what day of the week it is, and make a couple of individualized choices.

Simple. Kind of Shabbos-y, really.

Of course, this list of Christian things to do over the summer is pretty hilarious. ("Over a period of 10 days, pray daily for two or three non-Christian friends, asking God to show you how you can reach out to them in the coming school year." Yikes.)

I don’t believe in God. The whole story just doesn’t seem likely to me.

I do like religion, however. That is, I like attractive Gurdwaras, Mosques, Renaissance choral music, and Thought For The Day with the Reverend Dr Giles Fraser, the Vicar of Putney. You know, that sort of thing, rather than the sort of religion that involves fulminating against comedy musicals, or chopping people’s heads off on Youtube.

In particular, I like to sing carols, especially if you get to do it in a pleasant 13th century church - even more so, if there are mince pies afterwards.

Lots of Jews enjoy attending the services of other religions, too. The Reverend Dr Giles Fraser, the Vicar of Putney has made a career of it.

But not all Jews behave as well in Church as the Reverent Dr Giles Fraser, the Vicar of Putney. Take, for example, this lot. Instead of sitting properly in their pews, they ran up and down the aisles screaming, and looking for other Jews to kick.

Or these guys. Instead of singing nice carols like good children, they’ve made up some rather horrid ones instead. And they’re doing it in St James’s Piccadilly, later tonight. So they’re repaying the hospitality of the Church of England, by making it look as if they’re complicit in mocking Jews. Were I Rowan Williams, I’d be furious!

Come on Jews! Stop letting the side down!

 

 

In what could have been surprising display of humility, the Catholic Church has posthumously "forgiven" John Lennon for remarks he made in 1966 about The Beatles being "More popular than Jesus," rather than apologizing for demonizing the then-25-year-old musician. There can be little doubt that the Vatican's statements were subject to intense scrutiny while being passed from level to level throughout the Church bureaucracy in order to carefully convey an offering of truce without sounding apologetic.

It should be noted, hilariously, that with everyone on the Internet writing responses to this same issue, I couldn't even find a copy of the original article. It definitely doesn't help that L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican's pseudo-official newspaper, only publishes online select articles in English, with this week's topics including such scintillating fare as "The Virgin Mary Received the Most Precious Gift of All, Christ, and Offered Him Lovingly to the World," and "Encountering Christ, His Truth and Beauty Impels a Dynamic Witness of Christian Joy."The Big Three: Jesus, Money and Lennon

By placing a fawning retrospective of the Beatles' 1968 album, The Beatles (better known as the White Album), alongside the aforementioned articles about the Virgin Mary and that Jesus guy, the Church is accurately reflecting the Beatles' standing in the eyes of most of the public. In the decades since Lennon made his controversial remarks, his influence has only grown stronger. Along with the enormous (and still growing) popularity of the Beatles and their music, Lennon's legacy has the added ‘benefit' of his premature death in 1980. For a generation of kids, myself included, John Lennon has never been a person, he's been a name attributed to the music and ideals that our parents were raised on and instilled in us. He is a philosopher as much as a musician, and his sphere of influence in both fields reaches every continent spans all demographics - In the past year, the Wu-Tang Clan sampled "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" and a friend of mine recently mentioned that a gang of black drug dealers in his neighborhood routinely sport Beatles t-shirts, lending to the idea that the Beatles' music has finally infiltrated the American inner city. No, the Beatles are not literally more popular than Jesus, but they are up there, and serious competition is not something that the church has much experience with in its 2000-year history.

What the Church seems to be doing is acting in self-defense. By posthumously making nice with Lennon, they are shifting focus away from the notion that the two parties are oppositional. Shameless as it may be that the Vatican has not apologized for what was obviously an overreaction to Lennon's comments, they are clearly doing the right thing from a strategic standpoint. With Lennon all but canonized in the eyes of much of the public, it behooves the Church to avoid situations where people may have to choose sides; I'm guessing that as time passes, more people will choose the words of the guy who said "Why in the world are we here?/ Surely not to live in pain and fear," rather than the institution that threatens an eternity of damnation in Hell if certain rules are not dogmatically adhered to.

The recent survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life told us what we already knew: America is becoming more and more religious. The draw of a spiritual life is growing in all sectors, and apparently all over the world—even in the officially atheist China. Christians in China: no longer in hiding(I guess this is another case of "atheists" who believe in God). The Chicago Tribune has a fascinating article on the rise of Christianity in China, that mentions some of the reasons that people are coming to church: 

Many of the church's new adherents profess a common belief that 30 years of ungoverned capitalism, amid the fading of communist ideology, has opened a yawning spiritual gap.

A public debate in China over ethics in business has bloomed in recent years from an unlikely source: the same unsafe products that have bedeviled U.S. consumers. In the most infamous case, 13 Chinese babies died and 200 were sickened in 2004 when a manufacturer skimped on the ingredients in infant milk. The case became a symbol of an economy so out of control that people could no longer trust their countrymen to adhere to the most basic ethical standards.

Later in the article, a Chinese professor is quoted saying that he thinks Christianity may be what helps Communism to survive in China.

And in the States, though evangelical Christianity continues to attract hordes of worshippers to mega-churches every week, the quest for spirituality leads in all directions. The Atlanta Journal Constitution covers the trend of black Americans converting into Judaism. Many of these converts feel they are “coming home”: 

That's how Sivan Ariel sees her experience. Born to a Catholic family in the Virgin Islands, Ariel now believes her biracial grandmother practiced Jewish customs she learned from her mother.
"She would always talk about the laws of God" and the Exodus story, Ariel said. Her grandmother would light white candles, which now remind Ariel of those lit on the Sabbath.
"She was the only person I knew that actually did that, so I wondered if it was actually witchcraft," Ariel said with a chuckle.

Ariel left Catholicism when she moved to Atlanta for college and joined a Pentecostal church for a while. But she never felt comfortable there, and she began a spiritual search that led her to convert to Judaism.
…
Ariel, referring to her experience and those of other black Jews, said, "Some of us know beyond a shadow of a doubt we're here because we're home."

Rabbi Norry called this an "unprecedented time" of interest in Judaism.

"Business is booming," he said. "On any given Shabbos, there's 10 non-Jews at our service, visiting or studying to be Jewish."

Still, he asks every convert: "Why would you ever want to be Jewish? Don't you know how many people hate us?"

The black converts respond differently, he said. They look at him as if to say: "Welcome to my world."

People seek religion for a variety of diverse reasons.  How the spread of Christianity might influence the nation of China, and how the growing number of black Jews might ultimately influence Judaism remains to be seen.

An Empire of Their Own: in which we receive some basically redemptive message about human goodness I'm used to trusting movies. The film industry is mostly made up of Jewish liberals, and so when I go see a film, I trust -- often with a note of boredom -- that what I'm going to see has been politically approved by the mainstream left. Unless it's an indie flick, it won't be too radical. But it'll be comfortably liberal, with some basically redemptive message about human goodness, seizing the day instead of selling out, living with your heart more than your head. This is what Hollywood sells and, as described in Neal Gabler's fascinating An Empire of Their Own, it's an ideology that secular Jewish Americans deliberately created.

Well, the Right has gotten wise. After spending two decades whining about the liberal Hollywood elite, they've gone and created an evil empire of their own. Mel Gibson was just the beginning; now there's tycoon-funded Walden Films, devoted to Christian-friendly entertainment and/or brainwashing, and a dozen other outlets that seek to reverse the tide of secular-liberal culture. Watch out, rock & roll!

The Narnia series is Walden's first major undertaking, and it is major: seven multi-million dollar blockbusters based on C.S. Lewis's beloved tales. I liked The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, but I liked Prince Caspian even more. It's more focused, more fun, and darker. It's a war movie, basically, but it's also wistful where Lion was innocent, and it's got more cute guys in it.

It's well known that C.S. Lewis incorporated Christian religious themes in the Narnia series. What's debated is how intentional that was. Lewis himself, a convert to the Church of England who wrote several nonfiction books on religion, claimed that whatever symbols appear in the books crept in almost by accident. He didn't set out to teach Christian theology, he says; these were just the symbols floating about in his imagination.

Well, fair enough, but it was also Lewis who said that we moderns had to relearn religion from scratch, and that myths were the way to do it. And it was also Lewis who said that the best myths to teach the basics of religious instruction were pagan myths, fairy tales... stories just like those of Narnia.

So, at the very least, it's a tidy coincidence that the same man who said that we need new myths to teach the Christian religion also wrote new myths which happen to teach the Christian religion. No?

Prince Caspian is above all a tale of faith. The four adolescent heroes of the first book/film return to Narnia after a year away, only to find that many hundreds of years have passed in Narnia-time. Narnia itself has been conquered by the evil human Telmarines, and the children's exploits are now the stuff of myth. Some believe, and others do not.

Even once the children return as prophesied, the real hero, Aslan, does not. In the first film, Aslan is obviously Christ. He sacrifices himself for the good of others, is killed, and then rises from the dead. The film, in case it wasn't obvious, sets the scene on a kind of otherworldly Golgotha. Now, hundreds of years later, Aslan is the Christ not of the Passion story but of the Christian faith. He is absent from the stage, and all but the few faithful doubt he even exists anymore. Even three of the four children doubt, with only little Lucy still remaining entirely faithful.

But this is a Christian film: the good guys' dependence on Aslan is absolute. Their plans, from their foolish first assault to their clever second effort, are doomed to failure. Nor do they hasten Aslan's arrival by their efforts at tikkun olam. Not Peter's swordsmanship, and not Susan's archery, but only Lucy's faith brings the true Savior.

C.S. Lewis: claimed that his religious symbolism happened by accident Not just a Christian film, but a Catholic one. At perhaps the most exciting moment in the film, Peter is tempted by the White Witch, the Satanic villain of the first film. Aslan is absent, but the White Witch is summoned in a Satanic ritual, and offers her help. Peter knows she can save Narnia. He is sorely tempted. Evil is real, and powerful. Even if you probably know how this test turns out.

And not just a Catholic film, but a pagan-Catholic one as well. Prince Caspian threw me off at times, because the faith that must be maintained is not just faith in Aslan, but faith in magic as well: in centaurs, gryphons, talking animals, and fauns. Some have complained that the swarthy, accented Telmarines are typically ethnic baddies, but to me they resembled no one so much as corrupt churchmen stamping out the memory of pagan religion. They cut down trees, they work with machines; the heroes are the Earth-people.

This was surely Lewis's intention. In an interview he said that it was necessary "first to make people good pagans, and after that to make them Christians." The grammar of belief is first and foremost, not the object of it. First get children to see that faith is important, that the old stories are true, and that you must hold onto your beliefs no matter what people say. Then apply those lessons to Christian religion. Or, as the contemporary Kabbalist Ohad Ezrachi put it to me, first you have to see that there is a spirit in the tree, the lake, and the sky -- then you can understand they are all one spirit.

This is a fascinating strategy, and I wonder if it works. These days, a lot of people believe in weird myths that have nothing to do with Christianity -- the Secret, Qabalah, gnosticism, the Nation of Islam, Scientology -- and there's no sign that the New Agers are becoming baalei tshuvah for Jesus. Perhaps what these and other movements are tapping into is the unmet desire to believe in myth. Not just spirituality, but gnosticism, in its modern form: occultism, the notion that somewhere out there is indeed a secret power (or powers) that really does exist.

If belief is the Christian mode of myth-making, then interpretation is the dominant Jewish one. Kabbalah (the real, not the marketed, one) is largely about learning how to read texts and the text of the world. Allegory is central, as is allusion, symbol, and multivocality. They believe, but we read deeply.

If so, then perhaps Prince Caspian is a Jewish film, as well as a pagan-Catholic-Christian one. It is, of course, wholly enjoyable just as a fantasy film, and many critics have observed that you have to be eagle-eyed to even get the Christian references. (I may even be looking too closely; at one point, a warrior-mouse discovers that his tail has been cut off, and his fellow mice say they will cut their tails for Aslan. I whispered to my friend Tovah that this was an obvious circumcision reference, but Tovah said I was nuts.)

Lewis's Lucy Might Have Demanded More of Her God: if she had been jewish But the Jewish way is to read deeper. This is why we get accused of lacking organic genius: because we like to take things apart, analyze them, and read into their symbols. From Joseph to Freud, we love to interpret dreams, stories, and myths. Rabbis, mystics, and commentators alike delight in multiple levels of meaning. For better or for worse, we like to pay attention to the man behind the curtain, to see how the magic is done.

At its core, beneath the many layers of meaning which delight this critic, Prince Caspian finally refuses the effort of interpretation. The ultimate question, asked by several characters in the film, is why Aslan waited. Why, given the centuries of suffering and carnage, did he wait for the four English children to come back? If he's omnipotent and loving, why didn't he hear the cries of the faithful, like God heard the cries of the slaves in Egypt?

Aslan does not answer this question. In Liam Neeson's magisterial voice, he simply says that "things do not happen the same way as before." No explanation. God works in mysterious ways. That is all. If Lucy were Jewish, she would demand more of her God. She would bargain for the last ten souls in Sodom, plead for the unfaithful Israelites, and perhaps abandon God if he failed to save the innocent -- in Narnia, or in her own Europe of 1944. But Lucy is not Jewish.

As for me, I find myself caught in the crack between wanting to believe, with her emunah shleimah, her perfect faith, and being unable to accept into my heart an Aslan who consigns thousands of Narnians to death. I believe in the magic of the wood. I love the God that is with me now. But I cannot take the next step and embrace the myths of religion which Lewis thought were so central. If there is an Aslan, I hope that he can forgive me.

For those who are struck by the dangerously corrosive left-wing secularMike Huckabee: Is this man part of John McCain's "Christian problem"? cosmopolitanism inherent in the belief that Barack Obama is a Muslim fifth columnist who must be stopped at all costs, Michael Farris offers solace. A former Republican candidate for Lieutenant Governor in Virginia and current Chancellor of Patrick Henry College, a private college for Christian home-schoolers (fully accredited as of April 2007!), Farris has a large following among Virginia Evangelicals. And in that community, Bob Novak reports, Farris is promoting "the biblical justification for an Obama plague-like presidency," in rejection of John McCain and the GOP.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. According to Novak's sources, Mike Huckabee is secretly in league with Farris and other elements of the Christian "bitter end opposition" hoping to sabotage McCain's candidacy. How will they do that? So far, it's unclear. And with just five months and change left until the election, they'd better figure out a plan soon, if they're going to manage to call down the Obama-plague upon the heads of the wicked (it's mentioned in Revelation, somewhere between the fifth and sixth trumpets, IIRC.)

Not to cast any aspersions on Novak's sources, but WTF? As Ross Douthat notes, the idea that Huckabee --- who you may remember from a few months back as not only an amiable sweetheart with an occasional retrograde view, not only a loyal Republican soldier, but also the eager president of the John McCain fan club --- is furtively plotting McCain's demise, doesn't pass the laugh test. But worse than that, does an Evangelical anti-McCain vanguard even make any theological sense? Either McCain is the closet liberal abortion-and-spic-lovin' traitor his enemies on the right make him out to be, or he isn't. Either way, vote for McCain. That provides a hedge just in case he stops what another Republican bitter-ender has called the "genocide [of] the wombs" of American women (at least as effectively as Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush), and otherwise, McCain offers almost the same presidency-as-biblical-plague value as Obama.

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has announced plans to organize an "interfaith conference" among Jews, Muslims, and Christians. He invites "representatives of all the monotheistic religions to meet with their brothers in faith" in Saudi Arabia, in order to foster "respect among the religions."

King Abdullah's initiative is excellent and extremely positive. A conference of openKing Abdullah and sincere dialogue between representatives of the three Abrahamic traditions can only be a step forward. My only concern is that the diversity of Islamic opinion be fully represented, but indications from the Saudi kingdom are that King Abdullah recognizes the negative impact of Wahhabism, Deobandism, and other fundamentalist sects on the future of Islam. I hope that Jewish and Christian representatives will participate in such a conference with confidence in their own revelations, and will not give way to "politically correct" accommodations with Wahhabism.

Jewish and Christian representatives should understand that mainstream Islamic tradition respects the People of the Book and expects their teachers and other advocates to present their viewpoint in a learned and insightful manner, and not to engage in nonsensical rhetoric intended to improve relations with the Muslims by offering empty compliments. Jews and Christians who meet with and enter into dialogue with Muslims should do so from a position of self-respect, not of self-abasement. I hope and expect that Muslims at such an event will conduct themselves similarly.

In Chris Hedges' New York Times bestselling, Oprah-endorsed book American Fascists, Hedges repeatedly uses the term 'Christo-fascism'.

Hedges essentially equates fundamentalist Christians in the deep South with Nazis and Japanese fascists. I have no love for Evangelicals -- especially given my time among them -- but it's obvious that Hedges has not read any Yukio Mishima. Fascism was directly connected with racial purity and physical prowess. Christian fundamentalism is not. If it's not okay to use the term 'Islamo-fascist' because Islamists aren't corporatists, then it's not okay to use 'Christo-fascist' because fundamentalist Christians aren't concerned with biology.

It's sad that men like Rove and Bush, who cared nothing for Evangelicals, have givenShould read "No to 'Bush Christian Fascists'" Evangelicals such a bad rap that you can now reach bestseller status by calling them names. But 'Fascism' is a term with a particular meaning and reference, and shouldn't be inflated to include just any extremist movement.

It certainly shouldn't be inflated to include a movement that is not universally malign. There are some great Evangelicals like Jim Wallis, and even Mike Huckabee is intellectually honest (as per his appearance on the Tyra Banks show). During the Pastor Wright flap, Huckabee said that it was unfair to read too much into Obama's connection with Wright. That doesn't sound like the making of totalitarianism.

Those who (like me) oppose using the term 'Islamo-fascist' and opposed "Islamo-fascism Awareness Week" ought to have the intellectual consistency not to use 'Christo-fascist'. (Encouragingly, another Muslim writer, Shadi Hamid of the Project for Middle East Democracy, agrees.)

The case is different with the terms 'Islamist' and 'Christianist', frequently used in in political parlance as synonyms for 'Islamo-fascist' and 'Christo-fascist'. That conflation is mistaken. Islamism is political Islam of the non-violent variety, i.e the sustained political program by conservative Muslims to acquire --- not impose --- theocratic rule within their nation-state.

It is unhelpful, even from a pragmatic perspective, to collapse 'jihadism' (which refers to a violent movement) and 'Islamism'. The reason is that equating Islamism with violence ruins the opportunity to encourage post-Islamist groups -- who are roughly akin to Germany's Christian Democratic Party and represent a case of Islamism defeating itself using self-evaluation. On the same grounds, if Hedges had been more careful with his language, he would have used the term 'Christianism' to apply to the Evangelicals in his book, since by his analysis, they too are seeking to acquire --- not impose --- theocratic rule using non-violent means.

According to NPR, one Christian woman went looking for a way to add a little spark to her waning marriage “without compromising her Christian beliefs.” The result was the creation of this website, which sells all sorts of sex toys and other “intimate” products, but only for married couples.

 

And, apparently, the people who run this site are doing it out of the goodness of their hearts, and not because they actually need to use any of these products: " Wilson says she and her husband are blessed with good health, but that God has shown them that other couples might need help from a particular toy." I give to you all things holy: including the Jelly Rabbit.

That is very good to know. So how do they know which products to include?

"We pray about things before we add them to our site," she says. "We live our lives very openly in front of Jesus, so we just kind of pray for direction about which way he would have us go, and I have to be honest with you — he's really surprised us. ... Almost our whole entire 'special order' page has come about from that."

Of course I clicked on the “special order” page. Wouldn’t you be curious about which products Jesus “surprised” the couple with? She says their site steers clear of certain types of sexual activity that they believe are unholy. Hmmm . . .

I’m not married, and so technically I shouldn’t be browsing this site that exists for “married couples” only. But it was difficult not to be curious about what constitutes “sin-free” sex toys as opposed to . . . well, that’s just it—as opposed to what? Sinful sex toys?

What I discovered, however, is that apparently any sex toy can be “sin-free” as long as it’s used by a married couple. It’s unclear whether the pleasure device retains its “sin-free” status if enjoyed by a married individual by him or herself. But since we all know that masturbation leads to blindness, one imagines that it’s best not even to experiment with this idea.

I'm not slamming the site. So many religions—or at least the more orthodox manifestations of various religions—define themselves more or less on what they do not do, as opposed to what they do, in fact, do. In other words, it’s not uncommon to hear a religious mother say, to a child who has questioned an unquestionable tenet of the said faith, something along the lines of, “We’re Christians. We don’t engage in premarital sex,” or, “We’re Jews. We don’t eat pork, and we don’t drive over Shabbas.”

If only we defined ourselves according to our actions, rather than our inactions: “We’re Christians/Jews/Muslims. That means we love our neighbors.”

But, back to this scandalous Christian sex toy site. Maybe, I mean to say, this site is a positive thing. Maybe it’s positive because it’s as if they’re saying, “We’re Christians. We have good sex,” instead of, “We’re Christians. We don’t have certain kinds of sex and you shouldn’t either.”

What I can’t quite figure out is this: Are they using Jesus to sell sex? Or, are they using sex to sell Jesus? Is this a really creative attempt to proselytize? Either way, I’m sure it’s a win-win situation—as long as you’re married, that is.

Let's get it on: Pastor Wirth's guide God wants you to have a great sex life—if you’re married, that is. This is the claim being made by Paul Wirth, lead pastor of Tampa, Florida’s Relevant Church.

Pastor Wirth has issued a thirty day sex challenge to his married parishioners, advising couples to have sex every day for a full month. A mission statement available on the initiative’s website describes the plight of married couples (previously best explained by Flight of the Conchords) and the steps they can take to “review the obvious needs of him and uncover the forgotten needs of her.” It says that married couples are letting “dirty dishes, frumpy clothes, and a lack of authentic connections” get in the way of the romance, resulting in “an epidemic of breakups.” The solution: thirty days of sex in conjunction with a detailed guide in which couples are directed to share their thoughts, needs, and emotions (NOTE: don’t leave this in the bathroom when your in-laws visit.) If you have the determination, you will prevail and voila! Magic: restored.

So maybe it's no surprise that this news was http://babble.com/CS/blogs/strollerderby/archive/2008/02/20/minister-to-...)">picked up joyously on the parenting site Babble, where (presumably married) new parents seem nothing but psyched about the idea of having sex for God -- even if they're Jewish. Non-married couples, on the other hand, need not apply. In fact, singles and dating couples are strongly encouraged to take their own version of the thirty day challenge: to abstain from sex for the same amount of time in order to better understand and appreciate the virtues and joys of marriage.

What would the rabbis say about all this? The Jewish attitude towards sex is not that far from the one Pastor Wirth is preaching. Jewish sex, formally permitted only within marriage, is not only for the production of Jewish babies. It’s also a means for strengthening the love and commitment between two married people. As the Torah frequently uses the verb “to know” to describe sexual relations between people, sex can be thought of as a way to truly and most intimately become familiar with your spouse. Not to mention: it’s a mitzvah!

Maybe Relevant Church is onto something after all.

 

 

Greetings From Moldova: where Jesus was a communist carpenter Greetings from Moldova! You know, the former Soviet state bordered by Ukraine and Romania, whose special characteristics include being the poorest nation in Europe, as well as the first former Soviet state to elect a Communist as its president! It's hard to believe that a country where 98% of the population weighs in as Eastern Orthodox voted President Vladimir Voronin -- a Communist -- into office, but they did, and now priests, nuns, and assorted other believers are being intimidated and harassed by secret police.

Meanwhile, Christians in India aren't faring much better, what with increasing attacks by fundamentalist, nationalist religious groups such as radical Hindus and "anti-Christian fanatics."

And here in the U.S., a Burmese Christian refugee who gained asylum this past August is settling into his new life on the East Coast, while religious persecution in his homeland continues on.

We have spoken about love for the Bible. But let me lift up the larger aspect of this love and refer you toward the end, to one of the most beloved passages in the beloved book: I Corinthians 13, the Ode to Love. Here Paul has to deal with the question, How can diversity and pluralism be an asset instead of a liability? How can we learn, as some of the feminist theologians have taught us, to turn the old statement around and say, How much diversity do we need? How much unity can we afford? We are used to asking, Can the center hold? How much unity do we need? How much diversity can we allow? Paul has an image that love is measured by how much diversity can handle. And he had to learn it hard, because in Galatia, in an earlier part of his ministry, he thought that by stamping his foot, he could get his way. You remember what he says in Galatians I: If anybody preaches and teaches otherwise than I do, be it so an angel form heaven, damned be that one. That's chutzpah. But now he knows in Corinth that he is one of the many, and he is even, perhaps, low man on the totem pole, so he gets ecumenical.

It's so moving. Oh, how I love that book which tells me these things. It's so moving: he says that we now see like in an old-fashioned bad mirror, in a glass, darkly. And now our knowledge is only partial. That's called relativism. It is when he thinks about the diversity that he has to tell us: Don't be so cocky about the truth. You have your insights, but you are just at the beginnings. And then he ends by saying, so there remains those three: faith, hope, and love, and greatest of them is faith. Well, that's what he should have said, according to his own thinking.Love: It's the best The basic line: He is the apostle of faith, everything depends on faith. But here, suddenly, there is a breakthrough in his thinking, and he says: And the greatest of these is love, agape, esteem of the other, not "insisting on its own way," as the RSV puts it.

So, it is proper for me to end these five points where the Bible teaches us to deal with it-as a friend, not to give it honor by just inflating it, but to hear it as that strange way in which the divine has broken in through human thought and human words and human experience.

Finally, let me leave you with a word which is the one that, in my own long love relationship to this book, I want to have in my mind when my end comes. It reads, in 2 Corinthians 3:18, like this: "And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord who is the spirit."

Ultimately, I came to learn that there are at lest three quite distinct symbol systems, or paradigms, for Christian theology coming out of the Bible. One is dominated by the idea of God as the judge, and what is going to happen to us on the day of judgment.God is the judge: Arnold is the bailiff

Everything circles around God's judgment, and sin and forgiveness and redemption and the cross-that's Western Christendom in Catholicism and Lutheranism. Then there is God as Lord. And that has to do with God as Lord and we as subject, and the world is full of covenants-that's Calvin and also the Jewish tradition. And the model gave the basic model for the federal structure of the United States; foedus in Latin means convenant. It's the sociopolitical model of God.

And then there is the third, the Johannine. It's all about life. Sin is sickness, not primary guilt. It's not about obedience and Lordship. It's life: He came that they should have life, and have it abundantly. In him was life. Out of his innermost parts, streams of living water will flow (John 7). And everything is to be born anew, born out of water and blood (John 3). That's John, and that's Eastern Christendom. There is no crucifix in an Eastern church; there is the icon, where the divine life shines through the human image.

These are three different ways of thinking about God. What a richness. And you don't see them until you lay them apart. Of course they flow into one another, in all our traditions. But it is by studying the scriptures to get the integrity of each of these that they come to life. It is a little like the Gospels: if you mix them, you don't get the feel of how many theologies there are in scripture. It's like with homogenized milk: when you homogenize milk, you can't make whipped cream anymore.Dairy products: Thick like Scripture And for sermons, that's a deadening thing.

So when the preacher preaches Luke, it should sound like Luke. And even the Lutherans should not mix in a little Paul to make it kosher. So, not so uptight. Let a thousand flowers bloom. Richness. Plurality. Plurals. Yes, meanings is better than meaning. Isn't that, in a way, what the Trinity is about? Isn't that odd, these confused monotheists who speak about the Trinity: We couldn't quite settle for something which was just oneness, we had to have more of a fullness of an interplay, of a giving and receiving. Do you remember how it is with the oneness in John 17, where Jesus prays that they all be one? And you, father, are in me, and I am in you, and they are in us. It's like the biological world: Everything is interdependent. It's a giving and receiving. It's a oneness that is not a glob, but a living interplay. Plural.

Which leads me to the fifth point: Not so universal. And here I come full circle. I said in the beginning that I read the Bible as if it was just about me. And now I say, the Bible, my beloved Bible, it is indeed my Bible. There might be other holy scriptures-and that might not be as threatening as some people think. Not to claim universality and uniqueness? I always felt that to speak about the uniqueness of Christianity or the uniqueness of Christ does more for the ego of the believer than it does for God. Has God Only One Blessing? is the wonderful title of a recent book. How can I sing my song to Jesus with abandon, without telling negative stories about others? What one religion says about another religion, what one beloved scripture claims to be over against other scriptures, comes pretty close to a breach against the commandment "Though shall not bear false witness against your neighbor." What we say about the others is usually self-serving. We say, Is it self-serving? Oh no, it is just giving God honor. But think about it. Think about the scriptures themselves. Jesus said, "Let your light so shine before people that they see your good deeds and become Christian." That's not what it says. It says, "Let your light shine for people so that they see your good deeds and praise your father who is in heaven" (Matt. 5). Your father-so that people have a reason to be happy that there are Christians in the world, instead of getting irritated at them, if not worse. Jesus said, "You are the salt of the earth." But who wants the world to become a salt mine?

We are born as a minority religion, as a religion among religions. And we are heirs to the Jewish perspective on these things: that's what I learned from the scriptures. It says, to Israel, that Israel is meant to be a light to the nations. That's what Jesus speaks about: a light to the nations. The Jews have never thought that God's hottest dream was that everybody become a Jew. They rather thought that they were called upon to be faithful and that God somehow needed that people in the total cosmos. What a humility, but we called it tribalism. From the enlightenment, everything had to be universal. But when Christianity started its universal claim, and got power, it led to the crusades. We couldn't really think that it was not God's hottest dream that everybody be like us. So I say, no, the Bible is my Bible. The milk of salvation: Suckling from the gospelsThis is the breast that I, as a child of God, have been nourished from. And for the little child, when the child is born that's the whole world, the mother's breast. But maturing means to recognize that other kids have sucked other mothers' breasts. That belongs to growing up.

Now this is my Bible. It was given to me as a gift, and it is full of love, for which I am grateful. If I have found a doctrine, that is my doctrine. I don't need to bad-mouth all others. This is theology for the next generations. Paul was on to that. Paul, late in his mission, had to learn to deal with plurality.

PART FOUR: Final Thoughts 

In my first post, I explained the first wrong way to read the Bible; the second lesson is that the Bible is not always as deep as we think. Of course, because it is the word of God, it is going to be bottomless, and the deeper you can make it, the more honor to God. I think about that passage where Paul says in Romans 14 that everything that is not done in faith is sin—and any theologian who reads that statement gets the existential quivers. What a wonderful statement. But when you read it in context, it seems to mean that whatever is not done out of conviction, but just to play up to somebody else’s opinion, lacks authenticity and is sin. Or, when Paul says that we should work out our salvation with fear and trembling, for God works in you both to will and to work—that’s what they call a paradox. But it’s no paradox there in Philippians 2—Paul is just saying: You were pretty good when I was with you, but now I’m gone; but remember, God is with you, so there is no reason why you should not work just as hard.

Light and quick: Float like a Lutheran, sting like a BaptistBut we like it to be so terribly deep. One of the best rules for reading scriptures is the very same as for preaching: It should be light, it should be quick, and it should be tender. It should not be ponderous, it should not be labored, and it should not be heavy.

Third, in the scriptures, sometimes it ain’t as sure as you think. St.Paul—I like him, but he was arrogant. He had a lot of human flaws, but he was great. He was a great, great theologian. A theologian is someone who sees problems where no one else sees problems, and sees no problems where other people see problems. Once, when he is speaking (I Cor.7)—it happens to be about family matters, divorce, and sex, and things of that kind—he says: On so-and-so, I have a word from the Lord, but then on so-and-so, I have no word from the Lord. I think he was the last preacher in Christendom who had the guts to say that. New situations come, really new situations. What shall we then do? And Paul says: I have no word from the Lord, but I’ll give you my advice. I’m doing as well as I can. And I think I am right…. That’s wonderful insight. What a lovely Bible that tells us that sometimes we might need to think, and not just to think that it is settled.

The fourth “no”: not so uptight. Apologetics, defending the Bible—defending God, for that matter—is a rather arrogant activity. Who is defending whom? I love to use the old Swedish expression, “It is pathetic to hear mosquitoes cough.” I don’t know why that is funny, but in Swedish it is funny. And apologetics is mosquitoes coughing. It kills so much of the joy in reading and practicing the love of the scriptures.

It is always a little moving when believers want to help God. There was a man in the second century of the Christian era whose name was Tatian, and he was so terribly bothered that, in the various Gospels, Jesus seemed to say things a little differently. And some things that were described in one Gospel were described otherwise in another—not to speak about the Gospel of John. So he thought he should help God by creating a unified Gospel. It’s called the Diatessaron. And it was very tempting for the church, because those who wanted to attack the church said: What is this? Jesus says that, and then Jesus says that. And the apologists tried to say: Of course he said it more than once, but a little differently.

The Gospels don't match: But they'll set your world on fireWell, that wasn’t quite convincing. So we got four Gospels, which do not always match, but Irenaeus, blessed be his memory, decided that it was more valuable to have the richness of the four than the streamlining of the one. And so the four Gospels are wonderful lessons in the fact that God is not pedantic when it comes to telling the story; rather, God wants it told a little different to catch as many aspects as possible. As I like to say, when you have four portraits of the somebody you love very much, you don’t make transparencies of them and send the light through—that becomes blur, holy blur because it is the Gospels, but still blur. You look at one portrait of a time. And actually where they are different is usually where the artist has something important to say. If you get the apologetic devil in you, then you get bothered by the richness and by the variation. And the more I have lived with the scriptures, the more loving my feelings for them have become. The more important thing for me is to make them as different as possible, in order to catch as many insights and as many perspectives as possible.

PART THREE: Who Owns God?

To give reasons for one’s love feels awkward. You might be able to give reasons for your choices, but before I fell in love with the Bible, I never went to the library to read the Holy Qur’an, or the Bhagavad Gita, or even the Book of Mormon. That’s not how love happens—because love does happen; it happened to me.

What else can one do—what else can I do—but tell my story, the story of my love for the Bible: how to read, to study, to ponder, to preach the Bible; how it became my professional, even professorial, career, as that study watered, even lubricated, my soul.

For the longer I live, the less adequate and less useful become all those stifling distinctions between academy and church, faith and reason, the intellectual and the spiritual. There is such an interplay between those fabricated distinctions that one cannot live without the other. So here is the story, the story of my love relationship with the scriptures.

PART 1: GETTING HOOKED

Somehow it did not start with the Bible. In my home, the Bible was supposed to be a little too Methodist. It started with Jesus, mainly as he had come to me through the hymn book, which is used as a spiritual guide in the piety of the Church of Sweden, and which we read a hymn from on Sunday morning. To go to church was a dangerous sliding into Phariseeism, as I was brought up. Somehow, what I had gathered about Jesus spoke to me, fascinated me. The image I had was of an incredibly interesting mixture of strength and kindness—strength so different from the bully world of the school yard.

Jesus became not my hero, but rather my friend. I guess I was 12 or so when I sneaked away to church on Sunday mornings—in spite of the risk of Phariseeism—to be where Jesus was supposed to be. But then in fall 1935, I was invited to something called a Bible study group. And I was given a pocket New Testament, both as a symbol and as a text, and I was told to read it as if it was all about me—my life, my conscience, my duties to God and to my neighbor. I was hooked, for life.

Not about him: The Prodigal Son

The old principle tua res agitur—it’s all about you, or, it is your case—carried me for a long time. And I got a language for my faith; I got words for my feelings; I got pictures for my dreams. And my image of Jesus became more multifaceted.

When I thought I understood, there was always more and more and more. I had begun to feed on the mysteries of God. And it was intellectually a most stimulating awakening. That way of reading served me well, for a while. This was the time when I was naïve and arrogant enough to identify with the people I read about, or whose writings I read. I felt like Peter and I felt like Paul—especially when they had negative feelings. I felt like all the disciples. I felt like the Prodigal Son—I had not yet learned that the story in Luke 15 was actually about the older son, who is the one who is like church people, those who stayed on the farm (somebody has to), but couldn’t take it unto himself to be grateful when his brother came home. I wanted to become more like Jesus, wondering what he would say or do had he been where I was.

That way of reading lasted for a while, and who would say that it isn’t the way I still read and feel from time to time. But my love for the scriptures led me to ways of reading that were so much less ego-centered. The Bible was really not about me. It was many other things—in the long run, much more interesting things. It was about many things in distant lands, from many distant ages.

I came to read it more and more like a book, perhaps more as a “classic.” Now it spoke to me from a great distance, of centuries and cultures deeply different from my own. And it began to be, just by its difference, that the fascination grew, that it had a way of saying to me, there are other ways of seeing and thinking and feeling and believing than you have taken for granted. And it just added to my love—for love is not just fascination.

When I short-circuited my reading in those earlier days of having it just be about me, I slowly learned that this was a greedy way to deal with the richness of the scriptures.

PART 2: FIVE WRONG WAYS TO READ THE BIBLE

So let me share with you as a tribute to the Bible—and perhaps in a strange way—five “no” statements. It is usual when one is describing love to describe it in positive and glowing terms. But my friendship with the Bible gave me the joy, and the courage, to express my love in five statements of “not.” The first one I have pointed at: It is not primarily about me. Second, it is not always as deep as we think. Third, even Paul isn’t always totally sure. Fourth, don’t be so uptight. And fifth, it is probably not as universal as we think.

Friendly debate: In the Jewish tradition, God likes the argumentative

It is perhaps odd to express my love in such negative terms. But it is also perhaps in the line of that wonderful word of Jesus in chapter of John: I do not call you any longer servants, but I call you friends. Somehow I became friends with the Bible. In the biblical tradition, and in the Jewish tradition, to be called the friend of God, you had to be one who argued with God. Abraham, arguing about Sodom and Gomorrah, was called a friend of God. Job was called the friend of God. To me, Jesus is the friend of God, because he argues with God. And so, these five “no’s” of mine I bring to you as a sign of love and friendship.

The first “no” is the one which became the watershed in my love story with the Bible: It is not about me. In Galatians 3 it says that the law became, as many people translated, the tutor unto Christ. And I had learned, in good Lutheran theology—and John Wesley was on that line, too—that the law was for the preparation of my conscience. The law was the tutor, and tutored me so that I could fully understand not only what I should do, but also that I couldn’t live up to it, and hence needed a savior. The law was a tutor unto Christ, preparing, tendering my conscience, so that my need for forgiveness would become so great.

Then I learned Greek. That sometimes has its value. And it seemed to me very clear that the text actually said something quite different. It said that the law for the Jewish people had been a kind of harsh babysitter who saw to it that they did not raid the kingdom until it was Gentile time, so that the Gentiles could also be in on the deal. That’s what the text actually said: The law had been tutored until it was time for the Gentiles to come in. That was confusing. Then I looked in my concordance, and I found that what the preachers had been preaching about when they preached about Paul, the forgiveness of sins, was never mentioned by Paul in either Galatians or Romans.

It's all about me: Uh, no it's not

I started to recognize that when Paul spoke about justification by faith, he was really giving the argument in favor of his Gentile converts. He had to come to grips with how, in God’s word and God’s mind, his mission to the Gentiles fitted into God’s total plan. It was about the Jews and the Gentiles and not about me. What an awakening. And I read in Romans 7: I cannot understand that I act as I act, because the good things I want to do, I don’t, and the bad things I do not want to do, I do. I, wretched human being—who is going to rescue me? And I thought that at least it was about me. I mean it was psychologically sound and easy to show that that’s the way it is. But then I found that Paul said: If I act as I do not want and I do not act act as I want, then it isn’t I who do it. That’s what the text says. Then he said: Then I agree to the law that it is good. This sounded strange. He wasn’t very bothered, was he, by his inner conflict. He described something quite different. He used this wonderful psychological example to prove that the holy law and the commandment was holy, righteous, and just. I hadn’t cared about that, because I thought it was about me. And then I read: We have the God who justifies the ungodly. And Abraham believed, and it was counted him unto the righteousness (Rom. 4). And I thought that this had to do with God’s grace, by which we are forgiven. But it seemed that the point here was quite simply that Abraham was a gentile when he believed, because the circumcision didn’t happen until chapter 17 of Genesis and we were only in chapter 15.

So, Paul had found a wonderful exegetical key to the mystery of his Gentile mission. It wasn’t about me. And I read in Chapter II in Romans where Paul says: You Gentiles had gotten a little uppity toward the people of Israel, and I’ll tell you a secret, lest you be conceited, and that is that all of Israel will be saved, so that’s none of your business. So it was about Jews, about people.

And, imagine, I read these things during the end of the Second World War, when the camps in Auschwitz and Dachau opened up, and I still thought that Romans was a theological tractate about my soul. And I didn’t feel that it was about people. And I didn’t feel that Paul had fathomed that this Gentile condescension toward the Jewish people had started to happen already in his own time. How come the greatest missionary of the Bible warns his converts of missionary zeal? Isn’t that strange? Or, is it not so strange? Paul had been burned once. It was out of religious zeal that he had committed his only sin-—no, perhaps not his only sin, but the only sin he ever mentioned that he committed, namely, that he had persecuted the church. And he saw that now perhaps it started all over again with the Christians toward the Jews. Oh, that we had listened to him instead of to the tradition that didn’t see the Jews, but just made them a kind of brick in the game of interpretation.

I learned that it was not about me, but it was teaching me about God’s way of dealing with the world, with people, with tensions between people of different faiths. What an insight. What a wonderful book that I had claimed for my own soul game instead of feeling the big drama of God, in which I was very little.

PART TWO: How Not to Read the Bible