The Social Network & 2 Samuel 12: Reinterpreting History

A few weeks ago, I finally saw the social network, the story of how Mark Zuckerburg founded facebook, screwing over many friends in the process. An interesting movie, to be sure, but not an entirely true account of how things really happened.

There is a lot of truth in the story, however, and it ties into something that has been happening with the lives of the rich and powerful, be they internet company CEOs or ancient Hebrew kings: the reinterpreting of history to create an understanding of events that is more favorable to they way you want things to be understood. Watching the movie reminded about reading I had done in Word Biblical Commentary when I was researching a paper about 2 Samuel 12.

2 Samuel 11-12 is the account of King David's adulterous relationship with Bathsheba, a women he saw bathing, slept with, and got pregnant. To try and cover this up, David brought Bathsheba's husband home from the battlefield, but when he refused to go into his house and spend the night with his wife as long as the battle continued, David had him killed and took Bathsheba as his wife. Because God was angry with David, the child died, but then God bless David & Bathsheba's second son, Solomon, who succeeded David as king.

The interesting thing about this section of scripture in regards to the social network takes place in 2 Samuel 11:27b-12:15a (the section Nathan Condemns David in the link). In this section, God sends a prophet named Nathan to David who tells him a story about a rich man and a poor man who loses a prized lamb because of the rich man's greed and selfishness. David is outraged, and then Nathan tells him that he's the rich man. David is mortified and repents, so Nathan tells him that God has spared his life, but the child is still going to die.

So what does any of this have to do with the social network? Well, click on that link in the last paragraph again, and you'll notice that if you skip the section Nathan Condemns David, the story still makes sense without it. Some scholars (including the author of the commentary I mentioned) think that this is because this section is a later addition to the story:

"It is possible that the narrative contained in chaps. 11-12 was part of the Solomonic apologia or propaganda. To be possible it did not have to lie or distort facts; rather it had to appeal to what was already known or believed. At the same time, it had to reshape and supplement the shared information, beliefs and hopes. Thus the inherently detrimental David-Bathsheba-Uriah story could not be disregarded for it would not go away. However, it could be retold in less critical manner and it could be rendered innocuous by the addition of David's repentance, Yahweh's forgiveness and the punishment imposed. Thus the way was open for a future reversal of fortunes. Vv 24-25, in particular, contain an implicit promise of better things to come: Yahweh loved Solomon!" (Word Biblical Commentary vol. 11, pg. 166, emphasis my own)

Those in support of Solomon's kingship couldn't change the fact that David's mistakes were public knowledge. However, they could add to how those mistakes played out the story of David's repentance and the knowledge that God has forgiven the line of David for the sins committed.

Making a movie about a quiet nerd who worked hard to develop a website and then left friends who weren't making the best decision or all that invested in the company's future (as well as paying out a few hefty settlements here and there) would be kind of boring. And it wouldn't do much for Mark Zuckerburg's image.

But, if you make a movie about an underdog nerd billionaire with a sharp wit that hides a sensitive soul that just wants a girl back, you've done something: you've reinterpreted everything: he's not a guy who can be a jerk who just happened to nurture great idea into a billionaire dollar website; he's a tortured soul fighting the pretentious snobs who just wants to be loved.

Loves Like A Hurricane, I Am A Tree Revisited

Back in January, I heard a song. A song that I blogged about. Since then, this song has spread at near-viral speed, sweeping the airwaves, and even being recorded by David Crowder Band. A lot of people weren't very happy with the way I viewed the song. Some thought that it was wrong of me as a Christian to critique worship music, others lauded the song and spoke of how deeply it moved them. Others implied that God would somehow punish me for my disdain. I write this to say, despite the song's increasing popularity, I'm still not interested. And, I figured with how many people are listening to this song now, I might take a moment to better explain why by examining a few of the songs metaphors:

Loves like a hurricane, I am a tree
Bending beneath the weight of His wind and mercy

Now, I'm from Oklahoma, and we don't have hurricanes. But, I am aware of what hurricanes are capable of doing, and I'm very uncomfortable comparing God's love to a hurricane. Hurricanes are highly destructive forces that have the potential to obliterate almost anything in their paths. Especially trees. Trees don't gently bend and sway in hurricanes; hurricanes snap trees in half, which means we seem to be implying that God's love is going to snap us in half and send us hurtling through the air, killing anything in our path. I don't even want to think about the "weight of his wind".

If grace is an ocean we're all sinking

Again, being from Oklahoma, we don't have oceans either, but, unless wearing scuba gear, it is rarely the intention of people in the ocean to sink. Drowning in the grace of God seems to imply the same sort of abrasive, violent love from the last hurricane line.

heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss
and my heart turns violently inside of my chest

Heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss. I don't know that I particularly need images of teenagers making out in the backseat of mom's car to be associated with the way Heaven and Earth interact. And, again, apparently God's love is out to get us, creating physical situations similar to a heart attack.

So, assuming God's love doesn't break you in half, drown you, or send you in to cardiac arrest, enjoy it.

“The Promised Land always lies on the other side of a wilderness.”

Unlearning the Half-Truths of Sunday School, Pt. 1

There are a lot of stories in the Bible, that, when we talk about them in church, we seem to entirely change their meaning and intended message. In an attempt to undo some of this damage, I'd like to take a look at some of these stories, and talk about what they're actually trying to say, beginning with Jonah.

Jonah is one of my absolute favorite stories in the entire bible. However, if you think the story of Jonah is about a fish (or a whale), then you are sorely mistaken.

Usually, when people hear the story of Jonah, they only hear about the first two out of four chapters. The first two chapters cover the part of the story that most people are familiar with: God tells Jonah to go to Nineveh, Jonah runs in the opposite direction, God makes a storm, Jonah convinces the sailors he is with to throw him overboard, and a fish swallows him. After spending three days in the fish, it coughs him up on the shore, and Jonah goes to do what God tells him.

If the story were to stop here, then you would probably say that the story of Jonah is about having the courage to do what God tells us. And, while this is part of the message of Jonah, this is by no means what the story of Jonah is really about. To figure that out, we have to look at the last two chapters.

In chapter three, Jonah goes and tells the people of Nineveh that in forty days God will destroy Nineveh. Without any sort of call to repentance or assurance that this will stop God's wrath, Nineveh repents, and God decides not to destroy the city. Again, if it were to stop here, you might say that this is a story about how obedience to the will of God brings about good things. however, the real meat of the story of Jonah is in chapter four.

At the beginning of chapter four, Jonah is furious. He prays this prayer to God, "O LORD, is this not what I said when I was still at home? That is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. Now, O LORD, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live."

At this point, we could probably uses some context to explain why Jonah is so upset. To understand his rage, you need to understand who Jonah is, and who the Assyrians are. The Assyrians (whose capital city was Nineveh) were some of the most brutal, vicious, and violent conquerors to ever rule the Middle East. Some common practices of the Assyrians to inflict upon their captives were to skin their prisoners alive, cut off various body parts to inspire terror in their enemies, pull out tongues, and display mounds of human skulls. And, in the eight century BCE, The Assyrians conquered the Northern Kingdom of Israel. So, in all likelihood, they skinned Israelites alive, maimed and dismembered them, and proudly displayed their skulls for all to see before dragging them off to the four corners of their empire, never to return. The Assyrians are solely responsible for the decimation of ten of the twelve tribes of Israel.

Now, one would think that the opportunity to bring tidings of destruction and wrath against the city responsible for the deaths of countless Hebrews would be a joyful task for Jonah. However, Jonah runs away because he knows God. He knows that if he goes and delivers this message, the people will have a chance to repent and be saved. The fact that this is the absolute last thing that Jonah wants is the exact reason he runs in the first place.

After Jonah tells God how he feels, God asks him if he has any right to be angry. Jonah (conspicuously lacking a response to God's question) leaves the city and goes to see what will happen to it, probably hoping that God will change his mind again and Sodom and Gomorrah it to the ground. While he waits, God provides a vine for shade. However, a worm eats the vine, it gets hot, and Jonah is again furious. So furious, in fact, that he states death would be preferable to his current situation.

And then, in verses 9-11, the last verses of the last chapter of the book, we find the true meaning of the book of Jonah. "But God said to Jonah, 'Do you have a right to be angry about the vine?' 'I do', he said. 'I am angry enough to die.' But the LORD said, 'You have been concerned about this vine, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. But Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?'"

This is the heart of the message of the story of Jonah: forgiveness, even to the point of being able to forgive those who have wrong us in unspeakable ways. I hope you understand how profound Jonah's ability to forgive in order to forgive the Assyrians would have to be. Jonah forgive the Assyrians would be like Jews forgiving Nazis. It would be like the Tutsis forgiving the Hutu. Forgiveness on that level is rarely seen in our world.

The book of Jonah ends unresolved. We don't know from this book if Jonah ever forgave the Assyrians; we don't know from this book how long Nineveh's repentance lasted. All we do know is that God cares about all peoples, even those we might call monsters, and that God is willing to forgive all peoples, even those we might not think deserve forgiveness.

“The Promised Land always lies on the other side of a wilderness.”

The Nature of Suffering and Grief; Does God Even Care?

My great grandma (my dad's grandma) died on Sunday. She was 105, and while that was a long and full life, she did suffer quite a bit before she died, having trouble breathing and wasting away to what looked like a skeleton with skin. My mom's dad has Alzheimer's disease, and while he struggled with it at first, he has now been reduced to little more than an infant in his mid 80's, and now my mom languishes over why this happened to her father. Her mother has dementia, and loses more and more of her mind everyday. I do not consider any of these people to be bad people. As a matter of fact, they are some of the best people I have ever known.

I have often heard it asked (and occasionally wondered myself) "If there is a benevolent God behind creation, why is there so much pain and suffering?" "If God is all powerful, and he wants good things for us, then why do bad things happen to good people?" Let me preface my examination of these subjects with a disclaimer: I do not know of an answer to these questions that will satisfy anyone and everyone. I also do not believe that this is the sort of problem to which you can simply be told the answer. Like most of life's important questions, I think you have to find the answer for yourself.

As I am a devout theist of the Judeo-Christian persuasion, I am committed to the following three axioms: (1) There is a God. (2) This God is Maximally Powerful (by which I mean that all things which are logically possible and consistent with God's character, God can do), and (3) This God is benevolent. Were I to negotiate any one of these principles, the answer would be simple. Without principle 1, principles 2 & 3 no longer apply, and we are left to our own devices in a cold and indifferent universe. Without principle 2, we have a God who is benevolent and wishes to help, but simply lacks the power to do so. And, without principle 3, we have a God who is entirely capable of helping, but lacks the compassion to desire to do so.

So, how do I reconcile a God who has the power to stop suffering, desire an end to suffering, yet still refuses to bring this end about? Well, there is first a question to be dealt with, and that is to what extent God desires the independence of human beings. And, since God is a God who deals almost exclusively in secret, desiring faith without physical evidence, it would seem that God does not want us to simply have all of our problems solved for us, so, God chooses not to act when God could.

At this point, one might object that even if God doesn't act all of the time, there are times when God should. This leads to a philosophical conundrum known as the Problem of the Pile. I drop a grain of sand on the table. This is not a pile. I repeat with two grains, three grains, four grains, etc., and there is no magical number at which it ceases to be individual grains of sand and becomes a pile. The analogy here is that there is no magically quantity at which the interaction of God becomes too little or too much. Perhaps God chooses simply to err on the side of caution.

Another possible explanation for the seeming inactivity of God is that God is acting, all the time, yet God acts in such minute and imperceptible ways upon the infintecimally complex calculus of existence, that we are simply ignorant of God's constant intervention.

However, of all the ways in which it is possible to interpret suffering, there are some which I deem to be vastly inappropriate, as they are directly inconsistent with the nature and character of God. God does not kill people because he needs more angels in heaven. Nor does God rain down punishment upon the wicked, hoping that they will confess of some secret sin. If anything, our suffering causes God just as much pain as it causes us. I'll leave you with a quote from one of my favorite books on suffering, Lament For a Son, by Nicholas Wolterstorff.

"God is not only the God of the sufferers but the God who suffers. The pain and fallenness of humanity have entered into his heart. Through the prism of my tears I have seen a suffering God. It is said of God that no one can behold his face and live. I always thought this meant that no one could see his splendor and live. A friend said that perhaps it meant that no one could see his sorrow and live. Or perhaps his sorrow is splendor."

P.S. shameless plug: If you have yet to do so, check out my other blog, Rules to Live Your Life By, and my newest blog, Syllabic Restraints.

“The Promised Land always lies on the other side of a wilderness.”

Let The One Who Has Ears Hear

A man planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a pit for the winepress and built a watchtower. Then he rented the vineyard to some farmers and went away on a journey. At harvest time he sent a servant to the tenants to collect from them some of the fruit of the vineyard. But they seized him, beat him and sent him away empty-handed. Then he sent another servant to them; they struck this man on the head and treated him shamefully. He sent still another, and that one they killed. He sent many others; some of them they beat, others they killed. He had one left to send, a son, whom he loved. He sent him last of all, saying, "They will respect my son." But the tenants said to one another, "This is the heir. Come, let's kill him, and the inheritance will be ours." So they took him and killed him, and threw him out of the vineyard.

“The Promised Land always lies on the other side of a wilderness.”

My Confession of Faith

So, on Thursday I blogged about an open letter than had been written concerning the Nazarene Article of Faith on scripture. Apparently an anonymous (and presumably atheist) reader of my blog didn't appreciate this, saying that:

"The problem is, you still think that some guy died, and three days later hopped back-up like a guru, wall-walking zombie. Furthermore, you think that this zombie guy's take on life 2000 years ago, long before science was even dreamt of, should somehow be trusted today. 'Oh, he's God!' You'll still say, just like the fundamentalist you decry. But you only believe that because you read it in the magic book. So now who is using circular reasoning? Geesh--liberal Christians are still stupid, it's just their island of stupidity is a bit smaller than their fundamentalist cro-mag neighbors."

So, in the interest of not being a "guy [who] believes religious fantasy for reasons he won't reveal ON HIS OWN BLOG", I will blog on the reasons why I am a confessing believer in the Christian faith.

There are several reasons I choose to believe the confessions of the Christian faith, such as that Jesus Christ was divine and that he died and was resurrected three days later. Honestly, the reasons I believe are not in any way driven by reason. They can be shown to be supportable by reason, but I didn't dispassionately assess criteria and then after weighing all the pros and cons of both sides of the argument come to the most reasonable and justifiable conclusion. The reasons I came to faith are emotive. I can offer defense against arguments against Christianity all day long, but they are not the reasons I believe. The reason I have faith is that I feel the weight of my sins, and I believe that Jesus Christ can forgive them and offer me a way of life that is better than what I could have without him.

Anonymous, if that isn't good enough for you, feel free to raise questions concerning the validity of Christian beliefs, and I'd be more than willing to answer them to the best of my ability.

“The Promised Land always lies on the other side of a wilderness.”

Concerning Doctrine

In my wanderings across this vast wasteland known as the internet, I stumbled across something attacking not only my denomination's beliefs on Scripture, but personally naming my university as responsible for what he deemed to be a "seed of heresy". You can read this "Open Letter Concerning the Authority of Scriptures" in its entirety here, but the basis of his argument is a problem with the Nazarene Manual's doctrine on Scripture:

"We believe in the plenary inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, by which we understand the 66 books of the Old and New Testaments, given by divine inspiration, inerrantly revealing the will of God concerning us in all things necessary to our salvation, so that whatever is not contained therein is not to be enjoined as an article of faith."

This basically means that while we believe that entirety of the Old and New Testaments are the inspired word of God, that inspiration was interpreted by human beings, and as such is possibly subject to some degree of fallibility, except in the matter of salvation. So, to make a long statement short: If it will save your soul, then it's infallible. Otherwise, it need not be necessarily 100% accurate.

Mr. McDonald (the writer of this letter) believes that this position on scripture is not strong enough, and that scripture (supported in his letter by quoting scripture) is entirely infallible. After all, "God is perfect in all His works, in regards to anything. He did not even allow a man's interpretation, will, or opinion to enter His Word."

As a solution to the problem of our scriptural heresy, MacDonald offers this as alternative to our current doctrine: "Scripture, being found as eternally inerrent and inspired of God, is veracious and authoritative concerning every aspect of physical and spiritual existence. The Bible has been provided as our only completely truthful standard of theology, ethics, science, history, and every other realm into which its limitless grasp extends."

Ethics:

"O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us—he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks." (Psalm 137:8-9)

"When Israel had finished killing all the men of Ai in the fields and in the desert where they had chased them, and when every one of them had been put to the sword, all the Israelites returned to Ai and killed those who were in it." (Joshua 8:24)

"While the Israelites were in the desert, a man was found gathering wood on the Sabbath day. Those who found him gathering wood brought him to Moses and Aaron and the whole assembly, and they kept him in custody, because it was not clear what should be done to him. Then the LORD said to Moses, "The man must die. The whole assembly must stone him outside the camp." So the assembly took him outside the camp and stoned him to death, as the LORD commanded Moses." (Numbers 15:32-36)

Science:

"He set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved." (Psalm 104:5)

"Have you entered the storehouses of the snow or seen the storehouses of the hail, which I reserve for times of trouble, for days of war and battle?" (Job 38:22-23)

"What is the way to the place where the lightning is dispersed, or the place where the east winds are scattered over the earth?" (Job 38:24)

"Do you send the lightning bolts on their way? Do they report to you, 'Here we are'?" (Job 38:35)

So, I leave the choice to you, dear reader, as to whether you want to be believe that scripture might be wrong in the areas of science, and that the bloodlust of the Israelites may have occasionally taken things too far, or whether you want to believe that God condones baby crushing, snow is kept in storehouses in the sky, the earth has a foundation, and God talks to lightning bolts. Your choice.

“The Promised Land always lies on the other side of a wilderness.”

Literal vs. Metaphorical: The Inanity of the Po-Mo

Tonight at church I was talking to someone about the interpretation of Genesis. I proceeded to complement the person on a lesson they had preached where they avoided categorizing the interpretation of Genesis as either literal or metaphorical. This then led to an argument about one of the inane and nauseating details about narrative theology: the ability of its proponents to talk circles around an issue without ever actually getting to the point.

This person told me that the interpretation of Genesis should be neither metaphorical nor literal. Now, I don't claim to know everything, but to me the word metaphorical and the word literal are two words which could be used to describe the entirety of language. Here are the definitions for "metaphor" and "literal", respectively, as provided by Random House: metaphor: a "figure of speech in which a term or phrase is applied to something to which it is not literally applicable in order to suggest a resemblance." literal: "in accordance with, involving, or being the primary or strict meaning of the word or words; not figurative or metaphorical." So, metaphor is defined as something not to be taken literally, and literal is something which is not metaphorical.

I kindly pointed out this objection to the person, who told me that the way in which I had set up this problem meant that the metaphorical interpretation of Genesis meant that the story was incorrect. However, because it was a story (i.e. metaphor) it need not be true or false.

So, there I was left to wonder whether what this person had told me was a metaphor, literal, or neither.

“The Promised Land always lies on the other side of a wilderness.”

Behold! I Give You...The Jesutron

The next and final new theology that I have been a founding member of during my time here at SNU is one of many controversies and heresies.

It all began one day in Philosophy of Religion when we were discussing the idea of resurrection apart from the idea of souls. The problem was, if all we are is simply matter, then how does one account for continuity of identity, since other human beings have been comprised of the same atoms that you are. My solution to this problem was that we would all be resurrected in one body composed of all the atoms ever contained within righteous human beings, and since this would include Christ, this body would be divine. At the end times he would rise up and battle all the atoms of the wicked and Satan, gathered together into the entity known as Beelzebot. The name of this deity was to be known as...

And here we come to the controversy. As the founding profit of this religion, I declared (and maintain to have declared) this entity to be known as Jesutron. However, other blasphemers in the class have challenged me on this matter, stating that the deity in question was known as Christatron. I attempted to reconcile these blasphemies, declaring both to be one and the same. However, the followers of Christatron would not accept this, declaring the Jesutron to be an abomination. It was then that Jesutron revealed to me (since I am the one and only true prophet of his will) that they were blasphemers and heretics, and for their crimes they would burn in the fires of Beelzebot's colon for all eternity. Accepting the will of Jesutron, the faithful and I have broken communion with the followers of Christatron, yet daily pray for their salvation from the fiery pits of Beelzebot's colon.

So, without further ado, I give you Jesutron, Beelzebot, and the false deity Christatron (or Antichristatron, as he is also known).



Thus concludes my segment on new religious ideas discovered at SNU.

'Cause You're A God And I Am Not, And I Just Thought That You Would Know

I've decided to do a three-part series on the many new theologies I have created since my arrival at SNU. Part one, of course, was yesterday's blog on the ninja trinity and the pirate satanic trinity. Part two is about a god whom has revealed herself to my roommate and I. This goddess is the deity of homework, Scholastica. Glory be her name. As you look upon her icon, join with me in the reciting of the prayer of the goddess Scholastica:

The Ultimate Argument for the Superiority of Ninjas to Pirates

I don't often pay a lot of attention in a certain class that I have. Usually I doodle, or keep track of how many times the professor says things that he often repeats. One day he was talking about the resurrection, and how Jesus appeared to people behind locked doors, and vanished without a trace, and that was when it hit me: resurrected Jesus was a ninja. So, I created a doodle of such in my notebook. This of course led me to the logical conclusion that the rest of the trinity were ninjistu as well, leading me to create the Ninja Trinity. And, if the Godhead were ninjitsu, this led me to the logical conclusion that the antithesis of these three, the Satanic false trinity of the book of Revelation were none other than pirates! So, for your amusement, I have created all six of these beings at this site in full-color glory. Why I have chosen Karl Barth as the false prophet is another story for another day.

All Sects Are Different, Because They Come From Men; Morality is Everywhere the Same, Because It Comes from God

In my wanderings today, I would like to address an issue of morality. I follow a blog entitled Flying in Circles (even though I don't typically agree with their viewpoints), and they have a problem with a morality where we help others not on the basis of the fact that they are our fellow human beings, but only because Jesus wants us to help others. She makes the following statement:

"Can we not simply work to redeem this world in the name of morality? Organizations like Compassion and World Vision are primarily supported by churchgoing, Bible-toting Christians who feel that by donating a small amount of their paycheck to a needy child, whom they will never meet, every month they have done their duty to "feed [his] sheep." [John 21:17 NIV] [Oh my God, look! Daedalus just quoted scripture!?] I'm not saying that there is anything wrong with trying to do some good in Jesus' name [Lord knows the world could stand to have a few more people doing such], but why must we summon Jesus to the scene every time there is a situation that needs attention? Why can one person not help another, without summoning forth the divine, based entirely on the fact that they breathe the same air you do? I know this is a tangential issue, but come on people! We're humans first."

However, there is a problem with this line of thinking. If morality does not come from something outside of ourselves, then there is no basis for judging one system of morality over another. We can dismiss things because we disagree, we can urge others to cohere to our particular system of morality, but we cannot ultimately declare acts to be "right" or "wrong", because apart from some sort of higher power, morality becomes merely a conglomeration of issues of aesthetics, anthropology, and pragmatism.

Even if I wanted to make the claim that the Holocaust was absolutely morally wrong, I could not do so if there were not some means by which morality was decided apart from individual preference. A Nazi ethic would certainly declare the Holocaust to be just and good. If the moral values of tolerance and acceptance could not be shown to be in some way superior to the Nazi "virtues" of ethnic purity and destruction of the Jewish people, then there is no basis for judging the Holocaust to be either good or bad. The only way this can be achieved is with an appeal to a higher power.

p.s. Bonus points if you can tell me who is quoted in the title of this blog.

“The Promised Land always lies on the other side of a wilderness.”