The Old Testament: The Book of Psalms I – The Bible’s Greeting Card Section

Posted on June 3, 2013 by virgowriter

In general, I hate shopping for greeting cards.  I enjoy honoring a friend’s birthday, but buying one of these (often over-priced) tokens doesn’t usually represent my feelings for the person who will receive the card.  This is perhaps most pronounced when I have to buy cards for my parents.  I always get them cards for their birthdays and for Mother’s and Fathers’ day.  For these last two occasions, the shopping gets most painful, in part because of the selection.

Cards are cloaked in a limited amount of themes, such as religious ones or syrupy affections adorned with roses or perhaps a sunset or ocean scene (all of which evoke an unsettling end-of-life theme) or ones that spell out how great mom or dad is the way a ten-year old who is just learning how to manipulate a sentence might.

I really wish these cards would represent the relationship I have with any of my four parents (mom, dad, stepmom, stepdad).  Too few are funny or friendly; most are too formal or juvenile.  Is it okay to reach a point where you think of your parents as friends?  Apparently not.  These cards even make me feel bad for not having the type of relationship suggested by these standard cards.

The Book of Psalms is the Bible’s greeting card section.

Divided in five sections (and with few exceptions), these short poem-like entries stick to a limited theme selection: Praise the lord; God, where are you?; reward me for being good; punish the wicked; a few condensed history lessons (mostly dealing with King David); and be kind to the poor.

Given all that happens in the Old Testament thus far, this restricted variety makes it seem that there are few options through which to have a relationship with God. You’d think the psalmist (or psalmists) would want to represent the different types of relationships people can have with God.  Wouldn’t this encourage more people to fall in line with God (and thereby affirm his (or their) beliefs)? And if you read them over the course of a few days (as I did), the lack of variety really stands out.

The stand out here is Psalm 23, and if even if you don’t know the Bible at all, you know the lines: “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want” (1) and “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadows of death, I will fear no evil” (4).  The lines continue about how good god is to those who follow him.

Although I’ve heard these lines uttered at funerals and/or in films, where characters loom over a dying character’s bedside, I had never heard one of the last lines that states that by following God, surely goodness and love will follow the person for the rest of his or her life (9).  Given a lot of the rest of the Old Testament (especially the lessons learned from the Book of Job), this seems a stretch.  Or perhaps just wishful thinking.

Still, it’s hard not to appreciate the nice language in these and several other psalms. And this is perhaps their greatest use—the feelings conveyed through the chosen words, regardless of how “honest” they are.  In that way, they are perfect little greeting cards: they can be used for several different occasions and work to convey generalities, not specific emotions (most of the time).

I try and think of greeting cards as items that function to convey general sentiments—the real “you” gets to write what you want on the inside.  More creative people can just make their cards, ones that better reflect them.  If I were a better artist, maybe I would, though perhaps my parents would worry about me if I sent them something colored in with crayons.

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The Old Testament: Job III – God Controls the Weather

Posted on May 31, 2013 by virgowriter

I have big teeth, and perhaps because of this, my bite was a mess until my orthodontist went to work on the mouth that he told my parents was the worst he’d ever seen. My teeth are also stubborn, so it took a while for them to fall out.  I was dreading losing them, in part because I didn’t know what to expect.  Though my imagination was less daunting than my father’s playful threats about yanking out the loose ones with a pair of pliers.

Like most kids, I was also a big fan of money, and this is perhaps one reason my parents assured me that once I lost a tooth, the tooth fairy would bring me cash.  This thought not only eased my anxiety over the terror of losing my teeth, it also warmed me to the idea.  In front of my bathroom mirror, I nudged each and every tooth, wondering just how much cash I could expect.

In the Book of Job, his friends do a whole lot of nudging; they try desperately to get him to accept that he’s sinned and that he needs to get right with God in order to end his intense suffering.  One of the things they use to establish God’s work is the weather.  Apparently, it quelled a lot of anxiety back then to think of God using the weather as punishment (37:17). Perhaps this made living through a disastrous (or simply unpleasant) storm palatable?

Given what people knew back then, I can see why they would pin weather on God—who wouldn’t think a crazy thunder storm was fueled by an angry force, especially given the damage one of these (or any severe storm, really) storms can wreak?  It’s comforting for things to happen for a reason.

It is curious, however, that there isn’t ever a point where someone says that sometimes things just happen, for no good reason other than they can. Sometimes weather happens and you just deal with it. Does it say something about us that we always need a reason?

Still, if people say everything in the Bible is true, perhaps they should consider how much attention is afforded the weather.  If what is included in the Bible comes with an all-or-nothing dictum, it’s a shame.  Clearly we know now how to explain the weather, especially in ways people centuries ago would never have been able to. How many other things like this can now be answered that books in the Bible ascribe to God’s power?

Although I learned the tooth fairy wasn’t real, I was happy to believe in her for a while.  Her existence made losing my teeth a whole lot easier. But I’m also glad to be an adult who doesn’t have a need for such an entity.  Although if I had a child, I’d mention her when the time came.

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The Old Testament: Job II – Speaking with Authority (cont.)

Posted on May 29, 2013 by virgowriter

I teach, and as a teacher you sometimes have to let students talk about things they think they understand (or about which they think they have an informed opinion) because we’re in a classroom.  This is a place where ideas can be shared, expanded, tweaked, or picked apart.  Sometimes this is painful, because some ideas are just so wrong.  But it’s not my place to tell people what to believe.  It’s my job to step in and identify lapses in logic and lack of evidence for an argument, etc.

But outside the classroom, it’s not so easy to let people spew nonsense, especially when that nonsense is fueled by hate.  For example, every time I hear about the misguided individuals associated with the Westboro church, my blood boils.  These supposed followers of God like to show up at high profile funerals to protest, an act they hope will shed light on the ways in which this country has lost its way, mostly due to the acceptance of gays, etc.

Supposedly, they speak for God, and they even have a website that speaks for God, named for a phrase that I have yet to see in the Bible. Yet I can’t see God picketing the funerals of those killed in the recent Boston marathon bombing: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/16/westboro-boston-marathon_n_3091174.html

While listening to his friends attempt to educate him in the ways of God, Job endures a different kind of ignorance as he listened in his misery.  What they say isn’t necessarily the painful part; rather, the pain comes in understanding the depth to which they believe that what they spew is accurate.  They feel perfectly comfortable speaking with authority on God’s behalf.  It seems they understand God better than Job, who they are sure must have done something to warrant his present predicament. In fact, they suggest Job is being disciplined (5:17), that he must have done something to warrant God’s wrath (8:3), and, instead of suggesting otherwise, Job needs to plead to God and make peace with him in order to find relief (22:21).

The readers of this book of the Bible know how ignorant these friends sound, but only if they’ve read the beginning and understood God’s interaction with Satan (which opens the book).  Missing that, there’s not much to suggest the friends aren’t echoing what a lot of people believe, have experienced, and endured thus far in the Old Testament. What makes it such a fascinating read is just how ridiculous these friends sound—they’d be right at home in say, Exodus, or Genesis or, well, most of the other books. So given its placement in the Bible, this book suggests that people who have followed God’s word may have a few things twisted, so perhaps you shouldn’t offer advice because you just might be wrong (even if you believe, in your heart of hearts that you’re correct).

The real lesson of The Book of Job is Job’s unshakeable faith, that even through his darkest days, he has faith in God.  I’m not sure whether to commend faith in a person/being who uses you as a pawn in a bet, though. Testing people is one thing; putting them through hell just to prove a point to Satan feels cruel.

As far as what that professor said, that still irks me, even all these years later, I’m glad I grew up and learned just how wrong she was.  I’d hate to think that my fellow students didn’t. Even worse, in conversation, they might tell someone they know what they “learned” that day.

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