At a home Bible study, the kind that Jehovah’s Witnesses offer, Darrel had a question. He brought up Exodus 22: 29-30.

“You shall give me the firstborn of your sons. You must do the same with your oxen and your sheep.” (New International Version) This meant, he worried, that you burn up your firstborn child for God, same as you would your ox and your sheep. “You must do the same”—he repeated the expression.

He got it from the atheists, I’ve no doubt. They would make a burnt offering of the entire Bible were it up to them. He doesn’t necessarily buy into it. He just doesn’t want to be snowed—by the atheists or by the Witnesses. He even apologizes for raising the question, as though for rocking the boat. ‘What—are you kidding me?’ I tell him. ‘We’d be worried if you didn’t have questions.’

Should one be flustered? The snippet quoted does sort of sound like you’re supposed burn your sons. It will not do just to say, ‘It doesn’t mean that!’ Unless you explain why it doesn’t, it comes across as though you are covering up a crime. The challenge is enough to send the one conducting the study scurrying in search of other scriptures to shed light on the passage—using one scripture to explain another, the tried and true method in the JW world. Me, I’m just the companion, sitting there, taking up space.

Actually, just backing out some and taking the entire passage into account would answer the question, but this is not immediately apparent. The entire passage reads:

“You shall not delay the offering of your harvest and your press. You shall give me the firstborn of your sons. You must do the same with your oxen and your sheep; for seven days the firstling may stay with its mother, but on the eighth day you must give it to me.”

Three things are being compared in the expanded passage, not two: 1) the first offerings of the harvest and [wine]press, 2) your own firstborn, and 3) the firstborn of the oxen and sheep. You must "do the same," not with the manner of sacrifice, but that all are subject to sacrifice. Grain and drink offerings were not done in the same manner as animal sacrifices. Neither would people be.

And here the atheists are trying to get him all pumped up over that passage! 'Well, it sure sounds like you're supposed to burn your son just like your ox or sheep,’ they mutter. 'If it’s not that way, it could have been explained more clearly!' Really? When we read of a celebrity roast, does anyone expect an asterisk explaining that they're not literally roasted (though many of them should be)?

In time, the conductor emerges with a verse from Jeremiah that explains it all. He had one of three to choose from; the prophet makes the point that many times. Referring to when Israel went carousing with their rowdy neighbors (the nations surrounding them) and in time picked up their bad habits, the prophet speaks for God and says, “they built the high places of Baal in order to burn their sons in the fire as whole burnt offerings to Baal, something that I had not commanded or spoken of and that had never even come into my heart.” (Jeremiah 19:5) Okay? If it “had never even come into [his] heart,” he’s not going to command his people do it. It is Baal they are thinking of.

Ezekiel confirms what Jeremiah related. The raucous neighbors did such things. When Israel proved unfaithful to its God, Jehovah, it followed suit:

“Because they did not carry out my judicial decisions and they rejected my statutes, they profaned my sabbaths, and they followed after the disgusting idols of their forefathers. I also allowed them to follow regulations that were not good and judicial decisions by which they could not have life. I let them become defiled by their own sacrifices—when they made every firstborn child pass through the fire—in order to make them desolate, so that they would know that I am Jehovah.” (bolding mine)

These appeals to Jeremiah and Ezekiel fall flat to persons schooled in higher criticism. They will object that Exodus is a work of ‘the priestly tradition’ and Jeremiah a work of ‘the prophetic tradition.’ The two traditions fought like cats and dogs—you wouldn’t appeal to one for support of the other. But Darell is not a person of higher criticism. He is a person of common sense. The point registers with him. Had it not, maybe an appeal to an earlier portion of Exodus (4:22-23) would have sufficed. There, Moses is directed, “You must say to Pharʹaoh, ‘This is what Jehovah says: “Israel is my son, my firstborn. I say to you, Send my son away so that he may serve me.”’” See what God wanted from his firstborn? He wanted service, not burnt remains. Since both quotes are from Exodus, the comparison might work with a higher critic. Though, it might not; even within a given Bible book, they claim to be able to see both the priestly and prophetic traditions squabbling with one another.

Thing is, to the higher critic, any words attributed to God are really human in origin. They cannot prove God by their scientific method, and the scientific method is all they recognize. God, for them, is a human construct. So, necessarily, words attributed to God are merely that of some human spinning his own theology. Moreover, how strong can a human construct be? Strong enough to fly in the face of tribal neighbors who did indeed offer children as burnt sacrifices? The critics judge it is not. Therefore, when Jeremiah and Ezekiel present Jehovah as condemning the practice, they are to the critics just reformers proclaiming what they would like to see, not what is. They are just whistleblowers. Their protests are but the protests of human prophets, not of God himself, who is imaginary. To the higher critics, Jehovah is a tribal god like all the rest. The religious zealots that are Jeremiah and Ezekiel may try to extricate him from the abhorrent practice, but it will not fly with higher critics. All gods to them are really but one god, and all are figments of the common human urge to worship what they can neither control nor understand. The human sciences of sociology and anthropology lead them to conclude that if one god did it, they all did. A passage such as Leviticus 18: 24-25 makes little impression on them: “Do not defile yourselves in any of these ways, because this is how the nations that I am going to drive out before you became defiled. Even the land was defiled; so I punished it for its sin, and the land vomited out its inhabitants.” To them, it is like the words of an ascending politician explaining why he must beat up on his rivals. He is just talking sweet until he gains power, whereupon he will revert to true form.

Biblical passages drawing a favorable distinction between the God of the Bible and the gods of surrounding nations are defused by the critics in short order. For example, a passage of Deuteronomy: (FN 4:5-8)

“See, I [Moses] have taught you regulations and judicial decisions, just as Jehovah my God has commanded me, for you to do that way in the midst of the land to which you are going to take possession of it. And you must keep and do them, because this is wisdom on your part and understanding on your part before the eyes of the peoples who will hear of all these regulations, and they will certainly say, ‘This great nation is undoubtedly a wise and understanding people.’ For what great nation is there that has gods near to it the way Jehovah our God is in all our calling upon him? And what great nation is there that has righteous regulations and judicial decisions like all this law that I am putting before you today.  Deut 4:5-8

With no way to ascertain that there is a God, the higher critic regards the above as a concoction of Moses, who was a great man hoping to impose his theology upon a resistant nation. He is attributing his own forward vision to God, saying the ways of his god are best, when he actually should be saying, ‘My ways are best.’

As an exercise, in the following summation of 2 Kings 17:7-18, replace every mention of Jehovah (FN traditionally thought to be Jeremiah, though you won’t be able to ram that by the higher critics, either). with the name of the author writing the account. Doing so moves it into the realm of a political statement, not one of God. Modern critics can identify with political statements. They cannot with statements of faith, so they repackage the latter as the former:

“[Calamity] happened because the people of Israel had sinned against Jehovah their God, who brought them up out of the land of Egypt from under the control of Pharaoh king of Egypt. They worshipped other gods, they followed the customs of the nations that Jehovah had driven out from before the Israelites, and they followed the customs that the kings of Israel had established. The Israelites were pursuing the things that were not right according to Jehovah their God. They kept building high places in all their cities, from watchtower to fortified city. They kept setting up for themselves sacred pillars and sacred poles on every high hill and under every luxuriant tree; and on all the high places they would make sacrificial smoke just as the nations did that Jehovah had driven into exile from before them. They kept doing wicked things to offend Jehovah. They continued to serve disgusting idols, about which Jehovah had told them: “You must not do this!” Jehovah kept warning Israel and Judah through all his prophets and every visionary, saying: “Turn back from your wicked ways! Keep my commandments and my statutes according to all the law that I commanded your forefathers and that I sent to you through my servants the prophets.” But they did not listen, and they remained just as stubborn as their forefathers who had not shown faith in Jehovah their God. They continued rejecting his regulations and his covenant that he had made with their forefathers and his reminders that he had given to warn them, and they kept following worthless idols and became worthless themselves, imitating the nations all around them that Jehovah had commanded them not to imitate. They kept leaving all the commandments of Jehovah their God, and they made metal statues of two calves and a sacred pole, and they bowed down to all the army of the heavens and served Baal. They also made their sons and their daughters pass through the fire, they practiced divination and looked for omens, and they kept devoting themselves to do what was bad in the eyes of Jehovah, to offend him. So Jehovah was very angry with Israel, so that he removed them from his sight.”

None of the above is God’s complaint, according to the higher critics. It is all the complaint of Jeremiah—or whoever is writing as though Jeremiah.

So destructive to faith is higher criticism that it ought to be as banned as DDT and thalidomide, for it triggers no fewer spiritual stillbirths. Instead, it is the method of theological preference today. If you shop the theological schools for your church pastor, it is what you most likely have inflicted upon your congregation. Jehovah’s Witnesses will have none of it. To them, the words of Peter apply, that “prophecy was at no time brought by man’s will, but men spoke from God as they were moved by holy spirit.” (2 Peter 1:21) Those words of Peter lead them to assume unity of scripture, not inherent discord between them. It necessarily makes scripture more powerful. You can focus things that are united. You cannot things that are disunited.

******  The bookstore

There are 18 verses in Psalm 88. Save for verse 13, not a single positive thought is expressed. Everything is disastrous. Nothing good anywhere. Plus, the psalmist all but blames God: ‘When are you going to pour out your loving-kindness—when I’m dead?’ He makes the point repeatedly.

Look those verses over. You can’t find a positive thought. Except for 13: “But I still cry to you for help, O Jehovah, Each morning my prayer comes before you.” Though, he immediately follows up (verse 14) that it does him no good: “Why, O Jehovah, do you reject me? Why do you hide your face from me?” The question is nowhere answered.  He has tried the “peace of God will safeguard your heart” thing. It hasn’t worked, and so he tells God about it!

Psalm 88 is just like the Book of Job, but without the preface pulling back the heavenly curtain to explain what it’s all about. What is this psalm even doing in the Bible, which is overall a book of faith? You could easily get all cynical over it, were that your inclination. Nowhere is the psalmist’s faith rewarded. But it is steadfast, if only by force of habit, per verse 13. Is it the more powerful on that account? Life is not consistently rosy. It can be horrendous for the long periods of time.

There is precious little commentary on this psalm from the JW Library app, which likes to focus on the positive. No wonder. There’s nothing positive here, save for the verse about hanging in there with prayer. ‘Sometimes we have to wait awhile’ is the gist of the Library’s sole remark (on 13). There’s one other remark, too, but it is simply the definition of a term.

The fellow is going through a trough. Sometimes we are in troughs. Don’t feel unique if it has ever happened to you. The ground has been plowed before. If you have ever felt as the psalmist, don’t feel bad. Or, at least, don’t feel guilty about feeling bad. Part of the roller coaster of life, someone said during field service, which delivers both good times and bad.

It reminded me of how the circuit overseer said he would get carsick as a boy. The solution? Fix your gaze far off into the horizon, the one thing that does not change. So it is that the psalmist fixes his gaze upon God to carry him through a rough period of life.

******  The bookstore

Lately, my wife and I have added ‘Mankind’s Search for God’ into our family study. Published in 1990. It was a good read for me when it came out, but I also wondered what was the point. Whereas the book tells of an huge population shift, many times I’ve told people that, at its time of release, one came across only three groups of people in the U.S.—white, black, and Hispanic. Maybe in huge cities there were other populations, and one could always find the odd duck out of the water, but in the mid-sized city that was mine, all but 99% were of those three groups.

Turned out the book was just ahead of its time. Within ten years, the trickle of cultures/nationalities/religions began. Now it is a torrent, as people hop from sinking nations onto ones that are sinking more slowly. The brothers in the big cities were already seeing it back in 1990.

It is a reference work, really, and yet there are printed questions, as though it was designed for congregation study that never came. Quite a bit different from any other study book. Best remembered is the chapters comparing and contrasting all the large religions. But there are also chapters as to how the theory of evolution modified the search for God itself.

”During the 19th century, however, the picture began to change. The theory of evolution was sweeping through intellectual circles. That, along with the advent of scientific inquiry, caused many to question established systems, including religion. Recognizing the limitations of looking for clues within existing religion, some scholars turned to the remains of early civilizations or to the remote corners of the world where people still lived in primitive societies. They tried to apply to these the methods of psychology, sociology, anthropology, and so forth, hoping to discover a clue as to how religion began and why.” p23

The book names a few of these scholars. Tylor, Marett, Frazer, Freud has a paragraph apiece, with a few details as to the theories they proposed. At last, all are dismissed with the observation of paragraph 15:

“Numerous other theories that are attempts to explain the origin of religion could be cited. Most of them, however, have been forgotten, and none of them have really stood out as more credible or acceptable than the others. Why? Simply because there was never any historical evidence or proof that these theories were true. They were purely products of some investigator’s imagination or conjecture, soon to be replaced by the next one that came along.”

Then, an appeal to another book (World Religions—From Ancient History to the Present), which says: “In the past too many theorists were concerned not simply to describe or explain religion but to explain it away, feeling that if the early forms were shown to be based upon illusions then the later and higher religions might be undermined.” (Italics mine)

Thing is, we normally have zero interest in such things. If it is not a Bible topic itself, we don’t touch it. The book is an aberration from all else we print. All these names have popped up in background reading to maybe incorporate in my current work-in-progress, but I was real surprised to see it here, even in truncated form. Probably in the end, someone decided that it really does nothing for the building up of faith (other than provide a contrast), so for that reason it never made it into congregation study. Or maybe, it was never meant to, but in that case, why the study questions?

******  The bookstore

When a full-time-service couple moves into town, they may have several congregations to choose from. I try to woo them into mine. ‘Frankly, in some of those other congregations,’ I tell them, ‘I’m not sure they even believe in God.’ It’s a joke. Everyone knows it’s a joke. They laugh.

But in the world of theologians, it’s no joke. Theologians may not. And if they do not, their credentials as theologian are not diminished. ‘How could they not believe in God?’ the uninitiated who supposes the two all but synonymous might ask. The answer is that theology is not a study of God. It is a study of humans. Specifically, it is a study of human interaction with the concept of a divine. As such, it does not even assume that there is a divine. The concept is what counts, not whether the concept has “the quality of existence.” Frequently, theologians are agnostic. Sometimes, they are atheist.

Since their limited tools of rational measurement leave them unable to verify spiritual interpretations, they don’t try. They leave that area, huge though it is, untouched. Instead, those trained in higher criticism judge religious belief entirely by its effect upon people and society. When they entertain arguments as to God’s existence, arguments categorized as ontological, cosmological, and teleological—they generally find flaws with all. James Hall considers numerous examples of each argument and in every case arrives at what he calls a ‘Scottish verdict’—undecided. He ends his 36-part lecture series on the Philosophy of Religion with the plea that religious people take more seriously the notion that they may be wrong. Why? Because when they don’t, they tend to persecute those believing differently.

Just tamp them all down some so that human reason might rule the roost; that is his position. No wonder he downplays any dualism theodicy that implies some things are beyond human control. Strong faith is not amenable to his tools of choice. he prefers you make it weak. As a hobby, as a dimly motivating background philosophy, it is okay, but for anything serious, just shelve it, please. “I wish you were hot or cold, but because you are lukewarm, I am going to vomit you out of my mouth,” Jesus says. Hall’s reply is that lukewarm with have to do.

It may be that religious people persecute those of different beliefs in his world—clearly, they do—but in the world of Jehovah’s Witnesses, they do not. As people who integrate the scriptures, rather than assume each one an island oblivious to all others, they are motivated by the Old Testament verse put in New Testament context, “‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay,’ says Jehovah.” If there is any persecuting to be done, it will not be at their hands. Witnesses do not even engage in the ‘soft violence’ of stirring up politicians to force their ways upon people by law. But those addicted to changing the world, by force, if necessary, cannot abide the expanded ‘vengeance is mine’ passage:

Return evil for evil to no one. Take into consideration what is fine from the viewpoint of all men. If possible, as far as it depends on you, be peaceable with all men. Do not avenge yourselves, beloved, but yield place to the wrath; for it is written: “‘Vengeance is mine; I will repay,’ says Jehovah.” But “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by doing this you will heap fiery coals on his head.” Do not let yourself be conquered by the evil, but keep conquering the evil with the good. (Romans 12: 17-21)

They do like the part about “heaping fiery coals” upon the heads of their opponents, but alas, it is not a literal recommendation. It is a reference to how metals can be softened to make them more pliable, and how acts of kindness can have that effect upon people.

Thus, one need not water down faith, as Hall appears to advocate. Assume unity of scripture and you are fine. Assume the ‘vengeance is mine’ passage is the insertion of some renegade theological peacenik, however, and you can see why he wants to dilute all systems of faith—they just go at each other like baking soda and vinegar.

******  The bookstore

Here is someone who gets right to the point. After a quick little genuflect to show he  still had the overall picture—“God is truly good to Israel, to those pure in heart,”  (Psalm 73:1) he relates how he almost lost it.

As for me, my feet had almost strayed; My steps had nearly slipped.” (vs 2)

The problem? He became envious! Few things are as corrosive as envy.

 “For I became envious of the arrogant When I would see the peace of the wicked.  For they have no pain in their death; Their bodies are healthy. They are not troubled like other humans, Nor do they suffer like other men. Therefore, haughtiness is their necklace; Violence clothes them as a garment. Their prosperity makes their eyes bulge; They have exceeded the imaginations of the heart. They scoff and say evil things. They arrogantly threaten oppression. They speak as if they were as high as heaven, And their tongues swagger about in the earth. . . Yes, these are the wicked, who always have it easy. They just keep increasing their wealth.” (3-12)

And just how do these ones feel about God? They tell him to take a hike!

“They say: “How does God know? Does the Most High really have knowledge?” (vs 11) And it goes well for them!

They don’t all hit the party scene upon forgetting God! They don’t all turn to drugs and sex and the bottle! Someone at the meeting cited 2 Timothy 3:2-5, with its laundry list of bad traits typifying the last days:

“For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, haughty, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, disloyal, having no natural affection, not open to any agreement, slanderers, without self-control, fierce, without love of goodness, betrayers, headstrong, puffed up with pride, lovers of pleasures rather than lovers of God, having an appearance of godliness but proving false to its power; and from these turn away.” 

It works for some. Some dance with the tune and they make out just fine! It was enough to make Asaph pull his hair out! If he were living in modern times, he’d be whining about being misled, about being brainwashed, about the Levites lying to him! In fact, when a recent Watchtower study incorporated Psalm 73 for the benefit of any feeling what Asaph did, virulent ex-Witnesses were all over it, but spinning it without reference to Asaph or the psalm. Instead, they spun it in terms of politics and cult manipulation; you know, further manipulation to keep the deluded in line. I mean, sheesh—if you’re going to carry on about Jehovah’s Witnesses, you must also carry on about what motivates them, not change that motivation to something else. It’s as though the grousers have forgotten that there are such things as scriptures.

The ones who forsake God (from vs 11) don’t actually say they no longer believe in him. They just act as though they don’t. They have their religion but they have learned to keep it in its place—last place. Here Asaph is exerting himself every day, keeping God in first place, crossing Ts and dotting Is, while “the arrogant,” and “the wicked” are “not troubled” over anything!  Their “bodies are healthy.” When they die—at least they have not escaped that bit of unpleasantness—there is “no pain in their death.” It’s as though they say, “Well, it’s been a fine run. Remind me to do it again sometime,” as they reach to switch off the light.

It’s driving Asaph mad! “Surely in vain I have kept my heart pure And washed my hands in innocence. And I was troubled all day long; Every morning I was chastised.” (13-14) Every morning he asked himself! “Why am I still doing this, striving so hard to measure up for God? Where is it getting me?” It’s a little like when we left our snowy clime to visit friends down south and they said, “Yeah, why are you still up there?” (And, in fact, why are we? Probably because it’s not so bad a test as Asaph’s.)

“But if I had said these things, I would have betrayed your people.” (15)

Great! So, he can’t even complain about it! It wouldn’t be “upbuilding.” You don’t want to rain on everyone else’s parade at the Kingdom Hall. You want to say, “Attaboy! Keep it up!” But it’s getting harder for him to do. “When I tried to understand it, It was troubling to me.” (16)

Sorry to those who hoped for something a little more dramatic, but the solution appears to have been to “hit the books.”

“Until I entered the grand sanctuary of God, And I discerned their future. Surely you place them on slippery ground. You make them fall to their ruin. How suddenly they are devastated! How sudden is their finish as they come to a terrible end!”

A terrible end? Like in the Braveheart movie, where William Wallace’s chum confides, as both are under heavy arrow bombardment, that he had prayed to the good Lord, and the good Lord was pretty sure he could get him out of this spot. “But you’re finished!”      (*He used a cruder synonym, not ‘finished.’)

There is an Act II! How could Asaph have forgotten that? The opening act is not also the closing act! If it was, the naysayers would be right. He is knocking himself out for nothing. But it’s not! It’s as though Asaph awakens from a bad dream: “Like a dream when one wakes up, O Jehovah, When you rouse yourself, you will dismiss their image.” (Vs 20)

 “I was unreasoning and lacked understanding” he says, once he has corrected himself. “I was like a senseless beast before you.” (vs 22)

Whoa! There it is! A reference to those who quickly settle that this life is all there is, to those who imagine nothing beyond the present 70-90 years.  They are like ‘senseless beasts!’ And Asaph had almost become one of them! No more!

“But now I am continually with you; You have taken hold of my right hand. You guide me with your advice, And afterward you will lead me to glory.

Whom do I have in the heavens? And besides you I desire nothing on earth. My body and my heart may fail, But God is the rock of my heart and my portion forever.

Truly, those keeping far from you will perish. You will put an end to everyone who immorally leaves you. But as for me, drawing near to God is good for me. I have made the Sovereign Lord Jehovah my refuge, To declare all your works.” (vs 23-28)

Back on track, he is. The opening act is not also the closing act. He’s setting himself out to weather the entire play, not just the first act.

***Sorry, that Psalm 73 reference to the people who have it made recalled for me when my new bride and I went to a gala hi-brow affair where everyone was dressed to the nines. Tuxes and gowns! When intermission came and all were out in the foyer sipping drinks, each one of which cost more than the antifreeze in my car, I whispered to my wife, “Here are people we don’t usually hang out with—the wicked!”

Yes, I know, I know. Completely unfair. No doubt, most were nice. My new wife looked at me oddly—but I couldn’t resist.

******  The bookstore

See Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 Part 5  Part 6

Upon the release of his movie, The Passion, Mel Gibson was asked whether it was true that the Jews killed Jesus. “Well, it wasn’t the Scandinavians,” he replied. No, it wasn’t. But neither was it the Jews, per se. It was the religious leaders of the Jews that did the deed. Jealous at Jesus’ sway with the crowds, agitated at his challenge to their authority, they manipulated the crowd present there in the middle of the night to turn against Jesus. Days before, the little people, the ones who had to sleep at night for the working day ahead and so were not at that hasty trial, had welcomed Jesus with unbridled enthusiasm. It wasn’t the Jews. It was their leaders at the time. Why can’t revisionists make that distinction? Who today says Germans killed the Jews during the Holocaust? Nobody blames the entire German people. It is enough to say Hitler killed the Jews—and that is how it is said.

Ms. Pagels bends over backwards to qualify all four gospel accounts on this point. They all reveal that the Jewish authorities instigated Jesus’ death. She tries to spin it that they didn’t. There is precious little basis for challenging the point, but she challenges it anyway on all four of them. Pilate was cruel, she points out, summing up sparse accounts of his life. He would not have gone out on a limb to free a Jew, she insists; he despised Jews. It is unconvincing to me. Why would he not have tried to free Jesus, especially if doing so annoyed the ruling Jews, whom he probably despised more? They woke him out of a sound sleep to kill a clearly innocent man just to satisfy their religious envy. Why wouldn’t he thwart them? If you “despise” a people, won’t you despise the leaders of them more?

Pagels writes of how shocked she was upon discovering that the charge of Jews killing Jesus had fueled countless pogroms throughout history. Isn’t that behind the modern determination to pin Jesus’ death on Pilate and the Romans alone? To be sure, preventing pogroms is a noble cause. It is hard to fault her for motive. But one need not gut the scriptures to do it. It works perfectly well to paint the Jews as hijacked by their religious leaders, just as the Germans were hijacked by Hitler two thousand years later. In fact, it works even better; Both deeds were done in the dark, but only Jesus’ trial was literally in the dark.

To those whose religious sensibilities takes decidedly a second place to human peacekeeping efforts, it will be, ‘Who cares who killed him? He’s dead. Spin it whatever way placates the masses.’ They will be totally oblivious to any sense of Jesus foretelling his own death, such as at John 22:24: “Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just one grain; but if it dies, it then bears much fruit,” ‘Naw, that line was thrown in after the fact,’ they will say, viewing it that he was a preacher who failed in his mission, but later opportunists managed to build a religion out of it.

Other conclusions seem equally doubtful. ‘Jesus wouldn’t have insulted the Jews,’ Pagels writes, referring to passages such as the 23rd chapter of Matthew. ‘He was a Jew.’ She has never heard of class distinction? Frankly, I think she goes easy on the educated rulers of the time because she also is of that educated class. It is not just her, but virtually all of today’s theologians. They are not drawn from the lower disadvantaged classes that included Jesus and the majority of those heeding him. They are from the higher classes. As such, they are generally inclined to say of the lower, ‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth?’ It will be as in the 2011 film Inside Job, in which the director expresses dismay that no specific individuals of the 2008 financial collapse were ever brought to justice:

   Charles Ferguson (film director): “Why do you think there isn’t a more systematic investigation being undertaken?”

   Nouriel Roubini (Professor, NYU Business School): “Because then you will find the culprits.”

Culprits and regulators alike belonged to the same social set and were members of the same country clubs; they had no desire to turn on one another. So it is that today’s theologians cannot see religious leaders of the past as anything but well-intentioned. They are of the same background and class. They will not turn on each other.

To be Continued

******  The bookstore

See art 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 Part 5

It is almost painful to see the critically-minded exploring biblical passages and, as though by design, discarding every key they come across. Time and again, you find yourself saying, ‘Not that one, don’t toss that one, you will need it, that one’s a keeper!’ Heedless, they say, ‘We are wise and learned adults, far too clever to be sold Adam and Eve (or whatever). What’s next? Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck? We will opt for a deeper meaning, never mind if if doesn’t add up to anything.’ So reliably does this happen that one almost suspects some sinister power at work manipulating the wise to destroy every useful map, that they may wander forever in the critical wilderness, with nary an oasis in sight.

Elaine Pagels writes a book (Why Religion? This one is her autobiography) in which she wrenches apart her soul, chronicling her unrelenting anguish at the deaths of both her young son and, several years later, her husband. She is an excellent researcher and author, and her documentation on her own ordeals is as expressive as anything I have read. It is enough to make one ashamed at better weathering similar trial, except . . .except for the reservation that, through her training, she systematically threw away any key that might have helped her. Untimely death, though still horrific, is infinitely more bearable to one entertaining the Bible’s resurrection hope.

You cannot throw away keys you never had, one might point out. If her education served to keep those keys shrouded, that is hardly her fault. Her only prior taste of Christianity was with the brand that spins the death of an infant as God picking flowers for his beautiful heavenly garden—who wouldn’t be repelled by that?—thereafter leaving her tastebuds for Christianity permanently seared. Consequently, though Pagel’s life work of religious legend and textual scholarship makes a fascinating read, both her education and religious experience have prejudiced her to overlook the keys. She never had them.

Though it has long been a staple of preachers, the analogy of God picking flowers is nowhere found in the Bible. However, there is an analogy parallel in all respects except the moral at the end. It is found in Nathan’s tale to David, the tale of the rich man who slaughtered and prepared for his visitors the sole lamb of a poor man, sparing his own abundant flock. That man did not receive praise from David, but rather instant wrath. “As surely as Jehovah is living, the man who did this deserves to die!” the king said. (FN) Likely, Pagels picked up on the contrast between David’s wholly understandable response and the evangelical model that holds God behaves just like that cruel man. Preachers make a horrific mess trying to extract themselves from the moral corners their doctrines unfailingly paint them into—in this case, the doctrine that the soul lives on and can never die.

One person who, unlike Pagels, did have the keys and did throw them away, all the time imagining she was taking a step forward, even when she desperately needed a certain key, is a woman praised to high heaven by an (one can only assume) atheist professor of theology at Harvard. Something is greatly off-base about the New York Times review (FN) of Amber Scorah’s book, Leaving the Witnesses, and it is not Amber. It is the reviewer, C. E. Morgan, who goes about her task with a humanist fervor that merits a review in itself. One wonders what she could possibly teach at that Divinity School or what might be the outcome for students who attend her class—students who likely went there because they wanted to learn about God. Her lavish praise of Ms. Scorah’s book: “She teaches us how integrity is determined . . . by enduring the universe as we find it—breathtaking in its ecstasies and vicious in its losses—without recourse to a God,” surely should give those students pause—are they truly in the place they thought they were? Or did they somehow get shunted off into Atheist Academy?

Ms. Scorah herself, as presented by Ms. Morgan, is more conventional. Hers is one of the oldest stories of time—of someone disillusioned with her present life, so she reaches out for another, which upon seizing, she finds exhilarating. It is a coming-of-age story. It is a staple of literature. Since she is “leaving the Witnesses”—Jehovah’s Witnesses, one must at least consider how the Witnesses themselves might have phrased her departure, perhaps similar to the words of the apostle Paul addressed to Timothy: “Demas has forsaken me because he loved the present world.”

Ms. Morgan cannot be expected to put it as did Paul, but since she teaches at the divinity school, one might at least expect her to be cognizant of that point of view. Instead, Amber’s departure is a tale of pure heroism for her—that of escape from an “extreme” religion—even worse than a “fundamentalist” religion, in her view—and it is “most valuable as an artifact of how one individual can escape mind control.”

It would appear that any denomination of Christianity that has not interpreted away into oblivion the resurrection of Christ would be fundamentalist in Ms. Morgan’s eyes. “The anti-intellectualism of these [fundamentalist] authoritarian movements, their staunch refusal to cede ground to reason and empiricism, often confounds nonbelievers,” and it seems she counts herself as Chief of the Nonbelievers—never mind what her teaching title might suggest. “How can people devote the totality of their lives to the unseen, the unevidenced?” she laments, seemingly unaware that such is the very fabric of faith, of those who interpret “evidence” differently, and who will say, akin to Jesus addressing the Pharisees, “Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have evidence as our father.’ For I say to you that the devil is able to raise up evidence from these monied and agenda-driven stones.” (FN Matthew 3:9) But she will not say it. “How can faith subsume thinking?” she complains instead. Her frustration could not be more clear—‘We have fired everything we have at them and yet they keep standing!’

As bad as fundamentalism is, however, it is not so bad in her eyes as an “extreme religion” like Jehovah’s Witnesses. To establish that she has done her homework, she relates that from its 1870 inception, the faith “rejected Christian doctrines it deemed extratextual [not in the Bible], including trinitarianism and hell.” You would think she would be happy about that, for it is a distinct step toward reason—Witness leader C. T. Russell was known within his lifetime as “the man who turned the hose on hell and put out the fire.” The Witness description of death, “extinction or non-being,” is exactly the rationalist view, though it will be marred in her eyes by the caveat of a future resurrection from the dead.

The notion that Christianity should return to its default state Morgan finds “dubious.” Yes, of course she would find it dubious, for it freezes religion in place. It halts evolution. It detracts from her authority at the Divinity School to proclaim a new gospel holding that dependence on God is for chumps. No, she wants religion to evolve, as does everything else in her Darwinian world. Witnesses also “actively proselytize, warning of an imminent Armageddon,” she complains, as though it is wrong to even suggest that an earth carved up into scores of eternally squabbling nations might not be exactly God’s dream come true.

In short, she has found people—ordinary people for the most part—who disagree with her, and she oozes disdain for them. Children raised in such religion “experience a totalizing indoctrination that so severely limits the formation of an adult psychology that many don’t ever achieve maturity in the way secular society conceives of it.” Necessarily, this means that she thinks adults of that faith are, for the most part, immature children. None of them will be found among her social contacts or workplace, perhaps barring a support worker or two, with whom she may occasionally exchange a brief word so long as they keep their stupid opinions to themselves.

The patronization is simply too much. Any time someone leaves one culture for another, there is some catching up to do—say, in the case of a person migrating from one country to another. Would Ms. Morgan similarly find it necessary to crow her superiority over the country and culture of emigration, say, where Hinduism is practiced, perhaps, or Spanish is spoken? She would recoil at the thought, but when it comes to religious views that stray from her worldview, it is as natural to her as breathing air. Let her “world” prove itself reasonably “free from sin” before she casts stones on those who have come to see things differently.

Amber ran out on a “loveless marriage,” Ms. Morgan states, and her implication is clear that Jehovah’s Witnesses think loveless marriages are the bee’s knees, since she presents love as the balm that finally wakes Ms. Scorah up. I will take her word for it that Scorah’s book is as she says it to be—an “earnest one, fueled by a plucky humor and a can-do spirit that endears.” And yet it does not completely satisfy the reviewer—it shows too much the “the remnants of a Christian modesty not well suited to the task of memoir.” One can all but hear her plead, ‘Modesty? What’s that?! Come on, SPILL!’ as she redefines “miracle” into “enduring the universe as we find it — breathtaking in its ecstasies and vicious in its losses — without recourse to a God.” Look, if I were a student in her divinity class, about this time I’d be asking for my money back, assuming I wasn’t too brainwashed just then to think of it. I mean, I get it that she’s not going to use her tenure to save souls, but you still wouldn’t think God would be public enemy #1 at the Divinity School.

But, her review has not yet come to the most gripping part. When it does, Morgan foresees another book. “Many readers know Scorah through her viral article in The New York Times about the death of her son on his first day of day care,” she writes. “This, one senses, is her brutal but beautiful route into a new book—a shorter, wiser one, sharp and devastating. Here she reveals a chastened existence, steeped in grief and unknowing without recourse to pacifying religious answers.” It is unbelievable! It is “wiser” to tell God to take a hike! If a religious answer comforts, throw it away! It is as though sawing off the tree limb upon which one has long perched and, as it comes crashing down to earth, whooping for joy at the liberation, like the Dr. Strangelove cowboy straddling the falling nuke!

Scorah must have anguished with the notion that her child might not have died but for the abandonment of her faith—she must have. Pagels thought it—what might she have done differently that might have averted tragedy? Job thought it, especially as his three visitors pulled out all the stops to convince him that he had caused his own downfall. Scorah, too, must have for a time grappled with the notion of ‘retributive justice,’ same as Job. There is no reason to think it is so, but she is human. She must have grappled with it.

She had the key, as Pagels did not. Swayed by the revisionists, she discarded it. She exchanged a backdrop of: “We do not want you to be ignorant about those who are sleeping in death, so that you may not sorrow as the rest do who have no hope” (FN 1 Thessalonians 4:13) for one that urges, “Stay Ignorant. Stuff happens. Get used to it.” Ms. Morgan reckons that exchange an unmitigated triumph of the human spirit! Anyone of sense would reckon it as does Paul, a “shipwreck of faith.” Keep smashing your head into the wall of critical education until you feel better. It is impossible for the biblically-literate not to think of the verse regarding those who, ‘although claiming they were wise, became foolish.’ (FN Rom 1:22)

From the upcoming: [working title]: The Book of Job: a Workman's Theodicy

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Those brought up with the Bible narrative are super impressed with that account of the angel halting 185,000 Assyrian troops in their tracks. How could they not be? The unstoppable Assyrians toppled one city after another, sweeping in from the north, but after a long siege, they were stopped at Jerusalem. Literally, they were stopped dead. Sennacherib boasts of his conquests—these kings were invariably braggarts. Their scribes had no choice but to corroborate their boasts, upping the numbers along the way to keep their bosses happy. So here he is, after knocking over one city after another, describing his encounter with Jerusalem:

“As to Hezekiah, the Jew, he did not submit to my yoke, I laid siege to 46 of his strong cities, walled forts and to the countless small villages in their vicinity, and conquered (them) by means of well-stamped (earth-)ramps, and battering-rams brought (thus) near (to the walls) (combined with) the attack by foot soldiers, (using) mines, breaches as well as sapper work. I drove out (of them) 200,150 people, young and old, male and female, horses, mules, donkeys, camels, big and small cattle beyond counting, and considered (them) booty. Himself [Hezekiah] I made a prisoner in Jerusalem, his royal residence, like a bird in a cage. . . . His towns which I had plundered, I took away from his country and gave them (over) to Mitinti, king of Ashdod, Padi, king of Ekron, and Sillibel, king of Gaza. . . . Hezekiah himself . . . did send me, later, to Nineveh, my lordly city, together with 30 talents of gold, 800 talents of silver, precious stones, antimony, large cuts of red stone, couches (inlaid) with ivory, nimedu -chairs (inlaid) with ivory, elephant-hides, ebony-wood, boxwood (and) all kinds of valuable treasures, his (own) daughters, concubines, male and female musicians. In order to deliver the tribute and to do obeisance as a slave he sent his (personal) messenger.” —Sennacherib Prism, per Ancient Near Eastern Texts, p. 288. [Bolding mine]

Oh, yeah? How come he didn’t conquer Hezekiah like he did everyone else? Why just let him off with a promise to pay if he was such a tough guy? The Bible record says that payment was paid before, not after, the siege began, whereas Sennacherib says just the opposite. This inverted order of events “looks like a screen to cover up something which he does not wish to mention,” says Funk and Wagnalls New Standard Bible Dictionary of 1936 (p. 829). Those who believe the Bible account say it is the angel he’s trying to covering up. But the secular historians today are inclined to say, ‘Nah, it was probably just a plague.’ That’s what Jean-Pierre Isbouts says in his 2022 lecture series, History and Archeology of the Bible.

The modern believer may take the Bible narrative as history, but the modern sociologist, anthropologist, archaeologist, historian, philosopher, theologian, psychologist—you name it—does not. The Bible narrative is but a source to them, and a source that doesn’t mean much unless it is validated by one of those ‘superior’ human fields of study. “We have our own maps and geodetic survey plans, of course, but where the Bible and the maps are at odds, we opt for The Book,”  said Dr. Ze’ev Shremer in 1967. Today, you can all but hear the modernists say, ‘We use pages of The Book to wrap our lunch sandwiches in.’

Who were the Bible writers, the scribes, the prophets, according to all those who track human activity? They were merely devout men trying to interpret the political events of the day into religious terms. Should it not be the other way around, that world events be interpreted through spirituality? It is that way with Jehovah’s Witnesses today and many other sets of believers. It was also that way with the Bible writers themselves, who come across just as ‘insular’ to world politics of the day as Witnesses do now. Unless some development of politics substantially impacted the people of God in those Bible times, the Old Testament, and later the New Testament writers, seem to know little about it. They kept track of their own cause—the furtherance of God’s purpose—not the ever-changing twists of what they regarded as that children’s game, ‘King of the Mountain.’ As far as they were concerned, the rise and fall of human powers was just such a game, barely worth writing down unless it somehow interfered with that greater purpose.

“Look! The nations are like a drop from a bucket, And as the film of dust on the scales they are regarded,” writes Isaiah. (40:15) Why waste your time chronicling drops and film? the Bible writers would have supposed, and so they didn’t do it. As though speaking for them all, Paul says, “We keep our eyes, not on the things seen, but on the things unseen. For the things seen are temporary, but the things unseen are everlasting.” No wonder the Bible writings seem insular to those who drink the drops and walk the film. They are tracking entire different things.

Always, among today’s educated, it is taken for granted that the struggles between nations are the realities to watch. Never for one moment is it speculated that these nations might be playing second fiddle to a greater cause. Theology is not a study of God. It is a study of man, so it is hardly surprising that it is human institutions they chronicle, and God‘s institutions only so far as they play ball with those of humans.

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In this age of fierce independence, it will not be surprising to find that the sheepfold model described by Jesus is unp0pular. Many don’t want the shepherds to be shepherds. They want them to be guidance counselors encouraging the sheep to ‘be all that you can be.’ Such is not the shepherd’s job. His job is to shepherd.

It is not that the sheepfold model does not frustrate me sometimes. It does. But I do my best to work with it because it is Jesus’ model. The present GB are just doing their best to fulfill their role as the human shepherd. When the sheep start shaking at the wires and the shepherd nudges them back, I say, “Well, that is what you would expect the shepherd to do.”  When a sheep starts to act in a way that you would not expect a sheep to act and refuses to be tamed, I say, when the shepherd ejects it from the pen, ‘Well, that is what you would expect the shepherd to do.’ If the shepherd even reads a false positive of rebellion into a sheep, I say, ‘Well, doctors read false positives all the time. Let the sheep sit in the penalty box for a time and then it can get back in the game.’ Tough love is no more of a crime than is unconditional love.

Since the sheepfold model is Jesus model, and I accept that, it is not for me even to say what I sometimes find ‘frustrating’ about it. It is enough to sing the song, ‘You can’t always get what you want.’ However, sometimes Newton’s law enforces itself that an object in motion tends to stay in motion. At this point, I have been in motion for a few paragraphs. Probably the grumblers cited would not disagree with their remarks being rephrased as ‘The shepherd sure does nanny a lot.’ Can it backfire?

We all know that a great way to get someone to do something is to tell them they should not. It is just human nature. Are we “at war” with a certain element? Usually, the first thing done in war is reconnaissance of the enemy. Ought we not help out a brother when he’s gotten himself into a spot because “he shouldn’t be there?” We don’t say the same when our bull has fallen into a pit, nor when our child is playing in the street, nor when we are reading up on Elihu helping Job out of a jam. I get it that David wants to stay mum as all day long his enemies speak against him. I get it that Jesus says ‘wisdom will prove righteous by its works.’  But perusing any policy to the nth degree has its drawbacks, too. Analyzing enemy action in order to devise a response is a significant part of any war. It never seems to occur to anyone that doing so might benefit a soldier and not be like drinking poison.

Every virus wants to hijack the cell so as to spit out copies of itself. I do get the doctor trying to make those cell walls ironclad. But the body has an immune system too. That immune system may even be weakened if it does not have a thorough workout from time to time. It is all very well to avoid the toxic climate where harsh criticism prevails and forgiveness is unheard of—the very attributes that have ground the overall world to a standstill. It is all very well to cancel your subscription to the Sinai Gazette over its feature series (that they seem to have made into their mission statement) on Moses’ foreign wives. But the one who reads it through, getting madder and madder, and is forming a rebuttal on account of the Gibeonites who may read the story, might be doing something useful indeed.

If I get into nice chatty sessions with some lout who is intent on working ill, then I think I would be transgressing that Bible counsel to avoid those who stir up dissension: “Now I urge you, brothers, to keep your eye on those who create divisions and causes for stumbling contrary to the teaching that you have learned, and avoid them.” (Romans 16:17) But if the person says something derogatory and I know 100 new people will read it and possibly take it to heart, I do not feel in violation for once, succinctly, and with respect, pointing out what is wrong about the comment. To do otherwise just strikes me as cowardly, a violation of ‘always be ready to make a defense to anyone who demands a reason for your hope.’ I don’t do it for him but for whoever might be reading him. If the answer is nobody, or even just his buddies, I won’t do it. To avoid contact under any circumstances just strikes me as though the Witness attorney in court declining to cross-examine an apostate, for fear he will be saying a greeting to such a one.

It saps my desire to engage in the ministry if I can’t address what makes people resistant to it. It is like “withhold[ing] good from those to whom you should give it if it is within your power to help.” (Prov 3:27) It is almost a parallel to not speaking for fear your remark will bring reproach, whereas the abuser has already brought the reproach, and your speaking may do some good to readers who don’t know the truth of the matter. Often, it is not a matter of correcting a flat-out lie, but of supplying the context that changes everything. I do get it, though, that one ought do it with discretion and sparingly. It can get toxic, hypercritical on the one hand, juvenile on the other, as though adolescents mocking out teachers. Forgiveness is unheard of. As these are the very qualities that have made the overall world cease to function, nobody should be encouraged to do it, just not all but forbidden. Every virus seeks to hijack the cell and force it to spit out copies of itself. If apostates had their druthers, every JW would be hashing out their beefs 24/7.

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