Sunday, May 21, 2017

Channelling My Inner Survivalist

Mad Max The Road Warrior

Stu, my accountant, once told me, “It’s not that people get more eccentric as they get older, they just care less about hiding it”.   Stu is on to something here; one of my own long hidden eccentricities is that I worry a little bit about The End of The World As We Know It.  I’m not talking about the natural disasters that knock out some of our communities for weeks and months, terrible and devastating as those are.   I’m talking about The Big One, the total collapse of civilization, End of Days type stuff.

  

I have to ‘fess up right off the bat: my survival skills are minimal and if The Big One hits, I’ll last about a week.  My disaster preparedness is half-hearted and sporadic:  I take note of neighborhood fallout shelters and when I see on the news that a big storm is coming, I tell my husband to top off the gas in the car.  Or I’ll read a Red Cross or FEMA brochure and then my family will wonder why suddenly twelve gallons of drinking water are in the hall closet along with many, many packs of batteries. I have a really good first aid kit that I forget to restock and sometimes I look on the internet for solar powered radios I never get around to buying.  

My husband and kids don’t know about this little niggling worry.   I think it’s just great that one of my daughters wants to be an engineer when she grows up (she can build us a generator and simple machines if we need them).  The girls think I’m encouraging them to learn to sew because of an interest in reviving housewifely arts, but it’s really because I won’t have anything to wear if Lord & Taylor’s isn’t around anymore.   But, while I keep my SHTF concerns to myself, I wonder if maybe some of my family members have a few worries of their own.  One of my daughters seems fascinated by a possible Zombie Apocalypse and, judging by this video that went viral because of Ellen, (Save the cat!) she is certainly not alone. 




I only started mentioning my EOTWAWKI fears to other people the past couple of years, and I’m surprised (maybe I shouldn’t be) that most of the people I talk to about it, they worry about it, too.  Usually their response is as minimal as my own.  One of my former staff, one of the most laid back people I know but who, like me, watched for weeks the plume of smoke rise up from what was once the World Trade Center, he keeps iodine tablets in his desk drawer.   He says it will protect his thyroid in case of a dirty bomb.   A colleague who is the COO at an agency I partner with, his plan is to “head upstate to stay with my friend from the Army, he knows where all the guns are”.  I also told my husband if we ever have another 9/11, “don’t worry about connecting with me, grab the girls and head North, we can find each other later”.  

Some of my friends have more elaborate plans, though.  A neighbor, who never does anything halfway, knows the person in charge of the Local Emergency Planning Committee (I didn’t even know LEPCs existed until she told me about them) and she is going to pin her survival hopes on him. She told me a lot of other things about emergency preparedness that made my head spin.  She also said she would “leave NYC, because people in the cities will all turn on each other”.    It seems like a lot of us city folk plan on heading to the country after the Apocalypse.  I guess the country folks’ own emergency planning involves how to fend off the city people all heading their way.

I have other friends who take the opposite approach: a philosophical shrug of the shoulders. One friend, a scientist, said if a big meteor hits the earth, and knocked it out of position just by a little bit, we would all be fried by radiation immediately.  There are a lot of meteors out there, he says, and nothing one can do about it, so why worry?  Another friend, a Classicist, says Greek tragedy is a reminder that the human experience is like walking a route through quicksand with terrible perils all along the way, but that most of the time we somehow get through it without even thinking about it.   And it’s the not thinking about it part that keeps us sane.   So, perhaps we just need to trust in a loving God whose hand keeps all of the meteors away and lifts us above the quicksand despite our own best efforts to sink.

I’ve decided, like my more philosophical friends, that I can’t really prepare for TEOTWAWKI, so I will take that off the to-do list. I’m sure I’ll still think about it once in a while, when I read about scientists concerned that melting permafrost might release microbes we have no resistance to , or if it looks like a world leader (maybe even our own) has higher-than-average odds of unleashing the nuclear dogs of war.   But I’ll try not to think about it too much. 

Instead, I’ll work more on developing real preparedness for real emergencies.  I know there is a large and heroic network of public and private agencies and volunteers who work hard behind the scenes to prevent catastrophes, who educate and prepare us for their occurrence and who have a plan in place to rebuild after they happen; I’m going to trust in them and follow their recommendations for preparedness.  I suspect there is also a less publicized plan in place in case of global meltdown (like that cave in Norway where all of the world’s seeds are being stored)

I’ll still encourage self-reliance in my girls, because that’s a good thing anyway, but I‘ll make sure they’ll know, too, that no one is totally self-reliant and maybe our best odds of surviving and flourishing is by doing it together with circles of friends and communities to support each other.

56 comments:

  1. About that seed storage vault in Norway ... ‘Doomsday’ seed vault meant to survive global disasters breached by climate change ... oops.

    I worry about the end of the world too - have read and watched too much science fiction post-apocalyptic stuff ;) I don't see any way for me in particular to prepare for it - just don't have the resources.

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  2. Actually, there is no way to prepare for it. Thanks to technology based on complex society, trade and economics, we exist in population numbers unsustainable without high tech. I, myself, would expect to survive a while by eating Trump voters. Yum, yum, eat-em-up.

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    1. Stanley, I think you are right that there is no way to prepare for an actual apocalypse. We like to fool ourselves, kind of like those nuclear war drills we did in school back in the 60's, when we ducked under our desks to hide from radiation (as if!) I guess I did get a bunch of bottled water and canned food when the Y-2K scare was on. Then when nothing happened I ended up giving most of it to the food pantry because I can't stand canned vegetables and Spam.
      What I do wonder about is the Parousia, or second coming, how that is going to come about. I have my own theories. Some people think that it will happen when we achieve such a high degree of wickedness that God will have to smite us. I don't think so, each era has managed to raise the bar pretty high (or is it low) for wickedness. Others have said that it will happen when we finally get our act together and achieve peace and harmony for a nanosecond, and God will call "time" and take us all to the heavenly Jerusalem. I wish I thought that would happen but I don't. I think it will come from something outside us, like a big meteor that gob-smacks the earth and ends life as we know it. Or maybe a super caldera that blows and kills everything. But in all the gospels, Jesus promises that the end will happen, and that he will come a second time, and that all will see him.

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    2. Katherine,
      I think that we are still here shows some kind of divine intervention. All the games and close calls of the cold war. I think the human race will go on but there's no guarantees we're not knocked back 90 or 99%. It would help if we colonized the solar system. Then, asteroid or supervolcano, they can come back and restart on the earth. But, yes, I too think survival after a crash of civilization will depend on cooperation and communication.

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  3. I can't say this is something I worry about, probably because The Boy is grown, and I have limited time here anyway. My meds aren't the kind you can stockpile, so I wouldn't last long.

    However, I can knit and spin, and I know how to reclaim fibers for same from recyclable sources. Also have some basic knowledge about herbs and gardening, so I think I would be an asset to a commmunity of survivors until I died.

    I mostly worry about going to hell. I think about it at least daily now.

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  4. I sort of worry about hell, or at least about what the after-life will be like. If it's anything like this life, I want to opt out.

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  5. I expect it's pitch dark, hot, muggy, and you are completely alone. Like being buried alive forever.

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  6. Irene, Move to Florida, and get used to it. Hurricane season starts, as it always does, a week from Thursday. They are already pushing "Get A Plan" Apps in public service announcements. As the day comes closer, we will be inundated (sic) with special newspaper sections, ads for hand-cranked radios, flashlights and batteries, peanut butter and tuna and enough water for three days, We will have to make evacuation plans (that is what Get A Plan is all about or prepare an indoor strong room if we expect to be able to ride it out.

    We do it every year. I expect the End of the World As We Know It to be signaled by the TV weathermen taking off their jackets and rolling up their shirtsleeves. That's how we know when a hurricane has us within its cone of high winds and possible tidal waves.

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    1. And, Tom, what is a case of tuna going to do you, anyway, if civilization collapses. The mayonnaise won't keep long.

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  7. The descriptions of hell in the bible sound pretty bad - lake of fire, outer darkness. I really hope there is no such place!

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    1. I think that hell is the absence of God, and that the only people who are there (if any are there) are those who reject God and want no part of salvation or grace, and have to share it with others like themselves who have no love for anybody. If we can worry about going to hell, then we're probably not going there.

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    2. Protestants talk a lot more about hell. I have found that cradle Catholics tend to have a sense of God's mercy that Protestants of some stripes don't have.

      IMO, those brothers in the video Irene posted should probably be worried about Purgatory at the very least. I couldn't believe their mother would collude in something like that. Yikes!

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    3. Jean, finally looked at video of the brothers tormenting their sister in her vulnerable state. Creeps.

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    4. But they all got to be on the Ellen show. She gave them a trip to Mexico and gifts for their pets. http://www.ellentv.com/2016/04/14/ellen-surprises-zombie-apocalypse-siblings-with-a-trip-to-mexico/

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  8. The Catholic priests I've known have all been light on hell - a sort of Hans Urs von Bakthasar take of there maybe being no one in hell, and then there's the invention of purgatory.

    But the reason Protestants are so aware of it is because Jesus, yes, Jesus, says some pretty scary things about hell. The Catholic church really cherry picks what it wants to take seriously about the bible ... like Jesus on marriage is the last word on the subject, but Jesus on hell, not so much.

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  9. We (Catholics) used to overdo it. I remember one priest around 1959 or 60 who added to whatever he sermonized on that if we did it, we'd go to hell. He always said it with a little giggle. I never knew if that was to take the curse off the threat or because he enjoyed thinking of his congregation in hell.

    Vat II was generally seen as changing the goal from "avoid hell" to "go to heaven." That was much more pleasant, but we probably underdo hell now. No Goldilocks preaching about hell yet.

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  10. Funny, I don't worry about Hell so much, even though it's a lot more intense than the end of civilization. I don't want to die, I really like being alive. I worry sometimes maybe there is no life after life, but that's also something, if true, I can't do anything about, so why worry.

    I think you guys are smart to worry about Hell. That's one you can have a plan in place to try and avoid.

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  11. If there's hell, it'll be something not of God, but something humans create for themselves. Look how bad we've made things for ourselves and this planet despite being at the top of the food chain for 200,000 years. I liked C.S. Lewis' idea of hell as a state people can leave but don't.

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  12. Do you think people can avoid hell by trying? Christians are pretty divided about this. For some Christians it seems to depend solely on the grace of faith and belief. Our priest always said that when we don't believe, we have to act as if we do. I suppose that's devotion to the Christian life. Maybe it's enough. For some Protestants, it's the belief that's important. Be as good as you want, but if your belief is skewed, too bad for you.

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  13. I think the believe the right thing and you'll be okay school of thought is kind of twisted actually. It let's you off the hook for doing the right thing, which is more important. What we think or believe doesn't change reality, what we do, does. I totally think you can avoid Hell by giving your best shot at figuring out what God wants you to do (and believe) and then doing it. Maybe I'm giving my own self a free pass here, but it's hard to believe a loving Creator (which I do believe in) is going to bail on us if we don't live up to expectations.

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    1. Irene, you articulate a POV that is what drew me to Catholicism! Thank you for the reminder.

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  14. I hate CS Lewis' idea of hell - it's the ultimate "blame the victim" scenario - people are only in hell because they choose to be there. It has nothing to do with what's in the NT, which has at least one example of someone in hell who really doesn't want to be there.

    I don't want to believe hell exists and it isn't consistent with a loving God - it's possible the gospel writers made what Jesus says about it up. But on the other hand, the OT is full of examples of a really ruthless God who's totally down with screwing people over.

    I'm not sure what would save a person from hell. Is belief enough? Are good deeds? Good deeds that don't spring from compassion and empathy are empty in God's eyes, I would think. And belief in a loving God that doesn't cause you to want to help others doesn't seems sincere either.

    I'm struck by what Jesus said often when he would heal people - "your faith has saved you". I'm not sure what that means. There's another place where Jesus calls bad people (church leaders, I think) 'stumbling blocks' (scandal) that cause others to trip and lose their belief that God is good. I think that's me who has tripped ... I see so much suffering and because of that I'm beginning to believe that either God isn't good or he just doesn't exist.

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    1. I always thought some of the more bellicose and vindictive characterizations of God in the OT said more about the people who saw him that way than about how God really was. A good example is when Abraham was going to sacrifice Isaac because he perceived a "message from God" to do so. But the angel stopped him. We don't see any more examples of human sacrifice in the Jewish religion (except for the sad story of Jepthah and Ada in Judges 11:31, and that was because of Jepthah's rash vow, not anything God made him do). We see a gradual progression to a more merciful perception of God, not because he changed, but because he changed the people.

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    2. Yeah, I agree. But it makes me wonder about the Jesus and God shown in the NT too .... how much are they and what they do/say just a reflection of the people who wrote the gospels? Once we start down that road, it's hard to know what to believe anymore.

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    3. I think the NT is more historical than the OT. For one thing it is written by people who were eye witnesses to the events, or talked to the eye witnesses. I realize the Gospels don't always agree in every particular. It's like trying to write down a family history. You talk to this relative or another, and they sometimes have different versions of events. Doesn't mean anyone is lying, just that they saw things from their own perspective.

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    4. Not written by eye witnesses but based on stories by eye witnesses at least decades later, and themed to certain communities, I think (and with the infant narratives made up). And then there are the non-canonical gospels which didn't make the cut. And on top of that, the stuff created by later church guys, like the deeming of Mary M a prostitute. It's kind of daunting.

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    5. I know some people have said the infancy narratives were made up but I don't believe that. One tradition holds that Luke got his version from Mary. Which seems plausible because their lives would have overlapped at least somewhat. If she didn't know what happened, who would?

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  15. More like blame the free agent. I think of it as the ego collapsing in on itself like a black hole, more like a pocket universe. The fires of hell may burn forever, but I don't think of what is thrown into it as burning forever. That which is separate from the source of being can't be forever. So, extinction.

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  16. Oh don't get me started on the free will excuse ;)

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  17. I have written about this before elsewhere, so I am self-plagiarizing here, but in any case, if you check out the entry for Gehenna in John L. McKenzie's Dictionary of the Bible, he points out that the depictions of final judgment and punishment in the Synoptics simply use the language of contemporary Judaism. He says:

    It is remarkable that the language and imagery does not appear in other NT writings; Chaine has suggested that it does not appear precisely because the other NT writers found the imagery of popular Jewish apocalyptic eschatology unsuitable for Gentile Christians. Hence they chose other imagery through which to portray the grim truth of the anger of God and the punishment of sin; these images must be included in a complete synthesis of NT thought on the subject.

    He reviews imagery found in John and the Epistles of Paul and concludes

    These passages suggest that the apocalyptic imagery of other NT passages is to be taken for what it is, imagery, and not as strictly literal theological affirmation. The great truths of judgment and punishment are firmly retained throughout the NT, and no theological hypothesis can be biblical which reduces the ultimate destiny of righteousness and wickedness to the same thing; the details of the afterlife, however, are not disclosed except in imagery.

    The idea of eternal punishment is horrifying and abhorrent. I can't imagine how anyone—even the worst person who ever lived—could merit eternal punishment. What would be the point?

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  18. I agree with you, David. Interesting about Gehenna. It's even got its own page in Wikipedia :)

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  19. In McKenzie's Dictionary of the Bible here is the entry for Hell in its entirety:

    Hell Cf. Gehenna.

    Hell is an English word, so it doesn't appear in the original text of the Old or New Testaments. English translations of the words of Jesus use hell when the original Greek has hades or Gehenna. I am no expert here, but it is not clear to me that those two words meant the same thing to first-century Jews. The phrase "descended into hell" from the Apostles Creed does not come from the Bible, but if it did, you can bet the original would not have been "descended into Gehenna." It would have been "descended into hades."

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  20. I don't see the point in intellectualizing hell with textual and linguistic acrobatics. Jesus emphasizes how hard it was to get to heaven (camel, eye of needle; not with us, against us; separate sheep and goats, etc.). So the implication is that heaven is difficult to get into, and most of us can expect to end up other places. If there's no last chance Purgatory, then it's the eternal fire.

    No point in hell? There's the deterrent argument. Threat of hell keeps people in line. If you get provisional absolution, it's based not on your sense of penitence but your fear of hell.

    If heaven is a place of perfect peace, you can't have it full of a bunch of malcontents and grousers.

    Purgatory makes sense to me as a "continuing education" facility, where those who tried and didn't quite get it are prepared for heaven. Scriptural evidence for it is pretty thin, but it's in line with what a merciful god might set up.

    I'm not sure you can make plans for the afterlife like, say, making a trip to Katmandu. You do your best, but sometimes, as we know from failures in life, your best isn't good enough.

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  21. The way hell is portrayed in the NT *is* really grim. I think purgatory was invented by the church as a way to take advantage of that .... tell people that though the NT says it's hard to get into heaven, the church can help finesse that (for a charge).

    A lot of theologians have come up with theories to make this idea of hell more acceptable, like CS Lewis' blame the victim idea. Edward Schillebeeckx said there was no hell but that everyone bad was just obliterated after death.

    But maybe it all comes down to what you think God is like. If he really did create us and if we really are mostly bad and unworthy of heaven, then he's responsible for a really egregious design flaw. How could anyone respect, much less love, a God who would set up such a fail situation in which most people end up spending eternity in torture? Jesus said God is even better than a good human father to his children, so what the hell?

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    1. I think we have to accept a degree of mystery about the nature of the hereafter. Scripture doesn't spell out many details, but does drop hints. If we start from the premise that God is good, then we can make the leap of faith that he has things covered, and that "..all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well", to paraphrase Julian of Norwich.
      Some things we arrive at from reasoning rather than from revelation. I think Purgatory is like that; I like Jean's take on it as "continuing education". Maybe that education takes place in an instant, maybe there is a type of time which passes. but it makes sense to me that people who didn't cross over in a perfect state get a chance, since God is all merciful and all just.
      There is a mysterious passage in 2 Corinthians 12:2-2: "I know someone in Christ who, fourteen years ago (whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows), was caught up to the third heaven. And I know that this person (whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows) was caught up into Paradise and heard ineffable things, which no one may utter." It is assumed that Paul is speaking of himself. Whether it is a vision, or a near-death experience isn't clear. But it implies different levels of heaven, and that it is impossible for us to imagine what waits for us.

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  22. Jean,

    I am rather taken aback by your apparent belief that the correct approach to the Gospels is to form general impressions rather than carefully examine the texts. They are, after all, Greek-language accounts based on what had to have begun as oral tradition in Aramaic, committed to writing decades after the actual events. Except for possibly a phrase or two, we have no record of what Jesus actually said (in the language he said it in).

    You said: "No point in hell? There's the deterrent argument. Threat of hell keeps people in line. If you get provisional absolution, it's based not on your sense of penitence but your fear of hell."

    I did not say there was no point in hell. I raised the (rhetorical) question of what would be the point of eternal punishment. If the alleged punishments of hell are akin to roasting in a fire, might not a limited sentence of ten, twenty, a thousand, or a million years be a sufficient deterrent to bad behavior? Look at what intractable pain does to human beings. What would it be like to know there would never, ever be any relief?

    I am not sure what you mean by "provisional absolution"? The Catholic Church recognizes two kinds of contrition—perfect and imperfect—and says the latter is sufficient for receiving absolution through the sacrament of reconciliation. That seems to be setting a very low bar for remaining in a state of sanctifying grace.

    You said: "I'm not sure you can make plans for the afterlife like, say, making a trip to Katmandu. You do your best, but sometimes, as we know from failures in life, your best isn't good enough."

    This sounds a bit like despair. Earlier you listed sayings of Jesus that made it seem like getting to heaven was only for a select few. But you forgot all the sayings about God as a wholly benevolent father, as crystal points out.

    Of course, I am in a rather odd position to be making such arguments, since I am basically an agnostic!

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    1. I didn't get the impression that Jean was saying anything against examining the texts.
      I however have some personal quibbles with some Biblical scholars. Some of them don't see the irony of deconstructing the manuscripts and reading their own meanings into them because the original texts are decades removed from the eyewitness accounts; even though said scholars are centuries and millennia removed from those sources. I am more likely to trust the "takes" of the original authors.

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  23. I do think examining the original texts is important. Without them there would be no Christianity - everything is built upon their account of Jesus.

    So the NT is essential. But having said that, there are so many worries about its reliability.

    Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the faith many Catholics have is not in Jesus or the NT but instead in the church and its teachings.

    My own method is to try to balance the NT and my prayer life. To leave out either one or to just take the church's word for stuff seems like a bad idea.

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  24. I have gone through many stages of belief in my life, from "true believer to my present stage of being borderline agnostic. I believe there is a God. I believe - at least I want to believe - that God is good, that God is love (which rules out eternal hell). But everything else is a bit fuzzy.
    I never believed that the bible is literally true, even as a devout, true-believing young Catholic girl. I don’t believe it necessary to believe in a physical resurrection of Jesus in order to believe what Jesus taught, or even to believe that Jesus may have been divine, one manifestation of God. I don't know if he was God, but nobody "knows", so I am not alone.
    I believe that the scriptures are important, without accepting them as literal "truth" (facts). I can't deal with heavy theology – I need God talk to be in simple language. And so I come to Marcus Borg, despised by many for being part of the Jesus Seminar. But I found that his book, "Reading the Bible Again for the First Time", was one of the first “makes sense’ book about the bible that I have ever read.
    Borg sees the Hebrew bible is a human product. I found an article that sums it up pretty well. The author quotes Borg
    "The modern preoccupation with factuality has had a pervasive and distorting effect on how we see the Bible and Christianity. . . . Christianity in the modern period became preoccupied with the dynamic of believing or not believing. For many people, believing "iffy" claims to be true became the central meaning of Christian faith. It is an odd notion--as if what God most wants from us is believing highly problematic statements to be factually true. And if one can't believe them, then one doesn't have faith and isn't a Christian. (16)”
    “For Borg the Bible … records the experiences of God of the ancient Israelites and the early Christian movement. The Bible is thus a record made by human beings, a "human product," but one that nevertheless communicates "a reality." According to Borg, God is not a fiction or a lie but a real presence known in human experience:
    To see the Bible as a human product does not in any way deny the reality of God. Indeed, one of the central premises of this book is that God is real and can be experienced. I have put that as simply as I know how. At the risk of repetition, I mean that God (or "the sacred" or "Spirit," terms that I use synonymously) is a reality known in human experience, and not simply a human creation or projection.
    That "God is real," however, does not mean that there can be any perfect human explanation of God or God's will. And this includes the Bible.



    Of course, whatever we say about the sacred is a human creation. We cannot talk about God (or anything else) except with the words, symbols, stories, concepts, and categories known to us, for they are the only language we have. Nevertheless, we also have experiences of "the holy," "the numinous," "the sacred." These experiences go beyond language, shatter it, relativize it. (22)"
    For Borg, the sacred is mainly to be found in these experiences of God. … If the Bible is sacred, then, it not because it is "the Word of God" in the sense of a Word that came directly from God, but rather because it is recognized as sacred by the community of Christian believers. The sacred character of the Bible is grounded in its status as record of the ancient experiences of God most valued by the Christian community. The Christian community, in turn, is constituted by the Bible through constant dialogue with its texts, which dialogue Borg understands as one of the central sacraments of Christian faith.

    full article is found at http://www.necessaryprose.com/borg.htm


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  25. In response to Katherine Nielsen's comment about reading the Gospel's on one's own rather than relying on "some" biblical scholars—"I am more likely to trust the 'takes' of the original authors"—unless you read Greek and are almost wholly lacking in a Christian upbringing, you are mostly likely heavily influenced by "other" biblical scholars, who will be largely unnamed and unknown to you. In my personal opinion, there is little sense in reading the Bible without consulting many good commentaries, dictionaries, and other reference works. You will just be reading into it what the translators put there and what you learned in your Christian upbringing. And there will likely be many questions you do not ask yourself or issues that you dismiss.

    As I have written in various forums over the years, here is something that gave me an "aha moment" decades ago. I was reading Saint Mark by D. E. Nineham, a volume in the Pelican New Testament Commentaries, and got to Mark 2:23-24:

    One sabbath he was going through the grainfields; and as they made their way his disciples began to pluck ears of grain. And the Pharisees said to him, Look, why are you doing what is not lawful on the sabbath?

    When I read the first line of the commentary, it made me laugh out loud. It said,

    It is idle to ask what the Pharisees were doing in the middle of a cornfield on a sabbath day.

    The question and so many others like it had never occurred to me. It strikes me that looking at the Gospels as oral tradition explains why we run into passages like this, which seem more like dramatizations of differences in approaches to the law than specific incidents recollected by eyewitnesses. The commentary continued

    The process of oral tradition has formalized the stories, hence the considerable element of truth in the comment: "Scribes and Pharisees appear or disappear just as the compiler requires them. They are part of the stage-property and scenery, like 'the house' and 'the mountain.'"

    If you are Catholic, you will no doubt find it convincing that Jesus instituted the papacy when he said, "You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church." If you are from any other branch of Christianity, you will not find it convincing at all. You will also no doubt believe it is obvious that Jesus is the Messiah, and the Jews who expected a Messiah were right to expect one, but mistaken about the kind of Messiah that was foretold. You are likely to believe that when the Gospels says something was "fulfilled," what you are reading about is a prophecy from the Old Testament that has miraculously come true.

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  26. My Unitarian roots showing here. Textual analysis and theories about accretions, additions, influences, audiences--fine. But at some point, these discussions simply turn the Gospels into a dead lab specimen to be pulled apart. And then the existence of heaven or hell simply become abstract concepts.

    Perhaps we have the Gospels the Holy Spirit wants us to have. I din't want to be a moron, but I also approach Scripture fare differently than an Anglo Saxon manuscript.

    I take it in faith that there is a Kingdom, but that some of us aren't going to make it and will end up outside the pale.

    The notion that if you're just sorry enough, everything will be fine strikes me as a bit facile. Your can go get absolves in Confession ... but if you haven't approached the sacrament with true penitence, it's null and void.

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    1. "But at some point, these discussions simply turn the Gospels into a dead lab specimen to be pulled apart." Exactly! That doesn't mean I'm against scholarship, but you can lose the meaning of it in all the dissection. Also agree that we have the Gospels the Holy Spirit wants us to have.

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    2. Yeah, this is why I think that the gospels and prayer have to go together to work.

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    3. Mean culpa. I am heartily sorry for my many typos! Ugh!

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  27. I would ask Jean and Katherine if they have ever read from works like Raymond E. Brown's The Birth of the Messiah or The Death of the Messiah or the two Anchor Bible volumes of The Gospel According to John, and if so, did they feel such works turn the Gospels into "dead lab specimens"? I certainly don't think so.

    Jean, you say: "The notion that if you're just sorry enough, everything will be fine strikes me as a bit facile. Your can go get absolves in Confession ... but if you haven't approached the sacrament with true penitence, it's null and void."

    From everything I have been taught and have read, that is not the teaching of the Catholic Church. For example, the Catechism says:

    1451 Among the penitent's acts contrition occupies first place. Contrition is "sorrow of the soul and detestation for the sin committed, together with the resolution not to sin again."

    1452 When it arises from a love by which God is loved above all else, contrition is called "perfect" (contrition of charity). Such contrition remits venial sins; it also obtains forgiveness of mortal sins if it includes the firm resolution to have recourse to sacramental confession as soon as possible.

    1453 The contrition called "imperfect" (or "attrition") is also a gift of God, a prompting of the Holy Spirit. It is born of the consideration of sin's ugliness or the fear of eternal damnation and the other penalties threatening the sinner (contrition of fear). Such a stirring of conscience can initiate an interior process which, under the prompting of grace, will be brought to completion by sacramental absolution. By itself however, imperfect contrition cannot obtain the forgiveness of grave sins, but it disposes one to obtain forgiveness in the sacrament of Penance.

    You seem to be saying that without perfect contrition, one cannot receive absolution by means of the sacrament of penance. That is simply not what the Church teaches.

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    1. David, yes I've read some Raymond Brown. Not the whole books though. Couldn't do it. I respect him as a scholar, and he's welcome to his conclusions. I just don't agree most of the time. And historical-critical does nada to help me in my faith journey.

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    2. I had my fill of historical Jesus works as a Unitarian. The underlying impetus for these discussions Sunday after Sunday seemed designed to prove that Jesus stole all his ideas and that the resurrection was a politically motivated lie designed to keep people in line.

      There were a lot of people clearly damaged by religion who felt the need to dismantle it.

      It took me many years to put the Gospels back together and make sense of them in a spiritual way. I think of myself as an Anglo-Catholic mostly, embracing the egalitarianism of Catholics and the moderation of Anglicans. Speaking of ...

      HAPPY ST. BEDE'S DAY!

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  28. My approach to the Bible, especially the Gospels, is a literary approach combined with a sociological rather than an historical interpretation. Take Mark for example.

    In the beginning Jesus calls two pairs of 'brothers' from their families to follow him; next we see Jesus preaching in the synagogue then we see Jesus with all the 'brothers" in Peter's house healing his mother-in-law. Mark constantly writes in literary sandwiches, so we have to see how this sandwich fits together.

    To me this describes how Jesus gathered a new community around the old synagogue. "Brethren" was one of the self-descriptions used by this community. Jesus called his disciples to be a new family, a community of brothers; they did not completely leave their old families but put their houses and their boats, i.e. all their family life, at the service of Jesus.

    This all happened after Jesus baptism; Mark wrote for people who had been baptized. He was speaking directly to their lives which were forming more around than in the synagogue (where they like encountered the equivalent of the possessed man).

    Did these particular events happened historically. The other Gospels, e.g. John give a very different picture of how Jesus first met and called the disciples because John was making different points. Each Gospel puts together different snapshots of Jesus to make a movie that is more sociologically than journalistically true.

    When Jesus enters Jerusalem before his death, he debates his views with the major religious viewpoints of his day, scribes, Pharisees, etc. Did he have disagreements with all these groups? Yes. Did he express these disagreement right before he was arrested? Unlikely. But Mark gives us a good account of why Jesus was arrested and executed. First he (like John the Baptist) ran into trouble with the Roman collaborators (Herod and the High Priest) who were in charge with keeping down trouble makers (Jesus and the money makers in the temple). Jesus as a nobody from Nazareth had little support and much opposition from all the groups that might have shielded him from execution.

    So I find much sociological truth ( a sociological picture of Jesus consistent with what we know about the time) but little historical truth (if by historical truth we mean a factual narration of events on the ground as they happened). That is a modern discipline like journalism; as inconceivable as social science to Mark

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    1. Jack, I agree with your take, up to a point. I have some theories of my own, which I plan to write a post on later. But right now I will desist from derailing Irene's further.

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  29. But at the end of the day, what matters? I want to know if God exists, if he is like Jesus said he is - a loving father who will help me when I ask for help. I want to know if what I do here during my life matters. I want to know what will happen to me and my loved ones when we die. If the gospels can't answer those questions, then what good are they?

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  30. I think what we do here matters, and I'm not sure you need the Gospels to tell you that. Whether it's good enough to keep you out of hell ... I don't think we're meant to know.

    Discussion here seems to assume you're going to heaven unless you really screw up and don't care. I tend to assume I'm bound for hell unless I get my attitude adjusted and start acting on more of those good impulses.

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  31. I have spent my whole life believing I'm a pretty bad person who will never be good enough for God ...

    *** "I tell you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” When the disciples heard this they were greatly astonished and asked, “Who then can be saved?” Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” ***

    Nobody is good enough, we all will always be at a moral disadvantage with God. But Jesus seems to say that will be ok somehow.

    To believe that God made creatures with such limitations that almost all of them will fail at a task he set up for them, to believe he will punish those who fail, is to believe God is a monster. I don't know, maybe he is one. Or maybe even all the people who fail will still pass because God loves us.

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    1. I remember hearing a homily in which the priest compared salvation to the Special Olympics; you're going to get a medal if you showed up and ran the race, even if you crawled it, even if you couldn't make it the whole distance. The implication was that we're all challenged in a lot of ways, but God gives us credit for effort.

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    2. One more, then I'll shut up. I went to the (Lutheran) funeral of a coworker this morning. It occurs to me, not for the first time, that maybe we Catholics over-think stuff. Of course, being Lutheran, the pastor emphasized salvation by faith. "John" had been baptized, he was a believer. The pastor had been with him at the last; he had no doubt that he was with his Savior now, end of story. The pastor wasn't worried about presumption. I envied him that confidence.

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  32. To believe that God made creatures with such limitations that almost all of them will fail at a task he set up for them, to believe he will punish those who fail, is to believe God is a monster.

    Exactly.

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