God of Process, God of Systems

I had a professor in college who was very quotable. Actually, I had a few professors in college who were very quotable. But especially this one. I still have many of his proverbs and truisms etched on the walls of my memory. One in particular came to my mind as I was reading God's promises regarding the conquest of Canaan in Ex. 23. My professor would say, "God brought about the Bible the same way he brought about the nation of Israel: through a historical process." Isn't that how God works! Our God is a God of Process. See in Ex. 23:29, "I will not drive [the "Ites" (Canaanites, etc.)] out of the land in one year, or the land would become desolate and the wild animals would multiply against you." God was preparing the Israelites for a long and trying campaign against the Ites. He anticipated that the people would grow weary (which they always seem to do) and was explaining why he didn't step in with one definite and dramatic miraculous action, the way he had with the red sea. If he merely wiped out the people of Canaan, the animals would overrun the land since the top of the food chain was removed.

Doesn't that remind you of Environmental Science class?

Anyway, I think this is where William P. Young is onto something in his book, The Shack. When Mack, the protagonist, confronts God about why his daughter was allowed to die, God talks about the consequences of interfering in the natural order (which God created). In the case of Israel, if God had merely wiped out the people of Canaan to make way for Israel, God would have had to interfere continually to keep animal populations down, and to keep the farmland from growing over with weeds.

This is a message we need to hear today: God works in process. We might want things to happen quicker, but God knows the best way. God is a systems theorist, understanding that within the created universe every point of intervention will result in a push back from some other part of the system. We humans are always seeking radical change. Maybe we need to step back and conquer one step at a time.

Carry Me Back to Old Virginny

A couple of days ago in class we were discussing the implications of Israel coming out of slavery in Egypt and continuing to own slaves themselves. We focused on Ex. 1:13: "The Egyptians became ruthless in imposing tasks on the Israelites." We observed that in this case, the Israelites are distinguishing the distance between their slavery and Egyptian slavery: namely, that Israelites were not ruthless. The implication here is that their slavery was "better."

This reminded me about the controversy toward the end of the 1990s over the Virginia State Song.
The previous state song, "Carry Me Back to Old Virginny" linked above, was written by an African American, named James Bland, and describes Virginia nostalgically from the perspective of a slave who was sold to the deep south. While as a native Virginian I can sympathize and long nostalgically for "the state where I was born," I would argue that the point of where slavery is better is moot because slavery is slavery. It's bad in Alabama, it's bad in Virginia.

It's bad in Egypt, it's bad in Israel.

-Wyatt

My God and My Brother

In Genesis 32, Jacob is on his way home to meet his brother Esau, from whom he has been estranged for some time. Remember that the last time Jacob saw Esau, things were a bit tense. Jacob had received Isaac's blessing instead of his (barely) older, (perhaps) more manly brother. As most of us know, sibling reunions can be a bit rough. Especially when there's something like this in the backgound.

So anyway, Jacob decides to spend the night alone and gets an unexpected visitor (v. 24). Jacob and this mysterious man wrestle until morning, and does pretty well. He later finds out that this man was God. Jacob earns himslef a new name for all of his effort: Israel.

Well anyway, that much is familiar. But lets look into the text and see what Jacob was feeling. Shall we? Okay!

So Jacob is going home to the nemisis in all of his childhood dreams, his bully big brother. Jacob was his mamma's favorite; Esau loved to hunt and won his father's favor. Esau was the woodsman. Jacob is terrified that his brother is still holding a grudge, and that his life is on the line. Jacob is -in short- afraid to face his brother. Imagine the fear that gripped him as he got closer to home. And yet for all his fear he is able to outwrestle the divine. It was this striving with God which made Jacob able to face his fear, and face his brother.

When Jacob sees his brother, he tells him: "truly to see your face is like seeing the face of God" (Gen. 33:10). It's one of those things we read in a story and have a better idea of what Jacob means than what Esau realizes. "Truly to see your face is like seeing the face of God." In both situations, Jacob is thankful to be alive after his encounters. "Truly to see your face is like seeing the face of God." Truly, Esau, like you have no idea.


-Wyatt

Of Humans and Humus

Genesis 2:7 (NRSV) reads "the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground." Poking around, one finds that in Hebrew, the two words are "adam" for humankind (from whence we get "Adam", the first man and representative of all humanity) and "adamah" for dust. This leads to, or is representative of, a link between humanity and the soil. As the story continues, humanity's relationship with the soil intensifies as the soil becomes the object of mankind's labors and out of it come the vegetation that humans are to eat. This relationship, furthermore, like all relationships, is complicated by the Fall:

"cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground. For out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return." (Gen 3:17b-19)

Notice the word choice in verse 17: "toil." The word is not work. I think humankind was intended to work and have relationship with the soil since the beginning, but in the Fall that work was corrupted to become toil and meaningless labor. Thus humankind's relationship to the soil and the earth realizes its first estrangement. Obviously one who sees their work as toil will come to resent the land, the scene of their vain efforts.

But this separation continues, as we notice throughout the Genesis account, every time "civilization" makes a progressive step "forward," relationships experience a further strain. In the Genesis 11 account of the Tower of Babel, languages are established. This can be seen as a further step of progress toward world civilization, and yet it also creates factional tensions and brokenness in relationships.

My argument here is that over time, our relationship with the land has been repeatedly estranged almost to the point of severance by the "progress" of civilization. Writer and agrarian philosopher Wendell Berry makes this point throughout his poems, essays, and novels. Berry looks at the shift of American values away from sustenance off of the land and toward "more noble pursuits" in the city, and argues that it is fundamentally backward. He also points out that whenever small farmers and their families lose land as a result of policy or economic conditions, the voice of society sees it as a liberation from toil. Unfortunately, liberation is in the eye of the beholder, and the rural poor often see it as the loss of a fundamental piece of their identity.

My point is that we as a culture have come to disdain the land and those who work on it. Even many of the so-called "environmentalists" look down on small farmers and see them as backward and part of the problem. The Genesis account, with its reminder that humanity and the soil are fundamentally linked, points to the error in the thinking of the supposedly wise in society. We cannot live without the soil. And so we must protect it from erosion, contamination, overuse, and most importantly ourselves.