Freedom is Not a Biblical Virtue

When we speak of freedom these days in the United States, one would think we are quoting a code of moral ethics that spans the pages of our world religions and is so robust in its conceptual underpinnings that to deny anyone their “human dignity” comes at the price of heresy.

The problem is of course that while every American President talks about freedom, and today, especially within the Republican party which uses it as a battle cry against left-leaning big government politicians, the concept has emerged as a vacuous hole, devoid of any unambiguous meaningful content.  We fight for the cause of freedom, but cannot define it. We call ourselves a nation where freedom reigns, but refuse to talk about its application except where it promotes our politics. The freedom we like is an American form. It is idealistic, but little do the ones who champion it the most know that it derives from the Enlightenment form of humanism than from a supposed divine origin.  

In the Judeo-Christian tradition, talk of freedom in the Bible does not exist. The freedom we speak of in our country is most often regarded as a civil and civic freedom, dare I say, a secular one that has been co-opted by politicians as spiritual rights. Freedom of religion is not the same as a theology of freedom in religion. And therefore, where both Democrats and Republicans remain true to this ideal of freedom they remain true to the ideals that launched in Europe hundreds of years ago in the renaissance of humanism that itself underpinned the founders’ framing of our own country.

The Bible discourages freedom. It does not opine about what a man can be in society (never mind a woman), but rather gives practical advice about minding and remembering one’s place. These references are scattered throughout the scriptures, whether it is the advice to slaves to obey their masters or mitzvot concerning the practical duties of the Levitical order, the subjugation of lepers and women. In fact, just about everywhere you look there is an underlying message of anti-individuality whether it is in rank and file order of custom, ritual, society, even lineages. Paul himself tells us that any man who thinks himself something must remember that he is nothing. Was this simply the call to avoid pride, while a thin thread of positive self-image writhed underneath the surface? Or was this the order of the day. The humble man, the one who denies himself the freedoms of self-expression, but who lives in obedience is the man who is truly free. This was the thinking of many a theologian in Germany in the last century. But it is so counter-intuitive to our American political theology that we would thumb our noses at such theological advice today.

Certainly, there are exceptions. We see David being promoted. Saul is promoted. But where those exceptions exist they are not given for the general advancement and welfare of the individuals making up the culture. Instead, they are often contextualized to fulfill God’s purpose, a purpose that time and again diminishes man to “drop in the bucket status.” Yes, David is in awe that God is mindful of him. But the question we must ask ourselves is why? Is it for our benefit or his glory? If it is for his glory, then we again run into an important theme in the scriptures.

“In a Beginning, God Created…” or Stretching Possible Interpretations of Genesis 1:1

During my first graduate school program, I did a whole paper on the interpretation of Genesis 1:1-2. Indeed, these verses have made for quite a bit of entertainment and controversy. One of my favorite possibilities alluded to in Genesis, comes with this very first phrase from the very first line: in the beginning.

Of course, this is not what the phrase says in Hebrew:

בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית

The root of the word is “head” reš with a bә added for effect. Scholars seem to think it means something like “at the head.” Of course the glaring problem is the absence of the definite article. But without the definite article, which would look like (ba)reishit instead of (bә)reishit, we are left with an awkward construction, namely: “in a head.”

Now perhaps it has been suggested that what is really being said is that creation began in the mind (head) of God. Other than making this a Matrix-type/Bishop Berkeley illusion of creation, the other possibility suggests that if we stay with the colloquial translation of “beginning,” we still are left with something like this: “in a beginning.” This is actually theologically consistent when one considers that the story of the flood and the rebirth was a beginning as well, and so Genesis 1:1 is not the most important beginning but is a beginning. This is also possible, if one considers that this most likely had nothing to do with creatio ex nihilo. And so God, working and fashioning pre-existing matter created “a beginning” by giving it form, the same way he creates a new beginning in the post-diluvian world. That is to say this isn’t a cosmological statement about the universe, but one about humanity’s beginning. The existence of the matter prior to its fashioning is of no interest to the author, but rather that God creates out of it a world for us. It is story thoroughly situated in our world!

There is still another possibility, and unless you are into ancient alien myths, the knights templar, and other Christian conspiracy theories, you’ll most likely not like this one, but I would caution that it is about as cogent a theory from a secular standpoint then it is to claim that Genesis 1:1 points to a scientific theory of Big Bang cosmology from the Niels Bohr particle.  That is to say, there is a modicum of faith that must be administered, in the same way one must tie any faith to his spiritual life.

Let’s propose that beyond the ancient texts, there is a God who is all-powerful and from himself begets reality. “In a beginning” may imply that there are also other beginnings, not important for us, but perhaps on other worlds. This was something I considered as I completed a very interesting independent study course on the Question of the Incarnation and Extra-terrestrial Life. After all, the vastness of the universe makes our own reality a bit absurd, even WITHIN the context of one’s faith. That God would reserve billions upon billions of galaxies for nothingness while we make up the only contingent of life would be an incredible tale. The crowd who considers that all of this is for us still seems not to have gotten past the Christocentricism and Anthropocentricism that despite science’s best attempts with Darwinism and Copernicanism remain hard at work in convincing us that we are prized creatures.

David’s question “What is man that thou art mindful of him?” need not be a statement of our solitary station in the universe or multi-verse for that matter. That God would mind anything other than himself seems an even greater statement than his minding us once you try to wrap your brain around what it means to be eternal and perfect!

The Importance Often Overlooked in the Feast of Tabernacles (Sukkoth) and the Apologetic Motif in the Gospel of John

I had planned on writing a little something on Sukkoth this year, but the week was busy and the festival has since passed. But I still figured this might be of interest for some.

Sukkoth, known as the Feast of Tabernacles, makes an important appearance in the Gospel of John. As we are coming out of this holy time, which was commemorated on October 2, 2012 this year, I was reflecting on the importance of the event and how it ties into its most famous New Testament reference in the Gospel of John.

On the one hand, in John, chapters 7 through 9, we find a Jesus who is being pursued by the Pharisees because, as the gospel writer tells us, they want him dead. Jesus tells his disciples to go ahead of him into Jerusalem to celebrate the holy week (in Jesus’ day it was a seven day celebration), but latter makes his way there as well.

While John is no stranger to harsh depictions of the Jews, it is somewhat surprising to find those same Jews mercilessly hunting down Jesus despite the sanctity of the event, especially since during the passion they at least seem to revere the prohibition against his dead body remaining on the cross over Shabbat. The interesting correlation here is that Sukkoth commemorates the Jews’ wanderings in the wilderness when they carried with them the Ark of the Covenant while they set up a makeshift tabernacle where the ark would come to rest. With the construction of Herod’s temple, and before that Solomon’s, the Shekinah glory of God was provided a place of residence. We cannot be positive how Jews celebrated Sukkoth in the first century and most likely practices varied. At least one criterion, which depending upon whether you lived in a walled city, would determine the length of the celebration. During the years of the temple, the multi-day celebration and festivals, including a pilgrimage to Hakhel, and at least every seventh year, the faithful gathered in the Temple courtyard on the first day of Chol Hamoed Sukkot to hear readings, according to Deuteronomy 31:10-13. Other testimonies to the festival appear in Nehemiah, Leviticus, the Mishnah, Tosefta, and both the Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmuds.

 It is interesting that the practice that comes down from the Rabbinic tradition is most commonly associated with building sukkahs, or makeshift dwellings, in imitation of the dwellings Israel’s ancestors must have inhabited as a nomadic people during the Egyptian exilic period.

Between chapters 7 and 9 in John, Jesus is chased from the Temple and finds his way to the outside where on the day after the seven-day long commemoration, he is said to have cured a blind man. There are some interesting apologetic motifs here, if indeed this was the author’s intention. In John 4, Jesus tells the Samaritan women that the true followers of God will not worship him in the temple or on the mountain (since the Samaritans believed Mount Gerizim to be the site of God’s coming to Moses and so ignored Jerusalem), but in “spirit and truth.” Therefore, Jesus’ being ousted from the temple during the time of a holy day that commemorated being “outside the temple” seems to be a symbolic but also a thematic point in the gospel of John, which of course makes sense when one considers that John, the latest of the canonical gospels was written after the Destruction of the Temple, and so was an attempt to write a narrative that downplayed the importance of the Temple in Israel’s destiny as a people.  Here then, perhaps John was eluding to the true meaning of the Feast of Tabernacles, which involved recovering a time in which those wandering in the wilderness were led by the presence of God. It is not without irony that at the culmination of this story, Jesus’ opens the eyes of a blind man, which the Pharisees who chase him out of the Temple believe he does to indict them of their own spiritual blindness. The Pharisees are indicted for working their form of Judaism from within the confines of the Temple, while John is attempting to show that the true power of God outside the temple. It is a classic Christian re-interpretation of the material.