Clarence Jordan and The Cotton Patch Gospel

When I talk of treating Scripture less formally than we do, of allowing it to get down on the floor with us, or join us in the pub, I’m really talking about learning to “play” with it more. I hesitate to use the word “play”, however, because play is so often seen as a frivolous thing. In truth, play is a very serious matter. It’s how children develop the social, mental, emotional and physical skills they need for life. It’s how adults learn too; surgeons in cadaver class, and test pilots in flight simulators.

A great example of seriously playing with Scripture is The Cotton Patch Gospel by Clarence Jordan (pronounced Jerden for some reason).

Jordan was a Southern Baptist preacher and Bible scholar who, in the 1940s, began to “play” with the text. He translated the Sermon on the Mount, the Gospel of Mathew, and ultimately most of the New Testament, from the original Greek, into the contemporary idiom, culture, time and place of the American South. Jerusalem became Atlanta, Georgia; Bethlehem, Gainesville Georgia; the crucifixion, a lynching.

And, as he “played” with the Bible, the Bible “played” with him and his life. He and his wife, together with another family, developed a racially integrated community called Koinonia Farm, in the heart of Georgia. They survived the hostility of the surrounding community, the Ku Klux Klan, and the State Governor. They overcame terrorist attacks and a crippling boycott and, in the 1970s, became the birth place of Habitat for Humanity, a worldwide Christian ministry that partners with low income families to build simple, good quality, affordable homes.

There is a great musical play called The Cotton Patch Gospel inspired by the Clarence Jordan translation.

Clarence Jordan quotes:

“Faith is not belief in spite of evidence, but a life lived in scorn of the consequences.”

“We think of belief as a way of thinking, when the original intent was to describe a way of acting.”

“If there is any balm in Gilead; if there is any healing in God's wings; if there is any hope — shall we go off and leave people without hope? We have too many enemies to leave them. The redemptive love of God must somehow break through. If it costs us our lives, if we must be hung on the cross to redeem our brothers and sisters in the flesh, so let it be. It will be well worth it. To move away would be to deny the redemptive process of God."

I remember a 1993 CBC interview with Jimmy Carter, former President of the United States and former Governor of Georgia. He was in Winnipeg pounding nails with Habitat for Humanity.

This is the sort of thing that happens when people seriously and imaginatively “play” with the Bible, and let the Bible “play” with them.

When you come to Bible Study, don’t leave your mind or imagination at the door.

As I’ve been thinking about the early chapters of Genesis I’ve been reminded of a concern that’s often troubled me over the years; that we are too formal in our handling of Scripture. Formality has it’s place in any respectful relationship, of course, but familiarity is also important. Parents do well to expect their children to listen respectfully, and to respond with “please” and “thank you”. But they also need to get down of the floor and play. We stand in church for the reading of the Gospel, and this is all well and good, but sometimes the Scriptures might like to go fishing, or meet with us in the pub. In Deuteronomy 6:7 we read, “Impress these things on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.” In other words, be at home with them wherever you are.

A great example of what I mean is the 1936 movie adaptation of Marc Connelly’s Pulitzer Prize winning play The Green Pastures. It’s an African American cast doing the Bible from Genesis to Jesus. And it’s wonderful.

I haven’t seen it on TV for many years, but you can buy it, and you can watch it on YouTube for free. The YouTube presentation is a bit clumsy because it’s done in ten segments, but it’s well worth the time and effort. Rex Ingram plays God, and he’s a beautiful mix of sweet and fearsome. And, in the end, we get some radical, and quite startling insights and speculations about God, suffering and salvation. Give it a look-see.

The Green Pastures

Note #1: You’ll need a good sound system or ear buds to enjoy this, but if you take the time and effort you will be glad you did.

Note #2: Some may find this movie patronizing and demeaning in its portrayal of African American characters. I don’t, but what do I know? If you do, I apologize in advance. No offence intended. I just think that, for it’s time at least, it’s a great movie. And, as a Bible epic, it’s a whole lot better than the Ten Commandments.

Re-reading Genesis: Is Science really the issue?

The problem of reading the early chapters of Genesis as literal history is usually framed as a conflict between Scripture and Science. But, as some literalists suggest, it would then just be a matter of waiting for Science to catch up with Scripture. Scientific theory is shifting sand. Evolution is ever evolving. When scientists are constantly reinterpreting their own material, some wonder why it should be assumed that the problem lies with our interpretation of Scripture? Perhaps they will solve the conflict from their end.

I love Science, but we must admit it’s a pretty flexible medium. In the past decade cosmologists have come to agree that 80% of the matter and energy in the universe is “dark matter” and “dark energy”, which is to say, unknown and, heretofore, unknowable. That’s a pretty big hole in our knowledge. And, in recent years, it has become conventional “wisdom” among serious cosmologists that there may be an infinite number of universes that are completely undetectable from our particular universe. There are also theoretically necessary, yet undetected particles in our universe. And lately there have been questions raised about the “absolute” limit of the speed of light.

It seems, what Science knows it doesn’t know, is increasing faster than what it knows it does know. So, I can understand people being reluctant to change their beliefs because of this week’s, or even this century’s scientific “facts”. Perhaps we’re on the verge of discovering that this particular universe really is about 6,000 years old, or that dinosaur bones actually are the debris left by a worldwide flood.

But Science isn’t the main challenge to a literal reading of Genesis 1-11. It’s the internal inconsistencies that make you wonder. And it’s not just the old classic poser “Where did Cain get his wife?” Consider the following:

• How could there be one brother (Abel) specialized in herding, and another (Cain) in tilling the ground, when there was only a handful of people in the world? Surely this kind of agricultural and economic specialization requires some time to develop and a relatively large community. (Genesis 4:2)
• When Cain is driven out of society by God, he expresses the fear that “... whoever finds me will kill me." (Genesis 4:14) Who are these people out there that he so fears.
• Cain not only goes out and finds a wife, but he begins to build a city. (Genesis 4:17) How could Cain be building a city at such an early point in human development?
• Cain’s great, great, great grandson was Lamech. We are told he fathered Jabal (the father of those who live in tents and raise livestock), and Jubal (the father of all who play the harp and flute). What does it mean to be the father of those who live in tents, or play the harp? If this is history, it’s a very strange kind of history indeed.
• How could the animal populations recover if every species were reduced to a single mating pair, or even three and a half pair as in the case of a few? (Genesis 7:2-5) What did the lions and tigers eat?
• The story of Abraham begins in chapter twelve and, but for fact that he’s 75 years old, it reads much more like history than the previous chapters. Abraham leaves his country, Haran, and goes to Shechem in the land of Canaan. From there he goes to Bethel, on toward the Negev, and down into Egypt where he has dealings with a Pharaoh and his officials. We can identify the places and peoples: Perizzites, Chaldeans, Sodomites (the literal folk of Sodom), Amorites, Jebusite, etc. The problem is, if you calculate the generations given (Genesis 10-11) you find that all this happened about 350 years after the entire world had been destroyed in a flood, reduced to one human family and a mating pair of just about everything else?

The fact is, quite apart from Science, the text itself suggests that it should not be read as a literal history of the creation, destruction, and re-creation of the earth.

Re-reading Genesis

Several weeks ago I received an email from a friend in which he forwarded some Bible questions he’d received. They concerned the early chapters of Genesis. Things like:

• If in fact humans have been on the planet for only 6,000 years, how did we develop so many variations of the human race in such a short period of time?
• How do we explain carbon dating of human remains at over 25,000 years when the Bible tells us that creation was in fact very recent?
• How old is the planet, and do we take the Bible literally on all of this information?

There are those who do back-flips trying to reconcile modern science with a literal reading of Genesis, and disregarding the science bits that don't fit. I believe this is unfortunate because it’s based on a category error in our reading of these passages. Allow me to illustrate.

Amadeus was one of my favourite movies when I first saw it in the mid 80s. It’s, the story of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his principle contemporary rival, Antonio Salieri. According to the movie, the relatively mediocre Salieri is obsessed with his desire to be a greater composer than Mozart, so he sets about to destroy the great musical genius and ultimately does so. It’s a powerful story, but eventually I learned that musicologists and historians unanimously agree that Salieri was actually a superb composer, more successful than Mozart in his day, and, though a rival of Mozart, had nothing whatever to do with his untimely death.

Discovering the liberties that the movie took with the historical material all but destroyed my appreciation of this cinematic masterpiece. But recently I watched Amadeus again for the first time since I originally saw it almost three decades ago. And, aware that the script was taking outrageous liberties with the historical material, I saw it all with new eyes and was far more deeply moved by it than I had originally been.

I had misunderstood the movie, assuming it to be a kind of docudrama about the lives of Mozart and Salieri when, in reality, it’s barely about them at all. It simply uses their historical rivalry to show us how even the greatest lives can be destroyed when human pride and envy come into conflict with the absolute sovereignty of God. This is a far more relevant truth than a literal rendering of their historic rivalry could possibly have taught me.

When we first discover the Bible, particularly the first eleven chapters of Genesis, we naturally assume it’s simply what it seems to be, a sort of docudrama about the history of mankind and the creation of the world. Then we discover that scientists (cosmologists, historians and anthropologists) almost unanimously agree that things didn’t happen quite that way, and we become conflicted. Should we discard Science or the Bible? Unfortunately many throw out the Bible, a few throw out Science, and most just limp along reconciling passages as they can. But my suggestion is that we do what I ended up doing with Amadeus; see the Bible, particularly the first eleven chapters of Genesis, with new eyes.

When our children were little they believed they were the central and most important people in our world. And that’s exactly the impression we were trying to give them because it was the truth they most needed to know. As they grew they discovered they were just four of billions of children in the world, but there was not a conflict in that because we were not teaching them who they were in the world, but who they were in our world. And everyone needs to be the most important person in somebody’s world.

The first eleven chapters of Genesis are the beginning of God’s story about who we are in his world. We and the earth are at the centre. The sun and moon are lights God made for us. The first man (the prototype of all men) was made from the soil. He was a gardener and worked the soil. The first woman (the prototype of all women) was made from the man. She was the same stuff he was, the best thing God had done for him since he was created (2:23), and the mother of all children (3:20). They were parts of each other (partners) like parts of one body; companions in the work God gave them to do. Their lives found fulfilment and purpose in obedience to God. Because of all this they were beautiful and good, and the world was beautiful and good. There was lots of growing, developing and perfecting to do. And there were temptations, and things they were not to do. But this was very good.

It’s a great story if we can get beyond the idea that its purpose is to teach cosmology, history and anthropology. And it’s far more relevant to the lives of most people than the age of the universe or where earth is situated in the galaxy. Copernicus and Galileo show us how to be good scientists and astronomers, but Cane and Able show us how to be good children and siblings, or how not to be. Darwin can help us see that we are one of many species, but Noah can help us see that, when the chips are down, the future of all species may depend on us.

Cosmology and evolution teach us that the earth is not the centre of the universe, and human beings are not the most important beings on earth. But there is a crucial sense in which it is and we are. That's the truth we need to live by, and Genesis said it best, and said it first.

Well Wuduyuknow, A New, New Atheist

I am very interested in the phenomenon of “The New Atheism”. This is the strident push-back against God and religion (mostly Christianity) , championed by folks like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, and inspired by the 9/11 terrorist attacks. I believe these folks do believers a service in challenging our thinking and helping us to see ourselves as at least some others see us, but I do get rather tired of the gratuitous nastiness of it all.

Well, here is an atheist who acknowledges some of the strengths of religion, and suggests that unbelievers might have something to learn from believers. It’s a TED Talk by Alain de Botton entitled Atheism 2.0. He also has a book out called Religion for Atheists that looks interesting.

What’s with all this blood?

A theme that troubles many Christians and non Christians alike, but is central to the doctrine of the Atonement, is the blood of the covenant, or the blood of Jesus. The literal blood of the ancient sacrifice, smeared on door posts and poured out on altars, is difficult enough but, when taken up in Christian hymns and reflection, it can be pretty disconcerting. I’m sure hymns like “Nothing but the Blood” and “There is power in the Blood” have troubled countless uninitiated church visitors over the years. And, in this secular age, even the previously commonplace notion of communion wine being a symbol of Jesus’ blood, must seem strange to many.

We tend to think that images have obvious meanings, but it’s really all about associations. Every year, in mid February, we have a custom of exchanging cards decorated with stylized, disembodied human hearts. Having been schooled in this image from childhood, we “get it”. In our culture, because the heart is imagined to be the seat of love, it is a symbol of love. Unless it’s pointed out to us, the potential goriness of the symbol fails to register at all.

In a similar way, blood was a significant symbol in ancient biblical culture. It was not eaten and all contact with it was deeply significant and circumscribed by ritual, not because it was gory, but because it was sacred.

"'Any Israelite or any alien living among you who hunts any animal or bird that may be eaten must drain out the blood and cover it with earth, because the life of every creature is its blood . That is why I have said to the Israelites, "You must not eat the blood of any creature, because the life of every creature is its blood... (Leviticus 17:13-14)

When the blood of a creature was drained away its life departed, so blood was seen as the place where life resided. Blood was associated with death, of course, but that was the back side of the coin, as it were. When the blood of an animal was poured out, sprinkled on the altar, or used to anoint the priest, it was not the death of the animal but its life that was being manipulated in this symbolic way.

At some point blood sacrifice may have been associated with the notion of appeasing an angry God, but the prophets and psalmists challenge this view.

Psalm 50:12-15

If I were hungry I would not tell you,

for the world is mine, and all that is in it.

Do I eat the flesh of bulls

or drink the blood of goats?

Sacrifice thank offerings to God,

fulfil your vows to the Most High,

and call upon me in the day of trouble;

I will deliver you, and you will honour me."

Isaiah 1:11-13

"The multitude of your sacrifices —

what are they to me?" says the LORD....

I have no pleasure

in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats.

When you come to appear before me,

who has asked this of you,

this trampling of my courts?

Stop bringing meaningless offerings!

Your incense is detestable to me.

In the end, the sacrificial system is about what we require, not God. The life of the lamb in the Old Testament (its blood), and the life of Jesus in the New (his blood), are not poured out for God but for us. It is we who are dying and in need life, and that life is provided by God.

A crucifixion is about as gruesome a scene as anyone could imagine, so we can hardly fault those who are shocked by it. Even in the first century Paul writes that the cross is “a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles” (1 Corinthians 1:23) And if all this suffering and death is something required by God before he will forgive, it’s not surprising that people turn away in disgust. But in the Gospels it’s not God who requires it. It is we who, in the persons of religious and political leaders and an angry mob, require it. It’s sin, rebellion, anger and fear, that require it. In short, it is death that requires life, and God, through the lamb of the Old Testament and Jesus in the New, is the only source of life.

Many years ago my brother, Tim, gave a bone marrow transplant to my brother Rick, who had leukemia. This was not because the doctors required that if one was to live another must die a little. It was because my brother, Rick, who was dying, required healthy bone marrow, and Tim was the only source he had. Tim gave up bone marrow joyfully for his brother and, seen in this way, it was a beautiful thing.

The metaphor at the heart of the Atonement is based on the idea of substitution, but it is not Jesus’ death being substituted for our death, but Jesus’ life being substituted for our death. In Paul’s words, I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me . The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20)

To be “washed in the blood of the lamb” is to be immersed in his life. To “drink the blood of Jesus” is to live by his life. In the words of Jesus, "I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5-6)