Well, I feel slightly vindicated now. You see, as long as I’ve known him, my husband has given me a hard time about my shoe wearing habits (or lack thereof) and the condition of my feet. I HATE shoes. So I walk around barefoot as much as humanly possible. When I do put on shoes they are either cute heels to go with an outfit … Continue reading Shoes are evil!
At the start of Chapter 3 of The Book of Job, we find Job, having sat in silence with his 3 friends for 7 days, ready to talk. (Text of Chapter 3 here.) What comes out of his mouth is one of the more heartbreaking of the laments found in scriptures. Job does not curse God or Satan or even his misfortune. Rather, it is his very existence which is the subject of his lament.
One of the notable things about Chapter 3 is that it is where the Book of Job ceases to be a narrative story and becomes an extended series of poems. We are of course reading a translation which can make it hard for us to appreciate the poetry involved. In addition, Hebrew poetry uses something called parallelism where an idea is stated and then restated. This can happen between lines, within lines, between stanzas or withing stanzas. For example, verse 17: “There the wicked cease from troubling, there the weary are at rest” is an example of parallelism within a line. We can see it in the repetition of the sentence structure and the repetition of the first word of each phrase. There is also a pairing relationship between the wicked and the weary and ceasing from trouble and being at rest (ceasing to be troubled).
People with more patience and attention to detail than I have/can spend oodles of time teasing out these structures and themes. For the rest of us, however, the result is often that the text becomes repetative and we can get so caught up in the flow that we lose track of what is going on. Like I said, I am not a good detail person, so having to wade through a bunch of lines which repeat themselves with variations over and over again is not my cup of tea. I have found it helpful to look at these sections as what they are: poems. I try to break the poem into thematic sections which are usually composed of the same or similar number of lines. For this chapter, it looks like this: Continue reading “Book of Job Chapter 3: Ever Wanted to Die?”
I have written before about issues of race, especially as pertains to conservative’s perceptions about race before. My basic premise is that I do not think that conservatives have an accurate or often even rational view of race in America. Now, mind you, I’m not some goofy lefty here to incite white guilt and pander for more government programs. I am coming at this from a conservative perspective myself. For me this is both a moral issue and a practical imperative. I say a practical imperative because if we think that we can keep the problems which arise in impoverished, minority communities isolated, we’re not paying attention. Over and over, we can see that things from social breakdown to styles of music and dress spread outwards from our cities into the lives of middle class white suburbanites. So my point is, it matters. If you are a conservative who cares about the breakdown of the family or porn posing as music, then you need to care as much about issues of race as you do about what goes on in leafy suburban neighborhoods.
As I have argued before, one of the main barriers to dealing realistically with matters of race and the ongoing fall-out of the history of race relations in this country, is an almost complete denial of race as a real issue worth dealing with. What is crazy, and what I did not realize was that this is not at all a new phenomena. We like to think that race is not an issue anymore because we have made so much progress. Anyone claiming that race is an obstacle for them must be trying to “play the race card” and “make themselves the victim”. However, it turns out that even back when we would all agree that the state of affairs for African Americans was horrid, unequal and morally indefensible, white Americans thought pretty much exactly the same thing!
I came across some statistics today which I think we all need to remember the next time we are tempted to write off race as an actual issue today: Continue reading “Check Yourself”
Well, I figured I would pick up my slow-mo study of the Book of Job again tonight. (Here’s my take on Chapter 1.) Tonight we’ll look at Chapter 2. (Text of Chapter 2 here.)
Chapter 2 starts with a repeat of the scene from Chapter 1 with a gathering before God at which Satan appears. Once again, God points out Job’s integrity – this time in the face of enormous suffering.
One of the challenges of the Book of Job is God’s complicity in Job’s suffering. As I said in my comments on Chapter 1, God not only allows Satan to visit tragedy on Job, but He actually offers Job up as a target for this treatment. This doesn’t sit well at all with our understanding of God as a protective force for His people. This difficult state of affairs continues in Chapter 2. Here we find an oddly worded sentence which points both to the fact that God is manipulating Satan and that He is willing to take responsibility for causing Job’s suffering. Verse 3 says, “you incited me against him to ruin him without cause”. The Netbible translates “incite me” as “stirred me up”. This is a rather odd thing to say as it was God who actually provoked Satan’s desire to ruin (lit “swallow up”) Job. But, like a manager who allows an employee to think their new assignment was their own idea, God allows Satan to think that he rather than God is in control of this situation. The other odd thing about the sentence is the imprecise pronouns which obscure who is bringing about ruin. God does not say, “you incited me against him so that you could ruin him without cause.” Rather, by simply saying “to ruin him”, God leaves open the possibility that it is not Satan, but God who has brought Job to ruin. In which case, Satan is merely the tool by which God has done this work. Satan, of course misses this distinction (as do most of us, come to think of it).
Now, I do know that I am treading in some ugly territory here. Continue reading “Book of Job Chapter 2: Lowering the Boom”
Apparently Americans are far from alone in being an overwhelmingly Christian country where most people know shockingly little about what scriptures actually say. A recent survey of Italians found that although 88% of them claim to be Roman Catholic, most of them are unable to answer basic questions about the bible correctly. Questions included whether Paul was in the OT or NT, if Jesus penned … Continue reading Italians ask, “who was this Jesus fellow?”
You know how sometimes you go rooting through your closet and come across an item of clothing you forgot you had? Well, one Japanese man had something much more interesting than an ill-fitting suit hiding in the unused corners of his closet. After being called to check on a suspected burglar, police found a 58 year old homeless woman hiding in a shelf compartment in … Continue reading What’s in your closet?
After putting up 4 fairly long posts in less than 24 hours yesterday, I need to take some time to attend to the kiddies and my gardens. But I’d hate the leave my minions without their Upside Down World fix (that’s a joke, btw 🙂 ). So I thought I’d pass on my take on a couple of recent news events which have been bugging me.
1. Oil. Obviously oil costs too much. Obviously we need to find ways to cut back. Obviously what we are doing isn’t sustainable in the long term. However, the reality is that our best case scenario right now is to cut back and go through a transition period away from heavy dependence on oil. Which means that for the foreseeable future we will still need the stuff. So, it drives me nuts that we refuse to allow drilling and oil exploration either on or off shore in the USA. Now, I’m not saying we can become self-sufficient by drilling in the USA. However, the main protest against drilling seems to be environmental. Normally, I’m very sympathetic to environmental causes. However, do other oil producing countries not have environments? Are we to believe that Russia and Nigeria and Argentina are taking their oil from lifeless wastelands? Is the USA the only place on the planet where there is an environment worth preserving? Come on people! At least in the USA we can be assured that best practices will be used to protect the environment. Can we really have have any confidence that Gabon will do the same? It seems to me that from a global level, those who really want us to do the least amount of environmental damage possible would be trying to get oil production moved into the places like the USA. IMO, our current approach is silly and selfish.
2. Scott McClellan, as you have surely heard, has written a tell-all book which repeats the same things every other book about the Bush administration has said (ie he’s an incurious baboon). What I have found amusing about this is the press reaction to the book. Now, I know that the press, having dealt with McClellan as press secretary don’t care for the man. However, they keep saying, “why didn’t he say anything when he was in office?” Yeah, I can see how that would have worked: “Thank you for coming today, ladies and gentlemen of the press. The president has asked me to tell you that things are going well in Iraq and we’re making adjustments on the ground as needed. However, I would personally like to add that the president is delusional and he was picking lint from between his toes during the morning briefing, so I doubt he has any real idea what’s going on. I’ll open the floor for questions now.”
3. Kathleen Parker, the (I hate to say it) conservative columnist has apparently taken up the use of psychotropic drugs and is now acting as a propagandist for various white-power groups. If you were fortunate enough to miss it, Ms. Parker wrote a column about voters looking for a “full blooded American” to vote for. Continue reading “My quick take on the news”
Funny thing; today Deborah Howell at the Washington Post, Nicholas Kristof at the NYT and Rod Dreher over at Crunchy Cons all have stuff up about the lack of diversity among pundits. For good measure, Rod Dreher adds bloggers to the mix and links to an older Heather MacDonald column about blogging saying that women aren’t good bloggers and blacks and hispanics are missing because they are currently illiterate. There are all sorts of reasons thrown around for this lack of diversity, almost all of them pretty much completely off base. So I roll my eyes and move on until this afternoon when I came across an article by Laura McKenna called “Let’s Give the Mommy Bloggers Some Respect“. Ding! Ding! Ding! Let’s give the little lady a prize.
For those few of you not in the know, here’s Ms. McKenna’s explanation of the term “mommyblogger”:
the term have come to describe mothers (with the stray stay-at-home dad in the mix) who maintain blogs that chronicle and deal with raising their kids and their life after kids. These bloggers vary greatly in terms of tone and focus, but in general, they take a very intense and irreverent look at parenting. They discuss potty training in graphic terms. They talk about tossing back a beer with other parents. They show off projects that they are working on. They complain about the amount of homework their kids get and agonize over how many hours they are in front of the television or (ironically) the computer. They cheer on and encourage their fellow online parents. Some mommybloggers have particular niches, like parenting kids with special needs or moms with PhDs and form sub-communities revolving around those interests.
All well and fine you say, but what do women writing about dirty diapers have to do with the lack of women writers in newspapers? Well, as anyone who has bothered reading mommybloggers already knows, many of these moms are talking about their kids and families along with politics: Continue reading “What Women Write”
Ok Gentlemen, if you could leave us alone for a moment, I have something I’d like to share with the ladies real quick. Well, I guess if you want to pass this along to your wife or daughter, you can stay and eavesdrop. Now, ladies I don’t know about you, but it seems to me that as a culture we have not only fetishized flawless … Continue reading You are a beautiful woman . . .
I came across a post just now on the first chapter of the Book of Revelation that was so wonderful, I wanted to share it with y’all. It’s on a blog called Into The Subversion. The whole thing is worth reading, but here’s the part that hooked me: It was the year A.D. 96 in the province of Asia Minor (modern day Turkey), the region … Continue reading Book of Revelation
The Upside Down World 