Tag: christianity

bible, religion

Do you read scripture like a Pharisee or like Jesus?

Way back in college, I took a class on the history of religion in America. One day during a discussion about some Christian evangelist, one of the other students offered this criticism of the man’s work: “it’s like he’s actually trying to be like Jesus.” I sat there a bit bug-eyed. Can you imagine – a Christian who was actually trying to be like Jesus? Whatever could that evangelist have been thinking? (Clearly, not everyone I who attended my college was the best or the brightest.) But the reality is that a lot of people – including a good number of Christians – are as unclear on the concept as this young man back in my college days was. How else to explain the fact that many people read the bible the exact same way that the Pharisees did rather than trying to read it like Jesus did? (For anyone who is really unclear on the concept – the Pharisees were Jesus’ main opponents in the gospel stories. We’re supposed to try to be like Jesus, not like the Pharisees. Just so we’re all on the same page here.)

At the time of Jesus, the Pharisees were experts on the bible. In fact, they had managed to find all the laws in the bible – 613 of them. They had further figured out that there were 365 negative laws – thou shall nots. And 248 positive laws – thou shalls. So they knew all about important rules like thou shalt wash your hands before eating, thou shalt not perform miracle healings on the Sabbath and how long to keep the fringe on their garments. Somehow they had managed to miss those very important rules about card playing, drinking alcohol and dancing. No one’s perfect, I guess. But they had mastered the very important biblical teaching to avoid the appearance of evil. Like they wouldn’t eat with unclean people because if they did, the other biblical rule followers might call them evil. And evil is bad, donchano? (I once attended a church which demanded that members not drink alcohol on the grounds that other church members might be scandalized if they saw you coming out of a liquor store.)

So long before the teaching of sola scripture, the Pharisees were experts in biblical living. If you needed to know the biblical way to weave your cloth was, they could tell you. (Using only one type of fiber is biblical. The Pharisees would not have stood for our unbiblical polyester/cotton blends!) The Pharisees were also very good about setting a good example for other people – praying in public or announcing their contributions to the synagogue loudly. Because it was important to “witness” to those around them so that people would be inspired to honor God the right way, of course. Continue reading “Do you read scripture like a Pharisee or like Jesus?”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter46 Comments
prayer, religion

“Masculine Christianity” and Men

My husband has often remarked to me that the heart of the problems we have in understanding God is one of translation. No matter how we try, the words we use to express spiritual truths can’t fully capture the reality they describe. Especially for “people of the book” such as we are, words are the medium through which we explain God to ourselves and each other. But as powerful as words are, it is exceedingly difficult to translate the spiritual into the spoken (or read) without flattening what is being described – sometimes to the point of obliteration. It’s a bit like explaining sex to a 9 year old – you can explain how it works, but they will walk away with no concept of why anyone would want to do such a thing. Descriptions don’t always illuminate reality.

When it comes to our Christian/Hebrew attempt at translation, scripture relies heavily on that good writing maxim: “show, don’t tell”. So we have a book filled with stories, poetry, a couple of books of rules, genealogies and some letters of exhortation. Its more like giving a 9 year old a Danielle Steel novel in lieu of explaining the mechanisms of sexual intercourse. They may come away a bit fuzzy on the details, but with a better grasp of what it is they have to look forward to.  Better, but still not complete.

One of the oddities of Hebrew and Christian texts is the extent to which they avoid describing the spiritual at all. There is no attempt to really discuss the nature or substance of God. Very little is said of where we come from or where we are going to outside of this physical realm. Questions such as the relationship between the physical world and spiritual world are vague at best. While our stories and poetry help to flesh out the relationship between God and mankind, the reality of the spiritual is something we must seek to experience for ourselves. Christianity has always hinged on experience rather than belief. Few people come to a life-altering Christian faith because they got to know the bible and theology and decided to follow it. At some point, most people must have a spiritual experience of love or connection to bring the whole thing to life. Even the most lurid erotica is a poor substitute for the real thing, after all.

So, what does all of this have to do with “Masculine Christianity” and men? Continue reading ““Masculine Christianity” and Men”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter6 Comments
culture, current events, enjoy life, life, politics, relationships, religion

“What is truth?”

So, are you sick of the arguments yet? You know the arguments – Romney vs Obama. “Job Creators” vs Inequality. Creationism vs Evolution. Pro-Choice vs Pro-Life. Old Fashioned vs New Fangled. Text Speak vs Grammar Nazi’s. Toilet Seat Up vs Toilet Seat Down. Whatever it is, if we can figure out two ways of looking at an issue to divide ourselves into, we do it. And then we argue and argue and argue. We refine our arguments and wonder what the hell is wrong with the people who don’t agree with us. But aren’t you sick of it?

I remember years ago an older, wiser friend told me, “arguments don’t work. You never change someone’s mind through arguments.” At the time I was a bit flabbergasted. If we didn’t argue, how would the other person know they were wrong? And if we can’t get everyone pretty much on board, how do we keep the world from going to hell in a hand basket? I mean, what was the alternative?

Of course, today we have reams of research and endless gigabytes of internet conversations to prove that what my friend told me was true: arguments don’t work. They rarely change anyone’s mind. And I think all but the most die-hard believers are starting to get sick of them.

So what is the alternative to argument? Do we just agree to disagree – you have your opinions and I’ll have mine? And what about truth? Aren’t some things just true and shouldn’t we stand up for and advocate for them? If we can’t argue and persuade our way into some consensus about what’s true how can we function together to get anything done? The live and let live concept sounds fine until we need policies to get the economy going or fix serious social problems. Then what? Continue reading ““What is truth?””

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter7 Comments
bible, culture, life, prayer, religion

Tebowing ™ – Harmless, Faithful or Whore of Babylon Stuff?

So, just this morning, I was explaining to my husband that I feel pretty strongly that my blog is not the place for me to engage in criticism or debate. Rarely, if ever, will you hear me weighing in directly on the latest debate or controversy. And I engage in direct criticism of others next to never. I’d rather make a positive case for what I think and allow it to stand or fall on its own rather than use other view points as a foil. Yup. That’s what I was saying just this morning. Now watch as I throw all that out the window for a moment in order to discuss a news story that embodies a serious error in the way many of us practice our Christian faith.

So, in case the title of this post didn’t clue you in, the news story I’m referring to is that American football player Tim Tebow has filed a trademark on the word “Tebowing”. ‘ (For those of you who don’t keep up with such things, Mr. Tebow is an outspoken Evangelical Christian football player. He is known for dropping to one knee on the field after successful plays/touchdowns for a quick “prayer”. The gesture has been called “Tebowing”. He’s seeking a trademark on the word, not the gesture.)

Now, I should stop right here and make a few things clear. First is that I have no idea what the quality of Mr. Tebow’s faith life is. I cannot possibly say whether he has a genuine faith, an actual relationship with God or what his heart is. By all accounts he is a good man. Secondly, I am picking on Mr. Tebow here, but his actions don’t exist in a vaccumn. Rather, they are an entirely consistent playing out of the values, beliefs and practices of a large segment of the American church. His actions just provide an unusually high profile case study. So, that being said, allow me to explain my issue here. Continue reading “Tebowing ™ – Harmless, Faithful or Whore of Babylon Stuff?”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter4 Comments
bible, divorce, life, religion

Does God Get Angry?


If you haven’t contemplated murder, you ain’t been in love. ~ Chris Rock

“I will turn my beloved people over to the power of their enemies. The people I call my own have turned on me like a lion in the forest. They have roared defiantly at me. So I will treat them as though I hate them. The people I call my own attack me like birds of prey or like hyenas.” ~ God (Jeremiah 12:7-9)

Over the weekend I happened to come across an email I had sent my husband a couple of months after he left me and the kids. (Background here and here.) It was just a short note rejecting his request that we strive to be on friendly terms. Not that I wanted to be in conflict, but I wasn’t going to pretend to be OK with someone who had treated me the way that he had. In fact, I think it would have been really unhealthy for me to agree to be friend-like under the circumstances. I was very, very angry and I had a right to my anger. I had been betrayed, rejected and turned on by someone who I had done my best to love unconditionally through thick and thin. Emotionally, I was not in any condition to have anything more than a cold, barely cordial relationship with him. (As always, I am speaking of my own perspective here. My husband could give you an encyclopedic list of all the ways he feels I wronged him as well.)

During those days in between praying fervently for God to hit my husband with a bus, I was often grateful for the words of 1 Corinthians 13:5: “Love is . . . not easily angered.” It meant that there was room in love for anger. The two aren’t mutually exclusive. I hadn’t turned into a terrible, hateful, unloving person because of my anger. I didn’t have to be afraid of it or deny it or hurry up and get rid of it. In fact, being so angry was a legitimate part of being a loving person. I knew I would be able to work through it in time. Continue reading “Does God Get Angry?”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter4 Comments
culture, life, race matters

The American Race and Race

Gather ’round, folks. Auntie Becky is going to tell you a story. A metaphor really, about race in America. And about the American Dream.

Imagine for a moment, a long relay race where for generations it has been considered acceptable and in some cases even required to break the limbs of a one group of people trying to run the race. The people thought this was OK. After all, it wasn’t long ago that this group of people had been used as horses to pull everyone else’s carts around the track. At least they were free of that back-breaking work. Now, they just had to contend with some needed cobbling. To keep the race running smoothly. Make sure the people who have been running the race so diligently for generations don’t lose any hard-earned ground. Anyone who resists the “in group’s” right to break bones is killed, so that keeps everything on an even keel. Not a bad system, really.

Of course, people with broken bones do not do very well in the race. Pretty quickly there are people lying all over the place with broken bones and deformities from past breaks which were never set properly. Many people in that group will simply stop trying to participate in the race. Maybe even set up little shanty towns around the track to do the best that they can outside of the race. The more ambitious set up little lemonade stands along the track and play music for the people running by to keep themselves out of the darkest, scariest parts of the shanty towns. A few are fast enough to elude those who would break their bones, but these would be few and far between. The track is littered with those who tried to be one of the fastest few but got caught. Their broken bones and mutilated corpses remind the out group not to try to hard or rebel against the natural order of things.

Now, let’s say that after a very long time, once most of the people who are able to run the race are pretty well ahead, that people start to come to their senses and decide that it is wrong to break the limbs of the out group. So they ban limb breaking. From that point forward, a person’s success or failure in the race will depend on their efforts and abilities. Continue reading “The American Race and Race”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter1 Comment
life, religion

The Wisdom of Being Wrong

I have this idea that a big part of what is wrong with us as human beings is we don’t know how to be wrong. And it’s not only because we’re pig-headed fools. It seems to be something that’s hardwired into our brain. We know from research that people will go to great lengths to avoid facing facts which conflict with what they already believe. There are those who argue that this is what’s happening in our politics today. Or it could be that since we’re a nation of smart-asses, people who hate Obama are telling pollsters that they think he was born in Kenya just to piss everyone off. The world may never know. But the fact remains that there have been a lot of very good studies which have found that once we believe something to be true, it is bizarrely difficult to convince us that we are wrong.

Scientists think this is a perfectly reasonable survival mechanism which is shared by many animals as well. Experience is the best teacher after all. So once you experience something yourself or vicariously through someone with more experience, you learn lessons which you presume to be true. You stick to those lessons – maybe develop a way of doing things around them. And it usually works. Until your environment changes and you end up like a polar bear looking for an ice floe. Then you need to adjust.

Fortunately, if there’s anything that binds humans and bacteria together, it’s that we’re both fantastically adaptable. Frankly I think it’s a bit odd that we are actually surprised to find bacteria in inhospitable places. The bacteria are probably even more shocked that we showed up. By all rights, our physical capabilities should have kept us contained to temperate zones with enough moisture to allow for a year-round supply of food. You know, like the Garden of Eden was supposed to have been.

But that’s not us. We humans change things. We change the landscape and our locations and our clothes and bodies and even the songs we sing with glee. But changing our minds? That is one change we really don’t seem to like to do. A lot of us adhere to something my mom once told me: “I’d rather be wrong than change my mind.” (I’m pretty sure she was saying it in a “If Loving You Is Wrong, I Don’t Wanna Be Right” sort of way and not as an expression of unwillingness to admit error. But it was still funny.) Fortunately, we all know from experience that biology or no, it doesn’t have to be this way. Not only do humans change, we grow up. In fact, we can grow up the way other organisms just grow – for our whole lives. If we want to. But it all depends on learning how to be wrong. Continue reading “The Wisdom of Being Wrong”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter4 Comments
bible, life, politics, religion, thoughts

Most Christian’s Opinions Aren’t Worth Two Dead Flies – But That Can Change

I like to say that I grew up in the “Easy Listening” phase of American Roman Catholicism. We sang “On Eagle’s Wings” with a guitar accompanist and hung felt banners around the sanctuary. My cousins attended a church that had alter girls and interpretive dancers. An opera singer who attended our church was sometimes allowed to lead songs and children regularly got smacked in the back of the head for giggling when she stretched to hit really high, screechy notes. Which was better than when her nightclub singer daughter sang and made us all feel like we should go home and shower after watching her squirm around singing about God and love in breathy tones.

Some of my sisters feel strongly that they were damaged by being forced to attend mass each week at this retro-grade institution. But honestly, my memory is of sermons that could basically be summed up as, “kids, listen to your parents and don’t fight with your siblings. And every one needs to stop trying to run each other over in the parking lot after mass.” For me it was about as benign an introduction to Christianity as you could hope for.

Which isn’t to say that it was entirely content free. Like all good Catholic kiddies, I attended catechism classes every Wednesday night for an hour all through grade school. I have an amazing capacity to completely tune out anything that doesn’t catch my interest, so I don’t have any idea what we did each week. But what I do recall is having to memorize things. We memorized prayers like the Our Father, the Nicene Creed and the prayer for confession. We memorized the 10 commandments, the beatitudes and the various works of mercy. It is entirely possible that we actually talked about what these things we were memorizing meant, but again, I wasn’t really paying attention.

The end result was that I couldn’t have told you why Jesus lived and died, but I did know that he told us to love each other and serve those in need. And as much as I love me some good theology, I’d say I got a better religious education than other kids who could explain penal substitution and use “Roman’s Road” to explain (their version of) the gospel. Continue reading “Most Christian’s Opinions Aren’t Worth Two Dead Flies – But That Can Change”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter4 Comments
bible, religion

How Did Jesus Feed 5000 People? Does It Matter?

Christians do not believe that the spiritual is more real and more important than the physical. It’s true. Well, I’m sure that there are some who do, but not many. Allow me to demonstrate.

Some years ago, a theologian (whose name I can not recall or find at this moment) posited that the feeding of the 5000 happened differently than we had assumed. He said that rather than a physical miracle, Jesus had performed a spiritual miracle. It begins with the apostles asking around for food to feed everyone with. If you recall the story, they found only 10 fishes and 5 loaves of bread. In a crowd of 5000 men plus an unknown number of women and children. Jesus was teaching on a hill outside of town – it’s not like the crowd was made of people who just happened to be passing by – although there would be some of those. But mostly people had deliberately come out to hear Jesus teach. The problem wasn’t that every single mother in town just spaced out and forgot to pack lunches for everyone. There was food in that crowd. People just didn’t want to share it. And it wasn’t just selfishness – it was self-protection as well. What it the fellow next to you didn’t have any food? He might try to take yours by force if he figures out you have it.

So consider that. Jesus had just spent the day teaching people his message of love. Of care for enemy and neighbor alike. And out of a crowd of many thousand no one would offer what they had to Jesus to feed the crowd. Continue reading “How Did Jesus Feed 5000 People? Does It Matter?”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter11 Comments
life, religion

Faith or Works? Both? Neither!

Remember when Christians used to argue over how many angels could dance on the head of a needle? Perhaps someone should have stopped to ask why angels would even want to dance on the head of a needle. I mean, if they weren’t dancing there because they had some desire to, getting them there to begin with would require some coercion. And really, should we be coercing angels into doing dumb things for our own entertainment? It seems like they were having all the wrong conversations back then.

I’m going to go ahead and posit that the old faith vs works debate is going to go down in the books as an equally misguided debate about what we are judged on. The reality about faith and works is that they exist in a symbiotic relationship with each other. True faith yields good works which increases faith so on and so forth. But if we’re actually going to be judged on the basis of either faith or works, we’re pretty screwed anyways.

Take works. How many “Feed the Children” commercials showing a small child climbing a garbage heap have you sat through without doing something? How many times has a friend or family member had financial problems that you did nothing to help with? How many homeless people have you passed by without giving them so much as a sandwich? If you are a faithful Christian, you have likely helped those in need on occasion – as often as you are able maybe. (If you’ve never done any of these things – or things like them – you may want to question your concept of yourself as a faithful Christian. I’m just saying.) But I know that I’ve sat through pleas for money to help get clean water to kids drinking sewage while licking cheezy-poof dust off my fingers. I’m gonna fail if we’re judged on works, I’m afraid. Continue reading “Faith or Works? Both? Neither!”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter2 Comments