Category: scripture

imagining otherwise

wonderfulexchange10 Comments

So, I seem to have gotten away with re-writing the 10 commandments.  The faithful at Tighnabruaich were a bit alarmed, but Dunoon didn’t bat an eye.

The question on the floor was how can we help the text be heard by a generation that can’t bear with Thou Shalt Not long enough to find any good in law.

The tentative answer was that we play with it, and invert speech.  So, I ended up with this:

10 Offerings (an inversion of Exodus 20.1-17)

Then we said to God:

  1. You are our God, who brought us into freedom:
    we shall have no other gods before you.
  2. We shall not make idols, or try to contain you
    in the things of this world;
    we shall not worship the work of our own hands,
    for if we turn from you we will be miserable.
    We know that we and our children
    will be miserable without you.
  3. We shall not abuse your name,
    or use it to gain our own ends.
  4. We shall remember the Sabbath, the day of rest.
    We shall remember that our worth comes from you,
    and not the things we do.
    We shall honour that worth in others,
    and let strangers and all your creatures
    be blessed by your Sabbath.
  5. We shall give honour to those who nurture us,
    to all who give us life;
    so that we learn to live long and live well.
  6. We shall respect life, and help it flourish.
  7. We shall honour the commitments of love,
    and walk carefully with one another.
  8. We shall share our wealth freely,
    so that no one is left desperate.
  9. We shall speak what is true, and what is kind and good.
  10. We shall rejoice in our neighbours’ wealth and good fortune. We shall rejoice when they love and are loved.

I realised after the fact that I began with ‘nots’, but by the end was looking for affirmations only.  I’ve left the descrepancy in hope that maybe you will have a go at editing.

cry out

wonderfulexchange9 Comments

With the baking day cancelled, today’s schedule eased enough for me to engage with the suggestion I’d posted on Hermione’s Heaven this week — to read the (whole of?) the book of Psalms.

I chose to pick up The Message, which has sat ignored on my shelf since I bought it with a Wesley Owen token someone had foolishly given me.   I don’t expect to like The Message, but lots of people are reading it, so…

I began at the beginning — never the easiest place to start with the Psalms.   I read:

How well God must like you —
you don’t hang out at Sin Saloon,
you don’t slink along Dead-End Road,
you don’t go to Smart-Mouth college.  (Ps 1.1, The Message)

Now, I knew it was a paraphrase,  but how did we get there from:

How blessed is anyone who rejects the advice of the wicked
and does not take a stand in the path that sinners tread,
nor a seat in company with cynics…   (Ps 1.1, NJB)

Still, I perservered.

Ps 2.1 —
Why the big noise, nations?
Why the mean plots, peoples?  (oh how I wish that were ‘people’)

Ps 4.2-3 —
You rabble — how long do I put up with you scorn
…
Look at this: look
Who got picked by God!
He listens the split second I call to him.

Ps 5.1, 4-7 —
Listen, God! Please, pay attention!
…
You don’t socialize with Wicked,
or invite Evil over as your houseguest.
Hot-Air-Boaster collapses in front of you;
you shake your head over Mischief-Maker.
God destroys Lie-Speaker;
Blood-Thirsty and Truth-Bender disgust you.
And here I am, your invited guest–
it’s incredible

then

Ps 6.1-2 —
Please, God, no more yelling,
no more trips to the woodshed.
Treat me nice for a change;
I’m so starved for affection.
Can’t you see I’m black and blue,
beat up badly in bones and soul?
God how long will it take you to let up?

I almost had to stop reading there.  Have we really just implied that God is an abusive parent?

So by psalm seven, when I read

Ps 7.1 —
God! God! I am running to you for dear life;
the chase is wild.
If they catch me, I’m finished

…  I knew I was rooting for the other guy.

I am all for modern language in scripture and in worship.  I am all for finding  ways to tell the bible story that will speak more readily to those for whom it is unfamiliar.

But this just made me want to run screaming ‘no, no, that is not the God I believe in.’

I know the psalms can be hard in any version.  There are psalms of great beauty, but there are also psalms that  are petty and vindictive, projecting all our hopes for vengeance onto God.   Most translations of the psalms do not hide their foreignness.   The images and structures are ancient, and we are free  to hope we have moved on — as a culture and as people of faith — from some of what we find there.

Peterson’s paraphrase  does away with all that.  There is no distance, and I (wrongly?) get the sense that I’m supposed to be right there with the narrator, saying ‘na-na-na-na-na’ every time the wicked get punished or I experience the blessing of God.   I don’t want to be there; I cannot overcome the feeling of disgust.

So, I’m going to start over again, with something safe like the New Jerusalem Bible (always good for poetry). Then perhaps later, I will  summon the courage to read another bit of The Message (Gospels?  Epistles?) in the hope that my first impressions will be proven wrong.