Moses

The story of Moses and Israel’s journey together can be found in the Bible’s books of Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy and Numbers.  Many people are familiar with Israel’s Exodus from Egypt.  Not as many are familiar with the fact that, according to the story, the people who experienced all those amazing acts of God in Egypt were not allowed into the Promised Land.  this included regular, everyday Jewish folk, Levites in charge of keeping the Tabernacle operations, and even Moses himself.

We live in a time when the popular theology being communicated by some of the US’ most popular TV preachers doesn’t have much room for that part of the story.  A teaching heard recently by one such preacher promised his audience that if they did the right thing, God would get them a job promotion that would shame their critics.  He used the story of Esther to support the promise.  Of course, people want to believe this.  We want it to be that simple.  But Pastor Jolly Ovaltine, in various interviews, has made it clear that he doesn’t feel that God has called him to deal with those discrepancies – he is called only to talk about the good, fluffy stuff.  Good for him.  Really good for him, since it sells millions of books and packs stadiums with folks who want it to be just that simple.

Good news for Jolly: there’s no money-back-guarantee for his books, and if things don’t work out the way he promised, it is surely due to someone’s lack of faith somewhere.  Bad theology is never to blame for false hope.

Moses was, according to the author of Numbers, the most humble man on the planet.  And then he blew his top (Numbers 20:1-13).  he was probably over 100 years old.  He had listened to complaints from Israelites for decades.  They lamented once again, and Moses let them have a piece of his mind.  In the process, however, he also disobeyed God, and attempted to play God during his tirade.  This was enough to disqualify him from receiving the dream.  Of course, this kind of behavior doesn’t just happen – there is backstory for sure, just as there is for us when we do similarly stupid things we regret.  And, like Moses, we also realize after awhile that while God may forgive us for our poor attitude and/or behavior, the consequences still remain.  Broken relationships are the usual toll.  Some heal up pretty quickly, others never do.  This is reality.  Jolly Ovaltine’s theology doesn’t fit so well.  It’s not always going to be a happy ending in this life.  This, again, forces us to consider what we believe, what we pray for, why we continue to have faith.  These are questions the Israelites struggled with throughout their history.

What do you think?  Is God worth believing in?  Is faith worth the effort if we don’t get the promotion, or the clean bill of health, or healthy children, or…  What does God do in the midst of our struggle, pain, failure, etc.?


I believe God still enters into the human experience.  I believe God still acts.  I believe God still breaks in.  I believe with Jesus’ brother James that prayer is powerful and effective.  And I believe that failed dreams, dashed hopes, disappointment and struggle are all parts of a normal life that do not rob God of any of God’s “Godness”.  So I look for God to meet me in the midst of struggle rather than seeing the struggle as a sign of the absence of God.  I look to God for strength, healing, direction for myself and everybody else.  This makes me a better person.  It shifts my expectations.  It gives me peace when I shouldn’t be feeling peace.  It keeps God close instead of at arm’s length.

Joseph

As so often in myth and legend, the hero can achieve enlightenment only by taking an arduous path through the shadow of death. – Karen Armstrong, In the Beginning

Quick review…  Abraham sensed God calling him to leave his homeland to begin a new nation and, along with it, a new way of thinking and relating to God.  For the most part, Abraham gave a solid “Okay” to God’s invitations to step out in new directions.  One of those moments involved nearly sacrificing his only son, Isaac, which traumatized the kid for the rest of his life.  Isaac became the father of Esau and Jacob, but he made no efforts to hide the fact that he loved his hirsute son more than the future namesake of the nation of Israel.  Blind to the dynamics occurring before him, he mistakenly gave his blessing (read: estate) to his slightly younger son, Jacob,who deceived his dad to acquire a future much brighter than his brother deserved.  Jacob, harboring massive sibling rivalry issues, perpetuated his problems into his own family, creating a dysfunction that would be too much for even Dr. Phil.  He had two wives and twelve sons between them (and their maidservants), but he loved wife Rachel more than her sister Leah, and he loved Rachel’s boys more than all the rest.  The most beloved son was number 11 in the line up.  His name was Joseph.  You can read his story in Genesis’ chapters 37-50.  Grab a cup of coffee and take an hour to enjoy the story which led to a major Broadway hit, Joseph and the Amazing TechniColor Dreamcoat.

Joseph, from day one, was given the impression from his father that he was more special than his brothers.  He even had a fancy, expensive robe to prove it.  His ego was huge, which was evident in his approach to his brother on various occasions.  His holier-than-thou attitude caught up with him, though, and through his brothers’ malicious acts winded up a slave in Egypt.  He kept focused, however, and, through a crazy series of events, wound up being VP of Egypt!  Sort of.  Anyhoo, his riches to rags to riches story found him living pretty high on the hog (even though he was Jewish).  He got married, and had two sons, whose names indicated that his misery was over and done with – he had really, finally let go of the pain of his brothers’ mistreatment.

Joseph was a survivor who, unlike Noah and Lot, used his experience to find some measure of healing… But it is never safe to assume that we have wholly transcended past pain and resentment. – Karen Armstrong, In the Beginning

All that joy and peace got challenged one day when his brothers came to Egypt for help during the famine.  They, of course, did not recognize him.  But for Joseph, everything came rushing back.  And even though most tend to focus on some of his actions that gave the impression that he made amends and they all lived on as one big happy family, there are not-so-subtle words and actions that let us know Joseph hadn’t evolved as much as we would have hoped.  Like father, like son.

He gave God full credit for the entire saga – not even giving his brothers the benefit of having power enough to even do evil to Joseph. 

He used the “God’s will” card to excuse any of his own wrongdoing, too, so that he didn’t have to own any of his junk which certainly contributed to his perilous journey.

When Daddy Jacob was on his deathbed, the ten older brothers were terrified of what Joseph might do to them – does it sound like resolution happened?

After all of this, a strange twist comes at the end of the story of beginnings.  The future King of Israel – centuries from the date of Jacob’s death – would not come from Joseph’s favored lineage, but from another, surprising candidate: Judah.

Judah lived up to his family heritage.  He was not a good father, and was, indeed, a scoundrel.  His son died, leaving his daughter-in-law, Tamar, without any children (and thus without hope in her day).  According to custom, his brother was supposed to sire a child with her for his deceased brother.  But he refused.  Then he died.  Judah’s remaining son was not allowed to marry Tamar for fear that he might die as well, so Tamar was left out in the cold, so to speak.  Tamar was quite clever, however.  She put on the clothes of a prostitute and placed herself in Judah’s path, who was happy to oblige her invitation.  Unfortunately, he discovered too late that he left hi wallet at home, so he had to give her some other personal effects as collateral – a signet ring, a cord, and staff.  Jerk.

Three months later, Tamar is discovered to be with child, so naturally Judah called for her execution – what a whore!  But then Tamar produced the ring, cord and staff.  Judah could no longer deny his indiscretions.  She became Judah’s wife, and bore two sons.  This episode in Judah’s life, compounded by his role in Joseph’s trauma, radically transformed him.  The evidence of which came when he offered to give his life in exchange for Benjamin, to keep his father from experiencing the loss of a second son, which he knew all too well.  He finally had compassion for his father who probably never returned it.

Judah had been able to accept the painful truth that had torn siblings apart since the time of Cain: that love is unfair. Only when we accept this and make peace with past pain and rejection can we move positively into the future as whole human beings. Instead of allowing his own tragedies to sour and fester, Judah had used them imaginatively to heal past wounds. His own suffering enabled him to enter the inner world of the father who had wronged him. Judah had also learned from his experience with Tamar that it is only when we admit that we have been wrong that we can take full control of our lives and stop the ongoing cycle of violence, deception, and reprisal that holds us in thrall. – Karen Armstrong, In the Beginning

From Judah’s lineage with Tamar would come Perez, from whose line would eventually bring King David, and many moons later, Jesus.

Genesis is a messy story of the beginnings of the people and faith of Israel.  We are left to struggle with what we see about ourselves, and about God.  But at least in Judah’s case, the struggle yields benefits that reach far beyond our normal scope.  Sometimes it feels like we are struggling with God as an adversary.  But trusting that God has our best interests in mind, it’s more like God is struggling with us toward the same goal – shouldering some of the strain even though it may feel like God is the source.  Thanks, Anne Edmunds, for that interesting insight at our group last night.


So, how is your struggle going?

Jacob and Esau

The sense of transcendence and of the sacred dimension of life… [is] linked to the integrity of a life that has come to terms with the past and with the demands of the intractable self. – Karen Armstrong, In the Beginning

Jacob’s life would make a great movie.  Great movies are great because they connect with the human experience on some level that draws us in, shows something of ourselves to us, and leaves us having to make a decision to deal with what we’ve just experienced or continue hiding in a closet.

The Bible’s book of Genesis certainly provided ongoing fodder for discussion around the campfire for families for its original audience, and it still does.  But the conversation takes place in formal papers and presentations and academic books as well.  Jacob’s story is no exception.

The story begins in the 25th chapter of Genesis with a whopper of an allusion: Rebekah is pregnant not just with Jacob, but with Esau as well – twins – who struggled with each other in the womb, and even as they were given birth into the world.  In the ancient world, twins were a symbol of the divided self.  The rest of Jacob’s story is one episode after another of his struggle to heal the pain of his past as he did his best to forge a new reality.

Struggle he did.  Overcome – not so much.  In truth, Jacob lived up to his name, which can be translated “deceiver” much like that of the serpent in the second creation story.  The person he deceived the most, however, was himself.

Jacob felt the pain of sibling rivalry caused, in great part, by his father’s favoritism toward Esau, his hairy twin brother.  Isaac, their father, made it clear who he loved more, and it was not lost on Jacob. Jacob deceived his brother, and his father, in order to gain the blessing he longed for.  He technically got what he wanted – he was going to get the estate of his wealthy father.  But his life shows that he went to his grave with plenty of wealth, but a lack of blessing.  Unfortunately, because he didn’t really come to grips with his literal or metaphorical Esau, he – like us – perpetuated the curse of sibling rivalry to his wives and his many children.  It’s really a gut-wrenching story of painful struggle, hitting very close to home for those who read it thoughtfully.

The patriarchs had to learn that no one could move forward creatively into the future without having made peace with the past. – Karen Armstrong, In the Beginning

All Jacob wanted was the blessing.  Blessing is more than the simple legal transaction he got from his father.  Blessing is the dream every person is born to pursue.  Blessing is that sense of wholeness, peace, and integration that gives life its depth and beauty.  It really doesn’t have much to do with money or status, either.  Extreme poverty sucks, to be sure, but I know people stuck in extreme poverty a world away who are living in the blessed life Jacob sought but never attained.

How do we know if we are being plagued by our past?  How do we know if we haven’t quite received the blessing we long for?  Feel free to add to this list:

• If you have recurring problems on the same theme, you’ve probably not fully addressed your Esau.  If you haven’t dealt with your past, be sure of this: that it is dealing with you!
• If you resemble people or behaviors from your past you once swore you never would, say hello, again, to Esau.
• If you know you’re still running from your pain, thinking to yourself that avoiding it will somehow make it all better, Esau is on your shoulder.
• If you’re not in touch with your inner self, don’t worry, our body sometimes reminds us that we have unfinished business.  Stress manifests itself in myriad ways, from tight muscles to indigestion to hypertension to much worse.  This doesn’t mean that if you have heartburn, you also have Esau – blame the chili peppers! – but we would be wise to wonder if our physical ailments might just be the outworking of our inner conflicts.
• If the people we are closest to are letting us know there are serious problems, there just might be.  Don’t be too quick to kill the messenger if the messenger lives with you.
• What else?

Jacob had a moment of insight when he finally headed back home after two decades of camping out with his uncle, where he became extremely wealthy but simultaneously built a family who lived and breathed sibling rivalry’s torture.  What started out as one guy’s problems was exponentially expanded.  Denial would lead to more deception, and even death (read Dinah’s story).  But he knew he had to deal with the physical Esau even if he hadn’t grasped the importance of wrestling with his inner Esau.  He made amends, the boys lived in the same basic region for awhile.  But ultimately, Esau would find himself leaving the place of blessing – Jacob won?

The good news is that we can be reconciled with our past should we recognize an important reality.  The blessing we long for doesn’t come through escapism or denial or simply time that pretends to heal all wounds.  Blessing is the fruit of struggle.  Struggling with our Esau, coming home to our problems, facing our pain with the intent of healing – that’s the trail that leads to blessing.

How can you help me build on this list of methods to get us on the road to healing:

• Ask the tough questions about how you interpreted and integrated your upbringing.  Note: identifying is not the same as blaming.  Even if you had the worst parents in the world, it’s on you to wrestle with its implications.  Read How We Love (Yerkovich) if you need help seeing yourself.
• Ask people you trust who are close to you to help identify how your Esau manifests itself in you: anger issues, avoidance, pleaser tendencies, etc., point to stuff beneath the surface.
• Plan on a slow pace.  You might become aware that you have a mountain of stuff to address.  How do you ascend a mountain?  One step at a time.  But you can get there.  And steps forward give a lot better view than where you are right now.
• Expect sweat.  I played a lot of sports as a kid.  Soccer, football, baseball, basketball, track and field, and, for one season, wrestling.  Wrestling, by far, was the most physically taxing sport I ever attempted.  Imagine flexing every muscle in your body for several minutes straight, all while trying to pin your opponent while he is doing the same.  Jacob’s name changed and an entire people group became identified by the name Israel – struggles with God.  The struggle is what leads to the blessing.  Completely counter-intuitive, yet correct.  Expect sweat.
• What else?

May you recognize that we all have our Esau’s to deal with.  May you stop running away, pretending like denial works.  May you come home, though the journey be filled with struggle, and may you find the blessing, the peace, the wholeness and healing you’ve been looking for.

Abraham: Lech lekha

The search for blessing, the essence of life itself, involved an encounter with death and the death of meaning. – Karen Armstrong, In the Beginning: A New Interpretation

Three of the world’s largest monotheistic religions call Abraham the Father of their faith.  Muslims, Jews, and Christians all lay claim to him.  He is often revered as a pillar of faith – which he no doubt was – and also lifted up as an example to follow, which maybe he shouldn’t be (except that faith part).  We live in a time where politicians call for us to return to family values that faith calls for.  Wonderful!  Just don’t look for any help from any of the characters in the Bible’s first book, Genesis!

The greatest case supporting this notion must be account of Abraham nearly sacrificing his son, Isaac, to God at God’s request.  The story is ugly on so many levels.  God asks Abraham to do something horrific.  Abraham agrees.  Isaac is bound, and experiences the person he most admires nearly commit murder against him.  Note: Isaac doesn’t go home with Abraham when Abraham leaves.  Would you be able to sleep now that you’ve seen this side of your daddy?  A life may have been spared, but a relationship was ruined, and the emotional stability of a young man was crushed for the rest of his life.  So how do we reconcile this?

We get some solace when we appreciate the context:

• Child sacrifice was common in Abraham’s day, making it unfortunate but understandable for Abraham to comply. 
• We get a hint in the text to give us some peace that God did this to test Abraham, which gets our hopes up for a good outcome. 
• Similarly, Abraham is portrayed as being sure that God will provide the sacrifice, and that he won’t really have to kill Isaac. 
• When we realize that this was written around 600 BCE, we think differently, too, as the story acts as a reminder that Israel was not to sacrifice humans in worship of God, in contrast to other religions.  This story settles that from the very beginning.

So, with some of the horror of the story addressed, the real point here and now is, how do we apply Abraham’s life story to our lives?

Abraham heard God’s call to lech lekha, get up and go, and Abraham did.  He left his family and friends and familiarity in response to God’s call.  This was no easy step.  It was a leap of faith, which, by definition, requires leaping!  Sketchy details about the future – just go!  I assume that God is always calling us to get up and go regarding any number of things in our lives.  What is God calling you to leave behind, even though you may not know exactly what the future holds?

As soon as Abraham arrived in Canaan, he had to flee to Egypt to survive the famine.  This had to be experienced as failure.  Yet he remained resolute (with a lot of cheerleading from God).  How do you process what feels like failure as you attempt to walk in faith?  What can you learn from Abraham’s dogged determination to stay the course of faith?

When God showed up to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham plead for leniency and grace.  Where is Sodom today?  Do we care enough to plead her case today, or are we quick to take a wrathful stance?

Abraham will never be nominated for Father of the Year.  Before he nearly killed Isaac, he sent his first son, Ishmael, and his mother, Hagar, into the desert with a bottle of water and some saltines for survival.  Hats off to Ishmael for processing that neglect better than his half-brother did.  How are you doing with the people you’ve been entrusted? 

Who is your Isaac?  Without getting caught up in the gore of the story, we see a guy who was willing to place in God’s hands what he most cared about, and what most represented his future.  In this act he faced down death itself, and trashed his ambition in favor or what God wanted to do with him.  What is your Isaac?  Your money?  Your future?  Your time?  Your loves? 

Lose your life for my sake and you will find it. – Jesus

Reminders from the live teach:

Appreciating Abraham…

ü  He left everything for God’s new thing:   

Following God is not predictable; it’s more likely to be challenging and bumpy.

ü  Child sacrifice was common in his culture:

What culturally normative things do we do that one day will indict us?

ü  He believed God would provide the sacrifice:

Leaps of faith require leaping.

ü  God forbade human sacrifice:

We are not to worship how/what others do.

Applying Abraham today…

God continually calls everybody to get up and go (lech lekha):

ü  What are we called to leave behind?

ü  How do we process midstream “failure”?

ü  Where is Sodom?  How are we pleading her case?

ü  How are we treating those entrusted to our care?

ü  What/who is our Isaac?

Noah

Reverend Doctor Heretic.  Last week I made a straightforward statement that I do not believe that either of the creation stories found in Genesis are historically factual.  Neither do I believe that the story of Adam and Eve is historically factual.  Yet at the same time I believe the stories are true – true in the sense that the original author was communicating great truth to the world in his rendering of these two stories.  A natural response to this assertion from more conservative, fundamentalist-oriented friends runs along this line: Pete doesn’t believe the Bible, so we can’t believe him.  Is he even Christian?  A similar response comes from skeptics of the faith: I knew the Bible was just a bunch of unreliable stories…

So, let me be clear.  I am a huge fan of the Bible, and believe it to be an incredible resource for understanding God, ourselves, life, the world – everything.  The approach I take is simply one that is highly – and appropriately – contextualized.  Some passages are meant to be read as poetry.  Solomon, for instance, compared his beloved’s breasts to two fawns of a gazelle.  Was he saying she had a hairy chest?  TMI!  We know better than to read poetry literally.  The Bible is full of different genres that need to be appreciated for what they are.  The book of Genesis starts with more theologically-toned passages and then moves toward more historical (yet still theological), which has to be recognized.  The author’s agenda needs to be respected.  The culture, the time in history, and all that influences the setting of the text needs to be examined to get the most from it.  God works powerfully in this process.  I believe the primary reason this truly ancient approach is so startling is not because it is new or wrong, but because it challenges the very powerful, 118 year old/young fundamentalist position that the Bible is inerrant, which itself was a reaction to post-Enlightenment fear of higher criticism perceived threat to the faith.  I think we need more eyes on the text, from various fields of study, so that we might get the most complete view of what we study.

With all that said, I must now confess that while there apparently was a catastrophic flood that took place in the Ancient Near East somewhere around 2900 B.C.E., I do not think it covered the entire world – only the world they could see.  I also do not believe that an ark was built to hold all of the animals of the world.  I also am not certain of the historical merit of an actual person named Noah who experienced what the story communicates.  And yet I believe the story is true.  Not in a Greek, historical/factual sort of way, but in a Hebrew, Eastern religion kind of way.  A way that provides room for Noah to be referenced by prophets, Jesus, Apostles and the writer of Hebrews without regard to historical credibility.

Competing Stories in Antiquity.  If you have done much research at all, or had conversations with non-fundamentalists about Noah’s ark, you are certainly aware that the Bible’s flood story does not stand alone.  Many cultures have similar stories, the most famous of which is the Epic of Gilgamesh with Utnapishtim as the human deemed worthy of salvation.  Google it and read it for yourself.  The Gilgamesh Epic was written far earlier than our Hebrew story of Noah and the Ark.  The differences are significant.  In Gilgamesh, human beings are carrying on normally – not doing anything terrible, just doing life.  The gods, however, are annoyed with them because they are apparently noisy, and this was long before noise-cancelling headphones were created.  What to do?  Flood the earth and kill off noisy human beings, start over, and see if less noisy creatures can be created so the gods can enjoy naps  whenever convenient…  The gods in Gilgamesh are petty, immature, displaying bold adolescent behavior deserving of a “time out” at least.  Maybe even no cell phone for a week or two for such behavior!  The Hebrew writer, wanting to communicate a different understanding of God that they had experienced for a thousand years at that time, paints a very different picture.  God is holy and good, but the humanity God created has gone off the deep end.  So much so that the only reasonable thing to do is to start over.  In the Bible’s version, humanity is the reason for the flood – not God – and God is seen as more or less innocent.  There aren’t many petty gods, there is one good, just, holy God.  Human beings aren’t innocent as in Gilgamesh – they have squandered their God-likeness for an unrecognizable alternative and deserve whatever they have coming.  This theme is consistent in the Bible: obey God whose ways are good and things will go better for you.  Go against that good way – disobey God – and it will catch up with you and bite down hard.

Genesis as Israel’s Story.  Peter Enns and Jared Byas, authors of Genesis for Normal People, note that when we read this book, we need to keep in mind that its writers had an overarching theme in mind: to tell the story of Israel.  The themes we see in Genesis represent Israel’s ongoing struggle with God – living up to their namesake throughout her history.  Noah’s story is a dramatic story of God hitting the reset button.  At the beginning of creation, there was chaos – darkness over the face of the deep with God hovering over the face of the waters (Genesis 1:2).  What are we left with after the flood?  Water covering everything, and God starting over.  This cycle of Israel starting fresh, flourishing, then failing, then paying the price, then being redeemed by God as they endured consequences, then starting fresh once more happened over and over and over and over.  And it still does with us.

God’s Wrath: Windows in Heaven?  Our ancestors in the faith approached God continually, wanting to learn more and more as time passed.  They expanded their understanding of God as they mulled over the stories of their heritage, sometimes agreeing together that they didn’t have a clue what a passage was about, at which point they tabled it.  Sometimes they changed their position on critical issues – going against earlier interpretations of scripture – after sufficient time had passed to give the perspective they could not have had earlier.  This is reflected in black and white as anyone can identify changes in “God’s Law” over time concerning women, children, and foreigners.  As time passed, the law became more compassionate toward these vulnerable groups.  This also happened in a massive way in the first century after the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by the Roman Empire.  The Jewish faith required sacrifice to atone for sin.  With the temple gone, sacrifice was no longer viable.  After many games of chess, the ancient rabbis and theologians concluded that redemption’s cleansing could come from devotion to the scriptures.  This was congruent with past theologically themes, but certainly was an indicator that a new form of Judaism was emerging from the old.  We have the responsibility to be in dialogue with the writers of our ancient text, bringing all we know about the cosmos into play.  The ancient authors would gladly have corrected themselves if they knew better.  For example, the ancient world had a primitive view of weather.  When a thunderstorm, tsunami, tornado, earthquake, lightning happened, etc., it was an act of the gods.  I don’t believe that, do you?  I think natural weather phenomena happen due to all sorts of natural variables, without manipulation or intervention from any god.  So, whatever flood may have occurred, while the ancient, primitive mindset would naturally attribute it to the work of the gods, I don’t, and I don’t think they would, either, if they had all the information we have to work with.  Rather than God, I think we need to take our share of responsibility about our impact on weather in light of increasingly undeniable global warming issues.  By extension, I don’t attribute cancer and other diseases, traffic accidents, mental and emotional disorders, physical abnormalities, job loss, etc. to “God wanting to teach me a lesson.”  I think that is a position of antiquity reaffirmed by some of Calvin’s powerful theological work hundreds of years ago given new life by fundamentalists over the last 200 years.  Long sentence there to simply say I think traditional thinking has maligned God and hurt our relationship with God who is portrayed as blessing us one moment while afflicting us this next.

Campfire Talks: Righteousness Quotient.  What do we do with this text now?  How do we apply it to our lives?  As I just noted, I don’t think we’re headed toward another flood of God’s wrath.  But we may be heading toward multiple disasters of our own choosing if we don’t pay attention.  Karen Armstrong, in her book In the Beginning: A New Interpretation, focuses her attention on Noah as the only one righteous enough to be saved from the flood.  She wonders by what measure Noah was found to be righteous.  When Noah hears of the impending doom, we do not see a righteousness witnessed in the likes of Abraham, who bartered and begged for a more lenient approach toward Sodom and Gomorrah.  While there have been unsubstantiated legends told of Noah’s roaming around decrying the end of the world, the scripture itself gives no such testimony (2 Peter 2:5 says that Noah warned his culture, but that may have simply been his act of building a huge boat in the middle of a desert).  Noah is held in high regard in the Bible, but I join Armstrong in her struggle at Noah’s lack of remorse before the flood came, and no apparent mourning afterward.  The righteousness that makes sense to me is one that looks more like Jesus who wept at the brutality of death in its myriad forms.  As a person sitting around the campfire, I think I want to ask how comfortable we are with the deadly prognosis so many in our world have been given simply by the zip code into which they were born.  Is my heart broken (like God’s) at the site of extreme poverty, knowing that our beloved, Calvinism-fed Capitalism perpetuates it?  Am I wrenched by the painful curse of domestic violence that carries on for generations unless someone does something about it?  How wrecked am I that innocent men, women, and children died a terrible death from chemical weapons in Syria?  Is my lip service response simply that we need to care for our own backyard before cleaning up someone else’s?  That’s a nice deflection, since we really don’t do much to clean up our own backyard, and since we can handle both if we care enough.  Do I realize that my disengagement from the world around me – looking primarily only after my own – is disengagement from God?  Do I realize that when I say with my true, lived values, I am not interested in bringing redemption to the world around me, I am really saying I am not interested in God?  What questions about life and faith does the Noah story stir in you?