Is that all there is?

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Oracles of God

“Is that all there is? Is that all there is, my friends? Then let’s keep dancing! Let’s break out the booze, and have a ball … if that’s all there is.” (Song written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller in the 1960s, recorded by Peggy Lee in 1969)

These lyrics have started to go through my mind in recent months as I read some of the newest Bible translations, particularly my new 2011 version of the NIV. It seems we who are interested in Bible translations tend to put the “contemporary, easy-to-read” translations up on a pedestal. The easier it is to read, and the more it sounds like contemporary English, even American slang, the better. As it is said, if we can’t understand it, what good is it?

And so I often choose a recent translation for my evening reading time. I sit down and read my Bible and relax for a while. It’s not a study time, it’s a reading and relaxing time for me. But lately it has often been less than I want; it’s been less than fulfilling. As good as the NIV (NLT, CEB, etc.) is, it often leaves me with a hollow feeling. It leaves me saying to myself, “Is that all there is?”

There’s something missing. And I think I have an idea what it is: it’s that mysterious feeling I used to get when I was a kid reading my Bible, my old RSV, realizing I was reading the Holy Oracles of God! The language was strange, ancient, almost other-worldly. People didn’t talk like that. It was almost as if some ancient being had come forward in time to tell us about what it was like thousands of years ago.

Do you ever get any similar feelings when reading your Bibles? Or am I the only one?

It seems when I read the “older” translations, that is, the more “formal” translations like the NKJV and NASB, I don’t get that “empty” feeling. Granted, they are harder to understand, and I sometimes question their translation choices in light of the way English is spoken today. But they seem to have that something extra that seems to be missing from newer, more dynamic translations.

It makes me wonder sometimes if the translators did too good a job on the new NIV.

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Thinking about splitting…

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splitting the UMC

No, not me! I’m thinking about the possible splitting up of the United Methodist Church that appears may be coming sometime in the relatively near future. I’ve been busy reading the discussions going on between clergy on both sides of the aisle, and more and more it seems to be a hopeless situation. Neither side is seeing any real possibility of ever coming together and agreeing. We are two churches, two faiths, and never the twain shall meet. The disagreements have taken the form, for the past 40 years, of whether or not homosexuality is a sin; and whether or not those who wear the label “homosexual” should be included in our church as leaders and even clergy; and whether or not so-called “gay marriage” should be supported by the church and same-sex weddings should be performed in our churches and by our clergy.

But of course the disagreements go far deeper than these issues, all the way down deep to our beliefs about the scriptures, the Holy Bible, and its authority in the lives of believers.

And so, my thoughts are naturally turning to how this process will work itself out.

It’s interesting to me that these discussions are taking place on the internet, where nearly anybody can read them, yet only a relatively few actually are. Go into just about any UMC on a given Sunday, and while you will find many people who are aware there is disagreement within the church on the subject, you will find virtually no one who has any idea the church could be so close to actually splitting apart. The people in the pews go to church on Sunday, go to Wednesday evening suppers and activities, participate in youth ministries, give their tithes and offerings to the local church to be used as is seen fit, including apportionments which are sent to the Annual Conference and are used to advance the political agenda of the “leadership” of the church without the knowledge of the people in the pews.

When the time comes, the church won’t even be aware of what has been happening within the church. But the clergy, the lay leadership, they’ll know. And they’ll understand what’s at stake.

So how do I think this will play out? Well, any such decisions would have to come from the General Conference, which meets every four years, and is scheduled to meet in 2012. I think the General Conference would go through its business, debating issues and voting, and at some point the frustration would build to a point that such a split would be proposed. I think that somebody already has the proposal drawn up and may be trying to get it on the agenda already. It may not pass the first time around. Then again, if it doesn’t pass it may not see a second time because there are people who may take things into their own hands if that happens. In that case I think the most likely scenario would be the simple split by people walking out.

But if it is resolved at the General Conference that the church be split, I think it would take the form of a vote by the individual churches. Of course, the members of the churches would have to be educated about the problem, which would probably take the form of people getting up and making speeches, obviously strongly biased. I would hope that it would be possible to give people both sides of the question, but emotions get pretty heated sometimes, and I don’t think it would happen that way if the churches are left to gather the information themselves. At any rate, the people would have to be given the information, and then the voting would have to take place.

I’m really curious about this, because I don’t know which faction would be leaving — the progressives or the orthodox. Would the fact that the vast majority of the clergy and bishops are progressive figure into this determination? Would the church then be a “progressive” church and the orthodox would be leaving? Or would it be that the orthodox have control of much of the power, i.e., the much larger southern jurisdictions and the judicial “courts” of the church, mean the orthodox would have control and the progressives would leave?

The other possibility I see is that each church would take a vote, and would go to whichever side won the vote, effectively splitting the church into two churches. Property would go to the side which won that church, simple and effective. This I think is the scenario I would hope to see. It would be the fairest to both sides and nobody would be losing any property — each church would keep its property. So instead of one church remaining and many people leaving for other denominations, leaving behind empty or near-empty churches, you would have two separate denominations instead of the silly church-within-a-church that we have now.

No, I’m not going to bow at the altar of church unity any more if it means being in unity with people whose “faith” is clearly a different faith entirely. We are of two faiths in the UMC. It’s time for the charade to end.

So What’s All This About Food?

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Food and Faith

This past Sunday in our adult Sunday School class we got on the topic of how food and eating are such an integral part of what we Christians consider “fellowship”. After church, we gather in the fellowship hall for coffee and juice, and donuts, cookies, cake, or other treats. (Note that we call it the “fellowship hall”) And when we go out with our fellow believers to share a time of fellowship, it invariably includes eating. One group from our church is actually meeting at a local coffee shop for a time of talking once a week, which of course means coffee or tea and food to eat. Our class leader even asked the question, “How many people would come to such a gathering if food were not included?”

Did you ever wonder why food and eating is such a big part of our church, and also of our faith?

It’s easy to see that food and drink are a part of it all, after all we celebrate Holy Communion, or the Lord’s Supper, or the Eucharist, by eating a piece of bread and drinking a bit of wine or grape juice. That’s an easy example, though for most of us it can hardly be considered a meal, as small as the portions are! Still, it’s eating and drinking.

But have you noticed how often in the Scriptures we see examples of food and eating, which are equated with some symbolic meaning? It starts all the way back in the early chapters of Genesis, when Adam and Eve eat the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. It symbolized their rebellion against God and so their fall from His Grace.

But move a little farther along and you will notice how Abram, when he sees the angels arrive at his camp, quickly speaks to his wife Sarai and tells her to bake a large volume of bread for them so they can eat and be rested and refreshed before they continue on their journey. It was a matter of hospitality in that culture in those ancient days. That was what you did when strangers come along. This kind of thing is very common in the Old Testament.

And of course there is the example of the Passover Feast, which is to commemorate the passing-over of the destroyer on that terrible night when God sent the destroyer to kill all the first born of the Egyptians. The Passover is still celebrated every year by the Jewish people, thousands of years later.

In Jesus’ ministry we often see him eating and drinking with his followers, and also the Pharisees and Saducees, and also the sinners and tax collectors. Two of his miracles involved his feeding of 5000 and 4000 people from just a tiny seed of food, like five little buns and two small fish.

Shockingly, Jesus spoke of himself as being the bread that comes down from heaven, and tells us that we must eat his body and drink his blood; though fortunately it is a spiritual eating and drinking he is talking about.

I always enjoy reading the end of the Gospels where Jesus proves he still has a physical body by eating a fish. And also in John 21 we find Jesus on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, where he has started a charcoal fire and baked a breakfast of fish and bread for his disciples.

Did you realize all the food-related things in the Bible? This is probably just the tip of the iceberg!

And even at the very end of the Bible, in the Book of Revelation, we discover that we who are followers of Jesus will join him in heaven for the greatest meal of all time, the Wedding Feast of the Lamb!

Has thinking about the Faith ever made your mouth water? Maybe it will now!