Tag Archives: Bible

Reflecting on the Ten Commandments

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News that the Ten Commandments will be posted in all schools and public places in Louisiana and Oklahoma took me back to Mark Twain’s encounter with a sanctimonious businessman notorious for his unscrupulous business practices.

“Before I die,” said the shyster, “I want to take a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. I’ll climb Mount Sinai and read the Ten Commandments aloud from the top.”

“’I have a better idea,’” said Twain. “’You could stay home in Boston and keep them.'”

What difference do the 10 Commandments make if one shouts them from the top of Mount Sinai . . . or insists they be posted in every school and public space . . . but ignores them and does not practice them?

You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain.

Not taking the Lord’s Name in vain is hard. It would be easy to keep If the commandment tells us, as children often are taught, not to say “G-d damn.” But, if it prohibits the wrongful use of the Divine Name, any person, official, or group (church, synagogue, political party) that uses the 10 Commandments for selfish ends and purposes makes a wrongful use of the Name of God.

You shall not commit adultery.

Anyone who sweeps aside a jury’s conviction on 34 counts for cooking the books to hide from his third wife and from the press his tryst with a porn star from his third wife and out of the news on the cusp of an election violates the commandment

You shall not steal.

You shall not steal an election which every court decides is legitimate. You shall not make a wrongful use of your constitutional oath of office by refusing to concede the victory of your opponent preventing the peaceful transfer, invite your followers to the Capitol to stop the steal of power, telling them to go to the Capitol to prevent Congress from its Constitutionally required certification of election results on January 6, and continue to promote the lie that the election you are seek to steal has been stolen. You shall not steal.

You shall not bear false witness

Tell the truth! Do not make up stories that will hurt someone else. Do not call them names that have no foundation in reality. Do not malign judges, Jurys, court personnel, and potential witnesses, a jury of your peers. Do not insult your adversaries. Do not shift the blame to those who testify against you. You shall not make a wrongful use of your First Amendment right of free speech, promoting what you know is false, and claiming that your country’s judicial system has been rigged by the person who wrongfully occupies the Oval Office.


You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s

Earth and the fulness thereof belong to the Lord, not to you! Be careful that your prayers do not become a form of preying. Stem the tide that confuses wants with needs. America has devolved from any sense of responsibility and moral character into the quicksand of late consumer capitalism. Citizens of Aboriginal communities likely experienced covetousness. A member of the tribe may have wanted to be the chief or fantasized about another’s attractive spouse, or being jealous of larger huts or more hides to warm themselves in the cold. Covetousness is human, and, as such, it needs to stay within the guard rails that limit its search for dominion.

Gordon C. Stewart, Brooklyn Park, MN, June 30, 2024.

Even a Parrot Can Quote Scripture

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Pull down thy vanity, it is not man
Made courage, or made order, or made grace
Pull down thy vanity, I say pull down.
Learn of the green world that can be thy place .

Ezra Pound, Canto LXXLI

They’re not after me. They’re after you. I’m just standing in the way.

There’s been a mistake

There’s been a mistake. I don’t know you; you don’t know me. No one is coming after me. I’m not that important. Neither are you. No one with their wits about them could believe you are the only one who keeps “them” from getting to me. But the pitch has a familiar ring.

The old, old story?

It sounds like “the old, old story of Jesus and his glory, of Jesus and his love,” but this story is a far cry from the one in the New Testament. The Biblical story includes a warning, attributed to Jesus: “Many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am the Messiah,’ and they will lead many astray.”

It’s a biblical way of saying, “Don’t mistake a wolf disguised as Little Red Riding Hood’s Grandma for the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep.

Photograph of Gustave Dore's Little Red Riding Hood in bed with the big bad wolf disguised as Grandma.

Life with Buddy

Even a parrot can quote scripture. But there’s a difference: the parrot has no idea what it’s saying. Human beings do. Take Buddy, for example. Shortly after arriving for a visit with old friends, the phone rang. Harry stayed put. Knowing that any call to Harry could be an emergency, we encouraged Harry or Anna to feel free to take the call.

Harry raised his finger to his lips. Anna smiled and whispered, “Shhhh!

The phone continued to ring. When it stopped, a voice from an adjacent room yelled, “Harry! It’s for you! Harry. . . it’s for you!”

If imitation is the highest form of flattery, an African Grey Parrot doesn’t know it. After Buddy had fooled us with his imitation of the phone ringing, with precise intervals between the rings, and calling Harry to the phone, Buddy went on to recite the 23rd Psalm. “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want…” before imitating the sounds of Anna he’d heard every morning: brushing her teeth, gargling, and other sounds not fit to print.

Shakespeare: “O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!”

“The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose,” wrote Shakespeare in The Merchant of Venice. “An evil soul producing holy witness Is like a villain with a smiling cheek, a goodly apple rotten at the heart. O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!”

Gordon C. Stewart, public theologian, host of Views from the Edge: To See More Clearly, and author of Be Still! Departure from Collective Madness (2017 Wipf & Stock), Brooklyn Park, MN.

Understanding Satan: The Personification of Trickery and Con Artistry

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In the eyes of QAnon and Christian fundamentalism, I’m a heretic. I don’t believe in Satan. Not that Satan, the devilish opponent of God. But trying to make some sense of life these days has led me to take another look at Satan.

Painting of the temptation of Christ with Satan peering over his shoulder by Georg Cornelius.
Georg Cornelius painting of the temptation of Christ

The biblical Satan is the personification of trickery and the reptilian impulses that lie in wait in every mortal psyche. Satan is a con artist. “You will not die,” whispers the serpent to the mortals in the Genesis story of humanity’s fall from paradisaical innocence. Likewise, in the wilderness temptations of Matthew and Luke, it is Satan who lures “the man for others” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s description of Christ) to being a man who cares only for himself. Satin is the personification of the lies that flips reality on its head. Satan is a Con Artist.

Con artistry is never far away. Sometimes we come face-to-face with it. I see it inside the courtroom in New York City where a jury wrestles to disentangling truth from falsehood, evidence from sham, honesty from fraudulence, in full view national figures, members of the U.S. House of Representatives take their seats in room as visiting dignitaries who are surely recognizable to at least one member of the jury. Their physical presence is intimidating; it strikes me as its own kind of witness and jury tampering, a violation of the defendant’s gag order.

Outside the courtroom, I see these same Members of the United States House of Representatives, each of whom has sworn the Constitutional oath of office, line up take their turns behind the microphone and media cameras to denounce the judicial system, malign court personnel, the judge, prosecutors and their families, and read aloud. Up is down and down is up; right is wrong and wrong is right; truth-telling is out; conning is in. I hear Pinocchio’s surrogates betray their oaths of office in hopes of becoming Pinocchio’s right hand. Jiminy Cricket is a distant memory. Conscience is nowhere to be found.

Yesterday confirmed what I know of the biblical Satan who never was but always is wherever there’s an Achilles’ Heel – the vulnerability of mortals to the Con that I and we can do no wrong.

Gordon C. Stewart, public theologian, host of Views from the Edge, author of Be Still! Departure from Collective Madness (2017 Wipf and Stock), Brooklyn Park, MN, May15, 2024.

The gods Made Trump

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“God Made Trump” is a masterpiece of cunning. Borrowing creation images from the Book of Genesis 1-3 and the Good Shepherd of fPsalm 23, Ezekiel 34:2-34, John 10:1-2), the three-minute video posted on Donald Trump’s social media platform Truth Social, goes like this:

“And on June 14th, 1946, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, 'I need a caretaker,' so God gave us Trump," the narrator says in the same style that the Book of Genesis in the Bible is written, while a video of Earth from space flashes to a photo of a young Trump.

"God said, 'I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, fix this country, work all day, fight the Marxists, eat supper, then go to the Oval Office, and stay past midnight at a meeting of the state, so God made Trump," the narrator says.

Trump is shown interacting with world leaders, signing executive orders, posing for photos with his supporters, hugging the American flag, and walking onto Air Force One, with former First Lady Melania Trump as the narrator describes God's "need" for the former president.

"God said, 'I need somebody who will be strong and courageous. Who will not be afraid or terrified of the wolves when they attack," says the narrator, while the viewer sees a wolf baring its teeth and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), "a man who cares for the flock. A shepherd to mankind who won't ever leave or forsake them."

Personal Reflection: ‘God’ and ‘the gods’

The Reform tradition of Christianity in which I stand views the Bible as a pair of spectacles through which to see God, the world, and oneself more clearly. Looking more clearly at “God Made Trump,” you will see something missing — the letter ‘s’, as in, “You shall have no other gods before Me.” We live among the gods that become God for us. A fitting title would be “The gods Made Trump.”

James Tissot, “The Good Shepherd.”

Mr. Magoo

“God Made Trump” is a rip off that takes off our glasses and turns it viewers into Mr. Magoo. It takes advantage of impaired eyesight. It blurs the ability to differentiate between hype and reality, fraud and truth, pretence and piety, subterfuge and honesty. We are all easily confused. “A little learning,” wrote Alexander Pope, “is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, and drinking largely sobers us again.”

Impostors of God

A cursory reading of the biblical creation and Good Shepherd stories is a shallow draught. A deeper drink guides the reader into what Karl Barth called “the strange new world of the Bible,” in which we see more clearly. Though monotheists, atheists, and agnostics are of diverse opinions about the one God, they agree that there is not more than one, i.e., the gods do not exist. Those who claim the Bible as their source of truth and life should know better.

Constitutional lawyer, lay theologian William Stringfellow describes the gods as “imposters of God,” which the great theologian and philosopher of culture Paul Tillich saw as substitutes for the “God above god” (life’s Ultimate Concern) and the gods of real but penultimate concern among which all of us live in daily life, e.g. religion, work, money, family, status, sex, patriotism, which, although part of the fabric of human life, become substitutes for that which concerns us ultimately. Living anxiously among the gods leaves us restless – “Our hearts are restless,” said St. Augustine, “until they find their rest in Thee.”

Jacket of An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land
Paul Johannes Tillich (1886-1965)

Serious study of the Bible leads a reader to notice something missing in “God Made Trump.” The gods of the First Commandment have been deleted – “I am the LORD your God. You shall have no other gods before Me. No longer are their other gods before God. Cut in half, the First Commandment is castrated, but, in reality, only the gods remain.

Seen through the eyes of the First Commandment, Stringfellow, and Tillich, the real question is not whether God made Trump; the question is two-fold: “Which gods made Trump?” and “Which gods are making us in their images?

The Incarnation of the gods

On June 14th, 1946, the gods look looked up and said, “Let us make a creature in our images who will incarnate all of us,” and, so they did. For six days the gods who aspired to be God laid aside their competitive urges to work together as a consortium. They would be godlier than “the God above god” (Paul Tillich), Maker of heaven and earth, whose fatal flaw was to grant the gods freedom to do their mischief.

So, the gods of Pride, Greed, Wrath, Envy, Lust, Gluttony, and Sloth laid aside their several powers for the sake of greater effectiveness. They put their heads together to craft an Immaculate Conception suited to their purposes.

Their creation would be the Incarnation of themselves and would embody all that the less-blessed creatures wanted for themselves: freedom from anxiety, absolute certainty, security, safety, and wealth. So, the gods found a virgin in Queens, and Mary Anne gave birth to her fourth-born child and named him Donald. The things the lesser creatures envied and desired for themselves – his unshakeable self-confidence, freedom to have any woman he wanted, his mastery of the arts of entertainment, prevarication, hypocrisy and greed, exemption from legal restraint and pangs of conscience, fearlessness in the valley of the shadow of death and prosecution, and palaces of silver and gold – would be theirs, just like him.

“God Made Trump” is an adaptation of “God Made a Farmer,” Paul Harvey’s speech to the 1978 Future Farmers of America convention that paid tribute to the American farmer’s dedication to caring for the land, plowing the fields, caring for animals. “God Made a Farmer” honored the farmer without idolizing him. It did not make wrongful use of the Name of God.

Gordon C. Stewart, public theologian and social critic, author of “Be Still! Departure from Collective Madness” (2017 Wipf and Stock), 49 short commentaries on faith and life. Writing from Brooklyn Park, MN, Feb. 7, 2024.

What the Book of Revelation was REALLY about

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No book has been more abused and abusive than the Book of Revelation.

Gunnison Memorial Chapel, St. Lawrence University, Canton, NY

Gunnison Memorial Chapel, St. Lawrence University, Canton, NY

Martin Ramirez Sostre. inmate held in solitary confinement, later pardoned.

Martin Ramirez Sostre. inmate held in solitary confinement, later granted clemency by NY Gov. Carey..

Below are excerpts from a sermon preached at the Gunnison Memorial Chapel of St. Lawrence University in Canton, NY inspired by Martin Sostre and re-reading the Book of Revelation. The sermon was published by The Christian Century (March, 1974).

The first half of the “Worship and Resistance: The Exercise of Freedom” introduces the hearer/ reader to the case of Martin Sostre’s resistance as a political prisoner incarcerated in solitary confinement at Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, NY, known as “New York’s Siberia” or, as the inmates refer to it, “the Hell Hole of the New York Prison system”.

It was during my weekly Wednesday evening program and visits with prisoners there that I learned about the case of Martin Sostre, held in solitary confinement in resistance to dehumanizing prison practices, and joined the campaign for his pardon.

Excerpts from “Worship and Resistance: The Exercise of Freedom:

“Incarcerated on the Aegean Island of Patmos, a penal settlement of the Roman Empire in the first century A.D., was a political prisoner named John. He wrote a political-religious manifesto declaring open resistance to the Roman Empire. The Revelation to John – the Apocalypse, the last book of the Bible – is the earliest extant Christian tract deliberately and openly directed against the pretensions of the world’s greatest power. In the Revelation to John, resistance to Roman power and authority is so inextricably bound together with worship of God that they constitute two sides of the same coin. Worship and resistance are the twin sides of faith’s freedom to celebrate God’s gift of life. The unity of resistance and worship is expressed with notable clarity in the passage where the fall of mighty Babylon occasions a celebration in heaven. The destruction of Babylon is joined to the salvation of the world itself and is the sign of God’s power and righteous rule over the nations. Only those who profit by Babylon’s wealth, power and injustice have reason to mourn her fall, while those who have ‘come out of her’ – who have disentangled themselves from her oppression, corruption and imperial claims – have cause to worship God and sing joyful hymns of praise.”

….

“Babylon is the state or nation in its presumption to be God. Babylon is any state, nation, or constellation of principalities and powers, which attempts to rule as final judge of persons and nations. Babylon is any such power – in any time or place – which makes its people subjects, calling them into idolatry of the nations, and any state or nation that persecutes its prophets of righteousness, peace and justice while rewarding the aggressive supporters and the silent ones who acquiesce. America is Babylon.”

….

“Envision once more a visit to Clinton Correctional Facility. Remember the disorienting sensation of having left everything familiar on the other side of the wall, the feeling of walking out of a real world into a nightmare, the shock induced by the size of the walls and the presence of the guards – strange and terrifying.

“But the closer one gets to the prison reality, the more one comes to realize that it is not so strange, that it is simply a more exaggerated and visible form of our own everyday reality in the face of death. Here on the outside, the walls are not visible, but they are much higher. Out here the guards do not stand poised with machine guns, but they are real and far more powerful – the guards our own fears provide.”
….
“Then I heard another voice from heaven ssying, ‘Come out of her, my people, lest you take part in her sins…’” (Rev. 18:4 RSV).

A commentary will follow soon on my experience of visiting Martin during the time he was transferred to the Federal Detention Center in NYC where he was held as a witness in someone else’s trial. Prior to that visit, none of us in Northern New York had been able to meet with Martin because of his refusal to see visitors on the principle that the rectal “searches” required before and after visits violated his human rights.

NY Governor Carey eventually issued a pardon.

Bonfire

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Even the embers warm

Univ. of Illinois Campus YMCA bonfire
Univ. of Illinois Campus Y bonfire

If we move our chairs and logs

Close enough.  The flames

Began roaring, jumping

High above our heads

As balsam branches, pines

Burned first furiously.

…

Reflections off glasses,

Earrings, flash like the stars

Above in the moonless night.*

Two kites, tethered, can be heard,

Not seen, above the prairie.

…

Marshmallows ignite if held too long

Near the glowing coals

S’Mores give a sugar rush

After the tangy stuffed mushrooms.

No one can remember a ghost story

Or campfire song. The troubles

Of Job are all forgotten

As the sparks fly upward.

* In the photo there is a moon. This was photo-shopped out in the poem–poetic license.God seems to have chosen to have the Bible written this way, also;  some things were omitted (or added) for the sake of the form or sound of the poem or story.

– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, Dec. 1, 2012

The photograph is of University of Illinois students who were engaged in service projects at the oldest student organization, the University Y (1873), where Steve served as Executive Director.