Transmission

In 1818, an 18-year-old named Mary Shelley wrote a novel called Frankenstein. I have never read it, but have picked up the basic plot from movies and such. A brilliant doctor decides that he will create the perfect man, using pieces of dead people. The man he creates will be of surpassing good-looks, and the doctor will teach him kindness, compassion, love ‚Äì all that’s best in humanity will be embodied in this perfect person. But once the creature is brought to life, the doctor becomes frightened and runs away. His creation follows him across Europe, demanding ‚Äúyou created me to be the best that humanity has to offer. You built me from scraps of the past, and promised to fill me with compassion and love, to bring about a better future. You have not kept your promise.‚Äù We’re all familiar with the story ‚Äì the creature keeps following him, and hurting the people he loves. The creature that was meant to be beautiful, wise, caring, intelligent…is feared and dreaded, chased away, and becomes a murderer. A monster.

This novel was probably written to caution people entering the industrial age ‚Äì be careful what you design to aid in human life, there will be consequences. But when I think of this story, I see another parallel, that I do not believe the author intended. Some of us may be aware of a book…called The Bible. Written over the course of more than a thousand years, assembled in its final form some seventeen hundred years ago. Built from scraps of the past, to represent all that’s best about humanity. Designed to bring a message of hope and compassion for the future. And it keeps on asking us, ‚Äúwhen are you going to fulfill the promises made on these pages?‚Äù And in fear and dread we run from it. And it follows us. And sometimes it hurts us, and the ones we love.

Part of the way the Bible hurts us is with ancient laws from distant times and places. For example, three rules from the book of Deuteronomy…

Deuteronomy 22:5 A woman shall not wear a man’s apparel, nor shall a man put on a woman’s garment; for whoever does such things is [hateful] to the LORD your God.

Deuteronomy 25:9 [If a man refuses to marry his dead brother's widow then she] shall go up to him in the presence of the elders, pull his sandal off his foot, spit in his face, and…Throughout Israel his family shall be known as “the house of him whose sandal was pulled off.”

Deuteronomy 25:11-12 If [two] men get into a fight…and the wife of one intervenes to rescue her husband…by reaching out and seizing his [opponent's] genitals, you shall cut off her hand; show no pity.

These are issues that some of us deal with every day. Even in this very room, I see women wearing pants. And I see men who would not be alive right now, if their wives hadn’t helped out in a fight. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of these laws, each one established in the hope of helping people. Yet still, the Bible follows us, in the form of people who will call us evil, tell us we will burn, and they’ve got the Biblical passage to prove it.

Jesus was something of a rebel ‚Äì one way to look at his ministry in the Gospels would be to say that he tried to lighten the load of rules, pare it down, simplify things. The book of Deuteronomy gives us ten commandments, Jesus pares it down to two. Love the Lord your God, and Love your neighbor as yourself. But no sooner was Jesus gone than the early Christians went right back to the old drawing board, coming up with more rules. In Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, he says…

1 Corinthians 5:11-13 …I am writing to you not to associate with anyone…who is sexually immoral or greedy, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or robber. Do not even eat with such a one…”Drive out the wicked person from among you.”

Whoa! What about Jesus, dining with prostitutes?

1 Corinthians 11:1-6 [Paul says] Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ…Christ is the head of every man, and the husband is the head of his wife… Any man who prays or prophesies with something on his head disgraces his head, but any woman who prays or prophesies with her head unveiled disgraces her head– it is one and the same thing as having her head shaved. For if a woman will not veil herself, then she should cut off her hair.

1 Peter 2:17-20 …Fear God. Honor the emperor. Slaves, accept the authority of your masters with all [respect], not only those who are kind and gentle but also those who are harsh. For it is a credit to you if…you endure pain while suffering unjustly. If you endure when you are beaten for doing wrong, what credit is that? But if you endure when you do right and suffer for it, you have God’s approval.

For this article I was given the title ‚ÄúMy love/hate relationship with the Bible.‚Äù And at first I thought ‚Äì I don’t hate the Bible! My father, an episcopal priest, once heard me say I hated someone and he said ‘Johnny, you don’t hate that person. To hate someone means you would be happy if they died.’ And so I guess it’s true, yeah, I do hate that first letter of Peter. I would be happy if it was never heard again. Maybe everybody here can think of some passage from the Bible that told them to shut up, or told them to stay in an abusive relationship with a person or an institution or a government. Maybe some people here have been told that the Bible hates them, that the Bible itself would be happy if they died.

I remember someone once asking me how it felt to know that my soul would burn for all eternity. Then, she made the mistake of saying every member of the Pink Floyd would be there too, which made the situation seem less dire.

And I ask these people…have you read the Bible?

The Hebrew Bible says thirteen times, five in the book of Deuteronomy, to help the widow and the orphan. And sure, you hear all kinds of things about people using the Bible as an excuse to turn wives into widows, to turn children into orphans…that’s the monster, following us again…but it says to help them.

Leviticus twenty-five says that just as people are meant to rest on the seventh day, the Earth is meant to rest on the seventh year. No reaping, no plowing, no farming. But wouldn’t we all starve? Ye of little faith. But just imagine how different our environmental situation would be if people took THIS part of the book literally, if the land we farm to death, had a chance to heal itself.

Later, Leviticus twenty-five says that people should conduct their business for seven times seven years – forty-nine years. And every fiftieth year, there should be a year of Jubilee. The trumpets will sound, and liberty shall be proclaimed throughout the land, everyone would go back to their homes and families.

LEV 25:11 That fiftieth year shall be a jubilee for you: you shall not sow, or reap the aftergrowth, or harvest the unpruned vines. 12 For it is a jubilee; it shall be holy… you shall eat only what the field itself produces… 19 The land will yield its fruit, and you will eat your fill and live on it securely.

In that fiftieth year, people will not cheat each-other, and anyone who has overcharged for land will pay back the difference. Can you imagine that, in your lease contracts? People who have lost their homes will have a chance to buy them back without inflation ‚Äì or, if you can’t afford it, it’ll be given back. Imagine the debts that the poorest countries in the world owe to our government ‚Äì and our government, founded on this Bible, is foreclosing, no mention of the Jubilee in our constitution. Some scholars have said that Jesus in the Gospel of Luke was asking for this forgiveness of debts, and restoration of humanity. But people who couldn’t think past written laws killed him for it. You could say that the monster killed Jesus ‚Äì I’m not talking about the Judeans, I mean the will to use sacred text as a weapon.

I don’t want to go on and on, I don’t need to. This monster chases us and attacks us, but it can only hurt us as long as we run away, and dread it. If you sit down with this monster, as Doctor Frankenstein should have done with his monster, if you really listen to it… You’ll find that all the best in humanity, the love and compassion and hope, is still there. Yeah, the Bible can be ugly. But if that novel Frankenstein teaches us nothing else, it’s not to judge a book by its cover.

Posted by: j. Snodgrass | Tags: bible study, Jesus