Searching for the Narrow Gate in Lancaster County

Enter by the narrow gate, since the road that leads to destruction is wide and spacious, and many take it; but it is a narrow gate and a hard road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”
(Matthew 7:13,14 in the New Jerusalem Bible translation)

This brief passage from the Sermon on the Mount is not self-explanatory.  Without context and interpretation, it exhorts the follower of Jesus not to take the popular, easy way of discipleship, but it seems to me not enough to look for the unpopular, hard way simply because it is difficult and lonely.  I am not dismissing Jesus’ warning but acknowledging my need to think about where the lines might fall in my own life with the choices I must make and in the lives of the churches in our North American context.

The Canadian theologian Douglas John Hall recalls Martin Luther’s distinction between Christianity’s prominent way of thinking and making choices with its wide gate and attractive, well marked road and Christianity’s other way less often taken.  Luther labeled the dominant way as the “theology of glory” which today we call triumphalism, and the unpopular “thin tradition” as “the theology of the cross” which is the way of humility, compassion, and non-authoritarian service.  Pope Francis is shaking up the Roman Catholic Church by tending toward the humble way of the theology of the cross.  Francis of Assisi stands in the tradition as another example of this never-popular but more faithful path of Christian discipleship. 

The model, to be sure, is Jesus of Nazareth himself who eschewed power, prestige, and bullying authority.  His was and continues to be the way of the servant.

After we retired and moved into Pennsylvania, my wife and I needed to find a church, a community of faith, with which to worship, learn, grow, and serve.  Our search took longer than we had expected.  We were looking and listening for this “thin tradition” – this attitude, posture, thought, and manner of the theology of the cross. 

We heard much of awesomeness, power, authority, and glory and much of right and wrong but little of humility, compassion, understanding, and service.  We heard answers that demanded acceptance but little regard for curiosity or puzzlement.  We found ourselves surrounded sometimes by the frenetic and supposedly feel-good and sometimes by the bored (including the minister).  We listened to the exhortations and judgments of those who knew they had arrived at the place of correctness and virtue.  Finally, we found ourselves hearing sermons and prayers from the thin tradition of Christian faith – shared thoughts, stories, insights, and questions from faith’s harder road where certainties may be few but trust in God sustains belief and encourages hope all along the way.

Were the others bad churches and the one into which we are settling the truly good one?  No, it’s not that simple.  All churches are works in progress, and so are we ourselves.  What I am discovering once again in a new context is that the narrow gate opens into a relationship of trust and willingness to keep learning and growing rather than a high road of certitude and present satisfaction.  For me, the hard road is not the strict, guilt inducing, dishonesty encouraging path of the “straight and narrow” as people have envisioned and preached it but, rather, the human way of uncertainty and humility with ongoing need for cooperation, mutual understanding, and openness. 

Questions are harder than answers, and answers I must continue to examine are harder than the authoritative kind I must simply accept.  Listening to people to understand them or else stand by them anyway is harder than judging them against standards.  Trusting Jesus the Christ is harder than deciding to affirm the correct answers about him whether they make sense to me or not.  Meeting other people in their humanity requires me to see myself in my own.  Taking the harder road makes us vulnerable which is exactly what we hate to be but also exactly what puts us on the way of Jesus the Christ of God.

Actually, we found two churches that spoke to us from Luther’s thin tradition of compassion, humility, and service.  The one we believe was not chosen for us (and so we did not choose) was said to be a very healing church for people in need of healing, which seems to me a strong recommendation, but we found ourselves drawn back to the other, and there we are.

A Good Samaritan?

Lately I have been seeing reflections on the parable of Jesus we call the Good Samaritan which is found in Luke 10:30-37, and I suggest starting at verse 25 and so including the question of the embarrassed critic, “And who is my neighbor?”  I consider it important to realize that the real force of that question is, “Who is NOT my neighbor?”  Where can I draw the line when it comes to loving my neighbor as I love myself, caring for my neighbor as I care for myself and my own (family, friends, etc.)?  Whom may I righteously exclude?

Jesus responds to the question by presenting the least likely and least desirable person in the role of the true (faithful) neighbor.  Who is the Samaritan?  He is the person most righteously despised as an enemy of God and of God’s people.  He is the one whom piety, purity, prejudice, and long-festering resentment agree is NOT the neighbor, not one to be loved or cared for.  He is the extreme other – not merely a stranger or outsider but a disgusting, contemptible enemy.  He is the sub-human thing that need not be treated humanely, the one it is right to hate.  So, rather than giving a Jew (the good guy to Jesus’ audience) the role of true neighbor who reaches across the deep divide of prejudice to help even a wretched Samaritan in distress, Jesus gives that good neighbor role to the hated Samaritan.

If we then include the exhortation as part of the parable or, at least, of the pericope of the parable (the passage to be interpreted as a unit), “Go and do likewise” does not tell me merely to be a good neighbor to people in distress when the opportunity presents itself but tells me, also and more strongly, to reach across the divides of prejudice and righteous contempt to the very people I least want to be my neighbors.

Historically, Jesus’ parable was effectively neutralized by the misinterpretations thrust upon it by allegorization.  Misunderstanding and therefore misinterpreting the parable as an allegory became firmly established in church history by Augustine of Hippo.  Allegorization is inappropriate for this parable because trying to force it into being an allegory does not fit with the parable itself but does render it harmless.  Allegory has a way of telling us only what we already know.  In Augustine’s misrepresentation of the parable, the Samaritan is Christ, the inn is the church, etc.  So, as allegory the former parable is forced to present a situation that could not have made any sense whatsoever to Jesus’ original hearers (the church did not yet exist, and they did not recognize Jesus as the Messiah or Christ), does not answer the question of who is (not) my neighbor, and does not challenge our prejudices.  Rather, as (illegitimate) allegory, the parable speaks only confirmation to certitude, not Christ’s challenge to self-righteousness and prejudice.

Now, the question is for me.  Who is my Samaritan – that is, the person (or dehumanized type of person) I do not care to see as my neighbor?  That question makes me uncomfortable.  It challenges, not my recognized sin, but my goodness – not my shame but my pride.  As a friend of mine back in seminary used to put it, Jesus has stopped preaching and started meddling.

What Happened to the Question?

In my other blog, Faith Pondering, I wrote recently about our long-practiced and deeply harmful ways of “otherizing” groups of people with whom we wish not to empathize.  Now I ask you to consider with me a different type of otherizing which I regard as Christianity’s constant danger from within: the otherizing of Jesus.

The idea is simple.  The more we make Jesus appear utterly different from us, the less we have to trouble ourselves with his way of life in faith.  At Christmas time, we celebrate what we call the Incarnation: the coming of the truth (Word) of God into our own flesh and blood as one of us, limited in time and space, vulnerable to all the forces that hurt and destroy us, not omnipotent or omniscient or omnipresent but embodied just as we are.  But the idea that he was truly and fully one of us makes worshipers uncomfortable.  So, we are tempted, time and again, to misrepresent incarnation as a disguise, a veil, through which the privileged (called, chosen, reborn) are enabled to see Jesus as he really is.  We are tempted to make Jesus’ humanity seem fake, illusory, deceptive.  Why?  The more we can make him totally different from us, the more easily we can keep him where gods belong and the less he represents for us what our own humanity should be.

Here’s a brief passage from the Gospel of Luke in which Jesus’ disciples pull a switch that much of Christian preaching has followed:

22 One day [Jesus] got into a boat with his disciples, and he said to them, "Let us go across to the other side of the lake." So they put out,
 23 and while they were sailing he fell asleep. A windstorm swept down on the lake, and the boat was filling with water, and they were in danger.
 24 They went to him and woke him up, shouting, "Master, Master, we are perishing!" And he woke up and rebuked the wind and the raging waves; they ceased, and there was a calm.
 25 He said to them, "Where is your faith?" They were afraid and amazed, and said to one another, "Who then is this, that he commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him?"  (Luke 8:22-25 NRSV)

Do you see the shift?  Jesus asks his terrified disciples where their faith is.  What happened to their trust in God?  Did it get blown away when the wind picked up and threatened them? 

And the disciples answer Jesus’ question by saying . . .  Uh, well, no, they don’t respond to his question at all.  They shield themselves by exclaiming over how different – indeed unique – he is.  Jesus the exceptional!  Jesus the divine.  Jesus the other, the not-as-we-are, not one of us.  Isn’t it much easier to have someone to praise, adore, and glorify than someone who challenges us?  So, in our account at least, his question goes unanswered.

During the Christmas season, I have often wished the word “king” didn’t rhyme so conveniently with bring, ring, sing, and ding-dong-ding because I get tired of singing about the coming of the King.  Jesus presented himself as a servant and called his disciples to follow him in a life of humble service, trusting God and showing (embodying) God’s compassion for people.  He rejected for himself and his followers the way of power and glory.  He does not permit us the luxury of standing apart from the shamed.  But it is much easier to exalt and praise him than to follow him.

I think it’s too bad “servant” doesn’t rhyme with festive, celebratory words to fit into our Christmas carols.

Search Me

21 Do I not hate those who hate you, O LORD? And do I not loathe those who rise up against you? 22 I hate them with perfect hatred; I count them my enemies. 23 Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. 24 See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. (Psalm 139:21-24 NRSV)

As I have said already, people who believe the Bible presents to us the truth of God nevertheless read two different Bibles, by which I mean they read the same Bible in two radically different ways which produce divergent and often clashing witnesses to the faith.  Some read what I call the vindictive Bible, others the salvific Bible.  The two contain the same books, same verses, and same words, although the two groups of readers may select different passages to keep rereading to bolster and guide their faith.  That, after decades of studying the Bible, I am compelled to read it as salvific should be no secret to those who read this blog or those who heard me preach during my forty years of pastoral ministry – compelled and not merely persuaded, because I read the entire Bible through the lens of the gospel, the good news announcement, of Jesus.

Do I not hate those who hate you, O LORD?
And do I not loathe those who rise up against you?
I hate them with perfect hatred;
I count them my enemies.

Whoa, what is this?  Are we not hearing the very kind of religious passions that drive zealots to cruelty, torture, murder, terrorism, warfare, and genocide?  Do these two verses from Psalm 139 not express in self-congratulating tones the sentiments of religious bigotry?  We have stained human history red with the blood of piety’s victims killed without remorse because they had been named by the faithful as enemies of God.  Just what every religion needs: more “perfect hatred” to teach its own children and inflict upon our strife-torn world!  Would we not do better to edit such evil-sounding verses out of our bibles so they can add no more stinking fuel to the fires of bigotry and hatred?  No, we need to keep and strive to understand them, for they offer us a kind of mirror into which we need to look and see ourselves.

I suspect that many who come to faith and then keep growing in it so that faith becomes the impelling force in their lives must pass through a phase of zealotry in some degree.  From early childhood, we define ourselves, not only by who we are and with whom we belong, but also by who we are not and with whom we do not belong.  We identify insiders (people like us, our kind) and outsiders (people not like us, not our kind), and both the positive and the negative shape us.  Negative self-identification forms prejudices but also protects our values and sometimes keeps us safe, especially when we are children.  Admittedly, this process is dangerous to the human soul and the human community but also necessary and, even if not absolutely necessary, inevitable.  The question soon becomes, however, “What is my attitude toward those who are what – because of my beliefs, commitments, and values – I choose not be?”  That question may lead to another: “Are they truly so different from me as I imagine them?”  And so on: “What do we share as human beings?” and, “Who are they to God?”  As empathy develops (if it is permitted to develop), so does compassion.  If empathy does not develop, contempt will grow where compassion rightfully belongs, and those who stay religious will imagine the people for whom they feel contempt to be God’s enemies.  Then, to guard themselves from guilt, the religious may choose to imagine, “If they will only repent and change their ways (and perhaps even their identities), they will become like us (our in-group), and I will accept them because then God will accept them.”  This feigned mercy is a self-delusion that pretends to grace without compassion, for compassion requires entering with respect and sympathy into another’s suffering and in some sense sharing in it.  Compassion does not say, “Become as I am, and then I will respect you and accept our shared humanity,” but moves to stand with the other before God and says, “Have mercy on us.”

What do we do with that zealous phase of hating God’s enemies?  It would be too easy because too right too soon to quote Jesus’ telling us to love our enemies and pray for those who despise and even harm us.  We’ll get there, I hope, but neither easily nor quickly.  In a matter so visceral and so interwoven into our very identities as persons, quick-and-easy must surely mean superficial and false.

The great Jewish philosopher and teacher, Abraham Joshua Heschel, said that the world does not need more people who love justice as a concept, an ideal, but remain conveniently undisturbed by the specific injustices done to other people as long as those injustices do not touch them or those they love.  He declared, very helpfully I find, that we need more people who cannot abide those specific injustices done to others.  So, we need to hate what is hurtful, and in that sense we need to “hate” (oppose, choose against, rather than tolerate) those doing the harm to the vulnerable and likely unpopular.  Biblically, “hate” and “love” can be words used to express choices against or for someone or something in a specific context, rather than deep-seated and enduring emotional ill will toward some person or group. 

Empathy and its resulting compassion, if allowed, will lead us toward the intolerance for injustices done to others for which Heschel calls.  I believe compassion will lead us also toward the deliberate actions of love for our enemies to which Jesus calls.  We will learn to pray for people even as we oppose their unjust, exploitive actions.  We will continue to oppose them, but our opposition will evolve into a different spirit far less prone to self-righteousness and cruelty.

Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my thoughts.
See if there is any wicked [hurtful] way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.

For me, this closing prayer points toward the redemption of the zeal that would take pride in hating, especially when I follow the alternative translation where the NRSV uses “wicked” but notes the word can also mean “hurtful.”  I much prefer hurtful because it is more clearly relational and, therefore, truer to the biblical way of thinking, speaking, and regarding life.

As it is true that I cannot fully know the mind of God (surely the understatement of the day!), it is true also that I cannot fully know my own thoughts, motives, and will.  I judge myself wrongly, so that I am ready and willing to take pride in what should shame me and just as ready to take the speck out of the other person’s eye while ignoring the log in my own, or I may be ready to blame myself where God does not blame me.  I need this kind of prayer and its attitude, and I dare not presume that simply praying it will be enough, as though the devotional act would shield me magically from presumption and spiritual arrogance.  For throughout this life, I see myself only as in a mirror darkly (I Corinthians 13:12).  But I am fully known – known through and through by the God who will not leave me even if I run and try to hide, the God who will go with me wherever I wander or get dragged, the God who won’t stop caring until I let myself be loved.

Counting Sand Grains

17 How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! 18 I try to count them– they are more than the sand; I come to the end– I am still with you. (Psalm 139:17-18 NRSV)

Sure, the idea of counting thoughts sounds strange to us, but maybe it helps us a little to know this psalm was written in a language (Hebrew) in which the same word can mean “word” or “thing.”  Words, and perhaps by extension thoughts, were considered to have substance, physical reality.  There is an earthiness, a physicality, to ancient Hebrew we in the postmodern West may find primitive, although some of our current masters (and mistresses) of deceit are learning to their chagrin that, through the wonder of online video, their words can remain fixed as specific things in the reality of having been spoken in a time and a place long after the speakers would wish them vaporized and deniable.  We can surely understand, in any case, that if thoughts may be regarded as having weight and number, God’s thoughts would vastly outweigh and outnumber ours!

The problem lies in comprehending God and God’s ways.  Even “just” comprehending God’s creation, the natural world we call the universe, is beyond us; we would do better to try to count one by one the grains of sand on a seashore.  Not only are there far too many sand grains, but the sands keep shifting.  The image serves as a metaphor for the undoable.  These days, we would probably just say that God’s thoughts are infinite, God’s ways mysterious, God’s plans unchartable.  Our more cerebral and ethereal language, however, may fail to connect with us as well as the earthy image of counting sand grains.  Remember, the psalmist is amazed, not by God’s distance from us, but by God’s inescapable closeness.  The more we elevate God beyond the knowable, the approachable, the conceivable, the intimate, the more we push God out of our lives and the life of our world.  The biblical witness contends that God wills and even yearns for relationship with us, that the Creator loves the creation and is committed to it, and that God insists upon being present and knowable in love’s sense of knowing another.  Love is a matter of coming close while keeping a respectful distance, of understanding for the purpose of caring but without violating the autonomy and mystery of the other person.

So, the psalmist concludes, not that God is remote, but, rather, that God stays close:  “I come to the end– I am still with you”!  Difference does not create distance.  Wonder does not estrange us from our God. 

What is the meaning of, “I come to the end”?  Life gives it many meanings.  Does it mean (1), “Even if I could reach the end of counting all God’s thoughts, comprehending God fully, the important thing is that I would still be with God?”  This interpretation may seem just a theoretical argument using an impossibility to make a point, but I think it reminds me in all my striving that I need to trust first, last, and always.  Or does it mean (2), “When I finally realize the futility of counting sand grains (of trying, that is, to comprehend God to my satisfaction), I am still with you, God”?  In this case, it counters the will to master, the compulsion to find right answers, with a reminder of my human limitations but a reminder that leads me toward humble trust and appreciation rather than toward cynicism or despair.  Or does it mean (3), “Even if I were to come to the end of my strength to be curious, to pursue life, and to keep growing, I am still, though nearly exhausted, with you”?  I can relate to that third interpretation also.  Whatever slight difference in meaning and message I need to hear in my current time and place, the realization is that God is not present for me according to the measure of my rightness or absent from me when I misunderstand, falter, fail, or go wrong; God is present to me in God’s own love for me and understanding of me that expresses itself as compassion rather than contempt. 

The Prophet of the Exile famously declares to the Jews in Babylonian exile, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways,’ says the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8-9 NRSV)  But precisely here God is moving toward, not away from, the defeated and discouraged people and calling for them to move closer to their God, also, in response.  God’s ways which are not like our ways are redemptive, and God’s thoughts which are astoundingly higher than our thoughts are compassionate. 

Our humanity does not disgust God!  The animalistic needs, processes, weaknesses, and yearnings of our mortal bodies may embarrass and even disgust us, but they do not disgust God, any more than loving parents turn away from and reject their baby for spitting up or needing a diaper change.  Even our sins, as the prophet asserts in context, can be overcome, and God comes to liberate us from their power.  

What I find here is not the futility of counting sand grains or of understanding God.  Rather I find that God’s insistence upon sticking with me no matter what or where means I do need to keep trying to understand and be changed by a growing relational knowledge of God’s compassion and desire for a truer and more alive human community.  And if/when I come to the end, whatever temporary or final form that end may take, I can trust that I will find, my God, that I am still with you.  And even when I doubt, you are still there for me.

Human Reproductive Choices

I’ve thought and thought about those four verses below that I’ve called the “problem verses” in Psalm 139, problematic, not in themselves, but because they are being used heavily in debate over birth control and abortion, and I’ve realized that writing about those two subjects, especially abortion, from a biblical perspective could require a very long blog post or a series.  So, I will, instead, make a few observations and ask a few questions.  For a consideration of the verses themselves in their biblical context, see my previous blog post, “The Problem Verses.”

13 For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother's womb. 14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well. 15 My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. 16 Your eyes beheld my unformed substance. In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed. (Psalm 139:13-16 NRSV)

The first observation concerns context for the public conversation about human reproduction and for a biblical approach to understanding the issues.  I place the conversation within the context of the relationship between women and the human community, and I believe it is very important that we consider the issues within that context.  Throughout the history of the human race, men’s ability to impregnate women has served both the purposes of love and the purposes of domination.  In a world turned over to itself and its own natural processes, the human reproductive process has been both a blessing and a bane for earth’s people.  Now that infant mortality has dropped from its appalling premedical levels (though still too high), blessing and bane alike threaten to overwhelm the ability of the human community to sustain itself, but my starting point in considering laws governing choices in human reproduction is and will continue to be the life and humanity of women.  That a one-or-two-celled organism should have more rights than a living woman I find outrageous, and that a potential conception should also have more rights than a living woman absolutely absurd. That a rapist should have any say or rights in his victim's reproductive choices is beyond outrageous and absurd.

The kind of thinking that would elevate potential for conception above the rights and dignity of living women seems to me based upon these notions: (1) that biblical thought and faith require us to see human sexuality as primarily or even solely for the purpose of reproduction, (2) that every conception happens by the will of God, (3) that the male seed has life like that of a person and should never be “killed,” and (4) that women are created to serve the needs and desires of men and to have babies.  Three of those notions are matters of biblical and theological misunderstanding, but #3 is just a primitive belief overruled long ago by science.  There are, however, still church doctrines based in part upon #3 as well as upon the other three notions I am calling fallacies.

The first fallacy is overruled by the second chapter of the Bible’s book of Genesis where the love and sexual communion between man and woman are based upon need for a partner who is “like but opposite” and which makes no mention of the result of having children.  “It is not good for the human to be alone.”  Anyone interested can find elaboration here.

I have addressed the second fallacy which holds that all conceptions happen in accordance with the will of God in my other blog, in a discussion of abortion following rape here.
and in a follow-up blog post here.

The third fallacy is so outdated that only superstition or doctrine could preserve it.  Sperm die in a man’s body and are expelled regularly, and so the lingering idea that both male masturbation and birth control “murder” human beings has no basis in our biology for being taken seriously.

The fourth fallacy moves us into what for me is the principal context for helpful conversation about issues of human reproduction: the full humanity and dignity of women.  Biblically, women and men together make up the human community created in the image and likeness of God, placed by God in creation to represent the Creator’s love and care for that creation and for each other within that human community.  Only after the rebellion against God in Genesis chapter 3, a rebellion which disrupts and strains all the kinds of relationships in which humanity lives, does the Bible speak of the man’s lording it over the woman, not as a command but, rather, as a recognition of the social reality into which creation has descended in what we call “the real world.”

For me, all further conversation about family planning, choices in unwanted pregnancies, adoption as an alternative to abortion, and any other matters of choice in human reproduction should be held within the context of the freedom and dignity of women as full, responsible human beings whose very persons (body, mind, emotion, spirit) are centrally engaged in that reproduction.  The starting point should be the freedom and dignity of women and their right to make choices about their bodies and their lives and not have those choices taken away.  The current abortion debate (if even that word "debate" does not over-dignify it after the lunacy of this past election season) is not about the choices to be made but about who has the right or power to make those choices.  I see a severe misuse of Psalm 139 when people appeal to it to say women have no valid choice but to accept whatever has been done to them and no responsibility but to bear children no matter the circumstances or consequences and keep doing as men tell them. 

So, can we take steps to reduce rape and incest, to see that people are informed about human sexuality in general and birth control in particular, and to enable women (and men) to strengthen themselves for responsible and dignified lives?  Can we work to overcome poverty and exploitation?  Can we enable the education of girls worldwide?  Can we enable the education of boys to find delight (see Genesis 2) rather than shame in female strength and competence?   Can we help turn sex from a weapon of control, of cruelty, and even of warfare into a shared delight of love and mutual respect?  With these and similar questions I believe we must begin.

Psalm 139's Problem Verses

I have been examining Psalm 139 as a hymn, not merely to the limitlessness of God’s information, but more importantly to the amazing range of God’s understanding and compassion.  In biblical language, knowledge is a relational term, not the cold, passionless, and supposedly objective matter knowledge can be in our modern or postmodern Western world.  Biblically, knowing involves commitment more than analysis; it requires a giving of the self to relationship with the one to be known.  Indifferent knowledge of another person or group of people is a contradiction in terms.

The psalmist (by which I mean the person speaking in the psalm, not its author) has pushed the limits of the time’s beliefs.  Of course God would be there for me if I could ascend into the heavens, but God is there for me also if I lie down in Sheol, the place of the dead.  Since Sheol was almost by definition the place or condition from which Yahweh God was absent and could not be praised, this psalm is radicalizing faith.  The psalmist repudiates the prevailing notions about places where God is absent: far away from the land apportioned to Israel, in the darkness, in the grave.  The question that has been raised is, “Where can I go from your spirit?  Or where can I flee from your presence?” (verse 7, NRSV) Step by step, the psalmist rejects the traditional answers in favor of the conclusion: nowhere!  Wherever I may go by choice or accident, wherever life may drag me, you will be there with me and for me.  Even Yahweh God’s anger comes from caring knowledge of the person or of the people.  Far worse than God’s anger and judgment is the thought of God’s absence and indifference.

Now we come to what I am calling the problem verses:

13 For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother's womb. 14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well. 15 My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. 16 Your eyes beheld my unformed substance. In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed. (Psalm 139:13-16 NRSV)

Why are these verses problematic?  First, they are difficult to translate, and some of the results are uncertain.  More importantly, they have been coopted to serve the polemic of the “right to life” movement that opposes, in various ways and to varying degrees, turning over control of choices about reproduction to women.

First, let’s look at what these verses actually affirm in their context.  In my next post, we can return to the issues of human reproduction.

Yahweh God will still know me when I have gone where I can no longer know my God or if and when I am ever caught or lost in a place in life where I cannot find my God and cannot believe God would be with me.  We hear the Christian echo of this idea in the eighth chapter of Paul’s Letter to the Romans.
   

35 Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? 36 As it is written, "For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered." 37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:35-39 NRSV)

Now, the psalmist looks back, beyond the limits of a human’s ability to know himself or herself, back to when the person’s life was not yet.  Before I could know myself or even my parents could know me, you knew me, my God.  Before I even existed as a person, you cared.  I didn’t have to prove myself to you.  I didn’t have to find you because you were already there waiting for me to live.  You created me for relationship with you.

The ancient wisdom idea of a book of life in which our days are recorded before they even occur is a difficult one for faith in God that would avoid the trap of fatalism.  Does it mean that everything which happens to us happens in accordance with the will and even the plan of God?  Jesus contradicts such a notion, but he was not the first.  The very idea of prophecy was not to predict an unavoidable future but, quite the opposite, to summon the people to change course.  The greatest biblical themes – salvation, repentance, redemption, forgiveness, healing beyond hope of healing, and even life out of death – all reject and overrule fatalism.  “What will be will be,” people say (que sera sera), but the biblical message is that, no, by the grace of God, “what will be” will not now come into being because God has intervened to change our destiny.

I will go so far as to understand the idea of God’s book in which the days of my life are written as being anti-deterministic.  I know I’m going out on a limb, but I invite you to consider coming along with me.  There are many ways in which I seem to have “made my bed” so that I must now lie in it, many ways in which life has dealt some people “a bad hand,” many ways in which some children “never have a chance.”  I hear the psalm telling me that my life is not in the hands of some blind or cruel fate, that randomness is not the supreme truth of the universe, that the sum of my biology (genetics), experiences, and choices does not equal the limit of my hope for life.  God can foresee more for me than my possibilities.

Is the other, more fatalistic interpretation, not possible?  Of course it is possible and quite popular, although as with all fatalism, it moves us away from compassion and relationship toward apathy and resignation.  If everything were predetermined, we would make no real choices at all and would be truly responsible for nothing.  Neither would there be any justice or injustice, right or wrong, sin or redemption.  We human beings would be mere pieces in a sort of grand board game, moved about the board by the will of another.  What would it matter who lived and who died, who loved and who hated, who offered help and who did harm? 

I understand Psalm 139 the other way, as affirming relationship and putting trust in God’s caring for us.  Although isolated passages and verses can be recruited to support fatalism, I find that the Bible as a whole rejects it.  Otherwise, there would be no reason for commandments, prophets, or a Messiah – at least not any reason that made a real difference in human life.  The psalmist affirms God’s persistent caring presence, and I read the entire psalm as just that affirmation.  At the end, the psalmist does not pray, “God, help me accept my fate as it is written.”  This psalmists prays instead:

23 Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. 24 See if there is any hurtful way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. (Psalm 139:23-24 NRSV, using the alternative translation “hurtful” instead of “wicked”)

What, then, do these “problem verses” say about the issues of human procreation and the choices of women in decisions about reproduction?  I find nothing in them upon which to base law and nothing that declares when independent life begins for an individual as an individual to be protected by law, but I’ll look at this question further in my next post.