Flying Lights, Pillars, and Smoke

Lets talk about perspective.

The Oxford dictionary defines perspective as a particular attitude toward or way of regarding something; a point of view.

So, this morning as I stepped outside to smoke a cigarette and drink my coffee, I knew that it was 28 degrees outside because I'd caught word on the radio that a hard freeze was coming. But, when I first stepped outside it didn't feel that cold. It felt like it was maybe in the upper 30's. After three minutes, it got a little colder.

And after five minutes, a little bit colder.

And after eight minutes, a little bit colder.

And after ten minutes, it was time to go in. For one, my cigarette was out. Secondly, by body was starting to tell me that it's core temperature was going down, which led to my hands getting this numb feeling and my nose running. As my body temperature changed, my perspective changed as well.

While I was out there, I looked through the trees and saw three lights slowly floating across the sky. There was also one blinking red light. All the lights were moving at the same speed, and they were equal distance from each other. They looked like they were just beyond the trees towering above me. The lights appeared to be moving 20 miles per hour, if that. 

The reason I know what these three lights and one blinking red light moving beyond the trees are is that my language has a word for this - airplane. So, in this case, language changed my perspective from seeing an unfamiliar set of lights traveling across the blackness to the very familiar reality of an airplane.

And then there's this: He (God) did not take away the pillar of cloud by day, nor the pillar of fire by night, from before the people.

We've all heard the story of God leading the Israelites through the wilderness, right? God was in the pillar of fire and pillar of cloud, and the Israelites followed it. End of story.

Well, that's not the end of the story, because for the writer of this story, there was very rich meaning in the words used in this passage.

First of all, a thought on pillar.

The hebrew word for pillar is ammud (am-mood), which comes from the root word amad (aw-mad). 

Everybody say it with me. Am-mood and aw-mad. Good job.

There is something very significant about this root word. There was a reason the author would have used this word, because he or she wanted to get a point across about the peculiarities of these crazy nomads who were crossing the desert, looking as if they were signing their own death warrants. 

Amad is a verb meaning to stand, take one's stand, be in a standing attitude, stand forth, take a stand, present oneself, attend upon, or, my favorite, be or become servant of. 

As a reader in 2014, it's easy to forget that we have this thing called perspective working on our senses at all times, including when we read the bible. From our perspective, it's easy to read about the pillars of smoke and fire without even questioning what it really means.

So, what were the Israelites doing with pillars of fire and smoke?

They were having the first church service in history!

And what did this first church service look like?

It looked like taking a stand with clouds during the day and fire at night.

Huh?

Let me explain. 

Where else in the scriptures have we heard of fire and smoke? It saturates the Torah.

What were fire and smoke a result of? You got it, offerings!

So, what were the Israelites up to in this story? They were taking a stand through offering something to this God.

So, what was so special about this? Everything.

It was very common back then to offer something to the gods. And so, all around your house if you had wealth and could afford it, you'd have tangible representations of different gods. You'd have one shrine that represented the rain god, another that represented the sun, another that represented fertility, another that represented the lottery (just kidding), and so on. And, depending on what season of life you were in, you would have a pre-scripted offering you'd give to whatever god you needed help from. The offerings included incense, grains, and even animals (if you really needed a god to act quickly). On any given day, if you were walking through an ancient city, you would see columns of smoke rising into the heavens to greet the gods. That was the belief of the day.

Another thought of the day was, the desert was a cursed piece of land. Civilizations had to build around water, because water is the most fundamental building block. It's where stuff happens. 

So, to write a story about a group of nomads traveling through the desert is to make a statement, or take a stand, about something that would have been thought of as crazy to any average city-dwellers at that time.

Why?

Because the author was trying to tell the audience that not only was there a god in the desert, but this god would connect with you in the desert, and this god would provide what normally four or five gods combined would hopefully provide. 

These people were telling the world, "We're following one God, and this God provides everything we need, even in the desert!"

And another point. 

We like to think of the desert travels of the Israelites as this non-stop, always on the move, journey for 40 years. Yet, have you ever tried to light a candle on the move? Much less, have you ever tried to light a thousand candles on the move?

These people weren't just moving, but they were constantly sending fire and smoke up to this god. These people wanted to take a stand for who and what they believed in, and the author wanted to get this point across to the readers. 

So, what does this mean for us?

The author is trying to tell us that the Israelites were unified in taking a stand for something, and the action of taking that stand was the driving force behind their journey and their worship. 

When we take a stand for something (notice the word for and not against) as a tribe of people, there's power that comes out of it. When we take a stand as a community for the things we believe this God is for, like liberating the oppressed, feeding the hungry, and giving water to the thirsty, we find power there. 

When we take a stand for the things we believe our God represents, 

 we're led by a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.

Roaches and Dinosaurs

When I walked into the bathroom early this morning, I flipped on the light and noticed a brown diamond-shaped splotch on the wall. Roach! Not only that, but this roach, just like the one I saw yesterday, had company. Baby company. Riding on its back. So, I grabbed the nearby can of Raid and gave him a little shot. He didn't move. The thing was just frozen in time. It looked like it was alive, but it wasn't. It was just hanging cryogenically on the wall with its little babies holding on.

Someone had come before me to smite the little guy - I mean girl - along with her babies. 

What does this have to do with the bible? 

There are instances in the scriptures (in the old testament) where the authors present humanity as roaches, and this invisible hand from heaven sprays a whole can of Raid on em. Usually, the roaches are the bad guys, like the Babylonians or the Sodomites, you know, in our day they'd be like members of Isis or North Korea or American Liberals. 

And we read these parts in the Bible, and for some reason even though we took all the required English literature classes, and some of us even graduated with degrees in the field, we don't bother to even think of questioning the validity of these stories. Yet, that's just what they are: STORIES!

And we go to church and hear supposedly schooled professionals speak as if Jurassic Park is a real thing, and tomorrow we may have dinosaurs coming to eat us if we don't change our ways. 

People have told me over the years that I have a problem with authority, and I agree with them. I don't get offended anymore, because they're right. I've gotten better with government authority, but it's the spiritual authority that just sets me on fire. We're supposed to interrogate the scriptures on one hand, but on the other listen to some preacher speak as if they opened the bible for the first time yesterday. As Paul once asked, "Where have all the teachers gone?"

Lets say the world is 12 billion years old. I don't remember how old it really is, but that's just the number I'm throwing out for right now. 

And then, let's say people didn't start writing until 4,000 years ago (which is pretty close to the truth I think). 

And then, let's say that the bibles we read (in English) weren't in circulation until the 1500's (another close-to-truth-truth).

That means, if it is all true, that we Americans have had roughly 500 years to process documents that have been around more than 4,000 years. 

It's no wonder there are still seemingly obvious social issues (like women in leadership, homosexuality, sex before marriage, etc.) that are still addressed with brainless answers like, "Because the Bible says so." 

Well, I'm getting off the because-the-bible-says-so train. Besides, I don't know how far these tracks are gonna go. Thank goodness that the problem of obvious slave ownership became a thing of the past, or has it? The slavery that exists today isn't so obvious, unless you frequent that nondescript neon-lit yellow building on the corner of Creeper and Family Man.

I've never, and probably will never in my lifetime, seen so many people take a book (rather, a library of books), so damn literally. And it frustrates the hell out of me. Why?

Because I'll be sitting in a church service somewhere. It can be anywhere. And I'll be thinking, and all of a sudden I'll hear a phrase like " . . . and they'll be thrown in the fire." And then I'll look around at all the sheep and everybody's just eating it up. And I'm wondering, "Are you kidding? Are you really feeding us this nonsense?" 

"Where have all the teachers gone?"

When Paul posed this question, I'd like to think he was thinking like I was, but he probably wasn't. My thinking is, is anybody willing to stand up at a podium and publicly interrogate the scriptures as they would have in Paul's day? Any good rabbi (including Jesus himself, who we've turned into the American bible drill champion for the ages) or Jew would have picked it up, questioned it, doubted it, criticized it, and picked it apart to look for a new nugget of truth other than, "Because the Bible says so."

I know this sounds crazy, but there are a lot of things in the Bible that will get me killed and get other people killed if I were to take them literally. For example, I could practice the spiritual lesson of ethnic cleansing and be like - who was it, Isaiah? - and invite all the local priests I don't agree with to the edges of town and slaughter them all. After all, God is for rightness if you read the bible in the same attitude that passage was written.

Or, I could practice the principle of sending-your-husband-to-the-front-lines-of-battle-so-I-can-sleep-with-you as King David did, and still get the label of a man after God's own heart. Is God's heart for this kind of thing? I hope not, at least not the God that I want to entrust my whole life to (including the sex part).

Why don't we take Shakespeare literally?
Why don't we take Dante's Inferno literally?
Why don't we take Homer seriously?
After all, they were circulating around the same time as our current English mis-translations.

Going back to the roach thing. I'm sorry if you still think that God literally smited anybody - wait, lets hear it - because the bible says so. And, I'm sorry if you think that God wrote the bible, or that the earth was literally created in six days, or that a donkey really talked, or that a man was really swallowed by a whale, or that Revelation is a story about how real angels on real horses are carrying real bazookas on real chariots of fire coming for real tomorrow to smite (or smote?) all the real wicked people on this planet.

I'm not buying it anymore, and there's a whole lot more folks besides me who are selling their bible-is-literal stock these days. If you haven't heard about it, then you probably live in an area that's saturated with conservative-Christian-censored-media-outlets like Lifeway and Mardel and the hundreds of propagandized church bookstores.

Back to the roaches again. 

I'm here to bring the good news that there isn't and never was a heavenly Raid can. And, humanity (even the worst of the worst) isn't like a bunch of roaches scurrying around running from the heavenly Raid can. God never smote, or smited, or smeethed anyone, but was rather portrayed as an armed bodyguard for the good guys, ready to take out the bad guys.

The good news is, we humans have a way of portraying God in a way that attributes our biases, our prejudices, and our loves. Our God is a concept of our belief systems, which is a very human and normal thing to do. If we didn't do this, we'd be robots (which I'm afraid is closer to the current state of evangelical Christianity than we'd like to think). And so, quit taking the bible so damn seriously. And literally. God is love. Wherever love is, God is also. And we all know love, so we all know God, right?

The stories in the scriptures didn't last long before they were taken places they were never supposed to go. And we still have this obvious thread of God-is-on-our-sideness saturating everything from the pulpit to the politician. 

So, this is my dare to you: 

Wake up really early in the morning.
Open the Bible.
Question everything that you've never experienced or heard of.
And then, search for the answers to those questions.

Chances are, the search won't get you answers, but it'll break you out of the box called biblical literalism. And that could be the most freeing thing you've ever experienced when it comes to spirituality.

Abide (The 12th Day of Christmas)

The more I read the Bible, the more questions I have. The doubts about what I've formerly been taught surface, and I feel more and more convinced that the "truth" I've known for so many years is all based on literary fiction. The more I study, the more I feel inside me that there's a great conspiracy that's captured me. There's so little known about the characters in the Bible, that I'm starting to believe that they were created by great novelists who wanted their audience to see the world differently.

But then, there's the whole other question of: What about God?

The bible seems to be leading me more and more down a rabbit trail of knowledge. There's so many layers to be unpacked and so many truths to discover. Each time I take a layer off, I realize there's another hidden ever so slightly beneath it. 

Trying to find out, for example, who Abraham was (if Abraham was even a real person) leads me not to truth but to assumptions. I wish I could travel to that era with a notebook and a pen, and walk with him and interview him, and ask him all the questions that my mind's been rattled with. 

And the same with the gospels and the writers themselves. There's so little known about Jesus, yet masses of people have relied on the literary creations written by the four. Yet, barely anything outside the bible supports their written claims. Not to mention, they weren't around when Jesus was apparently living. And so, how a whole religion has been made around a man who we know nothing about boggles my mind.

But then, there's the whole other question of: What about God?

The other age-old question that I've heard in pointless debates over the years is, "What about people who've never heard of Jesus?" What happens to them?

Well, in order to hear about Jesus, one must look into this same book that seems to be leading me down one rabbit trail after another. Inquiry is the journey I'm on. I don't want to settle on "knowing the truth." I can't just read and accept anymore. To accept without question is doomed to deceive me in the long run. I've already gone that route, and I ended up resentful towards anyone who claimed to know the truth. 

But then, there's the whole other question of: What about God?

Let's say we don't have a bible in front of us. We've heard people talk about Jesus and all the saints who went before him, but it was all word of mouth. Would you sacrifice your whole life based on what someone told you or would you question it and poke at it and find out for yourself what they really meant?

The concepts that have been built around Jesus are impossible to prove. You can't just verbally transmit them to someone else and expect that they are suddenly convinced of the same notions that you are. There's futility in verbally sharing this gospel without proof. How do you hope others will see the same truth when there's no evidence besides limited literary creations to back it up?

But then, there's the whole other question of: What about God?

Like I said in one of my previous posts, to the ancients, God represented this one underlying pattern that ordered all things. And while I question and continue to study the mysterious text called the Bible, there are things that happen outside of my studies. There are patterns. There are moments at which I can't deny that God is working within and without. 

And the other night, I found this pattern at work:

My wife and I decided to go to a movie, which started at 10:15. We were waiting on our daughter's biological father to get home from work. If he didn't get home by 9:45, we would have to go to a later movie.

Father arrives at 9:30.

I decide to go to Walgreen's to get some snacks for the movie.

My wife says to go to Kroger. It's cheaper.

I get a sudden urge to go to the bathroom in Kroger.

Beside the entrance to the bathroom is a man sitting in the corner with a "Korean War Veteran" hat on.

I know who this man is. In fact, I've been looking for him for two days. He's homeless, and we've been trying to find him so we could help him out in any way we could.

We talk.

I call the owner of the restaurant I work at, because he's been helping him out.

He tells me to take the man to the restaurant to sleep on the couch. 

So we go.

He needs to go to the VA on Monday.

My wife and I go to the VA every Monday already. 

We're gonna meet him at the restaurant today at 4.

If all I had was the Bible, and not these continuous moments where things beyond my control play out before my eyes, I don't know if I'd have the faith that I have today. You see, I happened to be "spiritually awake" enough to see what was playing out. I could've easily disregarded my wife's decision to go to Kroger. I could've easily disregarded the man.

I could've said nothing when I saw him, and if I was spiritually asleep this probably would've been the case. 

But at that moment, in that store, heading to that movie, getting those snacks, using that bathroom, seeing that man . . .

John 15:4 says, "Abide in me . . ."

While I'm sure there are many deep and hidden truths within these three words, my attempt to keep it simple leads me to rephrase it as so:

"Keep your spiritual eyes open."

God's at the center of the things I can't control, and the number of things I can't control is great. It's too many to count. But what my wife and I experienced the other night wasn't unique. This sort of thing happened many times before.

I'd be hard-pressed to believe that everyone else doesn't experience these moments as well - this reflection of how certain things came to play, and of how you happened to be in the right place at the right time. The stars aligned.

There's not a soul on earth who hasn't experienced a moment like we had the other night, where we felt that something bigger was at work in all of it. And another characteristic of that moment was this deep silence in our hearts. We didn't bother trying to explain it away, but let ourselves be carried by the awe of it. Our hearts called it a God experience, but our mouths stayed closed out of fear of playing it down as if it was just another thing.

And I would assume there's not a human being on earth who hasn't experienced one of these moments, where your heart is overflowing with awe and wonder but you know that if you open your mouth it may threaten to explain away the whole event. And so, you just sit, and let it sink in, and ponder it, and let it carry you.

Abide in me, and I in you.
Keep your spiritual eyes open, and I'll show you things you can't see otherwise.
 

Seasons (The Seventh Day of Christmas)

For an adult, an average of 50-70 billion cells die per day.
One million red blood cells are removed and replaced each second.
It's estimated that in the whole observable universe, 275 million stars die and are born each year.

On both the macro and micro levels, things are dying and things are coming alive every moment of every second of every minute or every hour of every day.

One of the most common forms of literary expression we find in the scriptures is the symbolism of death and rebirth. It's found in the rituals of animal sacrifice, where a goat or a calf is offered to a priest for slaughter.

It's found in the gospels in the death and rebirth of Jesus.

It's found in Revelation in the death and rebirth of the heavens and the earth. 

I'm not sure that Revelation was so much a hoped for reality for the first Christians as it was a warning against the coming assault by the Roman empire, but needless to say the symbolism is there.

So, why does death and rebirth constitute so much content in the Bible as well as every other religion on the planet?

For the original audience, they believed that everything and everyone would eventually be reborn through the God of Israel. For the first reformed Jews (or Christians), that rebirth would happen through believing in Jesus, who they claimed was the son of God. Regardless of the theological peculiarities, there's something behind all this death and rebirth. 

For the Buddhist, everything starts with energy and ends in energy. It's a circle of life.
For the Hindu, death is the last gift in life. 
For the Christian, spiritual death and rebirth are accessible in this life. 

One of the most fundamental displays of the death and rebirth process happens in gardening. 

You start with a pot, which is made of clay, which is made of dirt, which is made of humus?

And what is humus?

Glad you asked.

Humus is decomposed materials (feces, leaves, wood, animal stuff, etc.)

And you take the pot, and fill it with the same thing the pot is essentially made of, right?

And then you plant seeds, which are what came out of something that died, right?

And then the seeds open up and sprout little plants.

And then the plants bear fruit.

And then the plants die.

And then where do they go? 

That's right, they become humus, which, eventually turns into another clay pot that someone down the line's gonna use to start the process all over again.

And so the process is evident all around us, from the cells in our bodies to the stars in the universe.

For the writers of the scriptures, this natural component of death and life was woven into the fabric of their belief systems. And so, it only made sense that death and life had just as much a part to play in the heavens as it did on earth. In the natural world, the authors were convinced that just as the grass died and grew back season after season and year after year, it was just as plausible that the human spirit went through constant seasons of death and rebirth. And for them, in the end, it would end in life and this life would be eternal.

For Aristotle, nature abhorred a vacuum.  Nature required every space to be filled with something, even if that something was colorless and odorless air.

For the first followers of Jesus, the concepts of death and life are what separated this king from all the other kings that kept dying off. All the caesars of Rome (even though they thought themselves to be sons of God and chosen to sit at the right hand) would die and be replaced by another. But, for some reason, for the first followers, Jesus never really died off. If anything, his death essentially created something. It spurred a movement that only gained momentum as time went by. And as they found themselves caught up in this evolving, growing movement, they realized that what Jesus had taught them was something more than they had originally thought. The momentum was gaining so much speed that they felt invincible, and they started placing royal names on Jesus. And they started worshiping Jesus and saying things like "he's the son of God." 

Something was created through the death of Jesus.
Just as new cells are created as old ones pass away.
Just as new stars are born as old stars die.
Just as new plants grow out of the death of old ones.

Foster Home (The Sixth Day of Christmas)

A few years back, I was spending time at this home that cared for aged-out foster kids. Over time, I came to know one of the residents pretty well. He was eighteen, and I thought he looked like Jimi Hendrix. I think he was trying to look like him. As I hung around him more, I learned that he'd run away from his home with his brother, but he hadn't seen his brother in a very long time. He loved to play the guitar, and so one day one of the folks from our church bought him a brand new starter guitar. 

So, he started practicing. He learned the chords. He learned how to sing and play at the same time. At first, he had a hard time keeping rhythm while he sang, after a couple months really got the hang of it. And as he developed his guitar skills, opportunities started opening up for him. He'd catch wind of an open mike happening somewhere, and though he didn't have a car, someone would offer to load up his equipment and take him to the bar to play. 

Another thing about this guy was, no one could get through to him. Me and the other folks who would visit on a regular basis were on a completely different course in life. We were middle to upper class, had jobs, and had an education. And so, the things we thought my friend should do with his life were completely different than what my friend thought he should do with his life. There were many "come to Jesus" talks about how he should dress appropriately, and how he should be applying for jobs, and how he should've been working on going to school. 

But all my friend wanted to do was write songs and play the guitar. And he kept getting in trouble at the home because he didn't want to stay there. He wanted to be free to chase after his dreams of making it big in the music industry. So he formed a band, and I had the pleasure of playing in some of his first gigs ever. I'll never forget playing in a country ballroom and he was the only black person around. While everyone was in Wranglers and Stetsons, he was wearing a leather jacket, a scarf, and dark-tinted sunglasses. He really looked like what I thought Jimi Hendrix would look like today. 

He didn't care who was in the crowd though, and it made me not care either. Once the song would start, the audience vanished. It was just him, and I, and the lyrics. He'd get lost in the lyrics, and they would take him away to a place he'd never been before. The lyrics would infuse hope and beauty into his somewhat chaotic life, and you could watch it play out on his face as he sang. 

I was scanning through some Facebook pictures yesterday and found some shots of us playing together, and it took me back. Then, I found that he'd started a page for his current band. He's been playing all over the place, at clubs, bars, and music halls, and he has a full band. 

Throughout the process of my friend chasing his dreams, there were the voices of the religious, trying to persuade him to do what they wanted him to do. There were the voices of the parental figures, trying to step in and mentor him into a life of calm monotony. There were the voices of the friends, trying to persuade him to get off his high horse and to join them in there suffering. 

And then, there was another voice. This voice wasn't audible to anyone around. This voice was calling him to a life that was a pipe dream to the people around him. But to him, this voice was the only one that mattered. It was the only voice that would satisfy his desires and calm his nerves and inspire him to dream even bigger. 

And this voice was the one that called him out of the foster home. This voice called him out of the shackles of monotony and another meaningless existence. This voice took on a role of coach and motivational speaker, and, provider. 

He ran with the voice. I haven't seen him in awhile, but I've seen pictures of his concerts. And I imagine that once people saw that he wasn't gonna do as they wished, they backed off and let him go. They let him listen to the one voice that mattered. 

And it's that voice that my friend listened to that is so hard for most of us to listen to. It's the one that calls us out of our dreary existence and invites us into the land of not knowing. And usually, that land is filled with threats. But, the irony is that land is where our passions are. And the only way to get to that land is to stay so focused on the voice that promises to get us where we're supposed to go despite the obstacles and the scary beasts that may try to hinder us. 

In Isaiah, we read about a tribe of people who knew of this voice. And they had tons of obstacles, both outside the tribe and inside. And they believed this voice was delivering them from oppression. This voice was coming from their God. And at this time, it was ridiculous to consider a God that had anything to do with humans. Yet, they believed this God was providing shelter to the homeless, food for the poor, security for orphans, and delivering them from their enemies. They believed this God had a better place for them, and to the outside world they were a threat, because the biggest threat to a world that lives in the status quo is a new idea. And so other kingdoms would try to overtake them and assimilate them into their own way of doing things, but the voice kept whispering and pulling them to a land that was made just for them. 

After many episodes of falling, going backwards, and starting over, this tribe realized finally that no matter what, they had to stick to the little whispers that led them. They had to believe that what was in store for them was better than any of them could imagine. And so, they walked across deserts and mountains, through every weather pattern imaginable to get closer to this land they were promised. 

The hard part about it is, there are gonna be tons of people who claim they hear the same voice. And they'll try to get you to assimilate into what they think the voice is telling them to do. But, no one hears the voice in the same way. The voice says something different to each person. It's a cruel reality to watch someone deny the voice of adventure in their own life to follow the voice of another, but it's happening all around us. If we're not careful, it'll happen to us. 

We each have our own land to arrive at, not somebody else's. When we forsake our own for the false promises of another, we lose passion. We lose our sense of contribution to this world, and spend our time trying to make the best out of situations and jobs and relationships we were never intended to be a part of. And it kills us, because we still hear the echoes of the voice that use to be so familiar and so close to our hearts. And we drudge. The best we can do is put one lousy foot in front of the other, and hope things get better without our having to repent. 

The same voice that called my friend out of that foster home and into the world of music is the same voice that called that tribe of nomads into a land that was "flowing with milk and honey" is the same voice that calls me to write this very morning is the same voice that's been whispering at you every day telling you something's gotta change if you ever want to see the land that's promised ya'.

Applying Human Emotions to God (The Fifth Day of Christmas)

In ancient biblical cultures, it was common for people to attribute human emotions to the gods. For example, if drought came, then people would attribute the human emotion of anger to the god that ruled over the harvest. If rains came, then the human emotion of compassion would be attributed to the same god.

But, this concept isn't so ancient as I'd like to think.

Just a couple years ago, the governor of Texas called all Texans to pray for rain due to a severe drought that was costing millions to the Texas economy.

The concept of the gods being angry isn't as archaic as we'd like it to be.

Throughout the Hebrew scriptures, we see examples of people attributing these emotions to the God of Israel:

1And you will say in that day, "I thank you, GOD. You were angry but your anger wasn't forever. You withdrew your anger and moved in and comforted me.  2"Yes, indeed--God is my salvation. I trust, I won't be afraid. GOD-yes GOD!-is my strength and song, best of all, my salvation!" 3Joyfully you'll pull up buckets of water from the wells of salvation.  4And as you do it, you'll say, "Give thanks to GOD. Call out his name. Ask him anything! Shout to the nations, tell them what he's done, spread the news of his great reputation! 5"Sing praise-songs to GOD. He's done it all! Let the whole earth know what he's done!  6Raise the roof! Sing your hearts out, O Zion! The Greatest lives among you: The Holy of Israel."  Isaiah 12:1-6

But there's a difference between now and then, isn't there? Back then, people were trying to make sense of natural forces that they had no control over. And so, it was a very cultural thing to apply these emotions to a deity - a power that could comfort or oppress.

And I remember my darkest days. With the combination of alcohol and a concept of an angry God, my days were miserably painted with a black brush, every moment trying to invoke this God to stop being angry about the way I was living. The daily routine consisted of sacrificially waking up early in the morning, asking forgiveness for the previous days' sins, memorizing a passage of scripture, and praying for as many people I could think of. But, what was the motivation behind it all?

An attempt to provoke God to bring rain to my drought. Why? Because obviously my actions had caused this God to withhold nourishment from my dry spirit.

What I experienced though wasn't unique.

The more I talk to people about their conceptions of God, the more I find out that this archaic expression of attributing human emotions to this very non-human force is a very current practice. All the way from the atheist who's still being bothered by the ideas of his Catholic upbringing to the practicing Christian who still thinks that her prayers are the motivation of God's good graces.

Now, I'm mainly writing to those who find their instructions for living in the Bible. It seems that there's too many people who are clinging onto expressions that weren't meant to be clung on to - namely, that God is angry (or happy), for that matter.

For the earliest cultures that we've found evidence for, God was known to be a power - an underlying pattern or energy - that gave order to nature. Although the patterns could be seen (like, the relationship between the moon's position and the changing tides), there was always a question mark. That question mark was placed at the beginning. No one could explain why the changing tides resulted from the moon being in a different position.

So, the question mark was always readily supplanted with the idea of a divine force behind nature. And, as cultures progressed, they found they could make more sense of this divine force by applying human characteristics to it. It felt more relational.

Have you ever talked to someone about their dog, and you couldn't help but think, "Does this person think this dog is a human?" And this question raises in your mind because you know dogs don't talk in human voices. They may talk in doggy voices, but we don't know what they're saying (not yet at least).

Somehow, throughout the millennia, the concept that God is angry has crossed over cultures, religions, and societies. It's woven itself into the thinking of millions of people, religious or not. But, I'm writing to the religious.

How can one fully experience Christmas if one thinks God is angry at her?
How can one pray if one thinks God is angry at him?
How can one function if she thinks God is angry with her?
How can one see the beauty in life if he thinks God is angry with him?

With all the knowledge, history, science, biblical scholarship, and anthropological data we have from these ancient biblical cultures, there's no excuse to still be thinking that this God is on the level of human anger or human happiness.

Just like it was in the oldest of cultures, this God was linked to order, power, and the things we couldn't explain. In a way, this God was the mystery behind a black hole and/or the mystery behind gravity. This God was the answer to the age old riddle of "what created the first burst of energy to create what we like to call the Big Bang."

So, rather than applying a happiness or an anger to this God, I find comfort in having a deep sense of order and the sense that "if the lilies of the field are okay, along with the birds of the air, then I'm okay too."

There are good things that come out of applying human characteristics to God, as well as bad things.

The good things: 
It feels relational.
It gives one a sense of purpose in trying to make this God happy (just like one would attempt to make a sick friend or a parent happy).
It gives one a sense of the need for repentance if they feel they aren't in line with what this God wants (just like one would do if they stepped on the toes of a neighbor, they might seek out a way to reconcile with that neighbor).

The bad things:
Concepts like "being out of relationship" start making their mark with this God.
The sense of purpose can be lost if one doesn't feel that they are pleasing this God enough.
One can possibly feel they are repenting and changing their ways, but still not find the relationship with God they were told was possible.
Once human emotions start being applied to the divine, God can become an exclusive deity, only for those who are "good people."

And so, for my Bible reading friends/Jesus followers, we have no excuse for taking what we read in the scriptures (the old testament through Jesus), and still holding onto this idea that God is angry or happy. We're supposed to believe that Jesus showed us a glimpse of what God is like, but most of what was written about Jesus were words that were strategically placed on the lips of Jesus by people who wanted Jesus to play a certain part.

My point of saying all this is, there is an order, a pattern, an energy that we're involved in every moment. And this order is what the ancients called God. The word used in extra-biblical sources to define this power was "wisdom," or, "In the beginning, wisdom created the heavens and the earth . . . " God was never supposed to be this divine, untouchable figure that only the select few could access.

God, or wisdom, represented the knowledge or the power behind the things that humans couldn't explain. And, everyone had access or the ability to seek out that knowledge. Once we put labels like happy or sad and saved or unsaved on this God, we take the original meaning and turn it into the God club where a paid membership is required.

This God, just like in the ancient cultures, has to be accessible to "any old dummy," as my friend Derek says. If not, then chances are that we've boxed this God in with certain religious/political/societal expectations aka "pray for rain."

This God is much bigger than the emotions we like to place on it. This God is much bigger than the sentimental mush we like to put in songs about it. This God is about creating life and energizing the deadness in this world. And when we seek out this God, what we're really seeking out is wisdom. We're seeking out the knowledge of how to both contribute the most to this world and to get the most out of it.

So, here's my advice to the non-religious. When you seek wisdom, you will find it. When you knock on the door of wisdom, it shall be opened.

For the Christian: we adhere to the teachings of Jesus, so that is our route to wisdom. When we do the things that Jesus laid out and did himself, we find what we're looking for - wisdom.

When both the religious and non-religious are seeking out wisdom, the two roads converge and we find that we're no longer trying to appease an angry God, but we feel a deeper sense that God is sustaining order and peace and harmony in all of creation, and we get to be a part of it. We get to participate in the creative energy of this God, and we find that "all these things are being added unto us."

The Great Power and The Great Spirit (Genesis 1)

In an attempt to describe how everything around them came to be, the earliest cultures of the world shared poetic stories similar to this one:

Billions of years ago, a great power in the universe created the the sky above our heads and earth below our feet. There was nothing in the universe except a watery darkness. The Great Power had a Great Spirit that helped it, and the Spirit flew over all the waters. The Great Power said to the Spirit: "Turn on the lights." And the lights turned on. The Great Power liked the light because it took away the darkness and made it easier to see what the Great Power was doing. The Great Power gave light the name "day." And to the darnkness, the Great Power gave the name "night." This all happened on the first day of the Great Power's creation plan.

Then the Great Power told the Great Spirit, "We need to build a home, so separate some of the water from the rest." And the Great Spirit created a gap between the two water masses. The Great Power called the gap between the waters the "heavens." And this all happened on the second day of the Great Power's creation plan.

Then the Great Power told the Great Spirit, "Put all the waters below the heavens into one bowl. and let some of it dry up." When some of the water dried up, rocky textures began to develop, and the Great Power called this "land." The Great Power named the waters that didn't dry up "seas." Then the Great Power told the Great Spirit, "Mix together the water and the land to create plants, and make sure they can reproduce themselves as well as create other kinds of plants." And after the Great Spirit mixed the seas and land together, plants started showing up everywhere. The Great Power loved what it saw, and this all happened on the third day of Great Power's creation plan.

Then the Great Power told the Great Spirit, "Throw some lights into the heavens so we can tell between day and night, and let them tell us when the earth is changing." And so the Great Spirit made two lights - one to control the day and one to control the night. The Great Spirit also threw into the heavens uncountable amounts of different lights, and the Great Power named them "stars." The Great Power loved what became of the heavens, the day, and the night, and this all happened on the forth day of the creation plan.

Then the Great Power said to the Great Spirit, "Fill the seas and the skies with creatures like you and me." And the Great Spirit created the sea monsters and every creature that lives in the sea. It also created every bird that flies in the air. And the Great Power loved what it saw. And the Great Power spoke to the fish and birds, "Produce more of yourselves and different kinds of yourselves. Fill every bit of water and every bit of sky with yourselves." This all happened on the fifth day of the Great Power's creation plan.

Then the Great Power told the Great Spirit, "Create living creatures that live on land, and let them evolve into different kinds of themselves." And the Great Spirit created the beasts of the earth and the cattle, and all the serpents and things that crawl on the ground. The Great Power like what it saw.

Then the Great Power told the Great Spirit, "Lets make a creature that's just like us. They'll talk to each other just like we do. They'll create just like we do. Let them tell the fish and the birds and the beasts what to do for now on." And so the Great Spirit created two more kinds of living creatures very similar to each other, and very similar to the Great Power and Great Spirit. The Great Power called one male and the other female, and told them, "Reproduce yourselves and fill the earth, and produce different kinds of yourself. Tell every living creature on the earth and in the seas what to do because you're in charge of them. Also, use all the plants and trees to feed yourselves and the other living creatures, for they are what produce life for the living creatures." And the Great Power loved what it saw, and this all happened on the sixth day of the creation plan.