Theology for the Masses

jr. January 15th, 2008

May I present part 2 of my pictoral tour of the Creation Museum! You’ll remember that we left last time secure in the fact that we can trust God’s Word ™ over the evil, corruptive forces of Human Reason. We saw how God’s Word ™ had been preserved throughout the centuries, despite the fact that evil persons such as Jews and Catholics had tried to corrupt it. And so now we turn to the modern incarnation of this (apparently) ancient war: the defense of Creationism in the face of Darwin’s bastard step-children, the evil Evolutionists.

The First Four Days (In the Blink of an Eye)

The couple of rooms are pretty much what we expected. We were treated to “scientific” Old-Earth “theories” based on Human Reason (read: foolish atheism) claiming that Creation is more than 6,000 years old. We saw various computer models illustrating how Young Earth science made better use of the available evidence, and how (surprise!) the Museum’s understanding of this evidence is perfectly in line with God’s Word. (It’s so comforting to know someone has it all figured out!) And at one of the unfinished displays, we were treated to an example of the Museum’s ever-vigilant dedication to undermining the rhetoric of Human Reason.

Clever, no?

Oh, and in case you were wondering (I know I was), the reason you should care about this is that believing in an Old Earth undermines all Christian doctrine and theology. Apparently unless you believe that Genesis 1-11 is literal, historical fact, then you are an evil, pagan.

Day Six (because who really cares about plants and birds? no one. that’s who.)

Whew… two whole rooms without people? It was almost getting to be too much! Fortunately, by the time we got through the second room, we were treated to a documentary film that chronicled all six days of creation in a relatively short time period (even shorter than Six Days! man, these Museum people are GOOD!). Once we’d been properly prepared, we were shown into the Garden of Eden.

I learned so much in this room! Did you know that all animals were vegetarians before the Fall? True story.

Who’s going to blame this guy for loving pineapple? Not me, that’s for sure.

They were so tame you could feed them!!

Did you know that no animals or plants were toxic or venomous before the Fall? TRUE STORY. Did you know that before the Fall, Eve never looked Adam in the eye!?! TRUE STORY! Don’t believe me? Not only was it in the video we watched; I got photographs!

Let’s go to the film:

Note Adam’s strong, upward gaze. He’s in control here, folks!

Oh Eve! You’re so demure and feminine! Oh, by the way, while you were off frolicking, the Outdated Stereotype store phoned; apparently your model is being recalled.

Dinosaurs in the garden? That you can FEED WITH YOUR HANDS?!? I know, I know. You’re thinking, “This is too good to be true!”

Oh, and alas, you were right. All good things must end. And so we come to the one scene where Eve finally looks Adam in the eye: when she offers him grapes. Or a pomegranate. Or something. I always thought it was an Apple.

The Devil Made Me Do It (Sin and Fallout)

Surprisingly, the serpent (who was Satan) did not have legs. Before or after the Fall. I was disappointed. So, apparently Adam and Eve ate the fruit, got kicked out of the Garden and God showed them how to make animal sacrifices. I have this awesome picture of Adam and Eve wearing deer skins and standing behind altar on which are lying the two slain deer, fully skinned. I can’t find the pic, but I’ll keep looking. Consider the implications - God skinned these two deer and made Adam and Eve wear the skins, probably while the poor things were still dying. That is awesome because little kids come see this museum. Oh, and in case you were wondering, the theory that Genesis 3’s claim that God made them clothes of skin is actually God showing them how to sacrifice is actually rabbinic oral tradition. Yes, the same Oral Tradition that was condemned as evil about 4 rooms ago. What’s that? No, that’s not a contradictory display. You can only find something contradictory if you’re using Human Reason, and we’re not doing anything even remotely resembling something reasonable here at the Museum.

And I’m sure you were wondering, but the animal sacrifices were insufficient because humans and animals are unrelated. This was the one and only place in the entire museum I found them giving explicit reasons that Evolution allegedly undermines Christian doctrine. Apparently, if evolution is true, then we can all just do animal sacrifices. Somehow. But since the bible says that animal sacrifices weren’t sufficient (which, to their credit, it actually does, in Hebrews - though of course they don’t bother with such things as citing references) then apparently evolution can’t be true. Now, can someone please tell me where the Bible ever gives “we’re not related” as a reason animal sacrifice isn’t valid?!?!

Anyway, now we move onto the hall of Sin. This is the room I described from last post with the gray walls and the black-and-white photos featuring the consequences of sin. They were (in order): An African kid starving, A Wolf eating raw meat and looking menacingly at the camera/audience, A mushroom cloud, Bones from the Holocaust, A Woman screaming as she gives birth, A Tornado, Heroin (complete with a spoon and needle, WTF? exactly how educational is this museum supposed to be?! here kid, THIS IS HOW YOU FREAKING TAKE HEROIN!)* and A Graveyard.

Sin is bad. And don’t forget that it’s all because you forgot to listen to God’s Word and started thinking for yourself. Human Reason will pump you full of drugs, genocide you with radiation, make you have babies and take you to Kansas where a wolf will eat your heart while you starve to death.

Also, since you were curious, it was at this point that animals started eating meat and being venomous. Apparently God had build the potential for these things into various animals, but did not reveal them until after the Fall. In a rare fit of exegetical fantasy, the Museum presents Isaiah 11:6-9 (which is an apocalyptic passage) as proof of this clearly sound theory. I find it fascinating that this idea is so completely insane that even Museum realized that no one would believe this unless they could find a Bible verse to throw at it. Fortunately, we don’t need to pay attention to context when citing. Context sounds a little too much like Human Reason for our tastes. God’s Word is God’s Word! We don’t need no context!

What could possibly be next? Oh, we haven’t talked about incest yet!

The Fallen Community

Note in this picture (of Cain, Abel, Adam and Eve), that Adam and Abel are inside the wall, while Cain and Eve (who is pregnant, but not with Seth!) are in their appropriate positions outside the wall.

Also note that Mike’s arm is outside the community.

So, Cain kills Abel (who was apparently the first prophet, more rabbinic Oral Tradition!) and then takes his sister as a wife. But isn’t that incest? Isn’t that something the Bible forbids?! Oh silly. Genetic drift hadn’t happened yet, and God’s Laws are pragmatic, not moral. So calm down. Plus, you’re gay. What’s that? Oh, well on a display called “Who did Cain Marry?”, we find this statement (reproduced verbatim):

“Since God is the One who defined marriage in the first place, God’s Word is the only standard for defining proper marriage. People who do not accept the Bible as their absolute authority have no basis for condemning someone like Cain for marrying his sister.”

Were you paying attention? If you don’t conform to our white-middle-class-fundamentalist view ::ahem:: we mean, our biblical view of marriage, then you don’t have any room to talk. So take your liberal Reason and go home.

The Flood was a cool display. Apparently Noah hired a bunch of guys to help him build the ark, but they all thought he was crazy. We know this because the displays were animatronic and talked. Yeah, they were that creepy. Some pictures:

They actually showed all the people dying. Again, I’m impressed. There are babies on that rock. At least they’re not shying away from the implications. Of course, these are also all pagan evolutionists, so… well… they probably deserved to die in the first place. I mean, they helped Noah build the ark. So they don’t have an excuse.

Sadly, not life-sized. Even sadder, not biblically accurate. Apparently the biblical specifications don’t build something that would actually float. So a Navy simulator came up with this version. However, and we would like to make this very clear: using a Navy simulator to fix something in the Bible is not using Human Reason to augment God’s Word. What we at the Museum are doing here is completely different from what we’re criticizing everywhere else in the Museum. Somehow.

Fun fact: because we can’t account for how rapidly species have changed after the flood, we are going to tell you that “these differences suggest God provided organisms with special tools to change rapidly.” No word on what those special tools were, but my guess is Craftsman. Also, if you were curious how the various animals got to the different continents, it turns out that they used rafts made of dead trees (killed in the flood) that float on the ocean currents. No, I am not making this up. The Museum people made it up. And they have a video simulation to prove it:

The Museum concludes with videos of college students who don’t believe in God. These are the victims of the Enemy. Given that the Museum’s primary demographics are Elderly persons and parents with young children, this is a brilliant piece of propaganda to encourage giving. The Elderly can fight against the ever-more secular Universities to get us back to those mythic “good ole days” and parents with young children can fix the problem before their kids get there. The final station is a well-produced, well-acted and (relatively) well-written 20-minute video gospel presentation. At the beginning, a guy compares a T-Rex tooth to the Bible, apparently because both are old and cool. Other than this, nothing from the Museum’s previous 2.5 hour tour appears or is referenced in the video. Somehow this is meant to prove that the Gospel is dependent on a literal reading of Genesis 1-11.

Oh Those Terrible Lizards!

I was getting pissed - we’d gone through the whole museum with almost no reference to Dinosaurs! Fear not! They had their own separate exhibit, complete with Job quotations and models!

A great question! And one we were exited to have answered.

The Leviathan and Behemoth in Job were both dinosaurs. Yes, really. Go ahead and go read their descriptions in Job 40-41. Yeah. They could breath fire (at least Leviathan could). Don’t you know that’s where dragon legends came from? No, we’re not joking. Why are you laughing? I mean… consider knights…

See?! Knights in the middle ages hunted dragons to extinction. We even watched a 10 minute video (of which I purchased a copy) explaining all of this in lucid, rational terms. Why are you laughing?

And with that, we left. We managed to doge most of the museum people, who all wanted to know what we thought. I’m sure they thought those were tears of joy.

• Creationism
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tom December 22nd, 2007

When I first began reading feminist theology, Schusseler-Fiorenza and Welch drew my attention to how language, particularly patriarchal language, shapes not only abstract theological concepts, but also the everyday, practical matters of the Christian life. Among other things, we assume male dominance in the masculine pronouns we use for God, even though we classically maintain God is neither He nor She, but Spirit.

Though I could continue to criticize the church’s use of vocabulary in the oppression of certain peoples, the ecclesiastical rhetoric I want to appraise presently is the church’s employment of the vocabulary of the Empire – particularly its economic verbage.

I often hear Christians refer to “investing” in either non-believers or people whom they are mentoring in the faith. The language of investment is procured, obviously, from the economic world referring to putting money to use in order to gain a potentially profitable return. That is, one invests in order to gain a return.

But is the return what Christian friendship is really about? It is supposed to be what I can gain from my time and effort spilled into another person? When we “invest” in a non-Christian, what we often mean is that we spend time with them in order to make them Christian! When we “invest” in a disciple, we mean we spend time with them in order to elicit the return of sanctification!

But is the return at the heart of Christianity? Is my primary agenda in befriending a non-Christian that they might buy into my product? Does this language not dehumanize and objectify our “investment”? Does this language not communicate that this whole Christianity thing is about what I can profit, or God can yield? Being friends with people outside the Christian faith is not about investment, it is about being genuine friends! Genuine friendship, for sure, involves demonstrating God’s love to the other. But this demonstration of love is not artificial and contrived; it is not about reciprocation or return. Consider my friendship with JR.

I would never say of JR that I am “investing” in him. That would entail certain things which are not inherent in sincere friendship. It would imply that I deem him spiritually below me or that he needs me in his life to be spiritually fruitful. It also implies that my agenda is to correct his spiritual imperfections, and because of my investment, I expect that he will provide a certain return. In the end, the language of investment doesn’t appear to be a natural part of genuine friendship.

But, in the end, this is not even the most dangerous aspect of investment rhetoric.

For me, the most dangerous part of the church’s employment of economic language is that we have taken the language of America’s dominant deity (economics, consumerism, materialism), and leaving it unchanged and unchallenged, we have taken it into our communities like a long lost brother. But as long as the economic rhetoric involved in America’s one true religion is warmly accepted by the church, we will never be able to counter the influence of capitalism, consumerism, materialism, or just plain-ole Mammon in our lives.

Now from where I sit, it appears we have two options. First, the church can completely rid itself of economic language. We can completely drop the language like a deflated stock. No more language of investment or any other kind of rhetoric that smacks of capitalism.

The second option, and one that requires a bit more creativity, is to continue to use economic language, but subvert it by investing it with distinctly Christian meaning. This option falls in line a bit more with what we see in the New Testament. The Gk. word we translate “fellowship” often referred to partnership in business agendas in the first century. Also, and more obvious, the word we translate “redeem” means to “buy back.” It too is an overtly economic word.

I like this second option the best, but there are two difficulties with it.

First, are we creative enough, or even powerful enough, to change the way Christian people generally employ economic rhetoric? Like Wal-Mart in a small town, economic language dominates our American landscape. Completely subverting it and changing it is a nearly impossible task. We may try, but in the end, our use of language is merely a text which is interpreted and misinterpreted by our hearers. Just because I invest economic rhetoric with new meaning doesn’t mean my hearers will observe that investment.

Second, when the New Testament writers reinvested economic language with Christian meaning, they were not using the language of the dominant deity of the Roman Empire. So, even assuming our hearers will understand our new meaning, might we be safer in simply abandoning the language altogether?

So, that’s as far as my thoughts have taken me on this topic thus far. I’m looking for some help getting past this roadblock. What do you think? The bottom line is that Jesus did not heal people for his own glory, and he even healed some who never even thanked him or his Father. It doesn’t seem like his investment in people was only about what he or his religion can get out of it. What about just showing people the love of God for its own sake?

• Culture , Economics , Politics
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tom October 2nd, 2007

A Very Brief Background to Artemis:

The Greek/Roman female deity Artemis/Diana had a twin brother named Apollo. When her mother went into labor, Artemis came out of the womb first. Having preceded Apollo, many female worshipers considered her superior to Apollo because it symbolized the female preceding the male and therefore being superior. After she was born, while her mother was giving birth to her brother, Artemis assisted her mother across a river where she helped her mother give birth. This act made her, in the eyes of the women who followed her, the goddess of protection during childbearing. The problem, however, lied in that she was prone to killing a woman in labor just for the fun of it. This caused women not only to need her assistance, but also to fear her assistance.

Artemis was sort of a Feminist deity of the Greco-Roman world – especially Ephesus, Timothy’s location when Paul wrote to him (as her temple was in Ephesus). Women rallied around here for strength and escape from male oppression, and she gave them an avenue of resistance in a patriarchal culture.

I Timothy 2

As the previous word study from my last post suggests, the problem in the church did not lie in the fact that the women were preaching or having authority, but rather, they were enacting violence (probably through sermonic rhetoric) against the men in their congregations. Paul’s remarks do not forbid a woman “to teach or have authority”, but rather the Gk. word usage and construction of the sentence suggests he is forbidding women to “teach in such a way that oppresses men.” (my own paraphrase)

The Artemis Cult gives us the historical background to understand how this authoritative feminism might have arisen in their midst, and it gives us clear understanding of Paul’s subsequent response. The Ephesian women, through their cultural assumption of female superiority derived from Artemis, oppressed the men in their congregation. Paul responds with some statements regarding Adam and Eve – statements which have been taken to mean male leadership and female subordination. He says,

“For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner.”

Adam and Eve

Paul gives 2 reasons women shouldn’t dominate men through their sermonic rhetoric:

1. Adam was created first and Eve was created second
2. Eve was deceived while Adam wasn’t

Traditionally these two statements have been interpreted to eliminate the possibility of women becoming preachers or pastors. It has been suggested by many that 1. Men are superior to women because God created them first. And 2. Men are superior to women because women are easily deceived and men are intellectually superior.

These statements fall apart when we examine them in light of the Artemis Cult.

How do these 2 reasons fit into the Artemis hypothesis?

First, by maintaining that Adam was the first one created and Eve the second, Paul is not establishing patriarchy based on the order of creation as most biblical Complementarians assume. Rather, Paul is answering the objection of the Artemis Cult. The Artemis Cult assumed female superiority based on the fact that Artemis preceded here male counterpart Apollo. Paul, reorienting the mythology by which these people have ordered their lives, introduces Hebraic narrative as a way of subverting the female dominance. In other words: Paul counters Artemis with Adam, suggesting a new way of viewing the created order and power. He is not establishing male dominance so much as he is disestablishing female dominance. He’s saying, “Female superiority founded upon the Artemis philosophy does not work in this new community because in the new community, founded upon Hebraic narratives of Genesis 1, the male came first. Thus, your premise is really no foundation for the way you ladies are acting.”

Second, he suggests, female superiority in teaching roles cannot be assumed either. After all, it was Eve who was deceived, not Adam. (Where Paul gets this from Genesis I do not know.) The ultimate failure of your first mother is no basis for establishing female dominance – it simply doesn’t work. This explanation also gives us reasons as to why this theology is so foreign to the New Testament outside of this passage. In every other instance Paul blames the sin on Adam (Romans 5). Here, however, Eve is blamed for the Fall. Why the theological shift? Actually, there isn’t a theological shift. Paul is simply arguing that their mother Eve does not provide them with opportunity for female dominance. He is simply trying to get his point across.

Related to this second point, Eve’s deception was probably connected to Adam’s lack of teaching. That is, interpreters throughout the ages have read into the Genesis text that the serpent deceived Eve easily because Adam did a bad job of teaching. Though I have some questions about this interpretation, I do think it can work with my I Timothy 2 interpretation. All a woman in the Artemis cult needed to take leadership was an ecstatic experience. Discipleship was not a prerequisite. However, Paul will not have them transfer this assumption into the ecclesiastical community. Discipleship is essential, and one cannot teach if they have not undergone long term discipleship. The church has stricter standards than the pagan cults did.

In the end, whether this text was written by Paul or one of his disciples, we need to understand that this is not a proof-text for male dominance or solely male leadership in the ecclesiastical arena. Yes, this text IS bringing women down. However, it is not bringing them down from oppression to further oppression; it is bringing them down from a place of dominance to a place of equality with men.

Paul does not assume a gender based hierarchy in this text – or any other for that matter. I will argue over the next few weeks (months?) from each of Paul’s male/female relation texts that this is the case.

*I promised in my last post to comment on the ‘saved through childbearing’ aspect of this text. I would have done it in this post, but that would have made this post so long no one would want to read it. I am working on it, and it will be my next post.

• Toward an Egalitarian Ecclesia , Women in Christianity
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