WOMEN, MEN AND JESUS

It seems that lately we are being regularly subjected to reports of sexual misbehavior of prominent men.  Women are becoming more and more open to relating tales of sexual abuse by men, especially those in authority or power over them (These are only the latest.):

            A network executive.

      
            A network commentator - one who has often spoken with "indignation" of the misbehavior of others.

            A beloved comedian - one who has in the past been held up as an example of "family values."

            A movie mogul.

            The President of the United States - who has boasted of sexually assaulting women and calls it simply "locker room talk."

            And, of course, various lesser personalities - politicians, preachers, coaches.

Sadly, while women are seemingly becoming bolder and more open to tell - even to bring lawsuits - this masculine behavior itself is nothing new.  I can remember hearing boasts from my high school acquaintances and fellow office workers. We tend to accept this behavior as "just the way things are."

But while this may be "the way things are," it's not the way things should be!  And when it gets close to home, when we hear or read reports even from those women dear to us, then perhaps it's time for us men to examine our own attitudes as well as our behavior toward the "opposite sex." Are we behaving as though we lived in a patriarchal society. Do we condescend? Do we regard women as somehow simply there for our own pleasure and convenience? How should we behave toward women? What is the proper Christian view on a man's treatment of women?

I've been leading two Bible studies at our church.  One is a study of the family in the Book of Genesis, which I've entitled, "Dysfunctional Family Values."  We've been looking at man/woman and family relationships in this book and find the characters just as broken as those of today.  I've studied and taught this book before, but this time I was hit with the frequency of the appearance of tragic (abused?) female figures:

            Hagar, the Egyptian slave girl, forced to have sex with the aged Abraham and to become the "surrogate mother" of his child, only to be rejected and driven away into the desert.

            Leah, the unattractive older sister forced unloved into a polygamous relationship.

            Dinah, the 11th of 13 siblings and only girl. Raped and then given in marriage (apparently without her consent) by her brothers who then slaughter her husband and all his family.

            Tamar, who lost two husbands and then resorted to prostitution, and after being impregnated by her own father-in-law, threatened with death for becoming pregnant.

And again we tend to accept these stories as "just the way things are."  After all, the society of those days was patriarchal.

But my other Bible study is in the Gospel of John.  It is here we find the One who treats women with respect and dignity, at times revealing truths about Himself to them that He had not even revealed to the 12 men in His inner circle:

            The Samaritan woman he meets at the well - a woman considered by Jews as of an inferior race and a false religion - a woman who had apparently been bounced from one man to the next and was currently on her sixth.  Besides breaking tradition by talking to her, Jesus asks to drink from her water jar, breaking taboo after taboo.  It is to this woman he reveals that the worship of God is a spiritual matter not to be confined to a particular location. And He told her that God was seeking such worshippers. God was seeking her!

            The woman caught in adultery, brought to Jesus as a test case. After silencing and sending off her accusers ("Let the one without sin cast the first stone.") He turns to her and asks "Where are your accusers?" and sends her off with assurance that He does not accuse her.

            Mary and Martha whose brother Lazarus, Jesus raises from the dead. It is to Martha he makes the amazing claim, "I am the Resurrection and the life; the one who believes in me will live even if she dies..." Then he personalizes it with, "Do you believe this?"

            Later it is Martha's sister Mary who anoints His feet with expensive perfume. And Jesus defends her action to Judas and the others.

            His own mother Mary, for whom He takes concern even while dying on the cross.

            And, of course, Mary Magdalene, the first person to whom he appeared after his resurrection in a tender moving scene.

I don't believe we men need a book or a list of rules telling us how to relate to women. I believe we simply need to follow Jesus' example, to ask, "What would Jesus do?" - and then do it!

FANTASYLAND

Kurt Andersen, the author of Fantasyland - How American Went Haywire appears to believe he's put his finger on why we in America think and behave the strange way we do.  When I first started reading the book, however, I had mixed feelings.  While I felt that this book brought out some accurate analyses of American culture, I also felt like I was sitting around with an old curmudgeon who was mainly complaining about America's slippery slide.  I felt that the book would be best subtitled, "A Cynic's Guide to American History."  However, as I continued I found it a fascinating read and felt compelled to carry on through its 400 plus pages.

Kurt Andersen has impressive credentials:  a novelist, a contributor to The New York Times and Vanity Fair, a host on Public Radio and many others.  He is well-known as a cultural critic.  Andersen claims somewhere to be an agnostic and has a low view of Christianity, which he feels is based on fantasy.  This, I feel, is actually rather encouraging, because if a book such as this were written by a Christian, it would probably be ignored by most, except for the Pat Robertson types.

The thesis of the book is pretty clear and is brought out in the title:  we in America live in a fantasy world and have been moving in that direction since the beginning.  Interestingly, though our modern situation with a president who treats his office as that of a reality show host and who appears to have little understanding of truth is the epitome of "fantasyland," this is not where the author begins.  In fact, he lets us know that he began his studies and writing long before the Trump era.

He credits (or blames) the beginnings of this slide with Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation (hence the subtitle "a 500 year history").  By making "belief in the Bible's supernatural stories, especially those concerning Jesus ... the only prerequisite for being a good Christian," Luther started people on a course of believing whatever they chose to.  "The footings for Fantasyland had been cast." (page 17)

The settlers of America come next; they are of two kinds:  the gold-seekers and the heaven-on-earth-seekers, i.e. the Puritans.  Both believed a fantasy; one group believed the fantasy that wealth for the pickings was to be found in America; the other that some sort of Millennial Kingdom could be built here.  And both were wrong.

And so we continue through the history of our nation.  Credit is given to those of our Founding Fathers who were "reality based," such as Franklin, Washington and Jefferson. The Enlightenment is not seen as a step in the right direction; rather it "gave license to the freedom of all thought ... the absurd and untrue, as well as, the sensible and true:"  The Great Awakening religious revival is a step backward into fantasy and led to even greater fantasies, such as Mormonism and the other weird religious movements of the early 19th century.

And on it goes from P. T. Barnum and the snake-oil salesmen to the California gold rush and on into the 20th century, the Fundamentalist movement and so on.  The hippy movement.  Always underlying much of his history are his digs at the "fantasies" of Christianity.  It's a discouraging history.  The red scare.  The plethora of conspiracy theories.  The economic bubbles.  Even liberal intellectuals with their post-modernism making truth optional and personal, subjective rather than objective.

Then there are the Hollywood versions of Fantasyland:  Disneyland and all its imitators.  The X-files.  Though these make no claims to reality, we are less and less able to tell where reality leaves off and fantasy begins.

And we finally end up in Trump's America, dominated by "alternative facts" and "fake news" and Fox News.  An America where "truthiness" is more pleasing than truth.

So how do we Christians take this book?  I suppose many, even most of my fellow believers will either ignore this book, write it off as the rantings of an agnostic curmudgeon or resent it as one more attack on the faith.  For sure, like many unbelievers, Andersen at times shows little knowledge of the Christianity he attacks.  And yes, he himself appears to have his own fantasy bubble.  As one reviewer said, he suffers, in short, from "the fantasy of the intellectual that of all the rival systems competing for our attention, his alone is reality-based."  (James Bowman in The Weekly Standard quoted in The Week, 9/22/17).

And yet I believe that this is an important book for any Christian communicator, for a number of reasons, the first being, as Robert Burns said long ago, "to see oursels as others see us."  And this should lead to confession of our complicity in the decline in thinking in America.  Andersen sees any belief in the supernatural as fantasy thinking and while we may not be able to prove him wrong to his satisfaction, we can at least attempt to rid ourselves of the fantasies that cling to us: imaginary miracles, supposed signs of the second coming, reading all disasters as signs of God's judgment, the prosperity gospel, seeking solutions to our moral problems in immoral political leaders.  At times (most times?) we who consider ourselves orthodox appear just as loony as the rest.

Also - though unwittingly - Andersen's book illustrates some truths that are essential to our understanding of the  faith:  the doctrine of original sin ("the only doctrine of Christianity that is empirically verifiable."), as well as humankind's propensity toward religious and superstitious error.  Or as the Apostle Paul said, "they (humankind) became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened."  (Romans 1:21)

And this book teaches us the danger of uncritical thinking.  Of all people, we who are committed to the One who claimed to be the Truth, should also be committed to discerning the truth in every claim and to not be eager to follow the path to Fantasyland.

PROPHETS AND KINGS

When I first read the story of Micaiah and Ahab in the Bible many years ago, I could hardly believe what I was reading - not because it sounded too fantastic or unbelievable, but because it made me laugh.  Would God record a story so hilarious in His Word?  Apparently so.

Micaiah the prophet is only mentioned in one story in the Old Testament, but for some reason his story is told twice.  It's recorded in First Kings, chapter 22, verses 1-28 and in Second Chronicles, chapter 18, verses 1-27.  Both versions are essentially the same, with small variations in the details.  Read them both.

Though I still enjoy this story as a favorite, still see the humor and irony in it, and still see its relevance, I have found it even more relevant to our present situation in America.  If the reader will bear with me I'll try to tell it in my own words.

The nation of Israel had been divided into two separate kingdoms, both populated by the LORD's covenant people.  The northern kingdom still bore the name Israel, but had begun with an apostate religion, while the southern kingdom named Judah, had held on to the worship of the LORD, at least outwardly.  As our story begins, the kings of the two kingdoms had come together for some kind of conference, Ahab of Israel and Jehoshaphat of Judah.  We are told elsewhere something of what these two kings were like.

"Indeed there never was anyone like Ahab who sold himself to do evil in the sight of the LORD, at the instigation of his wife Jezebel.  He acted very abominably in chasing after idols ..." (1 Kings 21:25, 26)

"Jehoshaphat ... walked in all the way of his father Asa and did not turn aside from it, doing what was right in the sight of the LORD." (1 Kings 22:42, 43)

Though these two were clearly poles apart in their morals and religious beliefs their kingdoms had been united by the marriage of Jehoshaphat's son with Ahab's daughter.

Anyway at this conference, Ahab made a huge feast at which he attempted to persuade Jehoshaphat to unite with him to go to war with Aram (present day Syria) at a place called Ramoth-Gilead.  Jehoshaphat was in agreement.  "I'm with you; my people are as your people."  But Jehoshaphat wasn't quite ready; he said, "let's inquire for a word from the LORD."

So we're told that Ahab brought in about 400 of his prophets to give their opinions.  And of course, as religious leaders often do when given political prominence, these sycophantic soothsayers sucked up to this narcissistic king.  When he asked, "Should I go up to battle or should I refrain?" they all of course immediately assured him of victory.  Interestingly, at first they did not use the name of the LORD (Yahweh) but said, "the Lord (Adonai) will give victory," or "God will give victory."  Were they a bit afraid to cite the LORD as their source.?

Jehoshaphat seems to have been unimpressed.  "Wait a minute, isn't there a prophet of the LORD that we can inquire of?"  Apparently he was able to see through these phonies.

 
"Well yeah" said Ahab, "there's one more, but I hate him cause he never prophesies anything good about me, only evil" ("fake news?") His name is Micaiah Ben Imlah."

Jehoshaphat said, "Please don't say that your majesty!"

So Ahab called an officer to fetch Micaiah.  He knew where to find him; was he already in jail?

The officer told Micaiah that everyone was speaking favorable (flattering?) things to the king and that if he knows what's good for him he'll do the same. Micaiah simply answers, "What the LORD gives me is what I'll speak."

Meanwhile the 400 were going through their acts, reassuring Ahab that victory was his.  One change - they began to use the name of the LORD for their assurances.

So Micaiah, contrary to what Ahab was expecting, lays it on thick.  When Ahab asks him to give his opinion he says, "Go up to battle; you'll succeed because the LORD will give you victory!"  But though his "prophecy" agreed with all the others, Ahab was not pleased!

"How many times do I have to tell you to speak only the truth in the name of the LORD?"

Catch 22!  The king wants the truth!  The king wants you to say nice things!  How does one do both?  This sounds so -well - modern.  Truth is that which I want to hear.  Truth is that which reinforces my prejudices.  Truth is that which pumps up my ego.  And yet Ahab apparently knew that all his prophets were lying to him except this one lone man standing in front of him.  And he didn't care.

The story goes on. Micaiah then cuts loose with an account of his vision of the LORD and how the LORD is using Ahab's prophets to deceive him so that he would die in battle.  A heated dialog follows:  Ahab, Micaiah and one of the other "prophets."  Finally Ahab has Micaiah thrown in jail on bread and water ... "until I return safely."

Micaiah's final words were, "If you return safely then the LORD hasn't spoken by me!  Listen all you people!"

The story goes on.  Ahab, though attempting to keep safe by making Jehoshaphat his decoy, is killed in battle.  We're not told what happened to Micaiah; apparently he spent the rest of his days in jail on bread and water.

Though the story still strikes me as humorous, with a clown king who wants both truth and flattery at the same time when this is utterly impossible, it also is one of the best examples of a follower of the LORD who is unafraid to speak truth to power (albeit with a bit of sarcasm).

When I read stories in the Bible - or anywhere else - I often picture the characters as people I know or know of.  And I must confess that my picture of king Ahab looks a lot like Donald Trump.  And some of the prophets look a lot like the prominent "Christian" leaders who gather around him

We have a president whose concept of truth, like Ahab's is that which feeds his ego.  And sadly he has many "prophets" performing for him.  He has an advisory circle of preachers and televangelists who have apparently no effect on his  ethics or morals.  Some still tell us to "give him a chance;" some assure us that he's God's man; more and more excuses.

Are there no Micaiahs around?