*sigh* Where does he get this from???

Apparently the current President of the USA thinks the message of the story of the Exodus is that "wherever we live, there is oppression to be fought and freedom to be won." He further said, "In retelling this story from generation to generation, we are reminded of our ongoing responsibility to fight against all forms of suffering and discrimination." [quoted from this newspaper article]

Now, don't get me wrong, I am not for one minute trying to say that there's anything wrong with fighting against suffering and oppression.

What irks me is the feeling that such an amazing and special story is being hijacked, being used to promote a message that simply is not there in the text. Last night we sat and told the story, and I'm sorry but whichever way I look at it, I do not see how it is about the responsibility of human beings to fight against suffering/oppression/whatever. It is not a story of a rebellion, of a human fight for freedom. It is the story of a bunch of people who were severely oppressed and were amazingly, spectacularly, miraculously, rescued by God himself!

I can certainly see more than one point in this story, more than one message. There is the message about God's faithfulness - he remembers his covenant with Abraham, Issac and Jacob and he comes to rescue his people. There is a message about God's almighty power, which could be paraphrased as: don't mess with God! If he's fighting for you, you're in a very safe place, but if he's fighting against you - you don't stand a chance. (This can be a bit uncomfortable for those who like to think of God as merely a cuddly daddy-type who invites you to sit on his lap and gives you presents and says "there, there" a lot.) And of course I see the theme of being saved through the blood of a faultless lamb - a theme which was pointing to what was then the future, to the coming of the Messiah who was to be sacrificed so that all may go free through his blood.

And it is because I see such important themes in this story that I got so cross when I read about Obama's interpretation. It devalues the whole thing. It takes a story of God's awesomeness and turns it into a speech about human values. Yes, these are good values - and I believe God does want to see everyone set free. But that's not what Passover is about - it's not about human beings fighting for freedom, it is about human beings receiving freedom, won by God himself and handed to them on a plate. For the Israelites at the time it was freedom from the Egyptians - won for them by God and all they had to do was accept it, by smearing the blood of the lamb on their doorposts. And the clues about what was then the future arrival of the Messiah - again, they are about God himself winning freedom for humankind (this time for all humankind, not just the Israelites), and all we have to do is accept the blood sacrifice of the faultless Lamb of God, the Messiah, Jesus.

Please, let's not confuse freedom fighters (commendable as they may be) with freedom-receivers.

Oh give thanks to the LORD.

this one's for david

the Bible tells me not to judge others, and of course the reason God bothers to mention this is because he knows we tend to do it... we look at another person and say: look at her, she's so obnoxious; look at him, he's such a lazy so-and-so. etc etc. we see the externals and make judgements. but all we're seeing is the externals, we're seeing tiny bits of the picture, and most of the time - unless we've got to know someone very very well - we don't know the half of it.

scratch the surface with any fellow human being and you'll find that they are carrying heavy burdens, and often those external behaviour patterns that you find so annoying and unreasonable are a result of the pain which they don't talk about most of the time.

people don't go around with t-shirts saying: my job is boring/my daughter hates me/my back hurts all the time/my mum used to lock me in the broom cupboard for hours for no reason/my wife is having an affair/my overdraft has reached its limits/the bank wants to repossess my home/my husband gets drunk and beats me/my next-door neighbour keeps throwing stones at my cat/my son is taking drugs/my parents don't approve of my boyfriend/my teachers keep picking on me/my period is late and I'm worried/my shoes are pinching and I can't afford new ones/etc etc - people do not, most of the time, broadcast to all and sundry everything that is making them feel that life is tough.

but the tension has to come out somehow, so we kick the cat/yell at the kids/spouse/colleagues/friends/someone who has dared block our way on the road... and people look and shake their heads and say: why does she have to be so obnoxious...

many years ago, someone saw me being obnoxious and unpleasant and had the wisdom to see through it, he chose to reach out to me in friendship despite my very sharp corners. I was working in a tax advisers' and accountants' office in London, and for most people in the office I was - excuse the language - that bitch that you don't go and talk to unless you absolutely have to. I was rude, I was unhelpful, my immediate answer to any request was "no" - not my job, go find someone else to do it, that sort of thing. The f word was not unknown in my vocabulary. most people shook their heads, rolled their eyes, and steered well clear of me.

but david chose to befriend me. he was one of the partners in the firm, and he was the one who had interviewed me for the job there. the day he came up to me with a piece of paper and said, "would you like to type this for me?" and got the reply, "no", he could have given up on me and sacked me... (I wasn't being intentionally rude, I was just replying literally to what I heard as a yes/no question... I was new in England, and in Israel we don't have this form of asking politely in a way that sounds as though you're asking a question... we don't do niceties, an Israeli boss would simply bung the sheet of paper on your desk and say "type this".) but david didn't give up on me, he chose to be my friend and he was a real and very reliable friend throughout the eleven years I worked there. (and has remained a friend to this day)

at the time, I didn't know why I was being so obnoxious. I didn't see myself as making choices, all I could see was that I was right...

it was some time after I came out of the extremely unhealthy relationship I'd been in, that another friend made the connection and pointed out to me that I had been in such a difficult situation at home, that no wonder I was tense and taking my tension out on people at work. at home I was scared, walking on tiptoe, but at work I could exercise some control over things. once I'd come out of that relationship, and started to take ownership of my life back, I could afford to start being nice to people... (at least some of the time)

so what am I trying to say here? just this - next time you roll your eyes at someone's behaviour, remember: you don't know what burdens they are carrying. and just as I did back then in 1990, they could probably benefit from someone reaching out to them in friendship.

and I'm reminding myself of this too.

"If you like"

Grrrrr...

Got an email from Shelfari with book recommendations. Nice of them, you might say. It would be if they had actually used the information they hold to provide me with relevant recommendations - like when I log onto Amazon I get recommendations based on books I've bought, said I own, showed an interest in... that makes sense. But Shelfari, who have records of books I own, books I've read, books I've marked as favourites, books I've given x number of stars to, etc... Shelfari don't seem to have made any attempt to access that information and use it. So their email lists a whole load of books I've never heard of by authors I've never heard of, each under the heading of "if you like XYZ, you might also like: ................." when XYZ is a book I've mostly never heard of...

oh, there's one exception, it's the bit where they say "if you liked Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, you might also like To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee," which is interesting as (a) I really don't remember if I liked Catcher in the Rye and even if I did like it when I read it probably about three decades ago, I have absolutely no idea if I'd like it now; but, more importantly, (b) To Kill a Mockingbird is a book I've actually listed on Shelfari as a book I've read! (and that book I actually remember liking very much)

So, big brother ain't doing all that well :)

Is it just me?

Like everyone else, I get these emails now and again - words of wisdom on pretty backgrounds, sometimes even a powerpoint presentation with beautiful music... but are these really words of wisdom? is it just me that picks the nits, that wants to edit before passing it on, and often doesn't pass it on?

is it just me that wonders: would these words seem so wise and profound if they didn't come with beautiful pictures? if this is really true, does it need to be packaged like this?

I'm not saying it's all wrong. Far from it - a lot of it is good and true. But I feel it's presented in a way that is meant to distract us from thinking about whether or not it's true. I feel the pictures and the music are there to lull us into a kind of passive listening and absorbing, unquestioning, unthinking. I feel we're being discouraged from thinking critically about what is on the screen in front of us, from weighing up the words and seeing for ourselves whether we agree with them or not.

And I feel even more strongly about the video being circulated now, titled "The Interview With God" - how dare anyone put words into God's mouth in this way? Yes, some of the words are good. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that most of them are true. But dressing it up as though God himself would say this - sorry, that's unbelievably presumptuous! and to suggest that when God is asked at the end of the interview what else he would like his children to know, that all God says is, "Just know that I am here. Always." - sorry, is that really it? God as our loving, gracious father who just smiles and wants us to know he's always here? Is this why he bothered to give us, for example, the Ten Commandments? Is this why there's all that stuff in the Bible about God's wrath, about the need to repent and turn to Jesus so we can escape God's just punishment? I'm sorry, I don't buy into this. It's nice, it's pretty, but it's not the whole picture. It's a sanitised and heavily-edited version of what the real interview would be like.

Okay, I've got it off my chest now.