April 6, 2018 at 1:53 p.m.
WORD OF FAITH
A new perspective
'Far be it from us that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods.....Therefore we also will serve the Lord, for He is our God.' - Joshua 24:16,18
My one-time seminary classmate, Dr. Bill Sears, recently prompted lots of discussion about child rearing. Time magazine's controversial May cover story on his work opened the floodgates.
After years of research, Bill and his wife, Martha, concluded some of our old "tried and true" parenting techniques don't work. They weren't producing the kind of children we'd anticipated.
This is a commentary on Scripture, not child rearing, but their work dovetails with Sunday's three readings - beginning with Joshua's (24:1-2a,15-17,18b) dramatic decision to "serve Yahweh."
Entering the Promised Land after 40 years of wilderness wandering, the leader of the Israelites must make a choice: Who will be his family's God? They choose Yahweh. But it wasn't simple. We modern monotheists should examine the reasons behind their choice.
It wasn't a matter of believing in God or not believing in God - of becoming atheists. Twelfth-century-BCE Israelites had dozens of gods to choose from. The text says they picked Yahweh over all the others because Yahweh had brought them freedom.
Here and now
Scriptural salvation almost always revolves around this life, not the next. As theologian Marcus Borg demonstrates in "Speaking Christian," God usually saves us by making this life better.
Even in Sunday's Gospel (John 6:60-69), Peter's response to Jesus' question about looking elsewhere for salvation - "To whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life" - must be heard in the context of John's theology.
John's a proponent of "realized eschatology." He believes what we anticipate happening in the future is already taking place now. John's Jesus often speaks about providing a life for His followers - a life they already experience now because of their faith in Him, long before they go through the pearly gates.
In other words, Peter's saying almost the same thing Joshua said centuries before: "We follow you because you make our lives free, meaningful and fulfilled."
This is where Sunday's Ephesians (5:21-32) reading comes in. The Pauline disciple responsible for this letter is also responsible for the controversial statement, "Wives should be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord."
Where does he get this idea? The Gospel Jesus never brought up the subject. The writer obviously had different ideas about marriage relations than we have today. But we must see them in the context of his culture, not ours.
In context
Back then, most people thought wives who always obeyed their husbands were fortunate. They obviously were more fulfilled than those few who rashly challenged the will of their lord and master.
Of course, that was also a culture which believed slaves were fortunate because they were slaves. Such individuals couldn't survive in this world if they were given their freedom. They need a master's constant care and protection in order to be fulfilled.
Through the centuries, we've looked at human relations from different perspectives. We experience freedom and fulfillment on levels they could never have imagined. Once that happened, we had to change our behavior patterns.
Bill and Martha Sears are doing something parallel. They want us to look at child rearing from different perspectives. But, like the advice in Ephesians, we might have to wait a while to see if it brings "salvation."[[In-content Ad]]
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