The Power of Speech Christians and Jews often use a lectionary to choose readings for worship. This Sunday, Christians can choose to read from the very beginning of the Bible, where God creates the universe with words. In the beginning, when God created the universe, the earth was formless and desolate. The raging ocean that covered everything was engulfed in total darkness, and the Spirit of God was moving over the water. Then God commanded, “Let there be light”—and light appeared. Gen 1:1-3 Good News Translation Then God speaks sky and land into existence. Words, you see, have power; creative power. We see this, also, in the Gospel of John. He…
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Being Prepared and Universalism
It’s All About Love As a Universalist, I read scriptures and myths to learn about being human. In the case of the Bible, I also learn something about our relationship with the holy, the mysterious, the I Am. Though a good story raises more questions than it answers, in scripture, I can discover insights that encourage my transformation into a better self. For me, the Bible is about love. God is love. Eternal love made life possible, and everything that exists reflects that love. We can pervert love into indifference and animosity, but God—or whatever we choose to call the essence of life—cannot. Thus, God’s wrath, vengeance, and chastisement must…
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Lessons from The Seven Ravens
The Stories of the Brothers Grimm The brothers, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, collected their well-known stories from the oral tradition of the Germanic people. Their work went through many revisions before becoming the text we know today as Grimm’s Fairy Tales. When the brothers lived, their books were quite popular. Their compatriots bought almost as many of them as they did the Bible. Like the Bible, some of the stories are violent and crude, containing antisemitism and assumptions about gender roles and social stratification that we, in twenty-first-century America, may find offensive. This is true of folklore around the world. The oral history of a culture does not shrink from…
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The Stuff of Stars
The Sky Before Electricity In our light-filled world, with electric lamps illuminating our streets, backyards, and skies, few of us ever see the magnificence of a star-filled heaven. Indeed, as Paul Bogard explains in his book, The End of Night, only a few, very isolated places on Earth allow a vision of the night sky like the one our ancestors would have enjoyed, and then only after many hours of waiting for our eyes to adjust. Now that it is fall, I’m out for my walk before the sun rises, yet everywhere I go my path is lit by artificial light. Even when I turn onto the wooded path behind…
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Religion and Humor
Laughing at Ourselves If we can laugh at ourselves and take pleasure in life’s absurdity, we tend to feel happier. We may forgive more readily, love more easily, feel more grateful, and have more fun. If we have a good sense of humor, we’ll have an overall feeling of peace because we’re less likely to react with anger at the stresses and disappointments of each day. If we could all laugh a little more, we’d get along better. I’m not talking here about humor that shames others, that is crass, cutting, or sarcastic, that is used to assert power or to bully. I’m talking about compassionate laughter that bonds us,…
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Sisyphus and Letting Go
Punishment in Hades Everyone ends up in Hades eventually. For most who go there, the Greek Underworld is a gray and timeless place where nothing much happens. The dead have existence of a sort, though they feel little and appear to care about even less. It doesn’t sound joyful, but I suppose it’s not miserable. Some places in the Underworld, however, are. They have been set aside for those who especially irritate the Olympian gods. Take Ixion, king of the Lapith people. He has spent this part of eternity tied to a burning wheel. It seems fitting, in a way, for he killed his father-in-law by pushing him onto a…
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Lucifer and the Problem of Evil
The Story of Lucifer In the beginning, God created the angels, and none was more beloved to Him than Lucifer. He was Venus, that morning star that shone brighter than any other. He was the light bringer, and the light he shed made everything beautiful. God was most pleased with his creation. But children grow up. Vassals long for power and property of their own. So it was with this shining star, though he was a favorite. Maybe the problem was that God had favorites at all. The golden child can be most cruel. Charismatic, intelligent, successful, but also lustful, devious, manipulative, and most importantly, full of pride, Lucifer wanted…
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Knowing God’s Love
The God of Job About a year ago, while working on a column about the Book of Job, I came across the passage below. Job has demanded that God be put on trial, that he answer his questions about fairness and justice, yet God answers nothing. Instead, God grills him. He asks Job: Can you pull in Leviathan with a fishhook or tie down its tongue with a rope?Can you put a cord through its nose or pierce its jaw with a hook?Will it keep begging you for mercy? Will it speak to you with gentle words?Will it make an agreement with you for you to take it as your slave for life? [1] Job…
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Job, the Perfect Child
A Blameless and Upright Man In the beginning of the Book of Job, God calls Job “a blameless and upright man” (Job 1:8). [1] He feared God, did no evil, and obeyed the commandments. In case any of his children cursed God in their hearts without his knowing it, he sanctified them and made burnt offerings. All he did was good in the sight of the Lord, and he was rewarded with a great wealth of children, oxen, camels, many servants, and more. This theology, that if we do good, we will receive good, was common back in the day (the 4th to 7th centuries BCE) when Job was written.…
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Death and the Death of Balder
It Began with Balder It is unusual for gods to die. Even the Titans, the original Greek gods, who were vanquished by their Olympian offspring, remain alive in Tartarus, a cavernous hell that serves as their prison. Gods that do perish are resurrected. Isis traveled the world to collect the pieces of her husband, Osiris, so she might put him back together, and he might be reborn. The Aztec deity, Quetzalcoatl, after waking up to discover that, while intoxicated the night before, he had cavorted with his sister, felt such remorse that he set himself on fire, burning to ash. Out of this death, his heart rose to the heavens,…