The Small Group
While the Rector was away I allowed myself to be roped into co-hosting a Bible discussion group. There are about five or six of them going on simultaneously, each one consisting of six parishioners, including the two co-hosts.
It was a way to keep up my reading skills while fulfilling an obligation I presume all of us share, we who have been through four years of EfM. It's not clear how far the obligation extends nor is it clear how much the thirteen of us who received our certificates last July actually see ourselves as future deacons of the church. But, it was only a ten week commitment; it went by very quickly.
It did, however, reinforce some bitter takeaways from my EfM experience. Among them is the impression that deep within the fabric of every gathering of Protestants there is a desire to create a schism; to draw a line between two or more groups of other Protestants. This is at the very least closely related to another impression I have which is that we love arguing with each other. No one in a Bible study class ever raises their hand in order to say how much they agree with someone else. In the fifteen years it took for me to complete the requirements for my EfM certificate, I have only the dimmest memories of that ever happening.
At best, we find different ways of saying the same thing. Or, we'll go off on tangents. No one ever says, "I think that's correct. We can all go home now."
Something like that was at work during my small goups penultimate meeting last Wednesday. The subject was The Book of Job and just like all the other assignments for this period, it presented another opportunity to appreciate the psychological and thematic landscape created by the authors of the Hebrew Bible as well as contrast it to the New Testament.
Bing is in my group. He's an enthusiastic participant and I can always lean on him to supply a prayer at either the beginning or end of the hour. He was in the middle of making the point that God is represented in a way that is different in the Hebrew Bible; that compared to the New Testament, He is more of a task master. And, so much of our reading portrays Him as demanding obedience above all else.
Well, someone in class objected to that portrayal and came very close to calling it an anti-Semitic trope. Or, at tleast that it was a trope that has been used as a cudgel to justify anti-semitism in the past. I thought it was a bit of self-righteous finger-wagging. But, I didn't say that outright. I tried to offer Bing some cover by suggesting all he really meant was that God in the Old Testament was a more down-to-earth figure than the more distant font of All Being that undergirds everything Jesus says and does.
But, that wasn't enough for Bing's interlocutor who returned to the subject shortly after I stopped speaking, at which point - and much to Bing's chagrin - I quietly admonished everyone not to be anti-semites.
It was a way to keep up my reading skills while fulfilling an obligation I presume all of us share, we who have been through four years of EfM. It's not clear how far the obligation extends nor is it clear how much the thirteen of us who received our certificates last July actually see ourselves as future deacons of the church. But, it was only a ten week commitment; it went by very quickly.
It did, however, reinforce some bitter takeaways from my EfM experience. Among them is the impression that deep within the fabric of every gathering of Protestants there is a desire to create a schism; to draw a line between two or more groups of other Protestants. This is at the very least closely related to another impression I have which is that we love arguing with each other. No one in a Bible study class ever raises their hand in order to say how much they agree with someone else. In the fifteen years it took for me to complete the requirements for my EfM certificate, I have only the dimmest memories of that ever happening.
At best, we find different ways of saying the same thing. Or, we'll go off on tangents. No one ever says, "I think that's correct. We can all go home now."
Something like that was at work during my small goups penultimate meeting last Wednesday. The subject was The Book of Job and just like all the other assignments for this period, it presented another opportunity to appreciate the psychological and thematic landscape created by the authors of the Hebrew Bible as well as contrast it to the New Testament.
Bing is in my group. He's an enthusiastic participant and I can always lean on him to supply a prayer at either the beginning or end of the hour. He was in the middle of making the point that God is represented in a way that is different in the Hebrew Bible; that compared to the New Testament, He is more of a task master. And, so much of our reading portrays Him as demanding obedience above all else.
Well, someone in class objected to that portrayal and came very close to calling it an anti-Semitic trope. Or, at tleast that it was a trope that has been used as a cudgel to justify anti-semitism in the past. I thought it was a bit of self-righteous finger-wagging. But, I didn't say that outright. I tried to offer Bing some cover by suggesting all he really meant was that God in the Old Testament was a more down-to-earth figure than the more distant font of All Being that undergirds everything Jesus says and does.
But, that wasn't enough for Bing's interlocutor who returned to the subject shortly after I stopped speaking, at which point - and much to Bing's chagrin - I quietly admonished everyone not to be anti-semites.