I never met my grandmother, she passed away sixteen years before I was born. She died of a heart related disease brought on by the trauma of World War II: apparently a damaged US aircraft had to jettisoned its payload during the actions in 1944 and they blew up near where my grandmother lived.
But hearing stories about her introduced me to a woman who was the most tender, loving and caring mother that existed—or—the baddest bitch in the neighborhood. The stories varied wildly, depending on who was telling the story. I guess if you were the nice kid you would tend to get more of the affection while if you were the bad one you would tend to get whipped a lot. And my mom had ten siblings to contend with so that would be at least eleven variations to my grandmother’s personality.
What kind of woman was she anyway? Why is she so good and so bad at the same time? She did have eleven kids; seven boys and four girls. Of the seven boys, one went on to become the “Father of Philippine Radiology”, another was mentored by Daniel Burnham (of Burnham Park) to be key in planning Subic and Olongapo, and another was pioneering pediatric heart surgeon in the world. The other boys were engineers and were relatively successful in their various fields.
The four girls were made up of two educators who remained unmarried: one takes after their mother’s tender, loving and caring nature while the other becomes an even badder bitch known for flying typewriters if you manage to piss her off. I’m talking about those heavy metal Underwood typewriters, not the plastic portable ones. Another was a rebel in her own unique way putting the family in a Romeo and Juliet situation.
Then there was my mom, the middle child with a personality to match, but went on to study to become a nurse. She finished in schooling in 1944 and was recruited in the U.S. Army to work in a field hospital following behind the front lines as the Americans moved North to pursue the retreating Japanese. My survival from my congenital disease had a lot to do with her experience of putting back together faces that were blown up with high explosives.
So the question: what kind of woman was this that raised eleven overachieving strong willed children? That, plus being married to an equally strong willed and stubborn man that was my grandfather in a milieu that was still predominantly misogynistic. I was in awe hearing stories about her. Then growing up and in a fit of whimsical imagining, a question popped in my head.
“What if my grandmother never existed?”
Given the fact that I never met her (my grandfather remarried and I knew my step-grandmother) I had no real experience of her except through stories. And given the happy madness that goes in the family, I continue my whimsical trip by the thought: what if she never existed and all those stories about her were invented by eleven orphans as a coping mechanism for life in an orphanage? The man I knew as my grandfather was the guy who ran the orphanage.
Well, that would explain a lot in the variations to the stories about my grandmother and the weirdness that runs in my family. But then my grandmother did exist and she lived in a time when census, records, and photographs were there to prove her existence. It was fun imagining an alternate reality though—so that gives you an idea on how I think.
So, wait—what’s that got to do with the bible.
Everything. I look and read the bible and see stories based around twelve siblings that would eventually form the nation of Israel and their interaction with someone/something named Yahweh. And like my grandmother, the stories about Yahweh paints him as the most tender, loving and caring father figure or the cruelest and vilest evil genocidal maniac in the universe.
Their journey forms the nation of Israel and a religion known as Judaism which in turn spun off into Christianity and the Muslim faith which in turn breeds more sects. Are these stories any different from the myths of other civilizations which appealed to some divine connection to validate their nation’s history, and/or, to justify the ruling party’s claim to power?
Maybe?
The Israelites were telling a story in the same way my mother and her siblings told theirs. They were not out to prove the existence of Yahweh or my grandmother—it was a matter of fact to them. And what was recorded were candid snapshots of their respective protagonist.
Those candid records of Yahweh capture the ambiguity of character and personality that cannot be contained in a doctrinal or a theological statement. A contrived religion with a fix doctrine written on stone cannot handle ambiguity.
Welcome to what is known as Biblical Theology. As opposed to Systematic Theology which has been prevalent in the 19th and 20th century and still dominates how many bible Christians think even today. Systematic like things neatly folded and in a box. Biblical Theology is comfortable with things messy.
While Systematic Theology tries to make sense of the bad things by lumping them up into God’s sovereign will that all works for the good of his people with some convoluted theology, Biblical Theology is okay with “it sucks—bad things happen!” If no reasons were given for those bad things, then no reason exist to explain things away.
Systematic Theology has God locked up in a box like sovereignty or being in control: because God is in control it has to live with the conundrum of bad things happening in the world and even lead some to conclude that maybe God is that twisted capricious genocidal maniac after all. Biblical Theology allows Superman to be Clark Kent and have a life outside being “super”. Or, in the case of the bible, when Jesus was asked when the second coming would take place, he responded “I don’t want to know!” (Matthew 24:36).
So I let the bible stories speak for themselves; if it’s in the narrative then it’s great, If not then don’t try to wedge in something just to make yourself comfortable. God, it seems, likes and can handle ambiguity.
One note before moving on: I think God is both male and female and is not exclusively male and there are enough stories in the bible to show that. I would be the first person to argue that God is not that old white dude with a white beard—he or she can very well be a woman in a black gown. Having said that, I would be the last person to remove the gender references in the bible. Why not? Because that’s how the stories were told—it’s their story why tamper with it? In the same way you cannot change the gender of my grandmother just to satisfy some political sensibilities.
But hearing stories about her introduced me to a woman who was the most tender, loving and caring mother that existed—or—the baddest bitch in the neighborhood. The stories varied wildly, depending on who was telling the story. I guess if you were the nice kid you would tend to get more of the affection while if you were the bad one you would tend to get whipped a lot. And my mom had ten siblings to contend with so that would be at least eleven variations to my grandmother’s personality.
What kind of woman was she anyway? Why is she so good and so bad at the same time? She did have eleven kids; seven boys and four girls. Of the seven boys, one went on to become the “Father of Philippine Radiology”, another was mentored by Daniel Burnham (of Burnham Park) to be key in planning Subic and Olongapo, and another was pioneering pediatric heart surgeon in the world. The other boys were engineers and were relatively successful in their various fields.
The four girls were made up of two educators who remained unmarried: one takes after their mother’s tender, loving and caring nature while the other becomes an even badder bitch known for flying typewriters if you manage to piss her off. I’m talking about those heavy metal Underwood typewriters, not the plastic portable ones. Another was a rebel in her own unique way putting the family in a Romeo and Juliet situation.
Then there was my mom, the middle child with a personality to match, but went on to study to become a nurse. She finished in schooling in 1944 and was recruited in the U.S. Army to work in a field hospital following behind the front lines as the Americans moved North to pursue the retreating Japanese. My survival from my congenital disease had a lot to do with her experience of putting back together faces that were blown up with high explosives.
So the question: what kind of woman was this that raised eleven overachieving strong willed children? That, plus being married to an equally strong willed and stubborn man that was my grandfather in a milieu that was still predominantly misogynistic. I was in awe hearing stories about her. Then growing up and in a fit of whimsical imagining, a question popped in my head.
“What if my grandmother never existed?”
Given the fact that I never met her (my grandfather remarried and I knew my step-grandmother) I had no real experience of her except through stories. And given the happy madness that goes in the family, I continue my whimsical trip by the thought: what if she never existed and all those stories about her were invented by eleven orphans as a coping mechanism for life in an orphanage? The man I knew as my grandfather was the guy who ran the orphanage.
Well, that would explain a lot in the variations to the stories about my grandmother and the weirdness that runs in my family. But then my grandmother did exist and she lived in a time when census, records, and photographs were there to prove her existence. It was fun imagining an alternate reality though—so that gives you an idea on how I think.
So, wait—what’s that got to do with the bible.
Everything. I look and read the bible and see stories based around twelve siblings that would eventually form the nation of Israel and their interaction with someone/something named Yahweh. And like my grandmother, the stories about Yahweh paints him as the most tender, loving and caring father figure or the cruelest and vilest evil genocidal maniac in the universe.
Their journey forms the nation of Israel and a religion known as Judaism which in turn spun off into Christianity and the Muslim faith which in turn breeds more sects. Are these stories any different from the myths of other civilizations which appealed to some divine connection to validate their nation’s history, and/or, to justify the ruling party’s claim to power?
Maybe?
The Israelites were telling a story in the same way my mother and her siblings told theirs. They were not out to prove the existence of Yahweh or my grandmother—it was a matter of fact to them. And what was recorded were candid snapshots of their respective protagonist.
Those candid records of Yahweh capture the ambiguity of character and personality that cannot be contained in a doctrinal or a theological statement. A contrived religion with a fix doctrine written on stone cannot handle ambiguity.
Welcome to what is known as Biblical Theology. As opposed to Systematic Theology which has been prevalent in the 19th and 20th century and still dominates how many bible Christians think even today. Systematic like things neatly folded and in a box. Biblical Theology is comfortable with things messy.
While Systematic Theology tries to make sense of the bad things by lumping them up into God’s sovereign will that all works for the good of his people with some convoluted theology, Biblical Theology is okay with “it sucks—bad things happen!” If no reasons were given for those bad things, then no reason exist to explain things away.
Systematic Theology has God locked up in a box like sovereignty or being in control: because God is in control it has to live with the conundrum of bad things happening in the world and even lead some to conclude that maybe God is that twisted capricious genocidal maniac after all. Biblical Theology allows Superman to be Clark Kent and have a life outside being “super”. Or, in the case of the bible, when Jesus was asked when the second coming would take place, he responded “I don’t want to know!” (Matthew 24:36).
So I let the bible stories speak for themselves; if it’s in the narrative then it’s great, If not then don’t try to wedge in something just to make yourself comfortable. God, it seems, likes and can handle ambiguity.
One note before moving on: I think God is both male and female and is not exclusively male and there are enough stories in the bible to show that. I would be the first person to argue that God is not that old white dude with a white beard—he or she can very well be a woman in a black gown. Having said that, I would be the last person to remove the gender references in the bible. Why not? Because that’s how the stories were told—it’s their story why tamper with it? In the same way you cannot change the gender of my grandmother just to satisfy some political sensibilities.
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