Voices In My Head Podcast Episode 325: The Jewish View of Creation

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This is Rick Lee James, and the music you are hearing is from my new album, Thunder.

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Thunder, hear it today at rickleejames.com. Welcome to Voices in My Head, the official podcast of me, Rick Lee James. I'm a recording artist, a singer, a songwriter, an author, a worship leader, and an ordained minister in the Church of the Nazarene. The Voices in My Head podcast is where I discuss music, movies, books, pop culture, theology, and more with friends, colleagues, and sometimes just by myself. Now make sure to let me know what you think of today's episode by leaving me a review on iTunes or by tweeting at me @RickLeeJames. RickLeeJames on Twitter. And please join my mailing list at RickLeeJames.com where you can receive an email every time a new episode is released. And by the way, in case you're interested in a daily dose of kindness and encouragement beyond this podcast, I also run the Twitter account @MrRogersSay where I post daily quotes from Fred Rogers, one of the voices in my head. Well, I guess that's it for the intro, so sit back, relax, and and listen to the latest episode of Voices in My Head.

Welcome back to Voices in My Head. As always, I'm your host, Rick Lee James, and I'm so glad that you could be here with us once again this week. Now, I have to tell you kind of a funny story that brought this podcast about. As many of you know, as you have listened to this show several times now, my friend Rabbi Cary Kosberg here at Temple Shalom in Springfield, Ohio. He has been a guest on the show, and he's always had wonderful insights into the Hebrew Scriptures. And we had been talking the last time that we were together about doing a podcast and maybe going a little deeper into creation. But we also talked about the fact that Cary was interested, interested in starting a podcast himself, and he asked if we could get together sometime so that we could talk about the creation of a new podcast. Well, because we talked about creation and the creation of a new podcast, I was confused. And Kerry sent me an email and he said, just in a very brief note, "Could we get together sometime soon to talk about creation for the podcast?" I think it actually said though, "Creation of the podcast." So I was confused. And in the weeks that followed, as I was preparing for the time that we were going to get together I did a lot of research on the Jewish view of creation and how it may differ from evangelicalism. And then I showed up at the temple today so we could record this great conversation about the Jewish view of creation. And guess what? He was wanting to talk about the creation of a new podcast that he is going to be doing. So he was asking my advice about different things, and we ended up having a great conversation. But we didn't have quite the conversation that I was walking in expecting. It's kind of a funny story. But with that being said, I do have a lot of research that I did into this topic, and I even have a great Jewish resource that I showed to the rabbi when we were together today. And he knew the resource very well and was kind of glad that I had it because he said it expressed the views very well. And I thought I would use it tonight as I'm recording this podcast so that we can talk a little bit more about this subject that fascinates me— creation in the Jewish view, or the Hebrew Scriptures, and how it may differ from the ways that many in evangelicalism and in Christianity view creation. And so, with that kind of humorous beginning, it actually became a very interesting topic for me to look at, and I wanted to just share a little bit about this with you on this episode of Voices in My Head. So, although I am not an authority on it, I am using an authoritative Jewish resource tonight, along with some writings of another great authority on Scripture, Walter Brueggemann. Now let me tell you about the book I'm going to be using tonight. This is actually a book that I found in Chicago at a used bookstore. I think I probably paid, I don't know, maybe $3 for it. It's a book called "Little Lower Than the Angels," and it was written by a rabbi whose last name was Gittelson. And I want to look at the inside cover because I want to tell you when it was published. 1955, that's when the copyright is, from the Union of American Hebrew Congregations. I have the 5th printing. It's hardcover, and I found out as I was talking with Rabbi Kosberg about it, not only is it a great resource, but it's a simple resource for people who maybe aren't ready for a really deep theological study into something, but It's actually a book for youth that was written and published back in 1955, uh, for the purpose of confirmation. And so if you're a part of the Jewish faith, similarly to what many churches do in Christianity, they take their young people through a process, and when they decide that they are fully ready to live out this faith, they take them through confirmation. And that's what this book is about. A little lower than the angels. I don't know that, uh, that this book is in print anymore. Matter of fact, I'm fairly sure that it's not, and I don't think it's in a digital format. But if you can find it, there are copies around on the internet if you're interested at all. And I'm going to share a bit with you tonight about what this says about creation, along with what Walter Brueggemann says, probably The greatest Old Testament theologian alive today in Christianity that we have is Walter Brueggemann. So, I am going to be giving you a few ideas from him as I was researching from his interpretation commentary on Genesis. And I am going to be using "A Little Lower Than the Angels" to dive in a little bit deeper about the Jewish view. So, these are just a few of my notes as I had them getting ready for the podcast. That's turned into this podcast that just ends up being by myself. But Brueggemann talks about creation as being an important time when God calls us. That God is calling the world into being in the story of creation. That God is calling us into the church. And that God has formed the world to be his world and a special community to be his witness. Starting first with the Jewish people, but then as we in this special community called the church, we are formed as well into a special community to continue the call of God in the world. And Brueggemann talks about it being God who calls the world and who calls the special community. He says that both creations, world and community of faith, they spring from— fresh from the word. Both have been evoked by the speech of God. And again and again, Brueggemann talks about the importance of emphasizing that the speech of God is really what we are supposed to be focusing on in the story of Genesis. We learn that Genesis is structured around the same calls, that Genesis 1 through 11 concerns the affirmation that God calls the world into being to be his faithful world. And then going beyond that, in Genesis 12 through 50, in the rest of the book, Concerns the affirmation that God calls a special people to be faithfully his people. And Genesis is a reflection and a witness to these two calls. It is concerned with the gifts given in these calls, the demands announced in them, and the various responses evoked by them. So, um, the mode of the call, as Brueggemann talks about, is storytelling., and this is what we have in Genesis. Genesis is a narrative that is being told, but it's in a different way than we often talk about narrative. It's poetic, it comes to us in a different way than a lot of scripture passages do. It's actually a book that is concerned not so much not so much with absolutes, but with the possibility of the unpredictable. Creation comes with the possibility of surprise, and surprising us. Because creation is not a set of givens in the Old Testament. It's this open-ended process. I've heard Brueggemann talk before, this isn't from the commentary, but I've just heard him speak about this, and he says that in the Psalms We see that in a psalm like Psalm 104, for instance, all the verbs in that psalm are participles, which means that they're talking about a God whose creating actions are continuing to go on all the time. They are not at a fixed point. And he says we have these same anxieties about gays and lesbians, because we have the same anxieties. What he means by that is gay and lesbians, or creation and science, or things like that, because they have to do with a sense of the familiar falling apart. People start drawing lines and saying these are the absolute truths, and you can't step beyond those truths. When things happen that people start saying, "But I live in a different truth," it makes us insecure. And it's interesting that he kind of puts those two things in the same category. It says people have to draw a line somewhere, and they start defining absolutes. But Brueggemann reminds us that we want to substitute certitude for fidelity, but that's a distortion of what faith is all about. Faith is about fidelity. Faith is not certitude. Faith is fidelity. And he says that the best way to talk about creation is the same way that's the best way to talk about things like gays and lesbians, is to not so much talk about the subject themselves, but to talk about the anxiety that pervades our society. And the anxiety that makes people so intense about those subjects. He says we're living in a time when the old reliables are ending, and it scares the heck out of us, to be quite frank. Creation and evolution, they function as smoke screens to keep us from talking about the things that we are really anxious about: the changing world. And Jesus talks to us again and again and again and again Do not be anxious about... Jesus is always telling us not to be anxious about these things. So, the main theme of the text of Genesis, when we can get past these things that make us anxious, things like having to prove a literal 6-day creation and a rest to quell our anxieties, because we can't believe it was poetic, or we can't believe there might be something else about God the passage is saying, or we can't believe that the people in Genesis didn't know anything about science, and so we want to turn into a science book. What Brueggemann reminds us of is that the main theme of the text is this: that God and God's creation are bound together in a distinctive and delicate way. This is the presupposition for everything that follows in the Bible. It's the deepest premise from which good news is possible. God and his creation are bound together by the powerful, gracious movement of God towards that creation. The binding which is established by God's— God is inscrutable. It will not be explained or analyzed. It can only be affirmed and confessed. That's a very important thing for us to hear. I'm going to read it again. The binding which is established by God is inscrutable. It will not be explained or analyzed. It can only be affirmed and confessed. This text, talking about Genesis, announces the deepest mystery: God wills and will have a faithful relation with the earth. The text invites the listening community to celebrate that reality. Now, before I get into the part I wanted to read from this Jewish Jewish release called Little Lower Than the Angels. I did want to read this one more thing from Brueggemann. He says that the text in Genesis is likely dated to the 6th century BC, and it's addressed to exiles. Not only to exiles, but it's a liturgical document. It was intended to be used liturgically in worship as a part of a worship service. So it makes a difference when you're addressing something like Genesis. And a God who brings order to the world when you're living in the midst of chaos. And when Genesis comes in, and you see this picture of chaos being over all the earth, but God coming in and beginning to speak order, reminding people that as they are at worship, that the real world is what we are entering into in our times of liturgy, in our times of worship, in our times of being in the presence of the Lord, and with each other together as we worship. So it means a lot more, and it means something different. Similarly to when you don't read Revelation with a first-century view, how distorted your view of Revelation can be. Almost if you aren't reading Genesis from a 6th century BC view, you're gonna really kind of miss the point of why it's there. You'll start doing things like— things that'll lead you to creating something like a Creation Museum, thinking that the point is the science behind it, when in fact nothing could be further from the truth. So, uh, such a judgment means that this text is not an abstract statement about the origin of the universe. Rather, it is a theological and pastoral statement addressed to a real historical problem. Its affirmation is: this God can be trusted, even against contemporary data, even against what we're seeing around us. God can be trusted. The refutation of contemporary data may include sickness, poverty, unemployment, loneliness, that is, every human experience of abandonment. This text is not a scientific description, but a theological affirmation. It makes a faith statement. And that's what Genesis does. We have to emphasize that when we're coming to the text. We have to meet it on its terms, not ours. This text has been caught in the unfortunate battle over the years of modernism, so that literalists and rationalists have acted like the two mothers in 1 Kings 3, 3:16-28. They are nearly ready to have the text destroyed in order to control it. And that is what we do not want to do. We do not want to destroy the text. We want to respect it. We want to be faithful to it. And thus we continue on our journey. So let us get into this book a little bit tonight. This is again a book called "Little Lower Than the Angels." And there's a section in the book, let's see if I can find the page, just one moment. It says, "In the beginning, what?" And there were some such good points, I just wanted to read some of it to you tonight. Because I was getting ready to use this when I was having my conversation with the rabbi today, that didn't end up happening in the way that I thought it was going to. So, it says, "We don't want to leave the subject of religion and science without dealing at least briefly with one of the most interesting cases of the relationship between them." namely the story of creation as it is found in our Bible. We have already referred to this story in passing. Now it will be necessary for you to read it through in your Bible so that we may intelligently discuss it. Do that now before continuing. Turn to Genesis 1:1-2:3 in your Bible and read the story thoughtfully. We'll wait for you to do that. And if you want to, by the way, you can do that right now. Just pause the podcast and take some time to read Genesis 1 through chap— start with verse 1 and read through chapter 2, verse 3, and then come back to this conversation. You can just hit pause and come back when you're ready, and we're going to continue from there because that's what the author of this book wanted us to do. So if you're ready to do that, go ahead and pause it And welcome back. Hopefully you had some time to thoughtfully read Genesis 1 through chapter 2, verse 3. All right, let's continue. It says, then if you finish that, then you surely must have noticed plenty of room for disagreement and conflict. Chief among them, the disagreements in the Bible statement that it took God 6 days to create the world and everything in it. Now remember, this is a Jewish look at Genesis, okay? But we already know that it required more than a billion years of slow evolution to create man as we know him now. How can we reconcile 6 days and a billion years? Doesn't it seem obvious that either science or religion must be right about creation, not both? Well, there are several ways for us to approach this interesting story in Genesis. By the way, if those of you listening to the podcast are taking notes, this might be a good place to take a few notes. That is coming straight from what Judaism teaches about creation. It is their holy book. They are the ones that have had it even longer than Christians have. It is important to hear what they teach when they are confirming people in their faith. This is what they teach, what I have been reading here. Number 1: One way is to look upon it as a poetic account of how our early ancestors thought the world and life began. Without our knowledge and experience in science, this is the way things seemed to them. The story is interesting to us now as history and as poetry, but we no longer believe it literally. Number 2: Another way to accept the story of Genesis is figuratively. That is to say, making the actual words of the story serve as symbols rather than accepting them literally. Many people have suggested that each day in the story doesn't mean a day of 24 hours at all, that each day stands for a period or era of many centuries. They would say then that the Bible story is to be interpreted as a description of long periods of epochs of development, each represented or symbolized by a day. Those who interpret the story this way would probably also add that in the main, the writer of Genesis chapter 1, even without any direct knowledge of evolution, managed remarkably well, perhaps only by intuition, to list the forms of life in pretty much the order of their actual appearance. Notice, for example, the first thing that happens is that light appears. God's very first words are: Yi or, let there be light. The very latest theory of science is that our Earth may have originated in a tremendous explosion of some kind, with a blinding flash of light which filled the entire universe. Secondly, in the beginning, the whole Earth is covered with water. Only later and gradually do the waters recede, exposing dry land. We have already seen in our review of evolution that the modern scientist says the same thing. Thirdly, the first forms of life mentioned in the Bible story are sea monsters. After them come birds. In general, this follows very closely the pattern of evolution told in the rocks. Fourth, only after the sea creatures, uh, came animals which could live on dry land, and only as the final step in the creation of land animals did man appear. Here too, the order is amazingly close to that given us by modern science. We must not stretch the point too far, of course. It would be a mistake to suppose that the writer, or writers, of Genesis actually knew about evolution. But it is all the more remarkable that without knowing about it, they nevertheless came so close to scientific fact. Isn't that interesting, by the way? Just as— this is my interjection— that even in this book for Jewish confirmation, In the '50s, they were teaching evolution. I find that fascinating, and that they actually see the Genesis story being compatible with that. Fascinating for those of us who are in the evangelical world. And next, there's another way that they talk about that we can interpret Genesis. Says this: "Though there is much to recommend— though there is much to recommend each of these interpretations, there is a better way yet to look upon the Bible story of creation." which is to recognize that the Bible isn't a science book or a source of scientific knowledge at all. We turn to the Bible for an altogether different kind of knowledge from that of science. Actually, we might speak in this respect of two kinds of truth. We shall call them here lowercase truth and uppercase Truth. The first kind of truth refers to the actual details of any story in the Bible. When we ask whether a given story is true, we mean, did God really create the world in 6 days? Or did the Red Sea really split, um, really split for the children of Israel to pass through? Or was there actually a great flood in the days of Noah? When we ask, however, whether a story in the Bible is uppercase TRUE with a capital T, we mean, is there some great lasting moral or ethical truth which the writer of this story was trying to teach us? Are the details of the story as given merely symbols for something far more important which the author meant to convey to us? Can we find in this account some great principle we ought to remember, which can help us understand life and live it better? A story which is told primarily to teach a moral or ethical truth is called A parable. Let us, let us examine the biblical story of creation more closely now to see if it could properly be called a parable. Is it uppercase or lowercase true with lowercase letters, or uppercase true with uppercase letters as it shows in the book? What can we learn from this story that may be more important than the actual details? We'll do the work for you on this one, after which you'll be asked to do the same thing on one or two other stories from the Bible. If you'll reread the story of creation in Genesis, you'll find the following were some of the Truths we can find there. First, human beings are the highest order of creation. We are the only form of life created in the image of God, and that means to say the only form which has developed a soul. This means we also have a much greater responsibility than animals have, in that we alone are co-workers with God. Second, life and the world in which we live it are good. Some religions are pessimistic, believing that human beings are essentially evil. Judaism is a religion of optimism. After each day in the story of creation, the writer pictures God saying, "It is good." Our faith proclaims that life is good. People can be good if they try. The pleasures of the world are here for us to enjoy, not to prohibit or deny. Third, God is the force or power behind everything. No part of the world exists without God. The spirit or intelligence known as God is responsible for everything we are and know. And fourth, rest is as important for human life as work. After 6 days of labor, every human being is entitled to a day of rest. This includes not only the man who works for himself, but also his servant and employees, and even the stranger who happens to be with him. These 4 ideas are only part of the moral message or lesson which the writer of this story meant to express. In your reading selections for this chapter, you will find others. One of your workbook tasks will be to state at least 7 of these in your own words. Does this make the difference between upper— lowercase truth and uppercase Truth a little clearer for you? And does it help you understand the kind of thing for which we look when we read a Bible story? If it does, then you will understand still better that there is no conflict between religion and science. Now we want you to— we want you yourself to find the uppercase truth in two additional Bible stories with which you are probably already familiar. One is the story of Noah. The other is the story of the Tower of Babel. And the book goes on to say, in your workbook you will be asked to choose one of these stories and read it carefully, and then list the uppercase truths you think the writer was trying to teach us. Well, that's the end of what I'm gonna share from that book, but I think that's fascinating to find that when they are getting ready to confirm children in as, you know, confirmed Jews in the faith, that's one of the resources that since the '50s they've been using to talk to them about their faith and their religion. Sounds very different than a lot that we hear in evangelical circles, don't we? Sounds very different than the certitude that we seem to have to have, and it sounds very different than the wars that we seem to fight between faith and evolution. For the Jewish people, there's no battle. They look at Scripture much differently than most evangelicals do. They've been reading it for much longer than we have. It's their holy book, and we would do well to listen in on their conversations about Scripture, I think. And I have found my time meeting with Jewish brothers and sisters here in my own city over the last several years to be very enlightening and very helpful in my study of the Scripture as a Christian. And I am very grateful for them taking the time to help me in that. I am thankful for Rabbi Gittelson who wrote the book "Little Lower Than the Angels." And I hope that you have enjoyed diving in a little bit more into the subject of creation as a result. I'd love to know your thoughts. If you want to drop me a line, you can either contact me, rick@rickleejames.com, that's my email address. You can contact me about the podcast. You can drop me a line on Facebook, or you can find me on Twitter @RickLeeJames. I'd love to hear back from you. Well, I hope you enjoyed this conversation. Well, not really a conversation. It was, uh, whatever you call it, a monologue, I guess. And I hope you enjoyed the humorous story of how this episode got brought to you in the first place. But I really enjoyed my research into it, and it fascinates me, and it, it makes me even more secure, I think, in my faith. And I'm glad to know that there are good scholars out here, and I'm glad to know that we have so much to learn from our Jewish brothers and sisters. So with that being said, thank you all for listening and for letting me be the voice in my head this week, I guess. Thanks so much and God bless you guys. We'll see you here next time. This is Rick Lee James.

Thank you for joining me here this week on Voices in My Head. I hope you'll visit me on my website at rickleejames.com where you can find out more about me Get my music on vinyl and CD, follow my blog, and even schedule me for a concert or a speaking engagement. Better yet, even a book signing in your neighborhood. You can find all that and more at rickleejames.com. Also, it would mean a great deal to me if you could write a review of this podcast on iTunes. The more positive reviews that we receive, the more visible this podcast will be online. And now for the benediction: May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. God bless you, and thank you for listening to Voices in My Head.