Well, after class this [past] weekend, I've learned two things. The first is that Dr. Fortner objects to my changing career paths. He said, "This isn't because of what some idiot male said, is it? Because I'd like to apologize on behalf of my entire gender."

I'm going to go ahead with the plans for a BA in psychology at least. I can't look that many years ahead right now, anyway. I'll just keep thinking and learning and see what happens.

This weekend was great, though. We had good discussion about whether the prophets were in their laments and complaints laying the problem of evil at the doorstep of God -- i.e. whether they were blaming him.

Not to say that evil isn't the result of the actions of sinful men (for the most part -- and even if we can't trace it to a specific action, we lay it all on the head of Adam. "Children have cancer because Adam and Eve rebelled," that sort of thing...). Theodicy, the righteousness of God on trial, is thematically enormous in the old testament (and in Paul's writings in the new, but we tend to read them with Christian glasses on).

Anyway, I started writing this post... Sunday? Maybe Monday, but I think I got distracted. A lot has happened since then. A lot that brings to bear the questions of theodicy.

Philip Yancey tried to answer the question in his various books, among them Disappointment with God. And he did an excellent job - but since then, I've heard from Job on the issue.

Actually, his name's not Job. He's a man who attends SVCC, but his story is the same heaviness.

He and his wife had a perfect life: two beautiful sons, a nice home, good jobs, an active church life and a strong marriage with strong faith. It seemed there was a hedge around him. He though of it, though probably not explicitly, as his 'deal' with God. "God, you keep doing your thing - protect my wife, my children, our interests, our wellbeing, our spiritual lives, our endeavors - and I'll do mine: be a Christian father, husband, active church member, faithful Christian, cheerful giver, good example." And for a long time, that's how things went.

He and his wife had a perfect life. They began to think of expanding their family and soon were expecting their third child. It seemed like the perfect pregnancy, no real problems. When the baby was born, he was beautiful: red hair, soft skin, ten fingers, ten toes. Perfect. Except something inside didn't connect, something wasn't right.

The baby couldn't breathe on his own and his body didn't perform naturally many involuntary actions. The doctors put him on life support, telling the parents it would be days, maybe weeks before he could go home. The doctors could find no physiological reason for the disconnect. It didn't make sense; they didn't know what caused his condition or how to cure it. They couldn't even pinpoint what, exactly, his condition was.

Weeks soon became months. It became clear their son wouldn't be coming home.

The first time this couple held their newborn baby without a tangle of wires or through a gloved barrier was his last day. They disconnected the life support and sat and rocked their newborn as he died.

Their sorrow was intense, but they had a strong love for God and for each other. They had supportive families and a loving church home. They were devastated, but they survived faith, family and marriage intact. Several months went by and they began to wonder about the possibility of having another child. Their doctors assured them they'd be fine. They were young, healthy and should have no problem; what happened with this baby was like lightning: unpredictable and of miniscule likelihood to happen again. They didn't even know what had happened; it was a fluke.

This wasn't good enough. The couple brought their concerns to God. They prayed, the church prayed, everyone prayed. They couple prayed that if they could have another child, God would let it happen, but they were afraid of the heartache if anything else went wrong and asked God to circumvent their desire for another child if something like this could happen again.

The couple conceived quickly; they seemed to have their answer. Things seemed to be fine. At the first ultrasound, the doctor was concerned. He noticed some of the abnormalities that he'd seen last time and had written off. And this baby wasn't breathing much, even in the womb. It became apparent that this child had the same problem, only far more severe.

Doctors began to talk to the couple about their 'options.' Termination. "For us, there were no 'options.' My wife was committed to carrying this baby to term." And so, against the advice of the doctors, the pregnancy proceeded.

The prayers then became pleas for healing. "God, you're the God of miracles. Move in such a way that the doctors have no explanation except for your power. Heal him." And they went in to every appointment, every checkup and every ultrasound after that with the expectation that God would do it, that the doctors would scratch their heads, puzzled, and inform them that the deformity had vanished.

But it didn't happen. Each time, the news was the same.

Soon, his wife delivered their son. He looked perfect: red hair, soft skin, ten fingers, ten toes. But something didn't connect. He couldn't breathe and his body couldn't perform most of the involuntary actions it should do automatically. So that day, in that same room where they'd set almost a year before, in the same chair, they rocked their son as he died.

All he could do was ask God, "why?"

====

This modern Job spoke one Sunday night. He couldn't understand. Hadn't he prayed? Hadn't he been a good father, a good husband, a good Christian? Hadn't he done his part? Why, then, was God falling down on his? What kind of "father" is God, anyway?

Why.

He realized, eventually, that he didn't care why. Knowing why wouldn't make it hurt any less.

The man began to think of his two, living sons. When he taught one of them to ride a bike, the inevitable happened: his son fell. It hurt; he cried.

He didn't turn to his father and question his parenting skills. He didn't run up and kick him in the shins or scream in his face, asking where his father had been and why he'd let him fall. Instead, he ran to his father for comfort, for healing. "Because my son and I don't have an 'agreement.' We have a relationship."

That's when he realized all the "why's" in the world and all the answers to them wouldn't make a difference. What he wanted was not to know "why." What he wanted was for his father to pick him up, to clean him off, to comfort and to heal him.

===

It's not wrong to ask why. It just may not be what we need afterall.

Whaddaya wanna bet that with this, I could knit a wookie?

On a completely different note:

Saturday, I taught myself to knit. I now have about a fifth of a scarf. ^_^

This whole question of whether to pursue theology (academically and full-time, anyway) or whether to take this other trek - it's been a struggle. It's a struggle between what I want personally (either to sit in an ivory tower dissecting Hebrew words or teaching others to do the same, an academic 'ministry' since it's highly unlikely I'll be asked to preach) or this: counseling.

I can either spend the rest of my life fighting for a theological ideal I don't think will be realized in my lifetime or I can spend my life trying to help others heal. I guess it comes down to whether I really want to do ministry - or whether I only wanted to prove a point.

I want to do this. It was a hard decision to make and a lot of people might not understand why. I never just wanted to prove a point. I only ever wanted to become a minister in order to minister. I didn't know then that it'd just become a fight. I didn't know that exercising the talents God had given me would land me solidly on the side of the heretics.

Over the last several years, the same desire to minister hasn't died. And God has a sense of humor. God has apparently taken something I hate deeply and made it an avenue of ministry, a way to serve. The whole thing is an answer to years of prayer, though in the great tradition he's established over many millennia of interacting with his people, he didn't answer it in a way that I'd hoped or wanted.

If someone has been badly burned, how is he expected to react when around fire? Or when in the presence of another burn victim? But with proper training, he may ultimately become the best one to treat the burns of another. He remembers not only what it felt like to be burned, but how it hurt to start heal. And he has insight to obstacles that reach far beyond the initial healing. He knows what it's like to live with the scars and to flinch around flame. He understands.

Anyway, it's beyond the quiet corner thinking and the sounding board stage: this is what I'm going to do, Lord willing (and it seems he is). And sadly, there's a growing market for the area of social psychology in which I'll be specializing.

I'm a theologian by nature; it seems I probably always will be, since theology is literally thinking about God. This way, I can put that thinking into practice. Maybe I'll get the opportunity to do some good.

Slightly less cryptic...

Lord willing, in January or possibly summer of 2005, I will be starting a BS in Psychology program -- at a local Catholic university, of all places. Should take me about 3 regular semesters and a summer term. After that, I'll officially enter the masters program in counseling therapy at HUGSR with the additional intent to obtain licensure as an LPC.

Beyond that, who knows? But this looks like the direction I'm going. Doors have started flying open in directions I wasn't even looking. And the way in which the timing falls? Amazing.

I can't explain how all of this has come about, really, except to say that it looks like it's got all the marks of the hand of God plastered on it. How else would I shift from old testament theology to counseling therapy? And yes, I've shifted. I can't do both; old testament will become a (very involved) hobby.

I know God can use either choice, either path, that one isn't necessarily more "right" than another.

I'm just wondering what the heck God intends to do with a therapist who holds a deep interest in all things ancient near eastern?

I haven't entirely disappeared. Only in bits and pieces, one of which is the bit (or piece) that blogs, I guess.

Actually, it's still here -- it's just been kind of quiet lately. I've been thinking. Sometimes thinking needs a sounding board, and sometimes thinking just requires a quiet corner. This has been mostly quiet corner thinking.

Old testament is still my passion, still what I love best and would still rather study it than even to breathe, but it may not be where I'm headed anymore. It's still very much what I want to do, but there's a strong compulsion in a different direction in which I may actually be able to do more in a ministry sense.

And nothing says I can't continue to study OT, even if I serve in another way. Right?

This is an uncomfortable sort of shift, this direction of thinking. I'm not sure I like it, but somehow, I think I may also be at peace with it. Doesn't make sense, I'm sure, but then when we're honest, not that many things really do.

My brain may be twisting and/or writhing for the next while; in the future, maybe my "quiet corner thinking" will need a sounding board and I won't be so blasted cryptic. (Whether it sounds like it or not, this is actually something deeply entrenched in the last post re: "gifts." I think there's something I have that God can use if I let him. I've just got to get past the fear and/or reluctance and my own personal stubbornness that won't.)

Who knows?

I've been thinking a lot about the parable of the talents lately.

We just had a ministry fair at SVCC and it's stirred up some interesting thoughts about the nature of the body of Christ and the individual responsibility of every believer toward ministry.

And i've thought that "talent" might not be limited really to what I've traditionally understood: something a person is good at that's to be used for the glory of God. I think it's that, too, but I think that's an unnecessarily narrow definition and that a talent might be anything in a person's life that God intends to use -- and hiding one's talent in that respect would be standing in the way of his using it, or letting fear stand in the way.

God may not have given me the trials in my life, but he's given me what I've needed to survive them and he's given me opportunity to learn from them and, when necessary, to heal from them. And it strikes me sometimes that Mordecai's words to Esther, "who know but that you have come to [this] position for such a time as this?' may have far broader application. God spared her in order to spare his people. Who knows but that God has brought me through in order to use me to bring others through as well?

So maybe a talent isn't necessarily anything I'm good at or any specific gift God has given me directly. Maybe it's just something in my life he intends to use -- if I'll let him.

The Dan Brown Code

I've been re-reading The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown. Well, okay, I re-read it Sunday night; now I'm re-reading the prequel, Angels and Demons.

The criticism I've heard most often is that "it's a fun book for the most part, an interesting mystery novel with a lot of factual errors." And that's true in part. But I've harped on elsewhere about his absolute lack of fact checking before (i.e. citing over 80 gnostic gospels ...and apparently locating some of them in the Dead Sea scrolls -- which all scholars seem to think are devoid of anything remotely related to new testament gnosticism, not to mention containing absolutely no gospels or gospel fragments of any sort, and which he claims were discovered "in the 50s," I think.) Anyhow, I have other opinions, too -- which may or may not involve spoilers.

The story is, in general, pretty entertaining. Except that it's been done. To death. And by much more talented authors. Umberto Eco, for instance, wrote Foucault's Pendulum back in 1989, I think. Heck, even The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors by Kersey Graves, an unsupported fabrication of the 1870's from which Brown gets most of his "information" about where Christianity supposedly drew most of the characteristics claimed to be unique in the life of Christ is a better work of fiction.

Robert Langdon, the protagonist, is a relatively well-developed character, though sometimes dense as London fog -- maybe it's part of his charm. But I think that the character is three-dimensional because Brown is writing himself largely into the role. And it's interesting to note that the character doesn't mind notariety even of the infamous sort -- and neither will his editor -- because book sales will jump. Given Brown's past assertions, this seems revealing.

His villians are lacking. The albino monk, Silas, is at one point incredibly sinister and evidences a devious cunning -- and in another breath shows all the intestinal fortitude of a mango, being both imbecilic and a 'victim of circumstance.' Poor disillusioned guy...

His plots are formulaic. It's as though he took Angels and Demons, shortened it, changed most of the names of the characters and moved it to Paris instead of Geneva. The puzzles really should not have kept him and his cohort busy for the entire length of the book if he is indeed a "Harvard Symbologist" and she a professional cryptologist.

It is an intertaining book. But is it worthy of all the attention it's garnered? No. Not in my opinion. There are far better books -- on equally controversial themes, if one really needs that sort of thing. There are far more entertaining books much better written, researched and plotted. There are books out there which contain actual surprises.

This is not one of them.

So I think I've decided to write the next blockbusting best-seller. I'm not sure what I'm going to call it, but I promise not to do any research and to try to tick off as many people as possible somewhere near the middle and promote as many ludicrous theories as I possibly can -- and even some I can't.

At 6:00 this morning, my phone rang. My brain, though benedryl-hazed and coherence-impaired due to the ungodly hour somehow managed to recognize the voice of my mother. You know, the woman who gave birth to me and the one who realizes that one of the larger blockaids to my converting was that the local c's of C all met hours earlier than did the Baptist church of my youth. In short, she knows I like to sleep. However:

Mom: "Quiara? I have a surprise for you."
Me: *mmmprhhp*
Mom: "Did I wake you?"
Me: frumph.
Mom: "Good." *sound of phone being passed.*

...

Nephew(!): "Key?"
Me (suddenly awake): "Yes, Doodle?" (Which is, of course, short for Doodlebritches)
Nephew: "I go s'prise for you!"
Me: "You do? What is it?"
...

Nephew: "...I 'on't know... But Brandon [my youngest brother, a.k.a. "The Prodigal"] is fweepin' in my bed."
Me: "He is?"
Nephew: "Uh huh. He snorin'. Like this:" *loud, adorable imitation of Brandon's snore.*
Nephew (again): "Key? You talk to Nana now. I got go play."

-----


Eh, I think he's cute. ^_~ (Stinkin' adorable is the term I use most often, in fact). His maternal grandparents (who are also custodial at this point, but that's a long story) moved to Mississippi a while back. Since my mother continues to live in the God-forsaken land that is Arkansas (as opposed to the far more God-forsaken land that is Mississippi), she doesn't get to see him nearly often enough anymore. And I, living in Tennessee (somewhere between the two on the scale of God-forsaken-ness, I'm sure) hardly see him at all. I think he now believes I live in a telephone.

Major Prophets:

Fortner's class this semester is Major Prophets. It meets 2 days/month, 6ish hours/day, for 3 months. It's a baptism in the prophetic books - and I can't think of a better way to spend a Saturday.

Well, I also cleaned house. But mostly I thought about the prophets, their function, and the manifestations of the presence of God among his people throughout the ages.

Classes like this are air to me. I try to inhale enough to sustain me between class meetings. It almost works.

I'm still stewing over the things we talked about. Friday evening, we had a lecture by Dr. Jack P. Lewis. Incredible man. I've got tons of thoughts I want to coalesce at some point.