I wonder what it will take before we see all others as self. I wonder this for the sake of not only our civil society, but our entire world. I wonder if we will ever learn to live in the creative tension of the individual and the community or the common good? I wonder if the Church will ever be able to articulate the GOSPEL or “good news” as Jesus of Nazareth gave it; a universal message from GOD given through a brown man of a brown oppressed people living under “colonizers?”
I was sent a podcast link of THE BIBLE FOR NORMAL PEOPLE by a friend in Dallas. This podcast, whose hosts are Pete and Jared, describe it is as an interpretive conversation about the Scriptures through diverse lens, i.e., people who remain in the Church and think critically about what the good news means, based on how it is being lived out.
The most fascinating discussion recently was in an interview with author, Lisa Sharon Harper whose latest work has been the “decolonization” of the interpretation of Scripture. Ms. Harper believes that a “colonized” version of the bible (even in its various translations) has led to the exploitation of peoples around the world. Her hermeneutical tool for this deconstruction has been the return to the first pages of the Book of Genesis in the Hebrew language AND a real look at the social context of the authors of the entire bible as people of Afro-Asian roots living in oppressive conditions over millenia.
Now, I have always known something was wrong with the biblical scholarly contention that the verse, “Let us make humankind in our image and in our likeness and let them have dominion…” was not all about the rational capacity of being human. It was never about reason as far as I could tell, but I knew no Hebrew, so I regurgitated back whatever I was taught in Old Testament.
But study of the Hebrew—yes, I went down that hole after the podcast—led me to understand the words like image, (tsalem), good (towb), and dominion (radah) in a brand-new way. The Hebrew, tsalem or image, means resemblance or representation. Towb or good, means beneficial of excellent welfare in a relational way; and radah or dominion is not to subjugate, but rather to protect and serve for the sake of the other.
So, we humans were created to represent Elohim (God) or resemble Elohim in beneficial relationship to the rest of everything else that was created and to protect and serve creation for creation’s sake…that includes each other. How else can we represent Elohim EXCEPT in our capacity to create for the excellent welfare of the other, and to do that for LOVE’s sake. It is only then that we resemble GOD.
What happens when a human being, any human being, or an entire group of human beings are prevented from flourishing as that divine representation in the world?
Ms. Harper is adamant that our failure to recognize and to understand the image of GOD as tsalem allows for the hierarchical world we live in and the diminished humanity of all oppressed people. If we really believed that each human represented GOD—especially the poor, the prisoner, and the broken—we would be less apt to kick them to the societal curb as we normally do.
The entire conversation was woven around a new look from her “evangelical” perspective of the Good News. What do you think? Can you articulate what is the “good news” of the Kin(g)dom of God?
Just wondering….
Faithfully,
Freda Marie+