A Fair Trade Book
Title: Snapshots of God
Author:
Richard W. Coffen
Date:
2009
Publisher:
Review & Herald
ISBN:
978-0-8280-2460-0
Length:
368 pages
Quote:
“The biblical passages selected for this book are extremely diverse…some…aren’t
what most of us would consider personal favorites…I found it a challenge to encapsulate
my understanding of a Bible verse in under 400 words.”
Richard
Coffen is one of those pastors who were considered “liberal” when I attended a
Seventh-Day Adventist church. By now they’ve succeeded in alienating most of
the real “conservatives.” Of course, in this peculiar context, “liberal” and
“conservative” have nothing to do with secular politics; Seventh-Day Adventists
define these words in terms of how people relate to the church’s traditional
rules about modesty, temperance, and frugality. By now it seems that those who
wanted to abolish the rules have succeeded in alienating those who had no
problem with the rules. Rethinking the rules was touted as a way to make church
membership grow. In practice, while the Spanish-speaking Iglesia Adventista del Séptimo Día has grown, the English-speaking
Seventh-Day Adventist church has splintered and shrunk. Nevertheless it’s still
a fairly large, rich denomination, able to maintain publishing houses that
print devotional books by S.D.A. authors.
Snapshots of God is that kind of book.
Written not to convert Christians but to inform Christians already converted,
it’s one of those devotional books that offer exactly one page of reflections
on one Bible verse per day. Review & Herald prints both full-length hardcover
books for anyone to read over a whole year, like this one, and ninety-day
paperback “quarterlies” for members of different discussion groups in the
church.
For those
not familiar…S.D.A. “Sabbath School” classes, graded by age, are the interactive part of the weekly church meetings. Members are not required to read
the “quarterly” devotional, but will fit into the classes where discussions are
liveliest if they have. So the most active members of the S.D.A. church
typically don’t even read a book like Snapshots
of God as the authors intend this kind of books to be read. They buy them,
though—Grandma Bonnie Peters bought Snapshots
of God—and leave them lying about for casual reading. Since each page is a
self-contained section, books like Snapshots
of God are perfect for “reading” in the bathroom, or while waiting for
dinner…I read this book (and also knitted a full-sized, original-designed
blanket) while waiting on the computer regular readers may remember as The
Sickly Snail.
Coffen’s
introduction (and reflection on 1 Cor. 10:11) is the reading for the first day
of January. Genesis 1:1 is discussed on the second of January. After that
Coffen’s reflections are presented mostly in the order the verses appear in the
Bible. The end of January brings us into the book of Numbers; by the beginning
of March we’re in the book of Judges, and so on.
One thing
of which the Neo-Pagan movement has recently reminded Christians is that God
the Father is not, in fact, described in the Bible as male. God is a Spirit, not limited to any gender, number, or form
of mortal flesh. The Hebrew language paints very vivid word “pictures” of
abstract concepts. On page 27, Coffen discusses the description of God in
Exodus 34:6-7, one of several passages in which the Bible writers agree that
God is motherly (possessing the kind of mercy the ancient Hebrews believed to
be based in the uterus) and has a long nose (is not easily provoked to anger,
which the ancient Hebrews metaphorically expressed by, among other things,
snorting through the nose). Other texts credit God with upper body strength, which sounds masculine,
but ancient Hebrews identified this quality with the feminine figure (El Shaddai means “powerful,” “mountain-like,” or “busty”). The Hebrew
text has some vivid images of male-body qualities, always used to refer to men
not to God. The Bible calls God “Father” and “He,” but does not describe God in
terms of the corresponding metaphors for human male characteristics.
So,
should we “image” God as “He” or as “She”? The Bible warns us against “making
images” of either kind. The ancient Hebrew language and culture were so full of
gendered imagery and stereotypes about what mortal fathers and mothers did that
it’s even possible to read the Hebrew Scriptures as emphasizing God’s
transcendence of mortal limits by emphasizing that God can be like either,
neither, and/or both mortal fathers and mortal mothers. Each of the Arabs’
“ninety-nine names of God” has a Hebrew counterpart, but the Hebrew scriptures
use four primary names for God: one looks like a feminine form, but is used as
if it were masculine; one looks like a plural form, but is used as if it were
singular; one looks like a verb form, but is used as if it were a noun; and although
the fourth is solidly masculine, with connotations of male sexuality, the Bible
tells us that when we become enlightened we won’t have much use for that one.
Personally,
I’ve often found it valuable to remember that the Bible writers consistently
called God a Father—in terms of a culture where fathers depended on their
children for economic security, but spent time with their children mostly while
teaching their children to do their jobs—rather than a Nanny. Some twentieth
century Christians seem to want to worship God as a Nanny who caaares about soothing their feeelings, rather than a Father who
holds them to standards. These people may not like to be reminded that in the
Bible God is less likely to say “There there everything’s all right” than to say
“No, not like that—now watch this—like that!
Now try it again!”
Some feminist friends and writers are attracted to the idea
of a Goddess because “She is more like us.” Observing that, in history, women
as a group seem to have been better off in cultures where people prayed to God
as a Father of Justice than in cultures where women were considered too
inferior even to pray to the masculinized images of God and relegated to
goddess cults, I continue to appreciate the image of God the Father. But, yes,
according to the Bible, my Heavenly Father feels distinctly motherly love and has the specific kind
of powerful shoulders and mighty arms that support a full bosom, and may therefore, if we want
to be downright silly about it, resemble me more than Gloria Steinem does. This
despite the fact that He is also a “Lord” whose rights, implicit in the title
“Lord,” include the right to use any of the things He is Lord of in a male
sexual way.
Coffen,
addressing Seventh-Day Adventists, doesn’t go as far along this line of thought
as I just did (knowing that this web site has some feminist and Neo-Pagan
readers), but he does discuss the Bible passages that describe God as a
remarkably motherly sort of Father, as well as Lord, King, Savior, Creator, and
other things. Not all of the texts on which Coffen dwells are descriptions of
God; most are.
On page
22, Coffen discusses some of the additional titles used to describe God in the
Bible, the “God of…” or “God, the…” phrases: El-Shaddai, El-Elyon, El-Olam,
El-Berith. There are others. “God of Abraham.” “God of our ancestors.” In
Hebrew possessive forms that link the name of someone addressed with the people
speaking become additional forms of the name, giving us Eloi (my God) and Elohenu (our
God) and so on. Coffen does not discuss every single one of these names,
although that might become a topic for another devotional book some day. He
focusses on those four because they, along with El, Elohe, and Elohim,
were general Semitic-language words for God that we know were used to refer to
the “false gods of the nations” as well as the One God of the Bible.
This line
of thought, too, can be followed further. In the Hebrew scriptures the word for
the Lord God is Ba’al. This, also,
was a general Semitic-language word for “lord,” which has become familiar to us
in Bible passages where it’s used to mean the false god of some cult or city. In Hebrew ba’al can mean any “Lord
and Master,” whether good or evil, human or divine, and it was used to mean all
four. Ba’ali, “my lord,” was what slaves
called slavemasters. It was also what wives called husbands in public. (There
were female forms, ba’alit and
others.) Privately wives called husbands
Ishi, “my man.” Because slavery was
still real, the shift of attitude implied by “call me Ishi rather than Ba’ali”
was probably stronger than the one implied by “call me ‘Dear’
rather than ‘Sir’.” Ba’ali had some
of the connotations of “bull” and “bully.” It was a name that lacks a real counterpart in any language spoken by free
people. The God of the Bible is credited with teaching people not to subject
themselves to these ba’alim, but,
despite a prohibition against “speaking the names” of the false gods, He
accepted the worship of people who called him ba’al.
Words, as
Coffen observes, evidently are not considered the names of false gods.We can
refer to August, or Monday, or Diana Spencer, without violating any religious
restriction on worshipping Augustus
Caesar or the moon or Diana of the Ephesians. (A.J. Jacobs
was joking about this.)
was joking about this.)
Another
controversial point on which Coffen frequently weighs in has to do with the
rules for church services, themselves. “A priest had to…be descended from
Aaron… Some argue that ordained ministers are the contemporary equivalent of
the ancient priests. Therefore, women pastors mustn’t be ordained…then
shouldn’t all the necessary
qualifications be applied?” “It’s a bit puzzling…to hear people speak of ‘altar
calls,’ because there are no altars in our churches. The exposition of
Scripture, not an animal sacrifice, is the focal point.” “Ancient places of
worship…weren’t places where the worshippers sat down…Literally, the text tells
us to come before God shouting.”
Then
there’s “biblical accuracy.” On page 113, Coffen’s focus is on Ezra 2:41: “The
singers of the family of Asaph: 128.” “But…Nehemiah 7:44 indicates that the
number of people was 148. A clear contradiction.” Not necessarily, if the
counts were taken on different days, but Coffen correctly notices that
“inspired people can get their facts wrong.” (Isn’t that a consolation to every
blogger who has ever published a typo, or an erroneous detail?) Some of the
Bible writers’ disagreements on names, numbers, etc., do not actually
contradict each other. An army that had eight hundred thousand swordsmen in one
year can easily have eleven hundred thousand in another year. A man might
change his name. Something that was begun on the seventh day of the month might
be finished on the tenth. Nevertheless, although it’s likely that Jesus healed
people both on the way into Jericho and on the way out of Jericho, it seems
likely that he healed Bartimaeus, specifically, on one occasion or the other
but not both, and one of the descriptions of this event contains a scribal
error. It’s possible that Matthew had heard a reasonably accurate genealogy for
Joseph and Luke had heard one for Mary, in which case they would have been very
distant cousins, but if so the gospel of
Luke would still contain an error, since its genealogy is identified as Joseph’s.
Adventists
have generally tried to ignore these errors in asserting “the inerrancy of the
Scriptures.” They have obviously been wrong in denying that the inconsistencies
exist. They can still go wrong by allowing too much to be made of the inconsistencies.
On page
117, Coffen takes the first of several steps toward what I see as making too
much of the idea that we can ever think
we know more than the Bible
writers did. “We use communication…in five different ways…Informative
communication provides names and information…Cognitive communication shares
thoughts… Affective communication shares and evokes emotions…Performative
communication produces action…and phatic communication eases tension and builds
solidarity.” The Bible writers were not shy about praying for harsh judgments
to fall upon evildoers. Coffen, here commenting on Nehemiah 3:37 (“Do not
pardon their wickedness! May their sin never be erased!”), wants to smooth
everything over: “He was frustrated and was venting his spleen.. It seems to me
that God takes our affective language seriously…But He doesn’t take such speech
literally.”
It seems
to me that nobody was ever meant to take some
Hebrew phrasings literally. Others, however, we smooth over at our peril. The
thing to be learned from Nehemiah’s prayer, here, is that God Himself cannot
forgive sins of which people don’t repent, and people of good will can indeed
pray that God will show displeasure with some people’s sins in ways that will
get their attention, here and now and forevermore, because that may be the only
way those people will ever repent. We do not really promote good, or even nice,
behavior by trying to smooth over “wickedness.” We are not practicing love when
we “call evil good.” It may be possible to feel as well as to practice real
love for rapists and murderers, but it’s not possible to do that by allowing
them to commit rapes and murders.
Rather
than trying to deny that we feel angry because we see things that are wrong
being done, it would be better if more Christians prayed biblically: Correct
them here and now, O Lord. Please, for the sake of whatever evildoers may have
in the way of salvageable souls, chastise the evildoers before they can do any
more evil. Clobber them, as it were with a heavy beam right between the eyes;
knock them down, strike them blind, even cripple them if You must, O God,
until—like St. Paul—they say, themselves, in sincere repentance, “Wanting to
kill those ‘heretical Jews’ who became Christians was wrong, and it would have
been better for me to have been totally blind forever, not even just blinded
for a few days and thereafter very nearsighted, rather than for me to have
participated in another murder like that of St. Stephen.”
One can
understand Coffen’s aversion to this kind of prayer. One does not have to have
been a Christian for very long before one hears a highly questionable prayer,
often uttered in complete sincerity by a very young Christian, along the lines
of “That girl/boy/employer/teacher/scholarship committee rejected me for wrong
reasons, O Lord. Please destroy all his/her beauty and prospects and hopes in
life, ruin his/her business, let his/her school burn to the ground, to correct
their wrong thinking!”
We need to be clear, I believe, about why this line of thought is not
biblical. Nehemiah was talking about hostile, violent opposition to the will of
God for a nation, not a mere personal demonstration of a prospective partner’s
unfitness or of his own. Most older people can and should say to the young
Christian, “Once, long ago, some other young person who was as confused as I
was at that time rejected me, too, in abusive and hurtful ways. Partly it was
because I was not in fact mature , sincere, or committed enough for the
position I wanted, partly it was because s/he wasn’t either. And actually, with
hindsight, I now believe that it was in harmony with God’s perfect will that I was never able to ruin my life by making any
commitment to that relationship, and I’m grateful that I married and/or worked
and/or studied with the people I did.” But nobody could have said that to
Nehemiah. Nehemiah’s prayer may sound superficially like “God, please punish my
ex-girlfriend for going out with other guys,” but it was completely different.
Coffen
classifies several Bible verses as “affective communication,” thereby sweeping
away the value of their content...I believe this is always a mistake.
This is
not an exhaustive list of the ways Coffen’s opinions may surprise some church
members. One I particularly like, and wish Coffen had developed further,
appears on page 91: “When it comes to helping the needy, we can do three
things, none of which are [sic] mutually exclusive. We can do the good thing
by providing financial donations that can sometimes care for the need of the moment…we
can do the better thing by enabling the deprived to help themselves…we can also
do the best thing by working to eliminate the causes of oppression.”
In this
discussion Coffen quotes (his relative?) William Sloane Coffin, the legendary
liberal Quaker behind SANE-FREEZE. I worked with WSC, too. He fell into some,
not all, of the same errors George Soros has been working so hard to lead the
young back into today. He was, I believe, less blameworthy, because he hadn't lived at the right time to see how socialism is inherently
more oppressive even than capitalism.
A real free market, in which nobody is
oppressed, is neither socialistic nor completely capitalistic; it blocks the
greedier capitalists’ efforts to set up protectionist schemes that keep newer,
smaller competitors out of the marketplace. Coffen doesn’t discuss the beauty
of a really free market that is wide open to newcomers, in which young, poor
people with little to invest can still out-compete huge corporations because their businesses are smaller and
more flexible. For Coffen’s audience, that’s a “secular” thought, likely to be
excluded from “religious” thinking. For me, “Proclaim liberty and justice by
freeing up the market” is as “spiritual,” as much of a biblical commandment, as
“Feed the hungry” and “Thou shalt not murder.”
But
discussing all of Coffen’s differences from all those other devotional writers
whose books Seventh-Day Adventists have read, at breakfast or on buses or in
the bathroom, would mean writing a whole new book. I might enjoy writing that
book. You’re not paying me to write it (yet). I’ll say just one more thing
about Snapshots of God, here. You
were wondering whether he says any of the things you expect, the things the
other books said, about God’s forgiving love and our need to forgive our
brethren and the joy of worship and how we can live without knowing when this
world may give place to the next. He does. I think something between one-third
and one-half of Coffen’s devotional reflections are non-controversial, standard
Christian thoughts about the ideas Seventh-Day Adventists hold in common with
all other Christians (and with Jews, Muslims, and Buddhists). Coffen expects
all his readers to have read plenty of reflections on God’s goodness and the
benefits of good behavior. He expects the reader to want both to think about
new ideas, and to be reminded of the old ones.
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