★★★★

SPOILER ALERT

It’s amazing how big a splash this self-published book made. I read the story several years back, but picked it up again for a book discussion group I belong to.

I don’t seem to be quite as enamored of it as some, but it IS a good story! The gist is of a father whose young daughter is murdered, and who ventures alone a year later to the place of her abduction. He is called there by a mysterious letter from “Papa;” Papa is the name his wife always used for God.

He arrives full of skepticism, and is met by three lovable figures: a big black woman (the Father), a plain looking Jewish man (Jesus), and a wispy, mysterious lady (the Holy Spirit). He talks with them, shares their food, does a bit of gardening with the Spirit, and in general works through his fury toward God for the loss of his daughter.

Together, over the weekend, they tackle the issue of good and evil and a few other stumbling blocks people may share toward God. He sees his dead daughter again, playing happily by a waterfall, and though she can’t see him through the void, she feels his presence and blows him a kiss. Finally grasping the love of God for him and for his daughter, he begins his journey back home. On the way, he suffers an auto accident and wakes up in the hospital, where he learns he was not gone two days after all, but had his accident on the day he left home.

So, it’s an escape into theodicy, plus a bit of unorthodox Trinity teaching, with a little postmodernism thrown in for spice (there’s a not-so-unexpected surprise in the end). If you think I’ve spoiled the book for you, I really haven’t—its value is not in the plot, but in the lively discussions on nearly every page about God.

While some reviewers feel the book is a bit sacrilegious in its bizarre portrayal of God, I found the character personalities helpful. It’s more feel-good than thought-provoking, though, as its theology is clearly supplemented by the author’s imagination. But then, whose theology isn’t?

//The prophet Isaiah is sometimes pictured as one of the more aristocratic, at least in comparison to other prophets. He has access to the king and other higher-ups. This makes God’s instruction in today’s verse even more bizarre.

God tells Isaiah to walk around naked for three years. Why? To illustrate the shame of Egyptians and Ethiopians, who would soon be captured and taken into captivity.

Then the LORD said, “Just as my servant Isaiah has gone stripped and barefoot for three years, as a sign and portent against Egypt and Cush, so the king of Assyria will lead away stripped and barefoot the Egyptian captives and Cushite exiles, young and old, with buttocks bared–to Egypt’s shame. –Isaiah 20:3-4

I have to ask. Does this make Isaiah the first to “walk like an Egyptian”?

//These are wonderful words of equality, penned by Paul, meant to be interpreted symbolically. Right? A person can’t really be neither male nor female, can s/he? Didn’t Genesis tell the story of how mankind was created “male and female” by God?

Let’s go back and read that text a little more carefully:

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. –Gen 1:27

Oh! Maybe we’ve been reading this wrong all along? God created “man” in His own image—being both male and female?

Hellenistic Jews read this text just this way! Mankind, they say, was created androgynous—both male and female—and they speculated that a time would come when human beings would once again return to this state of androgynous perfection.

Maybe you’ve read the Gospel of Thomas, and uncovered these words:

Jesus said to them: “When you make the two into one and when you make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside and the above like the below, — that is, to make the male and the female into a single one, so that the male will no longer be male and the female no longer female– … then you will enter [the kingdom].” –Thomas 22

Maybe Paul was writing more literally than we thought?

By the final quarter of the book, however, the tone turns more somber. Perhaps Constantine managed to twist the cross into a swastika, but we’ve never managed to untwist it. The horrors of war are only one example of how Jesus’ ministry has undergone a stark reversal. Is the Age of the Lord’s Favor merely a pipe dream?

//Today’s verse is about the children of Israel after they escaped from Egypt and fled into the desert. I’ve mentioned this topic so many times when talking about exaggerations in the Bible that I’ve noticed a mocking tone creep into my voice. The Bible says there were 600,000 men making this journey. As if one source isn’t enough, Numbers 1:45-46 counts “603,550 able-bodied, battle-ready men above twenty years of age.” Counting women and children, that’s probably about two million Israelites.

Guys, if there were ever two million people traipsing around in the desert for forty years, we’d know about it. We’d be able to uncover some record of it. Our archaeologists are not that bad. Instead, we have nothing. No record at all of an exodus ever happening. I’m not saying the escape didn’t happen, but two million people?

I’ve heard it calculated that if there were two million people crossing the Red Sea, in a column four people wide, the length of the line would stretch from northern Egypt down to the tip of the Sinai Peninsula, around Mount Sinai, and back up again. I mean, really! (There’s that mocking tone again, sorry!)

Archaeologists estimate that the population of Palestine around the year 1000 BC (the time of David) was about fifty thousand. Even if we consider all of these inhabitants to be Israelites, what happened to the two million? Did God kill 39 out of every 40 Israelites in the desert?

So, some scholars suggest the Hebrew word elef, translated as “thousand” in both Exodus and Numbers, should perhaps instead be translated as “military unit.” Each such unit could be as small as ten people. That means 20,000  escapees from Egypt, counting women and children. Still more than I would guess is reasonable, but at least it’s now within the realm of possibility!

//Ever hear of “Micah 6:8 Christianity?” Without arguing about context, this is an inspiring verse in its simplicity and self-direction. If only our lives could be so simple. Micah 6:8 is also the inspiration for a Charlie Hall song:

Verse
You could feed the whole world with the crumbs of old bread
Spread the good news through dreams and stones
With a breath of the wind You could raise up the dead
But You ask us to go

Chorus
Help us love mercy, help us do justly,
Help us walk humbly with You God

Verse 2
Forget not the widow, the orphan, and slave
O God please remember the helpless today
Call on Your children repairing the breach
There is no place too far that Your mercy can’t reach

Outro
For the children who sleep beneath cities at dark
let love go and touch them with your Father’s heart