Bible Archives - Page 5 of 11 - Ramblin' with Roger

John Lennon would have been 75

Both the first verse of the song The Word and the first verse of John, chapter 1, begin with the words, “in the beginning…”

My friend Dan sent me this article How did the Beatles Get Their Name? Any Beatles fan worth his or her salt has heard the Flaming Pie story:
Many people ask what are Beatles? Why Beatles? Ugh, Beatles, how did the name arrive? So we will tell you. It came in a vision–a man appeared in a flaming pie and said unto them “From this day on you are Beatles with an A.” “Thank you, Mister Man,” they said, thanking him.

Flaming Pie, not coincidentally, is the name of a 1997 Paul McCartney album.

In the book The Gospel according to the Beatles by Steven Turner, it’s clear that John, far more than any of his cohorts, grew up with religious training. He was living with his Aunt Mimi (Stanley) Smith, who grew up Anglican, though neither she nor her sisters attended church as adults.

Still, Mimi and her sisters made sure their children were sent to Sunday school. John was a chorister and member of a Bible class. “For a time, he was attending events at the church four days a week.”

It was that respectable, impersonal, “bourgeois” version of Christianity that John eventually rejected. Still, the lessons he heard seeped into his thinking. The structure of the flaming pie story, Turner opines, is based on Acts 10:11, and/or Genesis 17. John himself called the flaming pie story “imitation Biblical stuff.”

“Mimi’s religion could be summarized by a stanza she framed on her wall:
However black the clouds may be
In time they’ll pass away
Have faith and trust and you will see
God’s light make bright your day
Compare these to the lyrics from Tell Me What You See, from the UK version of the Help! album.

The first time I heard The Word, from Rubber Soul, it reminded me of the beginning verses of the Gospel according to John. Both the first verse of the song and the first verse of chapter 1 begin with the words, “in the beginning…” John acknowledged to Jann Wenner of Rolling Stone magazine that The Word was the first song he’d written to impart knowledge. (“This could be a Salvation Army song,” said Paul at the time.)

Girl, also from Rubber Soul, is a response to a book John read called Masochism in the Modern Man by Theodor Reil, who suggested that the command to love one’s enemies and pray for those who persecute us is masochistic. “In John’s hands, those ideas led him to question whether the ‘girl’ had been raised to believe ‘that pain would lead to pleasure…’ Did the girl believe those who told her “that a man must break his back to earn his day of leisure’?”

Turner said that The Beatles “were skeptical, even dismissive of the church, but yet many of the core beliefs… were secularized versions of Christian beliefs.” All You Need Is Love would be a prime example.

There’s a lot more in the book, both involving the Beatles’ philosophy as a group and individually, but this is enough for now.

John Lennon would have been 75 today. And his son Sean turns 40!

Tell Me What You See: Lyrics, and Song
The Word: Lyrics, and Song
Girl: Lyrics, and Song
All You Need Is Love: Lyrics, and Song

Christianity and me, Part 1: Losing My Religion

By the time I got to 10th grade, I had started carrying around my Bible.

Arnoldo Romero is one of the regular ABC Wednesday participants. On his E is for Ecclesiastical post, he talked about his faith journey. Hey, he’s a PK, or preacher’s kid; I know a few of those.

He wrote, “I have even considered going into the ministry at a couple of points throughout my lifetime.” I responded, “When I was 12, most people thought I would become a minister, and I tended to agree,” to which Arnoldo responded, “I’d love to learn more about your spiritual journey and what led you to have a change of heart about going into the ministry sometime.” My answer: “That’s going to take a blog post. Or two.”

Or more, because, somewhere tied in there, I need to respond to an earlier question from Arthur – no, I haven’t forgotten – about the author Ta-Nehisi Coates, and specifically his atheism.

Let’s start at the very beginning. I was raised in the church, specifically Trinity AME Zion Church in Binghamton, NY. AME stands for African Methodist Episcopal. Like the AME Church, founded a decade before in Philadelphia, the AMEZ church was founded as a result of racial prejudice on the part of the M. E. (white) church, this time in New York City, “licensed a number of colored men to preach, but prohibited them from preaching even to their own brethren, except occasionally, and never among the whites.”

I was baptized when I was five months old. My paternal grandmother, Agatha Green (nee Walker) was one of my Sunday school teachers. The junior choir, under the direction of Fred Goodall, who was there for decades, included both my sister Leslie and me.

When I was nine, I was “saved.” I was at someone’s house on Oak Street, about a half a block from my church, but I wasn’t with folks affiliated with my church, and in fact, I’m not remembering whose house it was at all.

What I do recall was watching a Billy Graham crusade one afternoon or early evening on television. The evangelist Graham had a regular column in one of the Binghamton newspapers at the time. On the TV, he did his usual altar call, where he asks if we in the audience, as well as those gathered wherever he was, wanted to accept the saving grace of Jesus Christ. It sounded good to me. So I said yes.

The secretary to the principal of my school, Daniel S. Dickinson, was named Patricia J. Gritman. Though I don’t remember the process, at some point, Pat asked if I wanted to go to a Bible study at her house on Front Street, a half dozen blocks from where I lived. I attended Friday Night Bible Club for at least five years, as did Leslie. We memorized Bible verses, some of which I STILL know; sang songs; and, according to Leslie, ate a lot.

I was still attending Sunday school at my church, As I got a bit older, my father, Les Green, led a group of kids, including Leslie, our cousin Debbie and me, in a group called the MAZET singers, MAZET being an anagram of our church’s acronym.

At school, I tried not to lord my religion over others, but issues came up. For instance, the vast majority of my classmates found a way to cheat on some written tests in biology, but I was unwilling to do so, to the detriment of my grade.

By the time I got to 10th grade, I had started carrying around my Bible. I didn’t discuss the Book unless asked, but it was my statement of faith.

If someone were to ask me what I was going to be in this period, I probably would have said “a minister.” I got the feeling that others in my church thought so. I was becoming familiar with Scripture, and I was an active church participant, reasonably intelligent, and very well-behaved.

Around that period, I started attending another church on Sunday evenings, Primitive Methodist Church in Johnson City, a primarily white church. Usually, I’d walk about 0.6 mile to my friend Bob’s house, then we’d walk over 2.5 miles to the service; sometimes, we’d walk back, too. This was a more, for lack of a better word, fundamentalist POV.

A funny thing happened, though. As I got even more knowledgeable about the Bible, I found it more confusing, at least if one were supposed to take it all literally, as opposed to reading parts of it as allegory. Part of the problem was sheer mechanics. Genesis 1’s and Genesis 2’s creation stories deviate from each other. If Adam and Eve were literally the first people, who did Cain and Seth have children with?

More problematic was the notion that we American Christians had to send missionaries all over the world to save souls, lest they all go to hell. The narrative was that some person, even a child, in India who wasn’t even aware of Jesus Christ was sentenced to eternal damnation? I had a great big problem with a loving Jesus being part of that, but I received no satisfactory answer. There were other issues, too, but that was the big one, presumably tied to John 14:6.

Then, I started poking at even the most prosaic issues that Christians I had associated with had been telling me. Some thought going to the movies was sinful, or maybe that Disney movies were OK. Playing cards were wrong, even though my Sunday school-teaching grandmother taught me how to play canasta. I never much bought into these minor issues, but they made me much more cynical about the whole faith thing.

Little by little, doubt crept into my previous impenetrable fortress of faith. In retrospect, I find it interesting that I never made any active attempt to find a church when I went away to college in New Paltz, even though there were at least three within walking distance.

(To be continued, at some point.)
***
Some R.E.M. song.

The Curse of Canaan (or Ham)

The explanation that black Africans, as the “sons of Ham”, were cursed, possibly “blackened” by their sins, became increasingly common during the slave trade of the 18th and 19th centuries.

When we were investigating some aspects of black history this year at church, I was intrigued by the fact that, for a time in the mid-17th century, slavery based on race wasn’t really codified in the United States. There were white indentured servants and black slaves, but the former were often given ever-changing terms of servitude, making them functionally little better off than slaves.

In the 1670s, Bacon’s Rebellion “demonstrated that poor whites and poor blacks could be united in a cause. This was a great fear of the ruling class — what would prevent the poor from uniting to fight them? This fear hastened the transition to racial slavery.”

The status of blacks in Virginia slowly changed over the last half of the 17th century.“The black indentured servant, with his hope of freedom, was increasingly being replaced by the black slave.” So why bother with indentured servants who, after 7, 18, or 21 years [would have to be freed], when you could have Africans serve their lifetime, and serve in perpetuity through their children?

But HOW was the idea of permanent black enslavement developed? In part, from the Bible. Specifically from Genesis 9, starting with verse 18. After Noah has too much wine, “Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father and told his two brethren outside.” Noah curses Canaan (not Ham) to be the lowest of slaves “to his brothers,” specifically to Ham’s brothers, Japheth and Shem.

From the Wikipedia:

While Genesis 9 never says that Ham was black, he became associated with black skin, through folk etymology deriving his name from a similar, but actually unconnected, word meaning “dark” or “brown”…

The explanation that black Africans, as the “sons of Ham”, were cursed, possibly “blackened” by their sins, was advanced only sporadically during the Middle Ages, but it became increasingly common during the slave trade of the 18th and 19th centuries. The justification of slavery itself through the sins of Ham was well suited to the ideological interests of the elite; with the emergence of the slave trade, its racialized version justified the exploitation of African labour.

Read Black Slavery as the “Curse of Ham”: Bible Truth or Racist Apologetic?

The notion that blackness is equal to sin, used to “prove” black people’s “natural” inferiority, and lack of moral character, also shows up in the Book of Mormon, published in the 1820s (2 Nephi 5:21):

And [God] had caused the cursing to come upon them, yea, even a sore cursing, because of their iniquity. For behold, they had hardened their hearts against him, that they had become like unto a flint; wherefore, as they were white, and exceedingly fair and delightsome, that they might not be enticing unto my people, the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them. And thus saith the Lord God; I will cause that they shall be loathsome unto thy people, save they shall repent of their iniquities.”

Sometime in the last few years, a good Christian woman, who reportedly has studied the Bible carefully, indicated, more or less out of the blue, that I was descended from Ham. Yet, in spite of my “cursed state,” the love of Jesus Christ was still available to me. Circumstances warranted that I had no opportunity for reply.

THIS is my reply: lady, your “Biblical history” is BS.

December rambling: the Rosa Parks of the Fourth Amendment

The Bible: So Misunderstood It’s a Sin. Plus the Atheist 10 Commandments.

This story claims: If The Supreme Court Reads This Study, It Could End Partisan Gerrymandering Forever. But probably not happening.

This being the second anniversary of the Newtown massacre this month, should Nancy and Adam Lanza be mourned? I’d say yes.

1944 murder conviction of 14-year-old vacated. His execution can’t be. I wrote about George Stinney HERE.

Pew Explains Why the Conservatives Live in Their Own “Reality”.

Reasons You Should Never Agree to a Police Search (Even If You Have Nothing to Hide). I agree, in theory, but I’m not sure, in practice.

Rethinking Immigration. We don’t understand “illegal”. We just think we do.

“Sustainable Keystone XL”.

Dollree Mapp, 1923-2014: ‘The Rosa Parks of the Fourth Amendment’.

The PR firm using “Strange Fruit” in its name. Oy.

Feds Indict Another Person For Teaching People How To Beat Polygraph Tests.

A friend of mine wrote: “Watch this video where a casino clamps down hard on a guy who is winning at blackjack by counting cards. I think there’s a very apt correlation between what happens here and what happens in real life any time you actually start to get ahead.”

When reporters value ‘justice’ over accuracy, journalism loses.

Ted Koppel: Fox News is Bad for America.

Why IS liberal Protestantism dying, anyway?

You’re Not What You Think You Are.

Evanier talks about an aspect of creative work (writing, drawing, etc.) that doesn’t get enough attention. It’s the part about making a living.

Why you’re so busy.

Major League Baseball umpire Dale Scott comes out as gay, which still matters as long as homophobia exists.

All of those end-of-the-year lists that come out well before the end of December:
What we searched for on Google. I swear I had NEVER heard of Flappy Bird.
TCM remembers movie actors who died in 2014
100 Notable Books of 2014.
74 Of The Most Amazing News Photos Of 2014, which ARE amazing
50 best albums of 2014; 60% of the artists I had not heard of, and only TWO of the albums, the ones by U2 and Leonard Cohen, I’ve actually heard, though the Springsteen is on the wish list
United State of Pop 2014 (Do What You Wanna Do). Arthur has linked to a bunch of these mashups.
*11 Hoaxes That Your Gullible Facebook Friends Fell For In 2014
And here’s a list of significant events each month of 2014, plus New Republic spotlights bad predictions that were made about the year now ending.

Facebook’s algorithmic cruelty.

The secret language of twins.

Spite thy neighbor, housing division. Also, The Long But Not the Short of It and The Immovable Ladder and Ye Olde Mispronunciation.

Robert Johnson, King of the Delta Blues at the wrong speed?

Fashion at the dawn of pop.

Mister Sister by Kate Pierson, formerly of the B-52s.

The James Bond Theme a cappella. And Ranking: James Bond Theme Songs From Worst to Best.

Inductions into the Grammy Hall of Fame. An eclectic bunch.

Christmas in her soul: Laura Nyro.

The Who’s Roger Daltrey: wedding singer.

Maya Angelou’s ‘Harlem Hopscotch’ Music Video.

The What colour is it? clock does a lovely job of showing the relationships between adjacent colors.

History of Franklin: 1st black Peanuts character” How a schoolteacher helped create the first black Peanuts comic strip character.

The Daughter liked this a LOT, and insisted I link to it: Who doesn’t love a good chain reaction?

Legendary Mad Magazine Illustrator Jack Davis Calls It Quits at 90: “I can still draw, but I just can’t draw like I used to.”

Here’s Everyone From the Epic ‘Colbert Report’ Finale. Never saw Andrew Young when I first viewed it.

If Dr. Seuss books were titled by their subtexts.

My failed attempt to draw the Nancy comic strip.

A Hanna-Barbera story, featuring Tex Avery.

Muppets: Thog (with whom I was unfamiliar), Uncle Deadly (who I DO remember), Vendaface (broad comedy), the very early Wilkins and Wontkins and Sam and Friends, the comedy stylings of Kermit and Cookie Monster, and Cookie Monster takes direction, and Auld Lang ~~Swine~~Syne.

Mystery of creepy 1970s Sesame Street clip solved.

Artifacts Discovered Buried In Washington D.C. Suggest Humans Once Passed Laws There.

John Oliver speaks of the horror that is New Year’s Eve. Still, woman to ride Rose Bowl float 60 years after she was denied because her race.

GOOGLE ALERTS (me)

Interesting that both Arthur and Dustbury responded to my post about compact discs.

Dustbury on an analysis of decade-specific words in song titles listed in Billboard.

It appears that Arthur will meet his post per day goal.

Arthur, by request: terrorism in New Zealand and white privilege and police violence and dentists and New Zealand holidays and loss, and memes and the places he’s been in the US and Canada.

The perfect victim, just the right symbol

Why is it that white men wave real guns around crowded areas in America and are taken into custody alive, yet Tamir Rice, a 12-year old carrying a toy gun in an open carry state, is dead?

Right around December 1, when everyone was rightfully talking about the anniversary of Rosa Parks’ 1955 refusal to cede her seat in a Birmingham bus, one of the Twitter pals of Arthur Tweeted, “Do some research on Claudette Colvin, sidelined as she didn’t have the right ‘look’ of a true heroine”. Arthur wanted my thoughts on that, maybe on March 2, 2015, which is the 60th anniversary of Colvin’s arrest — the first arrest for resisting bus segregation.

As it turns out, I DID write about Claudette Colvin, almost five years ago, and I don’t have much more to say.

Arthur added:

Seems to me this raises issues of expediency — deliberately choosing the best “face” to put on an issue (something I know LGBT activists have done, too), and also how quaint such outdated social mores seem to us now. But it seems to me it also raises issues of elevating sidelined pioneers in struggles for justice because we don’t look down on people like that nowadays.

I think it still happens, all the time. And it has to do, among other things, with young black men getting shot by police, or in Trayvon Martin’s case in Florida, by a wannabe cop. So the narrative becomes whether any of these victims is the “right” one to galvanize a nation seemingly willing to allow for the idea that each of the shootings was justified.

Thus, in Florida, Trayvon Martin is turned into a “thug” who may have smoked pot. Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO is a “thug,” who stole some tobacco product before he was killed.

How about Eric Garner in New York City? He was allegedly selling untaxed cigarettes on a Staten Island sidewalk, but the police action that led to his death was ON VIDEO. The fact that the grand jury, in this case, failed to indict Daniel Pantaleo, shortly after Darren Wilson was not indicted by the grand jury in Missouri, seems to be the tipping point, with demonstrations all around the country.

It is the perception that the PROCESS is broken. Read the New York Times editorial. Well, unless you’re Pat Robertson, who believes police brutality against blacks is a thing of the past. Or the more pervasive view of CONTINUING to parse every case to find some fault of the victim.

Former Republic National Committee head Michael Steele complained about a lack of indictment in the Garner case. Even former President George W. Bush found the decision “hard to understand.”

Why is it that white men wave real guns around crowded areas in America and are taken into custody alive, yet Tamir Rice, a 12-year old carrying a toy gun in an open-carry state, is dead? In part, I think it’s the fact that both the police and the general (white) public actually view black kids as older and less innocent than white kids. Thus the suggestion that the 12-year-old boy in Cleveland killed by police might have been 20. (But shooting a 20-year-old unarmed black man would not have been OK either.)

These cases seem to be piling up recently, with the shooting death by police of 34-year-old Rumain Brisbon in Phoenix, AZ, a black man armed only with a bottle of Oxycotin pain medicine. Then there’s 22-year-old Darrien Hunt, who was shot in the back six times by Utah cops. He had a cosplay sword; no charges were filed. Read this article about the decline of police deaths, even as civilian deaths from police actions have increased.

I am actually excited that the demonstrations are taking place in locations NOT involved in these shootings. What makes me guardedly hopeful about the future is a large number of young white demonstrators; it’s not just a “black issue” anymore.

I recently posted on my Facebook Ezekiel 13:10 New International Version
Because they lead my people astray, saying, “Peace,” when there is no peace, and because, when a flimsy wall is built, they cover it with whitewash.”
Make of that what you will.

Finally, from Arthur:

Seems to me that change usually happens because of the people who are NOT the smug, self-satisfied folks who try and dictate who is and who is not an “appropriate” symbol for a change movement. I seem to remember this one guy who was born in a stable and grew up to hang out with prostitutes, tax collectors, and all sorts of marginalised people, a guy who lost his temper and wrecked a market, disrupting businesses, before eventually being executed under questionable circumstances by the government. That’s one thuggish guy people don’t seem to mind as a symbol, even if they choose to ignore many parts of the story.