Seven Stories Review

Mike Morrell’s Speakeasy has supplied me with another free book this month in exchange for an honest review no matter how critical (i.e. I have no obligation to be nice). The title of this book is Seven Stories: How to Study and Teach a Nonviolent Bible, written by Anthony Bartlett.

This is the first book I have read by Bartlett, but he proves himself to be a brilliant thinker. He is well read in theology, philosophy and more specifically Girardian philosophy which emerges often in this book. Seven Stories is set up in a textbook fashion that is ideal for, but not limited to, teachers, small groups, pastors and their staff. I, however, found it also to be an enjoyable solo read.  At the end of each section he offers lesson questions, reflective questions, a glossary of terms used, literary resources for more on the subjects he is discussing and cultural references that have touched on these topics (e.g. movies and books). While I initially felt it was written for more of an academic audience, this did help toward making it accessible for others.

Bartlett employs solid interpretative tools for looking at scripture in that he constantly minds historical-criticism, literary-criticism and further employs Girard’s anthropological considerations. He takes his readers through seven stories, but they are “stories” in the sense that each chapter/story is broken up into three lessons which begins by picking up on a theme and theological issue that occurs early in the Bible (often within the Pentateuch) and shows how it travels and evolves throughout the rest of scripture for how people think about and relate to God in their experience and communal life. Bartlett reveals by “lesson three” of the story how each one finds fresh revelation that reshapes their understanding and sores to new heights in Jesus.

This is not in the sense that there is a univocal voice tidily linking the canonical books together but rather he makes full use of the view that the text (as Rene Girard says) is “in travail” and wrestling with itself. His storied themes show how in the messiness of it all that God is always progressing his people to somewhere new and striving toward new meanings especially in terms of what justice, vindication and redeemers look like.

While reading it I was reminded of a quote attributed to Novatian (though I cannot corroborate that, but it’s germane to the topic) in which he said, “The Israelites viewed God not as God was, but as the people were able to understand. God, therefore, is not mediocre, but the people’s understanding is mediocre; God is not limited, but the intellectual capacity of the people’s mind is limited.”  In a sense this book meets a need in the church right now that struggles to remember how God’s self-revelation in the midst of this is constantly moving humanity in life affirming directions and thus causing (as Bartlett terms it) a “semiotic shift” in the later authors’ view of everything.

 I really don’t have many gripes about this book other than wishing he would have expounded a little more on “Story 1” about the Hapiru as I think that will be a bombshell to many coming from evangelical streams and could be easily misused by those prone to anti-Semitism, but it is very important topic for us to be discussing.

Nevertheless, Anthony Bartlett sets out to offer a new lens to interpret the Bible through and he does it very well and will certainly challenge our thinking and assumptions. To me, that alone makes it a quality book to grapple with whether anyone walks away agreeing with him or not.

Christmas Confronts Capital

Everett Patterson's "Jose y Maria" 

From Advent through Christmas this season (that’s right there’s 12 days of Christmas so I am not late) I have been reflecting on the nativity in contrast with the idea of structural sin. Specifically how the structural sin Jesus was born into (which unsurprisingly looks a lot like our structures) created the culture that would later crucify him. This culture seems to be the very thing God asks Israel in Torah and the prophets to push back against. In considering this I am also noticing that personal sin is almost always a reflection of the systems of sin one lives in, which is not a new idea but one I am beginning to grasp. This is not to say that we do not have personal responsibility in the matter but quite the opposite as we are contributing to the larger problem when we engage in it. So let’s explore how.

I believe we see hints of Israel’s structural sin in all of Advent especially as we follow John the Baptist into the desert.  In this reminiscent scene of exodus and exile John draws Israel’s old night to a close and prepares everyone to ring in the new dawn. He takes up the prophet’s role of calling for the people to turn away from all that desecrates/enslaves them.  It is here that the culture’s entanglement is revealed when they ask, “What must we do?”  John tells the crowd to stop living in excess: If you have two coats give one to someone with none and the same goes for food; to the tax collectors he said stop taking more than you need from people; to the soldiers he said stop extorting and be content with your pay. Then King Herod arrests John for calling him out on taking his brother’s wife (Lk. 3:1-20).  All of these issues seem to be rooted in greed, violence and even fear-driven desire of their predatory economy. They lived in an unwillingness to trust each other or YHWH as provider and instead took for itself what it wanted.

Moreover, it reflects how Roman culture behaved from the top down and how much that had permeated Jewish culture.  Rome’s imperial control created severe inequality through its extraction-economy.  As Walter Brueggemann says about the period:

That is why so much attention is given in the Gospels to the tax collectors who were agents who helped transfer money and possessions from those who produced wealth to those who enjoyed wealth. That economy featured an urban center (Jerusalem) that was organized and ordered by the urban elite who enjoyed surplus wealth. It was evident that in Jerusalem many were not among the elite and lived subsistence existence. The elite who dominated the city depended, of course, on the labor of such subsistence workers… Douglas Oakman (in Jesus and the Peasants) has made a compelling case that the defining reality of this economy was debt, whereby subsistence peasants were kept endlessly and hopelessly in debt to predatory interests. ”[1]

It is not hard to extract from this scenario that it would have created fears over scarcity and vulnerability which has always been power’s greatest tool for control. Fear-based relationships never work well. Moreover, while the majority suffers, those at the top never go without and ironically they need the indebted majority to continue being consumers with innumerable payment plans.  This is why the tune that retailers sing the most is that we consumers do not have enough or that we are not enough without their product.  But that is not the truth, though it is the anxiety we enter into and it creates a people who will live beyond their means and implement such strategies over others. Thus the structure has formed the individual.

Contrastingly the message of Christmas is the great alternative message of hope. Not a message with words but a message of presence and a presence that threw shade on all their present arrangements. The nativity scene says that there is only one place even for the Creator who chooses to enter His creation through parents of poverty and that is to stay on the outside of its settled imperial order with the rest of the night’s displaced animals.  In this picture lay the hope of all who are displaced, disinherited, and disheartened because that is exactly where God prefers to make covenant, tabernacle, break bread, breathe life and redefine beauty. Why? Because God always had a life-thriving vision for creation and those set on the outside have no loyalty to the structures that never included them.  God opposes it by continuing creation through a people who will enter into trust and neighborly economies in the now. For those who insist on protecting the top of the economic and power food-chains this will NOT be good news! At least, not until they can see it for the life in captivity and anti-creation it is.

This foundational silent night sets the stage for the One who will later break traditional economic patterns and ask His followers to forsake possessions to follow Him (Lk. 5:11, 28; 18:22). It is because God’s remedy to our structural predation is selfless giving in remembrance that we are enough as is and YHWH decisively insists on being our provider (Exod. 16; Matt. 6:25-34; Mk. 6:30-44). The formation of trust and neighborliness is the culture of hope that should shape our collective lives on this creative journey. But it requires practicing this alternative way with fidelity in all of our relationships as our lives share a deep connection with the whole of the cosmic story.  

[1] Walter Brueggemann. Money and Possessions (Louisville, Ky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2016), 187-188.