Worldly Wisdom and Foolish Grace

Lessons from Abraham's Tent

Barbara Carnegie Campbell

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9781725270213
  9781725270206
• eBook ISBN:
  9781725270220
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Crítica e interpretación bíblicas

Rabbi Jesus interpreted the teachings of Torah to his followers. The Prophet Mohammad received a divine revelation centuries later that returned his people to the faith of Abraham. The holy texts of all three Abrahamic faiths, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, teach compassion, generosity, and nonviolence. While culture and politics often speak one understanding of "wisdom," each of these faith traditions asks very different and difficult behavior of their followers, i.e., loving enemies, showing compassion for all, and giving away wealth to serve the poor; in other words, grace-filled living which the world sees as "foolish." Worldly Wisdom and Foolish Grace reflects on ten of the hardest words spoken in Abraham's tent, places "foolish grace" up against "worldly wisdom," and asks us to choose which road to take.

1

It All Belongs To God

When Caesar stamps his image on a coin,

all the coins come out identical.

When the One Who is Beyond All Rulers

stamps the Divine Image on a coin

each coin comes out unique.

Sanhedrin 38a9

Then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap (Jesus) in what he said. So they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, “Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality. Tell us, then what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, “Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites? Show me the coin used for the tax.” And they brought him a denarius. Then he said to them, “Whose head is this, and whose title?” They answered, “The emperor’s.” Then he said to them, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”

Matthew 22:15–21

Then of the drop We created a blood clot,

then of the blood clot We created a lump of flesh,

then of the lump of flesh We created bones,

and We clothed the bones with flesh;

then We brought him into being as another creation.

Blessed is God, the best of the creators!

Quran 23:1410

Worldly Wisdom—“It All Belongs to Caesar”

Our Ecological Crisis

If the lifetime of Planet Earth were measured out on a timeline it would stretch down a country road for a mile and every inch would represent about 8,000 years. The existence of human life on this small blue–green marble would be represented only by the last inch of this timeline. Humanity has hardly lived here long enough to call the place “home.” We’ve barely just moved in! Considering how long our host has been here and how much she has done for us already, it seems odd that only one day out of the 365 days in each year should be set aside as Earth Day.

As the end of the twentieth century approached, scientists began to worry about the condition of Planet Earth. What had for a long time seemed like pollution that we could eliminate, whenever we put our minds to it, suddenly presented itself as irreparable damage from which the earth and all living creatures might never recover. The air and water that supported all life would soon be unbreathable and undrinkable.

Of all the current crises we face today the survival of our planet is at the top of the list. Yet things still do not seem bad enough to us to change the way we live even when we believe what science is forecasting. We stick our heads in the sand and pretend it will all go away when someone else just figures out what to do.

In the meantime, we go on buying fresh fruits and vegetables already cleaned, peeled, and cut up for us on handy plastic trays wrapped in plastic. We continue to dump our waste into landfills and drive ozone-killing cars. We say to ourselves, “Someone will come up with a solution in time,” or “It’s all a hoax to scare us into spending more money,” or “The Bible says the world will come to an end someday so why try to prevent it and go against God’s will?”

Protestant theologians of the last century may have been skilled at articulating faith in the midst of various political crises but, along with most of us, they did not have a clear understanding of an impending ecological disaster. Most of us were led to understand nature as a submissive object at the disposal of its more creative subjects: human beings. Even for the most profound of our religious thinkers like Kierkegaard, Bultmann, Barth, and Niebuhr, nature and history were divorced and all that seemed to matter for humans was the making of history. Culture and history was what humans did to nature, to give it meaning and render it serviceable.

There are endless examples of the destruction that has resulted and continues daily from our attempts to dominate and use nature for our own convenience, comfort, and pleasure. Thousands of shocking articles are found on websites every day, e.g,

• crop failures in poorer countries lead to violence and upheavals.
• drought one year increases the risk that an African country will slip into civil war the next year.
• More than a third of the world’s reefs have already been lost.
• Flooding river bottoms to grow hay means less water in the rivers for wild fish.
• Today forests cover only half of the area they did when the age of agriculture began.

Even though there are many people in the US who suffer from a lack of food, many suffer instead from the abundance of food available. We are the most overweight nation in the world. Nearly four million Americans weigh more than 300 pounds. Author Matthew Sleeth reminds us that, “Our appetite for meat, food out of season, and food from exotic places has a detrimental impact on the health of ourselves and the planet.”11

Under our present political administration, many of the efforts being made by scientific and political leaders to change the way we are destroying the earth are being discontinued. The Environmental Protection Agency has lost funding, reduced staff dramatically, and watched as many of its regulations were overturned. Such federal expenditures did not seem “reasonable” to leaders who suddenly had the majority of votes and executive privilege, many of whom did not believe in any evidence of climate change and global warming to begin with.

We now live in a culture deeply divided over political issues, but the one issue that may soon make our planet uninhabitable is the most critical. We cannot afford to fight partisan battles over whether there is a crisis at hand when the scientific community agrees that if we don’t do something to dramatically change the way we live our planet will soon no longer be able to support life.

Many will not live to see the full effect of this crisis first hand. It’s easy for those people to convince themselves that they therefore have nothing to personally worry about. On the other hand, young people in Canada and the US are filing lawsuits against their governments for their legal rights to a safe climate and healthy...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• It All Belongs To God
• Children Will Lead Us
• Plant Seeds and Tend the Soil
• Love Fulfills the Law
• Season Passion With Compassion
• Be a Good Neighbor
• Turn the Other Cheek
• Love and Bless Your Enemies
• Live Generously
• Let Your Light Shine
• Addendum
• Bibliography