outWORD by Matte Downey

Jacob's Dream by Jusepe de Ribera This is the second in a series: Stories from Exile. You can read part one  here . The biblical texts are full of stories featuring people who leave home for one reason or another and find themselves in an in-between place. The entire saga of Abraham and Sarah is underscored by a sense of un-belonging. The history of Israel is filled with tales situated in liminal spaces. People are running from danger, travelling to find a wife, searching for livestock, going to war, passing through a foreign land, or wandering in the wilderness.  One of these in-between stories is found in Genesis 28. Barbara Brown Taylor summarizes the familiar tale: There he was, still a young man, running away from home because the whole screwy family had finally imploded. His father was dying. He and his twin brother, Esau, had both wanted their father’s blessing. Jacob’s mother had colluded with him to get it, and though his scheme worked, it enraged his brother to the p...

Obedience has never been one of my favourite words. I thrive in an atmosphere of freedom, creativity, and independence. Submitting my will to that of another person is sometimes difficult for me (my parents were witnesses to this), but I have learned that this is what love does, so I practice loving what others love and saying Yes to people. But this type of loving, mutual submission is not what is commonly meant by obedience, especially in religious settings. In the English language, obedience generally refers to compliance with a rule or law or submission to someone's authority. Obedience is touted as a Christian virtue: we are to obey God and those God has set in leadership over us. In my evangelical tradition, this was presented as a rather self-evident doctrine. God is sovereign and righteous, Ruler over heaven and earth, therefore we must obey God. Similarly, God has set leaders in authority in our churches (who happen to be men), so we must obey them as we would obey G...

I have been re-reading some of the most violent books of the Bible. In Judges, we have stories of mutilation, mass murder, war, assassination, stabbing, familicide, crushed skulls, human sacrifice, gang rape, dismemberment, slavery, and abduction. It is not a pleasant read by any means. Surprisingly, some of these brutal stories have made their way into the Sunday School curriculum. The story of Gideon and his mighty men (found in the book of Joshua) is told as a lesson in relying on God's strength, not on human might. The Sunday School version highlights marching around the city, using torches and horns to disorient the enemy, but downplays Gideon rousing an army to kill men and women, old and young, cattle and sheep, and burn down the entire town (except for Rahab and her family). The story of Samson and Delilah is often told as an illustration of God giving superhuman strength to a man in order to accomplish divine purposes. Sometimes it is also framed as a tale of warning aga...

The Hebrew Bible, also known as the Old Testament, sometimes gets a bad rap. So much violence, so many harsh judgments and prophecies, so much bad behaviour, so much patriarchy. At first glance, it seems to paint a rather unattractive picture not only of the people of God but of God himself. But if we look a little closer, we find that things are not always as they seem. Take patriarchy, for example. Patriarchy is a societal and familial system in which the father and the eldest male are the authority figures. The first-born son dominates the family in power, wealth, and privilege. It is a system very unfriendly to women and anyone not lucky enough to be the firstborn male. And this objectionable, unjust system seems to lie at the very foundation of Judaism and Christianity. What is one to do with those pesky patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? The first thing we can do is note that while patriarchy is the context of the story of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, it is not t...