Mapping out Cancer

Another tangent, and way too cool: they've mapped out the genetic codes for melanoma and lung cancer. And this is the crazy part: "experts estimate a typical smoker acquires one new mutation for every 15 cigarettes they smoke. Although many of these mutations will be harmless, some will trigger cancer."

Wow.

Gotta love the Onion!

And on a totally unrelated note, check this out. The history-linguistics geek in me thought it was hilarious. And yes, I have a really weird sense of humor.

What I've learned about parenting, pt. 2

Or rather, ideas I have about parenting so far, given that I'm not very far into it: my daughter turns 3 in just a few months. On the other hand, I'm fast coming to believe that toddlers are just very young teenagers . . . or maybe that teenagers are just very big toddlers??? Hmmm. And now I'm just going to leave that right there.

So what I'm discovering about parenting is that it seems to be a 3-stage process. This isn't developmental stages or anything like that. These are stages I go through--or remind myself to go through--every day. Because I needed an acronym I could remember easily, and because I've got a pretty weird sense of humor, I call it OCD parenting: observation, contemplation, direction.

I have to observe my kids constantly, starting at birth. Those of you who are parents know that there are some things you can just tell about your kid (especially in contrast to an older sibling) from their first 24 hours of life. For example, my daughter is the oldest. She watches the world, considers it, analyzes it, and figures out how to get what she wants and where she wants based on the rules she deduces. My son is almost 8 months. From the time he was born, he saw the world, and tried to change it to match what he wanted. My daughter will deal with things as they are until they pass her internal limit, and then she falls apart. On the other hand, things are either good or the end of the world; there is no middle ground for this boy!

So I watch both of them, trying to get to know them and understand them and how they think.I keep track of where they are developmentally, and try to figure out what might be the biggest challenges and the most rewarding aspects of the stage they're in and in the next stage. That way I can help them with their challenges and praise them and appreciate their successes. I can also be prepared with some strategies for the next stage, but that's getting ahead of myself. That's the next step: contemplation.

And it's late, and my daughter is apparently out of bed and in the bathroom playing with her stepping stool. Let's end it here for now, and pick up with contemplation next time! It's time for little girls to be in bed.

What I've learned about parenting, pt. 1

It's embarrassing to realize that I promised this post a full 4 months ago, and am only now finally sitting down to write it. My excuse? Umm . . . parenting??

Actually, it's true. My son waited until he was 6 months old to sleep more than 2 hours at a time at night, and my daughter hit that wonderful 2 1/2 stage. I though maybe I should figure out some of my own parenting puzzles before writing about "everything I've learned about parenting." What I've learned in the past 4 months feels nearly equal to the previous year! So this one post will actually become two, and yet, in the end, really only cover two things: what I see as my job as a parent, and the parenting philosophy I've sort of settled on after a few years of hearing everyone else's advice and watching how everyone I know does family.

My least favorite part of parenting is the enforcer role. You know, the one that feels like a kill-joy ("Don't push your brother around the dining in his highchair!!") and so often ends in discipline ("Go to your room, NOW!"). I hate it. I hate that I have to emotionally distance myself from my kids to discipline them well. I've discovered that if I let myself stay emotionally invested in the situation, I react emotionally to their disobedience, and disciplining my kids when I'm emotionally involved always ends up feeling like punishment instead of discipline. I want to train my children even in the consequences they face for bad behavior. I don't want to just shut them down. So I've developed a mini-speech I always give my daughter after I discipline her. First we talk through why she got disciplined. Then I tell her I love her, and that my job is to help her grow up and be safe, and that's why we have rules and consequences.

Those two phrases--"grow up" and "be safe"--have come to summarize (to me, at any rate!) my job as a mother. So how do you define these? Safety is the obvious one. If the hurt you'll do yourself is not worth the cost of the injury and what you'll learn from it, don't do it. But what about "grow up"? I define that as preparing my kids to one day enter the real world as healthy and responsible adults capable of successfully navigating the confusing decisions of adulthood. As a Christian, a huge part of that for me is introducing them to the God of the Bible, who loves them profoundly and practically, and to Jesus, who walked in their shoes and offers the way back to God and to the kingdom reality we were meant to experience in complete trust and confidence in him.

Nearly every rule, every situation in parenting so far fits under being safe and growing up. Disobedience? It's part of growing up healthily, because we all need to be able to take direction and obey authorities. Don't play with hot water? Be safe. Don't hit your brother? It's part of growing up to be a healthy, responsible adult. Loving other people? Same thing. It helps my daughter understand I have reasons, and that these reasons are to help her, not just to shut her down. But then, that's her personality. I have a feeling that it will be more important to just say "I'm mommy, and get over it!" to my son!

The side benefit of consistently reminding Jenna of this is that I remind myself of it, as well. And that encourages--well, it challenges--me to parent thoughtfully, with one eye on my children and one eye on their future. And the idea of taking the long view on my kids actually brings me to the second part of what I've learned parenting: my parenting philosophy. It's based on our need as parents to get to know our own kids and to parent them based not on today's needs (at least, not only!) but on the future adults we see in our children.

A Change of Focus . . .

Having graduated (finally!) with my MDiv this past May, I'm taking a well-earned year off before diving into a doctoral program. A year off being a stay-at-home mom, prepping some papers for publishing, brushing up on my Spanish and French, and learning Latin and German. So, maybe not a year off.

But it is a year away from the classroom, be it learning or teaching. And I find my thoughts frequently drifting away from intricate arguments of interpretation and what's cutting-edge in the biblical studies world. I've got to admit, it's refreshing to be a bit more down-to-earth; academia so often seems most at home in the stratosphere! I continue to be grateful that I married a pastor, though--consistent involvement, even by proxy, in the heart of church life does force you to put feet and hands to what you learn in the classroom. I'll always be an academic at heart, but I'm grateful I've been consistently forced into the real world of real people and real problems.

That being said, it seems like a good time to look back over the last few (intense!) years of studying, teaching, growing up, and struggling to work out in life what I've been tested on in the classroom.

First up? Parenting . . . about as far from academia as you can get, I think!

Holiness and the Church

So I read through my last couple of posts and realized I didn't really finish my train of thought. All of this discussion on holiness or purity in the OT and NT deals with God's interaction with humanity and our interaction with him. Jesus turns the expectations of the OT upside down because in the Gospels he appears to "transmit" purity to the unclean instead of becoming unclean himself by touching them.

But there is one other aspect of holiness, outside of interactions between God and humanity, and that is interactions, or maybe I should say impact, of God's people on those who do not follow him. Holiness (literally, "set apart-ness") was, and still is, to be one of the key identifiers of God's people. We are to be set apart from a selfish, sinful way of looking at and doing life, and instead see and do life God's way. So what does this have to do with my previous comments on contagious holiness?

Well, put contagious holiness alongside our calling to be holy and do what we see our Father doing. What does that mean for the church? I think it could mean that we are called to be contagious ourselves. Instead of letting the world rub off on us, we are called to rub off on the world. We are called to follow Jesus' example and to grow the kingdom wherever we are. Wherever we go, we take a new way of looking at things, a new way of doing things. Jesus called us salt and light--preservatives and illumination. Our very presence changes the basic nature of our surroundings. And like the OT Israelites, we are also called to be holy--but a new holiness, constantly renewed by God's grace and forgiveness, that "trumps" the darkness and sin around us, purifying not just us but also through us, drawing to a dramatic close God's plan to redeem all of creation.

(By the way, this plan isn't just a NT thing. God didn't totally change his plan between OT and NT. He planted the seeds for it in the OT, and brought it to fruition in the person of Jesus. He is utterly consistent in plan--and fabulously patient in working it out.)

Jesus and Contagious Holiness

When we get to the New Testament,though, Jesus turns the standard understanding of holiness on its head. Throughout the Gospels the authors describe him healing by touch (Matthew 8.1-4, for example, or John 9). The account in Matthew underscores that Jesus didn't need to touch the recipient in order to heal him or her: directly after touching and healing a leper, Jesus speaks healing over the centurion's servant. It can only be that Jesus' touch is deliberate. Any first-century Jew would know that touching a leper makes you unclean; i.e., the uncleanness of the leper is contagiously passed on to you. But Jesus touches the leper without compunction, and apparently without contracting uncleanness. He cures the man's disease and, by curing a disease that thrust the leper out of the Jewish community, heals the man physically, socially, and spiritually (the man is now welcome back into God's presence at the Temple). Just looking at the Gospel accounts suggests that the healings Jesus performs have this three-fold purpose deliberately: physical, social, and spiritual healing. Jesus' holiness is passed on to the sick, demon-possessed, etc.

And Jesus' healing of the paralytic in Matthew 9 explicitly ties forgiveness to healing (a perfectly reasonable tie, given the link between sin and disease, disfigurement in the first-century Jewish worldview). Forgiveness, healing . . . these sound a lot like the results of sacrifice in Leviticus. I would argue that the Gospels deliberately set Jesus up as a new sacrifice, a replacement for Temple sacrifices, foreshadowing his offering on the cross by describing healings in which heals and sanctifies (by forgiveness?) the sinful, diseased, and otherwise marginalized. They "catch" holiness from Jesus (by faith) and are returned to full community. His touch purifies them of disease and sin alike, and his role as sacrifice is completed on the cross.

Obviously, it's been a while since I first started thinking about this, and a very long time since I started posting some of my thoughts. They've undergone some changes, additions, etc., and I suddenly realize there's a whole lot more work to be done in the Gospels and in Leviticus and some of the prophetic passages that deal with sacrifice in order to fully flesh these out. But there's enough just at a cursory glance that I think I'll be pondering these things for a long time.

Contagious Holiness in the OT (Leviticus?)

Leviticus 6.24-30 contains some interesting wording when it comes to the holiness of sacrifices. According to the TNIV, verse 27 reads "Whatever touches any of the flesh will become holy . . . ." This certainly sounds like contagious holiness, but the rest of the passage does not reflect this idea at all: the second half of the verse requires that any garment that touched the meat be washed, and verse 28 continues with the more frequent injunction to destroy or clean any pot in which the meat was cooked. These warnings are standard within these sections of Leviticus describing the various sacrifices, and nowhere do these descriptions suggest any sort of holiness that "passes on" from the sacrifice to any other object.

The NET probably has it right: "Anyone who touches its meat must be holy . . . ." Again, the holiness of an item, even of a sacrifice, continues its status subject to the holiness/cleanliness of what it contacts. So this passage, which I originally read in the TNIV, does not actually support any idea of "contagious holiness." So why bring it up at all? Simply because it demonstrates a principle core to the idea of contagious holiness: true holiness that trumps sin and uncleanness must come straight from the source--that is, God--and not from something else, even if it is associated with or given by him. This may not seem like a big deal, but its practical implications are pretty important. I'll take a look at those very briefly, and in just a minute. But first to look at holiness within the OT sacrificial system.

God set up the sacrificial system with its limitations so that it would be clear to Israel that holiness only came from personal interaction with himself via the avenues he specified (and thus demonstrating one's submission to his rule). Opening up another way to holiness via impersonal objects would bring "magic" back into Israel's experience of God (magic and divination were very significant parts of Egyptian and Canaanite religious rites). The key to magic is that man has control over the outcome. A priest trained for years in the "right" way to pray, to sacrifice, and to perform the rites so that he could guarantee the deity's response to the petitioner. In other words, praying the right prayer and giving the right gift guaranteed that you'd get what you wanted. It was a contract whose outcome you could control, and thus you had a measure of control over the divine.

The core of God's interaction with Israel, though, was their trust in his goodness and their consequent submission to his response to their petitions. This was completely the opposite of the religious atmosphere they left in Egypt, where one's status with the gods could be bought with proper rites. Israel's status with God depended instead on his grace, on their obedience, and on a covenant of trust and obedience instead of a contract of rituals and proper wording.

Ezekiel 47 takes this emphasis on the heart instead of on right ritual to a whole new level. Sacrifice and ritual--even as expressions of submission, obedience, and trust--are bypassed in favor of a new way in which God pours himself out on Israel, and Israel responds in heartfelt submission that transcends rite to be a personal interaction with God himself. This is where contagious holiness comes in, then: at the level of interaction with the person and power of God, and not with any other thing, no matter how closely linked to God's holiness it may be.

So what does that mean practically? It means that we can't expect God's holiness and his cleansing to "rub off" on us if we're not actually in contact with him. Too often we can get sidetracked by things that are "supposed" to grow us spiritually, whether they by people, practices, or events. But if we're not deliberately interacting with God at that heart level as a matter of lifestyle, we can't expect, much less demand, the outpouring of God's presence and power in our lives that we so very much desire. And with that, it's time to look at Jesus and how he viewed purity and holiness.

Contagious Holiness, Ezekiel Style

So the most vivid examples of contagious holiness can, I think, be found in the prophets and, specifically, in those prophetic passages that describe Israel's restoration and return from exile. In chapters 40-47, Ezekiel relates his vision of the new Temple and new Israel. A quick scan shows that it's full of odd details, numbers, etc. The perfection of the numbers and images (perfect cubes, numbers significant to Israelite history and gematria like 12, 40, etc.) indicate that the vision is symbolic. In keeping with his earlier vision in 10-13, Ezekiel's description of the Temple emphasizes its sheer "otherness," highlighting the transcendent glory, holiness, and power of God.

The imagery of this utter perfection coming down to dwell with Israel brings an astounding note of personal care and intimacy to Israel's future interactions with God. But the really astounding bit is found in Ezekiel 47. The Temple is once again in Israel, full of God's glory and holiness, and a river runs from the altar out of the Temple. It grows as it leaves the Temple, starting as a trickle but soon becoming an uncrossable river, overflowing the land. The river brings life everywhere it goes--life abundant and overwhelming, transforming a desert into fruitful land and even turning the Dead Sea into fresh water (but leaving the salt marshes salty in order to retain their usefulness). The trees bear unending fruit and their leaves bring healing to all. The uncleanness of the land that Ezekiel witnessed in chapters 10-13 is washed away in this flood as if it never existed.

Because of the link Ezekiel's already established between sin and the failure of the land and its people and the abandonment of God, the return of fruitfulness, the implied prosperity of God's people, and the simple yet undeniable fact of God's returned presence all point to a reversal of the OT concept of holiness as subject to defilement. The sacrificial code itself is based on the idea that the uncleanness of sin destroys the purification of holiness, making the repetition of sacrifice necessary in order to remain holy and within the covenant God established with his people (and, by extension, to remain within the community of God's people as well).

The OT view of the Temple is as a center of holiness, a place to come and have your uncleanness and sin effectively erased by sacrifice. However, neither the Tabernacle nor Solomon's Temple "infected" the land and its people with holiness. Instead, as Ezekiel saw, the sins of the people could defile the Temple itself, leading to God's abandonment of it, for it was no longer an appropriate dwelling for a holy God. This stands completely in line with the view of holiness described above.

However, Ezekiel's description in chapter 47 of unheard-of fruitfulness indicates a sanctification of the land--in a sense, its redemption. God's life-giving presence so pervades the land that it can only be described in cosmic, nearly surreal terms. No mention is made of sacrifices brought to the Temple; instead, the river bubbles forth from the altar spontaneously to bring holiness and redemption to God's people. The uncleanness of the land has been washed away in an outpouring of holiness unlike anything seen before. What is holy is not made unclean by the defilement of the land, but instead "trumps" the sin in the land in an explosion of life and healing. It is a contagious holiness that purifies all it touches.

To All Things There is An End . . . we hope!

Well, I have finally semi-officially finished my Master of Divinity! My thesis is submitted and my classes completed. On to graduation at the end of May! And now, for the first time in 2 years, I have time to explore all the ideas and fields I've put on hold because of my thesis. I've sadly neglected my blog, and I'm looking forward to working out some ideas I've kept in the back of my mind for the past few months.

But first I promise to finish some of my thoughts on contagious holiness. In the next couple of day, I'll sit down and look at sacrifice, Temple, and new covenant through the lens of contagious holiness--and then finally move on to how Jesus enacted this idea in his ministry, and what the implications of his actions are in regards to his understanding of God's promises to Israel and, possibly, our role as the church today, following the model he laid out.