More excerpts from my longer work: The Sign of Jonah: Doubts and Convictions

How do we read sacred texts?

My father and mother loved the Bible, and I inherited their passion. Dad loved to read Revelation and other references to the Return of Christ. He would invite canvassing Jehovah’s Witnesses into our home, so he could debate with them about the book of Revelation.   He believed Jesus would return in his lifetime, and on his deathbed assured us it would be soon. The highest praise he could give a minister was that he was “biblical.” We chose our churches, not by denomination, but if the preachers were “biblical.”

What did he mean by “biblical” ?

The Bible, both Hebrew and Christian,

1. should be read literally
2. should be relevant for every time and place
3. should be viewed from the perspective of the risen Christ
4. should be faithfully practiced

He and I affirmed this view in the 1960’s and early ‘70’s, until my graduation from formal schooling.

Read literally

My father believed we should take scripture literally, since it was God-inspired. I never heard him deny that the Psalms were poetry or claim the parables were true stories, but he would chafe at understanding the stories of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, and Noah as myths or symbolic stories. He always argued that interpreting these as mythological stories made them less than the word of God. He felt the same about the Book of Job and Jonah. He thought of them as biographies of ancient men.

Dad’s most-quoted verse about the interpretation of scriptures was:

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, ¹⁷ so that the servant of God^[a] may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. “(II Timothy 3:16-17).

Nothing here suggests a literal reading of the Bible. In fact, the method of reading corresponds to what I would consider a “critical literacy” theory, because interpretation is only complete through action. In the above epistle to Timothy, Paul says scripture is

1. Dynamic, organic (“God breathed”)
2. Useful (for teaching, rebuking, training in righteousness)
3. Culminating in action (equipped for every good work)

The typical argument that scripture should be read literally comes from the first part of Paul’s guidelines. If God said it, it should not be ambiguous or figurative. And yet “God-breathed” suggests anything but literal interpretation.

By “God-breathed” I suppose Paul meant that it was imparted by the Holy Spirit, but everything Jesus said about the Spirit indicated (he, she, it) was mysterious and dynamic. For example, in John 3:8, “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” This is not a static, boxed-up Spirit.

The analogy of the Spirit to the wind comes from the Hebrew word “ruach,” which is translated as “wind, breath, mind, spirit.” The same word is applied to the active presence of God 400 times in the Bible, beginning with Creation, when the “ruach” of God “swept over the face of the waters” (Genesis 1:2). From the beginning, the Spirit was a creative, not a limited force. https://www.hebrew4christians.com/Names_of_G-d/Spirit_of_God/spirit_of_god.html,

Yet, my father and many fellow-believers felt that God spoke in literal, unambiguous language, and they would read the book of Jonah as an historical event, with reference to the Christian life and the exhortation to be faithful to God’s call.  To see Jonah as fiction was to compromise its truth. The literal was a singular, transparent way to read.

Literal reading is a stumbling block for both the dogmatic and the skeptic. There are plenty of non-literal passages in the Christian Bible, such as Matthew 5:29: “If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away.”  Even staunch literalists will admit Jesus did not mean this as a literal commandment. The Christian Bible has dozens of passages like this, which will make the most ardent literalist back off.

Or how do we measure faith by the standards of the Christian Bible? “if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain,’Move from here to there ‘ and it will move; nothing will be impossible for you”[Matt 17:  21-22].  Since that standard was set, there is no record of someone moving a mountain by faith.  Have we all failed to demonstrate our faith by Jesus’ standard?

Or how about this famous simile? Could it be a literal statement?

²⁴ The disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said again, “Children, how hard it is^[e] to enter the kingdom of God! ²⁵ It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” Mark 10: 24

Wow,  no camel can do that Jesus! You don’t mean that literally do you?

²⁶ The disciples were even more amazed, and said to each other, “Who then can be saved?”

²⁷ Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God.” (10:27)

For the literal reader this camel simile is truly terrifying. Like the disciples, the literalist will reply, “Who, then, can be saved?” And Jesus does not say, “Don’t worry. It’s only a simile.”

Instead, he says, “With man this is impossible . . .” Not terribly reassuring for the literalists, even when he says, “all things are possible with God.” That leaves salvation entirely in God’s hands. The literal reader is not reassured, because, after all, literal readings were supposed to clear up mysteries, not complicate them.

As long as I have hung on to literal reading of the Bible, I have obviously turned my back on it. I realize, not only is it a very limited view of holy scripture, it creates way more problems than it solves.

I was excited to hear Paul Simon had composed  a new album called 7 Psalms. It was as if this Jewish kid I knew in college had come full circle and finally tapped into God. Ever since “the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls,” I’ve been a fan. He was so reflective and a bit of a wise-ass–a lonely poet, longing for friendship, as I was in  1964.  He wrote amazing music, but the lyrics! They were really poetry, almost too good to waste on a melody.

Apparently “A vision softly creeping/ left its seeds while I was sleeping” actually happened! In the new documentary “In Restless Dreams: The Music of Paul Simon” he heard a voice telling him in a dream: “You’re working on a piece called Seven Psalms.” It was no coincidence that the beginning section of the album “The Lord” sounded to me a like the “23^rd Psalm”.

The Lord is my shepherd = The Lord is my engineer

He makes me lie down in green pastures=The Lord is the face in the atmosphere

Even though I walk through the darkest valley= The path I slip and slide on

I’ll admit I’ve always appropriated Paul’s music for my own spiritual benefit. He was what my mother used to call “a seeker.” That meant he was on the way to being a Christian. I told her Paul Simon was Jewish, but maybe she was right. In those days I believed everyone was destined to become a Christian, and Paul was like the brilliant friend who was “almost there.”

He was a prophet In “The Sounds of Silence,” preaching against the materialism of society: And the people bowed and prayed/ To the neon god they made. 

In “I am a Rock” he touched a nerve of chronic loneliness. I won’t disturb the slumber of feelings that have died/ If I never loved I never would have cried/ I am a rock I am an island. In “America” tapped the isolation felt by young people: I’m empty and aching and I don’t know why.  I nourished the illusion that Simon was on the edge of a faith like mine.

The illusion snapped when the very carnal music of The Graduate came out, an Academy Award winning movie. Everyone was singing:

And here’s to you, Mrs. Robinson
Jesus loves you more than you will know
Whoa, whoa, whoa
God bless you, please, Mrs. Robinson
Heaven holds a place for those who pray
Hey, hey, hey
Hey, hey, hey

Mrs. Robinson was the hopeless, slutty housewife. Dustin Hoffman was the clueless graduate just a little older than I. In my mind Paul’s faith took a nosedive as the song/movie rose in the charts. Religion whad been treated cynically.  I was disappointed with my lyrical hero, who had the meditative sound of the spirit, but carnal messages. Paul and I were stuck in a dualism: he was the face of the carnal; I was the face of the spiritual.

Then there was the breakup of Simon and Garfunkel.  I found out it was partly due to Simon’s jealousy over the glory heaped on Art Garfunkel for his crystal-clear tenor in “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” It was an epic song of love. Such irony that the song brought them their widest attention, then the break-up.  They say some people can’t stand success.

Later came a very singable “Slip Sliding Away.” It had both the humor and disappointment of failing to reach your goals.  The carnal face: We’re working our jobs/ collect our pay/ then the spiritual revelation: Believe we’re gliding down the highway/ When in fact we’re slip slidin’ away.

It also turned out to be my story in the 1980’s:  I had walked into a spiritual snare, fully believing I was climbing a spiritual ladder.  Paul and I were suddenly on the same page: slip-sliding away. The spiritual and the carnal faces blurred together.

After a year of disillusionment, I began to claw back some of my faith, and I saw Paul in a different way, a man hoping to believe, but always “slip sliding away.” And his story was in his music–honest about successes and failures, excellent at portraying struggling souls and the oppressed. I was less inclined to judge him for his spiritual wisecracks.

Now Paul, the Psalmist. In this album I saw vulnerability, perhaps brought on by his progressing deafness. Simon had been filmed in his studio, with his music woven into his recollections.  I was moved by his reflections about the temporary loss of hearing in his left ear, the fear of losing connection with music.  “You saw a guy who was used to being extremely healthy and athletic for most of his life, and now, suddenly, things were happening that he couldn’t control,” said Alex Gibney, the filmmaker.

Tears and flowers/ dry over time/Memory leaves us/ Memory leaves us melody and rhyme/When the cold wind blows/ the seeds we gather/ From the gardener’s glove/ Nothing dies of too much love.

Now his spiritual face is brimming. In “tears” I see his grief over deafness and the “flowers” they are his music.  “Memory leaves us melody and rhyme”  is bthe residue of sound after near deafness. It is hard to read the “gardener’s glove” without thinking of the ultimate source of seeds and love.  “Seeds” appear to be his inspiration, and  the pleasure of gathering those seeds in the wistful: “Nothing dies of too much love.” The seeds and the love make me imagine his gratitude to the gardener. Well, that’s what my spiritual self wants to believe.

We have come a long way from the carnal face of “Mrs. Robinson” to the spiritual face of “7 Psalms.” Paul has become more meditative, and I have become less judgmental.  The meeting of carnal and the spiritual–face-to face.

The Lord is a meal for the poorest/ A welcome door to the stranger.

He restores my soul (23:3).

I am going to post excerpts of my reflections under the title The Sign of Jonah: Doubts and Convictions as a work  in progress. I hope it will give readers some thoughts to whet their appetites and make me more aware or my audience before I attempt to  publish. Feel free to comment about how these excerpts are working for you.

If you know anything about Jonah, you probably know he was swallowed by a whale. Sounds like a fish story, a child’s story.

Maybe you know he was running from God, and he finally saw the light and did his job preaching to the city of Nineveh.That sounds like a parable of repentance.

Maybe you know that the whole city repented of their ruthless rejection of God. That sounds like the greatest evangelical rally of all time. A hundred and twenty thousand repentant sinners, by God’s reckoning.

But did you know that God patiently instructed Jonah, first by an appeal to mercy on a pagan people, then by a parable, using a bush that protected Jonah from the blazing sun?

Most people haven’t read this part of the story. It’s not as interesting.

Did you know that the conclusion of this story shows God’s mercy on all people, not only the Chosen ones? This is the critical point of the narrative, but the one most neglected.

In these Reflections I want to show how Jonah and I have missed God’s message multiple times in our lives. I hope I can show I have learned from Jonah and avoided some of his mistakes. For Jonah is the story of tribalism and futility. Jonah, himself, is a poster child for intolerance and stubbornness. He is not just the guy who spent time “in the belly of the beast.” I hope I can say I, too, have outlived the belly of the beast.

Ultimately my story is about faith and doubt. Does faith allow room for doubt? Can we learn from doubting? Can faith and doubt co-exist? Can we live with unanswered questions?

If these sound like rhetorical questions, I encourage you to consider how faith and doubt have worked in your life, regardless of your beliefs. If you believe anything, are you challenged to re-think your beliefs? How do your beliefs deal with unanswered questions? Are you content or still struggling? Can you struggle and be content at the same time?

Jonah has much to teach us.  We may live in the belly of the beast. We may be dealing with the cruelty of  intolerant rivals. We may be questioning the mercy of God. These are modern reflections, not limited to the sixth century BCE. So, let’s venture into the whale and beyond.

The Rising Teachers program at St. Louis University may become an early target of the “chainsaw reform” approach to teacher education. According to the Post-Dispatch (March 10, 2025), the program, which offer classes for teacher certification to teacher aides and substitutes, is in jeopardy because its grant subsidizes “divisive ideologies including anti-racism, critical race theory, and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).”

With the inevitable demise of the Department of Education the purge of DEI-motivated programs is just the foreshadowing of deeper cuts. One of the major components of the DOE is Title IIA, the educator development program. The Supporting Effective Instruction State Grant Program provides funds for educator advancement, enabling certification and preparation for administration within schools, the same programs already threatened by DEI embargos.

Another important federal support for public schools is Title I, a substantial aid to schools with “disadvantaged” students. “Disadvantaged” usually refers to low-income populations. Schools with these populations depend on these funds to reach struggling students in their classrooms.

The dismantling of the DOE administration of grants usually results in Block grants to the states, based on some per capita formula. For some reason these grants never total up to the same aid as  Title I and Title IIA, so programs funded by these grants are in jeopardy.

I taught high school in the 1980’s when Block grants were the rage under the Reagan administration. My school was in a blue-collar city in Massachusetts, not wealthy, but flourishing with the aid of Title I and Title IIA grants.  First we lost our Title I teachers through something called “Reduction in Force.” These teachers supported the classes where students were less motivated to learn, sometimes with undiagnosed learning disabilities, sometimes under stress from working 30 hours a week, sometimes lacking support from home. These students suffered as the Title I teachers were cut.

Some of the teachers that remained had been involved involved in curriculum reform in our schools. We were paid to work after school, and our recommendations brought new books into the department, books with serious themes, but accessible to struggling readers. Suddenly the curriculum development funding was cut and our contributions and recommendations for books ended. I cannot express how demoralizing this was.

The loss of funds for professional development combined with a mounting teaching shortage, sounds doom for early and advancing professionals in the next decade. The lack of qualified teachers pushes uncertified teachers into general ed classrooms, creates over-crowded classes, and pushes special education students into general ed environments where they cannot possibly succeed. The most vulnerable students are affected, because the overcrowding of classrooms and the hiring of under-qualified teachers affects them more than privileged students, who have resources in their parents or private tutors.

The impending dismantling of the Department of Education will funnel the remains for education through a sieve which depletes funding as it passes from one level of government to another. With Block Grants the level of support from the federal government diminishes. Then it filters down to the states on a per capita formula, with no aid targeted for disadvantaged populations or for professional development.

When states receive these grants they use them to substitute for their own educational budget so the overall funding for schools diminishes. Each state decides for itself whether it wants to prioritize teacher training and disadvantaged students in their budget, so those items could shrink to zero.  Because state officials only see the birds-eye view of schools, they may hire high-priced consultants to tell teachers what they already know. Their aid is not targeted at specific needs of individual schools. The dwindling funds now slip through the sieve to the school districts.

The local district then has a pittance to hand out to its schools, but it tries to distribute it equitably, keeping in mind that some schools need it more. Some schools need it less, but it wouldn’t be fair to deprive them, so the funds are sifted down to all schools, by some needs-based formula. The result? The neediest schools receive a generous share of a pittance.

When you dismantle entire programs with the flick of a pen, some school children are going to be hurt. Already it is true by the elimination of teacher development programs. Because federal funds  also support diverse populations, the meager balance sifted down from the ruins of Title I will affect the most-needy the the most.

The critics of public education wonder why students are not succeeding on national standardized tests.  They wonder why teachers fail them under impossible conditions. The answer begins with the dwindling of funding at the federal level and ends with the tiny residue that filters down to individual  schools. There is no hidden wealth in the states or their districts.

The “trickle down” theory of educational funding works no better than the trickle down economy.

The “Revival” in St. Louis with Nadia Bolz-Webber was just as billed. Revival in singing, celebrating the Gospel, and testimonies of our experiences. If that sounds a little antiquated, come see what’s new as Nadia campaigns through the “Red States.”

Last night we were about 1200 strong at Manchester United Methodist Church, MO. We took the bait of hope that Nadia set out. We wanted it so badly.

My take-aways:

1. We are not “a caravan of despair.”
2. We need more face-to-face and less face-to-media time.
3. The Gospel has survived; the structures and empires of human-kind have passed on.
4. Hope is not optimism, but just a moment from despair.

The “caravan” lines are from Rumi, who says:

Come, Come, Whoever You Are

Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving.
It doesn’t matter.
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come, even if you have broken your vows
a thousand times
Come, yet again, come, come

~ Jalaluddin Rumi

1. We learned to sing words like this at the “Revival.”  It became a round. Half of us started, the other half entered at “Ours is not a caravan of despair” (“It doesn’t matter” was left out). We were building a community by adventurous singing. We were told the song was in the hymnal of the Unitarian Universalist Church.
2. She deplored social media. She remembered when it was optimistically billed to contact the far away and the lost relationships. Then the ads came, along with demographics. The whole thing dissolved into a cesspool of alienation and despair. She said we need more face-to-face relationships like “Red State Revival.” After Nadia gave her “testimony,” she asked us to turn to two or three others and share our own “testimonies,” whatever words came to us. That seemed to go well, even though, as Nadia quipped, “The Lutherans and the Episcopals  will be appalled.” At the end we were gathered into small groups organized by zip code. She urged us to meet again “to break bread.” We did so and invited our group of fifteen or so to our house for Continental breakfast.
3. She read from Luke 21:5-11 about the mortality of institutions, like the admired Temple in Jerusalem: “one stone will not be left upon another.” She described one site in Asia that had a Christian church and was rebuilt over and over as a mosque, then a church, and a temple. Meanwhile the same Gospel was preached over the world, regardless of structures. We do not depend on man-made buildings or institutions.
4. She talked about the power of hope–that it was not optimism, but a gift of God. No one can take it from us. We can only lose it ourselves. She said it was a a short leap from despair.

What makes Nadia compelling is that she expresses it all in her eyes, her voice, her joy,  her grief, her hope. She is alternately funny and mournful. She pokes fun at us as well as herself. “Don’t be afraid. I know you can do this,” she says as we launch into a new song or as we turn to others to give testimony.  She is a reassuring sister with infectious hope.

Just to share the joy, here is the itinerary for “Red State Revival:”

Dallas, TX . . . March 24

Lincoln NB . . . April 3

Des Moines IA. . .April 4

Atlanta, GA . . . April 25

Nadia invites any Red State church that seats at least 450 people to contact her about a “Revival.” She will fulfill as many invitations as she can. “Don’t be afraid. I know you can do this.”