Yesterday I was interviewed by KPBS–the local PBS affiliate–on the resignation of Pope Benedict and the upcoming conclave.
It was a brief segment–just five minutes, and they told us in advance that they were going to ask like six questions in that five minutes, so we have to be really concise.
What I was most interested in was the whole partisan/political way they tried to frame the issue. It was far more nakedly political than I’d guessed, especially for a network that tries to project an attitude of impartiality.
The evangelists Mark and Luke both speak from their own perspectives, which helps better express the complex truth about Jesus.
While they may agree about the facts of Jesus’ life, the authors of the four gospels have different interests and perspectives.
Matthew has a particular interest in Jewish concerns, Luke has a particular interest in Gentile concerns, etc.
But sometimes the differences between them come out in more personal ways.
Tuesday’s gospel reading contains a particularly striking illustration of that.
Mark on Doctors
Tuesday’s Gospel reading contains the passage from Mark 5 dealing with the woman with the flow of blood. You know, the one who is healed by sneaking up and touching Jesus’ clothing.
In Mark’s account of the event, we read:
And there was a woman who had had a flow of blood for twelve years, and who had suffered much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was no better but rather grew worse [Mark 5:25-26].
Ouch! Harsh.
Physicians had caused this woman a lot of suffering, they took all her money, and she got worse rather than better.
Not a positive commentary on the medical profession.
Some Truth
The comment would have resonated with many people in Mark’s day, for the state of the medical profession was primitive.
Doctors might be well meaning, but they had nothing like the tools we do today.
Even just a few centuries ago, one physician (my memory fails me on precisely who) made the ironic statement that medicine amounts to making the patient comfortable while nature takes its course.
Yikes!
And even today there are many situations that are not treatable or not easily treatable. We’re only at the dawn of effective medicine (that is, if we don’t ruin the future course of medicine by making the development of new cures uneconomical).
A Matter of Perspective
While it wouldn’t be surprising for many patients in Mark’s day to share his outlook on doctors, there is one group that you could count on to have a significantly different perspective.
Can you receive medical treatment when you're sick? Or does that indicate a lack of faith?According to some Christians, we shouldn’t ever be sick. If we ever are sick, it represents a failure on our part.
We haven’t had enough faith, they may say, for if we had perfect faith, God would heal us.
Some would see going to the doctor as a sign of bad or weak faith.
It would be nice if we could be healed, instantly, of any sickness or infirmity.
It would also be a great evangelization tool, if people saw Christians never got sick.
But the fact is that God allows sickness in our lives.
In fact, I’ve been sick for the last week with a bad cold, but I’m feeling better.
At least I’m feeling enough better to make this video, and I thought I’d to one about sickness.
Here are some biblical reasons why being sick does not indicate a lack of faith, and why it’s okay to go to the doctor.
In a previous post, we looked at a common answer to the problem of evil–that God allows sin and the suffering it causes to exist because the only way to eliminate them would be to eliminate free will.
Without free will, according to this view, something important would be lost.
If we didn’t freely choose good–to freely love God and love our fellow human beings–then these actions would lose something very important.
It would be like being “loved” by a robot–a being programmed to do nothing else.
The Love of the Saints
What about the saints in heaven? They don’t sin. Does that make their love less valuable?
At the wedding at Cana, Jesus told Mary: "Woman, how does your concern affect me?" Was he showing disrespect to her?
At the wedding at Cana, Jesus turns to Mary and says, “Woman, how does your concern affect me? My hour has not yet come.”
Sounds disrespectful, doesn’t it?
Or at least you could take it that way.
But Jesus wasn’t being disrespectful at all.
Here’s the story . . .
Pronoun Trouble
First, the translation “How does your concern affect me?” (John 2:4 in the NAB:RE) is not a literal rendering of what Jesus says in Greek.
Word-for-word, what he says is “What to me and to you?”
In context, Mary has just come up to him and informed Jesus that the people running the wedding have no wine, so you might literally translate his response as “What [is that] to me and to you?” In other words: “What does that have to do with us?”
He’s not dissing her. He’s putting the two of them–both of them–in a special category together and questioning the relevance of the fact that people outside this category don’t have wine. He’s saying that it’s not the responsibility of the two of them to make sure they have wine.
But that’s lost if you take the Greek pronoun that means “to you” (soi) and obliterate it in translation.
“Woman”
Part of what makes it sound like Jesus might be dissing his mother is the fact that he refers to her as “woman.”
We don’t talk to women like that today–not if we respect them, and certainly not our own mothers.
But the connotations–of respect, disrespect, or other things–that a word has in a given language are quite subtle, and we can’t impose the connotations that a word has in our own language on another.
Consider: Suppose, in English, we replaced “woman” with a term that means basically the same thing but with better connotations.
For example, the word “lady” or “ma’am.”
Suddenly what Jesus says sounds a lot more respectful.
In British circles, “lady” has distinctly noble overtones (it’s the female counterpart to the noble honorific “lord”).
And even in demotic America, a son can say, “Yes, ma’am” to his mother and mean it entirely respectfully.
So what can we learn about the connotations of “woman” as a form of address in Jesus’ time?
Why does God allow evil to exist? Why is there sin and suffering in the world? And, what's love got to do with it?
The most perplexing problem in apologetics is the problem of evil: Why would an all-good, all-powerful God allow evil to exist?
There is a real mystery here, and we can only give partial answers.
Here are some of mine . . .
Two Kinds of Evil
We need to recognize that there is more than one kind of evil.
When we use the word “evil,” we often mean moral evil (sin), but historically it was frequently used for other things, such as suffering.
These two forms of evil are linked: It is a sin to cause needless suffering, for example.
This brings us to an important question . . .
Could God Stop These Evils?
Yes. God is omnipotent. He is the Creator and Sustainer of the universe.
Without his action, the universe would never have come into existence, and without his continued action, it would cease to exist or go “to nothing” (Latin, ad nihilum–where we get “annihilate”).
God could have prevented all sin and suffering by not creating the universe.
And he could end all sin and suffering simply by allowing the universe to cease to exist.
Jephthah made a tragic vow, and to fulfill it, he would have to kill his daughter. What are we to make of this?
The book of Hebrews has a whole chapter about Old Testament men (and women) who achieved great things by faith.
One of them had his daughter killed–as a human sacrifice.
What are we to make of this?
Hebrews on Jephthah
Hebrews 11 celebrates various Old Testament figures who had faith in God and did amazing things. Toward the end of the chapter, we read:
And what more shall I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets–who through faith conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, received promises, stopped the mouths of lions . . . [Heb. 11:32-33].
It continues in the same vein.
The point is: These men, together with some notable women the chapter also mentions, did amazing things as a result of their faith.
One of the people mentioned in this passage is Jephthah.
Who was he?
The Stage Is Set
The stage for Jephthah’s first appearance is set in Judges 10, where we read about how the Israelites have been worshipping foreign gods and, as a result, they have become oppressed by a group of foreigners: the Ammonites.
The Israelites repent, and God is moved to have mercy on them.
So God will make sure that they are delivered from the persecution, but what historical form will this deliverance take?
The leaders of Gilead (part of the territory of Israel) start consulting about how they can free themselves from the Ammonite oppression.
Specifically, they decide that if they can find a man to lead the fight against the Ammonites, they’re willing to let him be the leader of Gilead.
Meet Jephthah
Turning the corner into chapter 11, we meet Jephthah:
[1] Now Jephthah the Gileadite was a mighty warrior, but he was the son of a harlot. Gilead was the father of Jephthah.
[2] And Gilead’s wife also bore him sons; and when his wife’s sons grew up, they thrust Jephthah out, and said to him, “You shall not inherit in our father’s house; for you are the son of another woman.”
[3] Then Jephthah fled from his brothers, and dwelt in the land of Tob; and worthless fellows collected round Jephthah, and went raiding with him.
So already, Jephthah has had a hard life. Think about his family situation!
He’s the son of a prostitute, but his father took him (as a boy) to dwell in his own house anyway, with the sons of his wife.
Ouch! Think about how painful that must have been for everyone involved!
Then when his half-brothers are grown up, the legitimate sons drive Jephthah out so that he can’t inherit anything (meaning: he leaves penniless or close to it).
Jephthah then descends into a life of banditry.
So: Hard life. Social and familial outcast. Enters a life of crime.
The magi followed the star and found Baby Jesus. What are we to make of this mysterious event, and does it mean astrology is okay?
On January 6 the Church celebrates the feast of “Epiphany.”
This feast commemorates the mysterious visit of the magi to the Baby Jesus.
Who were the magi? What led them to visit Jesus? And what lessons should we–and shouldn’t we!–learn from this incident?
Here are nine things you should know . . .
1. What does the word “Epiphany” mean?
“Epiphany” means “manifestation.”
It comes from Greek roots that mean “to show, to display” (phainein) and “on, to” (epi-).
An epiphany is thus a time when something is shown, displayed, or manifested to an audience.
2. What is the feast of the Epiphany about?
According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
The Epiphany is the manifestation of Jesus as Messiah of Israel, Son of God and Saviour of the world. the great feast of Epiphany celebrates the adoration of Jesus by the wise men (magi) from the East, together with his baptism in the Jordan and the wedding feast at Cana in Galilee.
In the magi, representatives of the neighbouring pagan religions, the Gospel sees the first-fruits of the nations, who welcome the good news of salvation through the Incarnation.
The magi’s coming to Jerusalem in order to pay homage to the king of the Jews shows that they seek in Israel, in the messianic light of the star of David, the one who will be king of the nations.
Their coming means that pagans can discover Jesus and worship him as Son of God and Saviour of the world only by turning towards the Jews and receiving from them the messianic promise as contained in the Old Testament.
The Epiphany shows that “the full number of the nations” now takes its “place in the family of the patriarchs”, and acquires Israelitica dignitas (is made “worthy of the heritage of Israel”) [CCC 528].
Matthew records that Herod the Great slaughtered the holy innocents in his efforts to kill Jesus. Did this even actually happen?
On December 28, the Church commemorates the slaughter of the holy innocents.
These are the baby boys in Bethlehem that Herod the Great had slaughtered in an attempt to kill the Baby Jesus.
But many people today challenge the idea that this ever took place.
“We have no record of it!” they say.
Actually, we do . . .
Who Was Herod the Great?
Herod the Great was the king of Judea at the time Jesus was born.
He had the title “king,” but he was not an independent ruler. Instead, he was a client king of the Roman empire who had been named “King of the Jews” by the Roman Senate.
This meant that he was a local ruler who ultimately answered to Rome and who owed his throne to the Roman Senate.
Religiously, Herod was a Jew, but ethnically, he was descended from a neighboring people, the Idumeans. They had been forcibly converted to Judaism in the time of the Maccabees (Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 13:9:1).
As a ruler, he built a lot of things–fortresses, aqueducts, theaters, etc. Undertaking major public works projects was one of the ways that rulers in the ancient world built a legacy for themselves.
His most famous building projects was the Temple in Jerusalem, which he began dramatically expanding.
Yesterday I was interviewed by KPBS–the local PBS affiliate–on the resignation of Pope Benedict and the upcoming conclave.
