I love to read. Have since I could read at about age 5. Okay, I am not a prodigy, my brother was 8 years older than me and he challenged me on everything. Even learned to play chess at age 3 or 4. Again, not a prodigy just had a big brother who needed someone to beat (and beat up on occasion). My daughter is as bad, has been since about the same age.
How we read is as important as what we read. I often come to a book full of hope that I will learn something, be entertained, even have a good laugh. In this blog, you get a taste of the kinds of things I read. But how do we read? If I understand the context, the society of what I am reading I enjoy it more. I love Jonathan Kellerman books. My mother sent me his first one years ago, when she was living in LA. I love his books for two reasons, one I have been in most of the towns he describes and all over LA, so I can see the places. The other reason is he really is a licensed psychologist and we are basically in the same field, so I get caught up in the therapeutic side of his work.
Do you realize that that book we call the Bible must be read the same way? My daughter was castigated by a parishioner for saying that we don’t know if Jesus could read or write. This elderly parishioner can only see Jesus and read the Bible from her modern life. Jesus was not modern, though he is ageless. If you read the Bible with a modern mind, you will really be confused and you will have a tough time resolving some important issues. No, this very complex book has to be seen from the times of the writers and from the Jewish or Roman cultures.
A great teacher in this regard is Richard Rohr. He is a priest with a brilliant mind and his retreat on the Sermon on the Mount is worth listening to. He explains Jesus from the stand point of his time. Jesus getting baptized, healing people, sitting with sinners all have a context. In those days, to get healed, to be remitted of sin you had to go to the Temple. There you paid for forgiveness with a sacrifice, that they sold you at the Temple. No money, no remission of sin. No money, no healing. Sinners, in those days, were the ones who could not afford to pay the fees for the temple sacrifices.
So, imagine dear friends, if we look at these lives of ours from another context. We are sinners, not because of our actions but because we cannot pay the price to be forgiven. We have no temple in all the world we can go to, buy a dove and have it sacrificed in our place. No lambs, no oxen, nothing we can do to buy forgiveness. That is the radical message of Jesus and it is what got him killed. He brought the Eternal “to the house” (to use an East Texas phrase) and he paid the Temple tax, the sacrifice price. Now does the old hymn “Jesus Paid It All” make more sense? That one carpenter, who lived in a world where only the most educated could read, where no one took notes, where your word was your bond, not a signature on a document, that Carpenter turned the world upside down and how we read the world.
He said to read the world a different way. He said we should love those who hate us. No not hugs and kisses and being smiley faced. No, loving those who hate us is to seek to understand that person as they are, without judgement. He said turn the other cheek. To not have your first response be anger. If we are to “read” Him right, then we cannot get caught by the words. We must get caught up in the context, the spirit of the words, most of all to get caught up in Love.
TMM